OMG Shops - Armor

These items rule. THESE ITEMS SUCK. These items rule. THESE ITEMS SUCK.

Welcome to Part 2 of the OMG Shops series, I suggest you check out the first one all about Magic Items. For naming a shop and aesthetic, you can check out part 1 as I went over all of it there. I go into alot about building in the engaging elements for a shop at the start of that post. But I'll include some specific examples when we are talking about Armor shops. It may seem like a trivial thing to focus on shops, shopkeepers, and items of the armor variety but for several classes they are the bread and butter of not dying terribly in battle. Its hard to have a tanking Paladin when they have shit AC.

A shop selling armor can mean a few things - it could mean a retail/reseller like establishment that has a little more polish on it, or it could mean straight from the source which is most likely a blacksmith. That isn't to say that it couldn't be a combination of the two with one person running the nice pretty looking shop that the players interact with and where the work happens away from all the fancy people. It really just comes down to the feel you want for the shop.

In honesty it also is determined by the feel that you want the location in general to have. You can really drive home aspects of the town or city your players are in using your shops. The biggest example is with armor and weapons but we will talk armor cause that is what I'm typing about. A small close knit community out in the country wouldn't have a shop facade to go with the blacksmith, it would be a very obvious direct transaction with the person who will be making the thing you want. But a city divided into sections where some have more money and power then others may have the blacksmithery itself in the poorer part of town because of the heat, smoke and noise it produces while having a very fancy shop in the swanky part of town. If the city goes further and caters in an extreme to the wealthy and powerful then the shop might be the only way to by new armor. However if its a force thing that most craftsmen are forced into in order to survive (never against taking a rich man's money when I'm starving) then the blacksmith might sell everyday things directly and mark up armor at the shop. This could mean that if players made a direct play for a discount via checking out the blacksmith that they might land quite the discount.

So we see how closely the world effects the shop but how does the shop effect the world? A blacksmith that pumps out alot of good quality product is going to raise the overall ACs of those in the area. Its going to make any fights with humanoids more difficult because of that. A city might have large crafted metal objects, art, or contraptions if a large guild of experimenting blacksmiths live there. The ability to profit off of both war time (armor, weapons, etc) and peacetime (farming, tools, wheels, etc) means that the balcksmithing trade is a pretty safe and stable one to get into so maybe its a popular go to. What does a flood of that kind of workforce, and therefore product, do to your world?

One quick note for shop aesthetics before we move on. The quality of the building, the cleanliness of it, and what is displayed is very important. An open air lean-to with a roaring kiln and the sounds of clanging metal with newly made tools hanging on pegs from the wall give a very different feel from a large multi-tiered building with public access on the first floor as the clanging from below is muffled by a thick plush carpet and rows of armor are set at attention. Feel free as always to have fun with it!

I also talked in length about Shopkeepers in Part 1 of this series so really go check that out. But for this one I'm going to do a quick pre-gen of a few options for you so you can see just how wildly diverse you can still get with something so specific.

Todar Rutunk, Bugbear - A well dressed Bugbear with a large feathered hat they are the epitaph of high society. Gracefully moving through the meticulously positioned, polished, and curated armor designs. They are quick with smile and wit but diabolical when it comes to negotiations, quickly using what ever advantage they can gain to get maximum gold per piece sold.

Nesrish Crordal, Silver Dragonborn - With a quick temper they run their forge hot to sweltering in order to keep unwanted visitors out of their space, which honestly is any visitor in their opinion. They are quick to snap at when approach but hold begrudging respect for those adventurers and warriors who actually use the armor they by for their intended purpose rather then to show off. If you can earn their respect and prove the use for it they are also likely to give return customers a steep discount.

Galthea Thunderweaver Vuma-Thigo, Goliath - Known as almost as terrifying as the monster their armor protect against this towering giant is said to have the powers of thunder and lightning dancing across their skin to make the pieces of armor rather then using a traditional forge. They don't value money or possessions and will refuse to sell any of their creations as they must instead be earned through great feats. Honor, fearlessness, and fierceness are held in high regard above all else.

Man this post is just writing itself at this point since now its time to talk about stocking your gear for an armor shop.  To stock your gear I could just send you to Part 1 again, and will suggest it but I thought I'd bring that part over since its only a quick paragraph. Just replace the words magic item with armor.

Okay so we have our Tiers of Play laid out, we've sorted the magic items by these tiers (you'll see that an item can be on more than one list and that's perfectly fine). I then create 3 random lists for each tier of play with magic items I feel best fit the campaign, the world, or things I tailor for the players. Normally you don't have to worry about a list larger than 20 but go as ham as you'd like. When making the store pick a list from the tier of play that currently applies to the players, roll 1d6 (min of 2) times on the list to stock the store. This method comes with the bonus that if you're players revisit a store at a higher tier you don't have to scrap everything, just roll on the new lists. You can also switch up the stock ever so often to show the life of the shop while the players are away. This might lead to some fun side quests and bargaining to get the shopkeeper to make an item that a player had their eye on but that was sold while they were away.

Not to be repetitive but in Part 1 I do go over reskinning, tweaking and homebrewing items. So to reinforce that and to show how doing it for armor might be a little different I'm going to provide examples below. For armor in particular there are a few more things you need to keep in mind, where a magic item has a large reach of effect, armor is instead more narrowly focused but can also have more impact. Since it most directly effects a player's AC it can change the balance of encounters. For a DM creating armor for their player this important to keep in mind just in general but should you be adding any other benefits to it you need to keep an eye on the player's power curve against what it should be for their Tier of Play. Man I really just need to do a whole post on the Tier of Play at this point I've mentioned it in enough posts.

Let's first look at an example of a reskinned armor, for fun lets take the Spiked Armor. Where as is it might be a cool addition for a fighter wading into the midst of enemies I also think it might be cool for a Druid with a little help. We take the spikes made of metal and switch them out for thorns and you know what lets take out the leather coat and leggings and switch them out for stonebark. Which is a type of plant I just made up that is hard and often used by Druid, Elves, and Fey in their armor. Cause that's how I roll. It still has the same stipulations, provides the same AC and disadvantage to stealth giving us Thorned Armor in place of Spiked Armor.

But why don't we take the above reskinned Thorned Armor, and take it a step forward and do a little tweaking to help out our good old Druid friend. First lets have it change shape during a wild shape to provide the new animal form some buffed AC, now this can get a little dicey. So we add the limit of size the creature needs to be, if the creature is considered Medium or larger this applies otherwise the armor melds into the shape as normal. Which means in theory you could have a crocodile in the middle of battle with thorny armor that has an AC of 14 + Dex modifier (max 2). Kind of effing scary since it normally rocks an AC of 12. This tweak is perfectly fine in Tier 2 and even 3 of Play but if the player became really attached to it to last in the later stages of Tier 3 and Tier 4 we could instead take the next step of making a whole new thing.

The final evolution of our Thorned Armor into something truly ridiculous as a gift to our Druid in the late stages of play is also in my opinion the most fun. Using the tweaked version of our Thorned Armor I then want to add two new features. The first being that any attempts to grapple are made at disadvantage and attackers attempting this OR attacking unarmed take 1d4 piercing damage. That seems fair since they are literally doing it to someone covered in thorns. For our second new feature I want to add an attack because I'm often told be those that play sports ball that the best defense is a good offense. (oh man is that going to make some people mad but too bad I don't care) IDK if you have seen a cartoon with a porcupine in it but alot of the time they seem to have this completely not real power of shooting their quills out like arrows.... see where I'm going with this yet? Cause that's what we are going to do here. Once per long rest the player can spend a bonus action to shoot out the thorns any creatures in a 15 ft radius need to make a DC 14 DEX save or take 1d6 +2 piercing damage. If used the armor loses its feature causing disadvantage on grapple and harm to unarmed attacks until the armor grows (after a long rest). The armor still retains its normal AC and its ability to change for wildshape. Now though I might call this one Porcupine Armor instead of Thorned Armor just for fun and then because I can have both in my game. In fact lets take the thorn flair from when we reskinned it and make it barbed quills instead.

Look I obviously have fun making up items, monsters, NPCs, and all sorts of things for TTRPGs. It is honestly very freeing creatively so I always encourage DMs of any experience level to try. The only way you will get better at it is by doing it over and over again. If you ever have any questions on it or want to chat about my process just hop over to the Contacts page and drop me a line or hit me up on Twitter @JustThinkingKay!

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.