Settings with no plate armour?

I'm planning to use a setting with no plate armour for a campaign and I was wondering what you guys would recommend doing for classes with plate armour proficiency or who have traded it out for another bonus?

Should I just reduce the XP cost and give classes with the proficiency (Fighter etc) a free proficiency?

I made a house rule for fighting defensively that is meant to address the situation where a character is wearing less protective armor than his class is capable of. See the thread titled "Fighting Defensively". Essentially, you can trade offense to gain a bonus up to the AC you would have if the PC was wearing the best armor available to him.

I think based on the trade-off rules for armor proficiency, each trade-off, and therefore full proficiency value, is worth 2 points of AC.

"Capping" the availability of mundane armor at AC5, therefore, could be considered half-a-proficiency granted back?

Depends if you are including banded being absent as well.

If its just plate I'd likely just ignore it (ie cap at AC 5), mostly because I find the sweet spot for armour is at banded. because it lets you carry a weapon (or two) and a little gear but still be unencumbered (up to 6 stone where plate will put you before weapons).  

If you are caping things at chainmail (AC 4), I'd likely give those classes that have heavy armour an innate AC bonus when wearing anything heavier than Leather.  Something like +1 AC (calling it Armour Master, or some such).

Alternativly you can go with "fitted" armours that cost a bit more give a +1 AC bonus, but can only be worn by a specific person without being adjusted.

[quote="Loswaith"]

If its just plate I'd likely just ignore it (ie cap at AC 5), mostly because I find the sweet spot for armour is at banded. because it lets you carry a weapon (or two) and a little gear but still be unencumbered (up to 6 stone where plate will put you before weapons).  

[/quote]

I love that you've pointed this out. It was a carefully-built outcome of the encumbrance system. The assumption of armor (2-6) plus possible shield (0-1) plus possible spear (0-1) plus hand weapons (1/6) combines with breakpoints of 5 and 7 to create interesting outcomes.

- Scale, shield, weapon = 4 1/6

- Chainmail, shield, weapon = 5 1/6

- Chainmail, spear, weapon = 5 1/6

- Chainmail, shield, spear, weapon = 6 1/6

- Banded, shield, weapon = 6 1/6

- Banded spear, weapon = 6 1/6

- Banded, shield, spear, weapon = 7 1/6

This becomes very interesting at the level of Domains at War. For instance, Roman legionaries can be built as banded armor (5), shield (1), short sword (1/6), javelin (1/6), 6 2/6, with movemet of 90'; plate armor would have pushed them to 60'. Conversely, hoplites can be built as plate armor (6), shield (1), spear (1), short sword (1/6), dagger (1/6), 8 2/6, with movement of 60'. 

 

Dunno if this would totally unbalance something, but you could change the unlimited armor to armor up to banded, plus your skill with armor reduces the effective encumbrance of all armor suits by 1.  Banded thus encumbers a warrior only by 4 stone.