0.7.65: Leather Material on Shields Causes Confusion

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I created a character with "Forbidden shield type: Buckler" and "Forbidden shield type: Round shield", but the game also forbids me from equipping tower shields.

[Blackthorne]

I tried to reproduce this problem but could not get it to happen. Can you provide more information? What other abilities/disabilities did you give your character, if any?

[Interkarma]

Can you provide a save game to verify, please.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I wouldn't be surprised if I'm just distracted and missing something, wouldn't be the first time. But right now I don't understand why it should be forbidden. My advantages/disadvantages are:

Low tolerance to poison
Low tolerance to disease
Forbidden shield types Buckler
Forbidden shield types Round shield
Forbidden armor type Leather
Increased magery 3X INT in spell points
Rapid Healing General

A zipped save is in attachment. There is a tower shield in the inventory and if I try to equip it, it says my class forbids it.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

By the way, don't be fooled by the character's class being named "Battlemage". It's a custom class, it's just that I gave it the same name as an existing class (I didn't remember at the time, I thought the existing class was called Warrior-Mage for some reason).

Now that I think of it... maybe the problem could be that by giving the class that name, I'm inheriting the restrictions of the default battlemage class?

Edit: Probably not, because those can only wear leather, and I'm definitely wearing non-leather armor.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

OK, I think I might have found the issue myself, and it's not a bug (although I think it could do with some clarification for noobs)... now I found a different tower shield, weighing more than the one I have (12.50 kg), and I can equip that one.

I guess that it's because tower shields have a material (even if it's not shown) and I was trying to equip a leather tower shield with my "Forbidden armor type: leather".

Sorry for the misleading bug report. I think something should be changed about this because it will confuse new players a lot, given that the material of shields is not shown anywhere on screen. Either material should be shown somewhere, or maybe change the message to say explicitly that you cannot equip it because it is leather?

[BansheeXYZ]

Which is understandable, because there's no such thing as a leather/chain shield, and there are no leather graphics for helms.

To me, it would make sense to just stop spawning leather and chain shield types. It wouldn't have a major impact on early game balance to just give iron from the getgo. This would eliminate the weirdness of material types being hidden for shields.

A solution for helms isn't so simple. But... leather and chain helms should use nothing but the noseguard graphic. The leather version could have a custom brown dye applied to it.

[Jay_H]

I'll move this topic over to Help since it isn't quite a bug. Confusing and misleading, but not a programming error

A universal catch-all could be a message that says, "Your character cannot equip this item. Reason: [DISADVANTAGE]."

[BansheeXYZ]

I've researched this a bit more. Shields are always equippable in classic regardless of material restrictions. IMO, this should be considered a bug that DFU has fixed. I will add it to my list later.

DFU may still be doing something wrong, though. Classic has this confusing and inconsistent usage of material and armor class in its naming. Chain is not a material, it is an armor class. It's only a material in the sense that it has a different modifier than steel plate.

Classic doesn't give chain armor any metallic prefix like you'd expect. Perhaps they thought it would be confusing to have the same material give different modifiers depending on whether it was chain or plate construct. I'd rather it say "Steel Chain Cuirass".

For shields, classic gives no material prefix (or class prefix, but armor class is a worn not wielded concept). Saying "chain buckler" is like saying "chain katana". It makes no sense. If DFU is going to prefix shields, they should be prefixed the same as weapons, with actual materials.

Lastly, DFHack reveals that "Leather" isn't even a material or given a material byte. So a Leather Cuirass has a material type of "Iron" that is basically ignored, like it's deriving the material and armor class from the armor class byte. I find this weird and stupid.

For anyone who thinks none of this is important, what about modders wanting stuff like Daedric Chain? Or a leather whip as a weapon? IMO these inconsistencies need to be fixed for modding purposes and to reduce confusion.

[pango]

Well, I've seen at least two streamers, having some experience with later games, being confused or mildly annoyed when being told that there's only one "chain armor" and that the "forbidden armor: plate" disadvantage they chose means they'll never be able to wear better materials than "chain".
The problem I see with replacing "chain armor" with a more explicit "steel chain armor" is that they would have waited even more for the upgrade of their chain armor... So this change on its own would only increase confusion

But I can totally imagine all this being fixed by a mod to add better materials light armors. (and stealth penalty for wearing plate?)