Armor For Stalker

Walstafa

Hi, been blasting through with a Stalker and generally loving it, but I'm wondering if there's any better armor out there than the +2 Studded Leather I should be looking for? Even with a 19 Dex he feels a little vulnerable.

SionIV

In BG1?

Ankheg plate, Shadow armor.

ronaldo

If i remember right from my Stalker play through the +2 Studded is the best you are going to find in BGEE. I don't remember having too much trouble staying alive. I usually started with a backstab and then would let one of my tanks engage the enemy.

There are also a couple of helms you can get that will lower your AC.
My stalker was the most fun I had with any character all the way through to the end.

meagloth

@SionIV‌ I don't think stalkers can use either of those?

Walstafa

meagloth said:

@SionIV‌ I don't think stalkers can use either of those?

Yeah, pretty much. The Ankheg still requires the ability to equip Plate Mail and the Shadow Armor appears to be Thief-only.

I have to admit, once I worked out that using the thief AI was the way to go (stealth, backstab and then engage) he's felt a lot more survivable. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. :-)

SionIV

meagloth said:

@SionIV‌ I don't think stalkers can use either of those?

Walstafa said:

meagloth said:

@SionIV‌ I don't think stalkers can use either of those?

Yeah, pretty much. The Ankheg still requires the ability to equip Plate Mail and the Shadow Armor appears to be Thief-only.

I have to admit, once I worked out that using the thief AI was the way to go (stealth, backstab and then engage) he's felt a lot more survivable. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. :-)

Ah my fault here, though the Archer and Stalker had the same wording with armor.

My brother played through both BGEE and BG2EE with his archer and he used ankheg plate.

Took for granted that the stalker could also use it then, thank you for the correction.

ronaldo

I remember how excited I was when I finally had enough money to buy the Shadow Armor for my Stalker and then the crushing sadness when I saw it was Thief only..... It really is a shame ,if any armor in the game screams Stalker its it.

Wolk

SionIV said:

Ah my fault here, though the Archer and Stalker had the same wording with armor.

My brother played through both BGEE and BG2EE with his archer and he used ankheg plate.

Took for granted that the stalker could also use it then, thank you for the correction.

Archers can do that?!?!

You are either wrong or I totally missed that when playing archer!

You might have also confused archer with druid, because they can only wear leather/studded but can wear ankheg.

elminster

Archers and regular rangers can wear ankheg mail. Beast Masters and Stalkers can't.

SionIV

Wolk said:

SionIV said:

Ah my fault here, though the Archer and Stalker had the same wording with armor.

My brother played through both BGEE and BG2EE with his archer and he used ankheg plate.

Took for granted that the stalker could also use it then, thank you for the correction.

Archers can do that?!?!

You are either wrong or I totally missed that when playing archer!

You might have also confused archer with druid, because they can only wear leather/studded but can wear ankheg.

Archer's can't use metal armor, Ankheg plate is made out of scales.

elminster

Its all really rather arbitrary since druids technically can't wear armor greater than studded leather (like a beast master or a stalker) but they can wear the ankheg plate. Stalkers and Beast Masters on the other hand can't wear armor greater than studded leather but also can't wear Ankheg mail.

Edit: They technically say "heavier than" just to correct myself.

Wolk

Just tested it on my archer... Mind blown! I never though it possible! :O

CTKnightOwl

On my first play through of BG2 with my Archer, I found I was able to don Valygar's family armor. I doubt that is still possible. If we are discussing BG1 than the Shadow Armor (+15% to hide in shadows) is indeed thief only. In BG2 however the Shadow DRAGON armor is studded leather which grants AC of 1 and a 50% resist to acid.

Tresset

@CTKnightOwl Yeah, all the NPC specific items have been properly restricted to them with a new opcode.

CTKnightOwl

sorry, slightly off topic 'spoiler' question; is mentioning the Shadow Dragon armor considered a spoiler? (because there is an even better one in ToB)

SharGuidesMyHand

Wolk said:

SionIV said:

Ah my fault here, though the Archer and Stalker had the same wording with armor.

My brother played through both BGEE and BG2EE with his archer and he used ankheg plate.

Took for granted that the stalker could also use it then, thank you for the correction.

Archers can do that?!?!

You are either wrong or I totally missed that when playing archer!

You might have also confused archer with druid, because they can only wear leather/studded but can wear ankheg.

IIRC, archers were not initially allowed to wear ankheg when BG:EE was first released. At some point, there was a very lengthy debate on this forum over whether archers should be allowed to wear ankheg, as their descriptions only prohibit them from wearing metal armor (ankheg is made from giant insect shells), whereas stalker descriptions specify that they cannot wear armor greater than studded leather. Apparently the devs sided with this argument, as a subsequent patch altered the game to allow archers to wear ankheg.

elminster

SharGuidesMyHand said:

Wolk said:

SionIV said:

Ah my fault here, though the Archer and Stalker had the same wording with armor.

My brother played through both BGEE and BG2EE with his archer and he used ankheg plate.

Took for granted that the stalker could also use it then, thank you for the correction.

Archers can do that?!?!

You are either wrong or I totally missed that when playing archer!

You might have also confused archer with druid, because they can only wear leather/studded but can wear ankheg.

IIRC, archers were not initially allowed to wear ankheg when BG:EE was first released. At some point, there was a very lengthy debate on this forum over whether archers should be allowed to wear ankheg, as their descriptions only prohibit them from wearing metal armor (ankheg is made from giant insect shells), whereas stalker descriptions specify that they cannot wear armor greater than studded leather. Apparently the devs sided with this argument, as a subsequent patch altered the game to allow archers to wear ankheg.

Either way like I wrote earlier its arbitrary because the druid (and by extension the totemic druid) description says they can't wear armor heavier than studded leather. They can wear the ankheg mail, which makes sense since it weights 25 and studded leather weighs 25 (plus ankheg mail is natural armor), but beast masters and stalkers have the exact same written description yet they can't wear it.

Tresset

Wouldn't make sense for a stalker to wear the ankheg plate since that disables stealth.

elminster

Tresset said:

Wouldn't make sense for a stalker to wear the ankheg plate since that disables stealth.

It might not make sense for a thief/mage to wear studded leather (or regular chainmail in the case of a bard), because it stops them from casting spells, but the game doesn't stop them from wearing it.

Edit: A better example might be that it does not make sense for a fighter/thief to use plate mail, since that stops certain thieving abilities, but they are still are allowed to use the armor.

Tresset

@elminster quite true, but given the whole theme of the stalker and how their armor is basically restricted to that of thieves (for obvious reasons) it makes sense in my mind that ankheg shouldn't be usable.

Shadow armor, on the other hand, makes very much sense on a stalker to me. When I first saw this thread I tried to mod the armor so that stalkers could wear it but I couldn't figure out how to restrict it to just stalkers without taking out the thief usability. The closest I got to that was making it usable only by thieves, stalkers, and kitless rangers; the last of which I didn't want using it.

elminster

Tresset said:

@elminster quite true, but given the whole theme of the stalker and how their armor is basically restricted to that of thieves (for obvious reasons) it makes sense in my mind that ankheg shouldn't be usable.

Shadow armor, on the other hand, makes very much sense on a stalker to me. When I first saw this thread I tried to mod the armor so that stalkers could wear it but I couldn't figure out how to restrict it to just stalkers without taking out the thief usability. The closest I got to that was making it usable only by thieves, stalkers, and kitless rangers; the last of which I didn't want using it.

Yea experienced that as well when I tried to give a priest of helm access to getting proficiency and using bastard swords (but not a vanilla cleric).

A stalker might want access to Ankheg mail because he/she knows that in their situation will involve heavier than usual melee combat. Similar to a fighter/thief. The difference being from a gameplay standpoint the consequence for taking the kit (rather than a vanilla ranger) is that you can't wear armor that is heavier than studded leather.

Also apparently beast masters can wear white dragon scale (which is considered splint mail). So I really don't know why they can't wear blue dragon scale or silver dragon scale considering they both weigh less than studded leather.

Edit: Looks like the white dragon scale might be a bug since I think thieves can wear it while still using their abilities.

Hurricane

The weight of individual items has nothing to do with usability, it never did. The phrase "cannot use armor heavier than..." is only used to classify armors by type (leather, studded leather, chain, splint, plate, full plate). There is nothing more to it.

The White Dragon armor is supposed to be usable by all classes that can wear studded leather. This was confirmed by Bioware. Meaning that Stalkers can wear it as well, and they do in vanilla BG2. This is currently an error in BG2:EE. @CamDawg already knows about it.

The reason why Stalkers currently can't wear it is because there was an erroneous change in BG2 Fixpack v10 that was ported to/backported from BG2:EE. And there were other changes as well (Archers), which are also likely wrong, but were probably made due to this discussion, which contained a lot of misinformation and came to rather bad, myopic conclusions.

Hopefully, most of these errors will be resolved in the future when the changes discussed in the Fixpack forum will be implemented in the Enhanced Editions, as QA has promised.

elminster

Edit: nvrmind

artemusclyde

Tresset said:

@elminster quite true, but given the whole theme of the stalker and how their armor is basically restricted to that of thieves (for obvious reasons) it makes sense in my mind that ankheg shouldn't be usable.

Shadow armor, on the other hand, makes very much sense on a stalker to me. When I first saw this thread I tried to mod the armor so that stalkers could wear it but I couldn't figure out how to restrict it to just stalkers without taking out the thief usability. The closest I got to that was making it usable only by thieves, stalkers, and kitless rangers; the last of which I didn't want using it.

You still have that mod? Mind if I use it?

elminster

artemusclyde said:

Tresset said:

@elminster quite true, but given the whole theme of the stalker and how their armor is basically restricted to that of thieves (for obvious reasons) it makes sense in my mind that ankheg shouldn't be usable.

Shadow armor, on the other hand, makes very much sense on a stalker to me. When I first saw this thread I tried to mod the armor so that stalkers could wear it but I couldn't figure out how to restrict it to just stalkers without taking out the thief usability. The closest I got to that was making it usable only by thieves, stalkers, and kitless rangers; the last of which I didn't want using it.

You still have that mod? Mind if I use it?

This should let stalkers and vanilla single-class rangers use it.

artemusclyde

elminster said:

artemusclyde said:

Tresset said:

@elminster quite true, but given the whole theme of the stalker and how their armor is basically restricted to that of thieves (for obvious reasons) it makes sense in my mind that ankheg shouldn't be usable.

Shadow armor, on the other hand, makes very much sense on a stalker to me. When I first saw this thread I tried to mod the armor so that stalkers could wear it but I couldn't figure out how to restrict it to just stalkers without taking out the thief usability. The closest I got to that was making it usable only by thieves, stalkers, and kitless rangers; the last of which I didn't want using it.

You still have that mod? Mind if I use it?

This should let stalkers and vanilla single-class rangers use it.

Sweet, thanks.

elminster

Yea if you aren't aware you just throw the itm file (that is located inside that rar file) in your override folder.

artemusclyde

elminster said:

Yea if you aren't aware you just throw the itm file (that is located inside that rar file) in your override folder.

To be honest, I wasn't aware of that lol. Thanks again. The modding tutorials were confusing as heck with the weidu thing. Although, from the looks of it, it doesn't look to different from installing mods on Dragon age or CK2.