Armor for technologist

What's the best armor for a gnome gun technologist? A mechanized plate? Or is there sometning better?

 

Depends on how many points you want to put into strength as plate is heavy.

 

In vanilla, in terms of protection and bonuses - the Iron Clan Armor. Basically it's an improved Small Machined Plate.

In A:WIP, the Iron Clan Armor has been redesigned and nerfed for some reason and is no longer superior to the Machined Plate. On the other hand, A:WIP introduces Meca Suits (=even more improved Machined Plates than the vanilla Iron Clan Armor), which are definitely the best tech armors, resistances and bonuses considered. The schematic to build them is in a container in Maxim's factory in Caladon, though your character already knows it if you're using the save I shared with you.

Machined plates improve the wearer's strength though, making their weight generally negligible.

 

But for such a small character though? I generally only play human or possibly half elf if I am feeling adventurous so don't the little races get reduced strength? Except for Dwarves of course.

 

Well, in my team Loghaire is wearing the iron clan armor, so you say it's better if I wear it? And that what should I give the king?

 

Halflings do (4 initially), though gnomes (8) start with a strength equal to a human (8) or a half-elf (8) and greater than an elf (7), oddly enough.

The second best small tech armor in vanilla is the Machined Plate.

Whether it's better or not is up to you. I'm just saying that in vanilla it's a greater armor than a Machined Plate. You can wear the better armor yourself or leave it for Loghaire for roleplaying reasons.

 

Are you bothered about encumbrance or not? Because if you aren't then yes the Iron Clan Armour is the best, however if you are then I would recommend the feather-weight chain which at only 200 stone is much lighter than the 1000 stone Iron Clan Armour. Even though the Iron Clan Armour boosts your strength by 3, that only adds 225 to the weight you can carry with no encumberance, which as the Iron Clan Armour itself weighs 1000 stone isn't really that great if being unencumbered is a concern.

For some actual figures a 20 Strength gnome (using the Iron Clan Armour for a +3 ST boost) can carry around 850 bullets with a one handed gun and shield with your other typical armour items (helmet, boots and gloves) and 1050 with a two handed gun and shield; whereas using feather-weight chain with the same character (thereby reducing his strength to 17) allows for around 3150 bullets with no encumbrance using a one handed gun and shield and around 3350 with a two handed gun. If you can't produce feather-weight chain then maybe something like small chainmail would produce the best compromise between weight and defensive capabilities. To reiterate though, the Iron Clan Armour is by far the best if defense is your only concern using vanilla Arcanum; to compare armour yourself you can always check out the gamebanshee website under Arcanum as its list is fairly comprehensive. Hope this was some help!

Also I checked this, halflings start with a strength of 5.

 

To make the description complete it should be noted, though, that while the Iron Clan Armor weights 1000 stone, in increases the user's carry weight by 1500 stone, which means he is actually able to carry 500 stone of equipment more with the armor on than without it. But I, of course, agree that plate mails - machined or not - are not the best choice of armor for those who value unencumbrance over resistances.

My bad, thanks for correcting my on this. I made the mistake of checking the race description on our site here rather than in the game itself. We really should do something about all the false data we have floating around.

 

With my mechanical plate I'm lightly encumered.

Also, what other equipment is good for technicians? Rings, gauntlets, helmets and amulets?

 

There is little variety of items from those categories dedicated for techies. The good ones:

Rings: Charged Rings.
Gauntlets: Vendigrothian War Gauntlets, War Gauntlets, Machined Gauntlets.
Helmets: Pig Face Bassets, Miner's Helmets, Goggled Helmets.
Amulets: Cassie's Necklace, Pelojian's Amulet, Jewel of Hebe, The Finger of Mannox.