Red Barbarian Clothes - Overpowered?

.
....... ..........
.....Red Barbarian Clothes LOL.....Arcane Robes
..........Armor Class: 11 INVISIBLE.Armor Class: 3
..........Damage Res: 16....TEXT..... Damage Res: 3
........Poison Res: 0 (+40) ..........Poison Res: 0 (+50)
..........Fire Res: 0 (+40) ...............Fire Res: 3 (+50)
.....Electrical Res: 0 (+40) ........Electrical Res: 0 (+50)
....Magick Res: 0 (+70) [?!] .......Magick Res: 0 (+50)

I haven't noticed this until just now, mostly because who pays attention to Red Barbarian Clothes anyway. Once I did notice it though, it confused me quite a lot.

Should an inexpensive (cheaper than a Dragon Skin Leather Armor) barbarian armor easily available in pretty much any magick merchant's or magick smith's shop (with the UAP, anyway) give better overall protection than an elite arcane garment, which is crafted with the finest of magicks and very hard to find anywhere else than on the pale skinny body of a Tullan Master Mage?

Alternate question: Why aren't Tullan Master Mages walking around wearing barbarian armors?

 

I have always overlooked the barbarian clothing simply because none of my characters would wear something like that. Though it now gives me a reason to play some kind of half-orc shaman or even a female dark-elf (you know the generic hot one that wears barely anything).

 

I thought one of the major downfalls of Barbarian armor is their extremely low HP levels. Do they not wear out and break rather quickly during combat?

 

Eh, at least it has a reaction penalty.

 

In vanilla Arcanum, the red barbarian armor is even more powerful, providing 20 DR. But as RunAwayScientist points out, they only take 50 damage before dissolving.

However, they also only weigh 100 stone, so even a weak char could carry one or two changes of this easily-acquired suit.

It does seem much too good for its ease of acquisition.

-- Mal

 

I don't think low item HP is much of a problem. In one's first Arcanum playthrough yes, possibly, but once one knows which hostile NPC deal fire damage - ergo damage armor - he does his best to deal with that NPC in a way that he doesn't have a single chance to make a hit, therefore preventing any armor damage.

There are of course critical hits sometimes damaging armor as well, but still 50 HP mean you can take 4 such hits and still have an armor on your body before needing to return to find a merchant and repair it, which is normally more than enough.