Amor Balance: Can we make more armors more useful?

[Subutai]

NWN, and DnD in general, has always (and continues to, to my knowledge) suffer from an all-or-nothing approach to armor. Cloth and full plate are the armors of choice for almost every class, with a couple of exceptions, are either going to use cloth (with appropriate dex, or if they're a mage), or full plate. Outside of some bards, Arelith's spellswords, and maybe a couple other unusual cases that I'm missing, there's no reason to use the overwhelming majority of armor in the game. While Arelith has provided a couple extra options (like Templar armor, greensteel armor, etc.) the majority still goes unused. There's really no reason, for example, to use adamantine half plate.

In DnD, this doesn't really matter. In NWN, however, it results in the majority of the armor torso appearances going completely, or almost completely, unused, since they belong to armor that doesn't really serve any real purpose outside of "I haven't bought full plate yet" or "My dex is still a little too low".

It would be really nice to see this armor balanced somehow to be more useful for flavor. Perhaps Adamantine Full Plate, for example, could give the current +3, while Adamantine Half Plate could give +4? Or perhaps with haks, the base AC values of the various types could be changed, or the appearances copied to the more prevalently used armors, to give players a wider variety of looks to choose from.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

It's really just the heavy armors, No?

I mean rogue can maintain it's Dex mod though leather now, Medium armors go to the barbarian types and what not.

But why make halfplate equal to full plate, Just for how it looks? And that are the torso options, Right?
Then why not wear halfplate? I LOVE to got for looks, One of my characters uses a shield (the one before towershield) and offers with that 1 ac. Why? It looks better. Does that make me want it to be equal to towershield? No, Cause it is my choice to pick looks over quality.

[Nevrus]

Re-balancing every armor to have an AC + Dex max bonus of 9 would go a long way to making them equivalent down a chain.

Additionally, effort needs to be put in to ensure there's some interesting armor that can be crafted in every tier, that competes with other armor available- if not in raw stats, in intrigue.

Some +Wis medium armor for clerics, +dex medium armor for strength fighters looking to diversify their AC portfolio, skill-boosting armor, intriguing spell per day armor, energy resisting armor, +3 soak armor, etc would all go a long way to making interesting choices in gearing beyond "what gives me the most AC" or "what is pre-defined as what my build wants." It would also invigorate the economy with new crafting options, something that armor makers would absolutely love- and you could even use components in the other trees for good measure (within reason, see Enchanted Shield) to increase the inter-reliability.

[Cortex]

There's unique heavy non-plate armor craftables that provide unique bonuses you won't find on Adamantine Full plate, without sacrificing too much AC(and sometimes matching it):

Adventurer's Armor grants +4 reflex (really good for battleclerics, barbarians or any STR melee lacking in reflex).
Templar Armor which grants +3 CHA (and is so good it honestly needs a nerf).
Northman's Armor for +1 CON, fort and +3 disc.
Guardsman's Armor which gives detection and discipline.
Chainmail of the Holy Knight (iirc BiS for paladins if geared properly, lots of things to it, look it up on the wiki)
Warded Ankheg Armor is scale armor that gives +2 universal, same AC as adamantine vs slashing and 50% acid immunity, superb for barbarians.
Elven Armor is great for any STR meleer who can cap the DEX AC.

And some other different things cropping up in the loot matrix, as well.

I haven't given a real examination of rogue leather armor AC, but to my understanding you still have both rogues and rangers who benefit from light/medium armors. Point is that there are multiple different kinds of armor that benefit different builds and niches, the fact that plate armor is universally the best armor for a lot of meleers is, I feel, both thematic and logically correct.

[R0GUE]

A while back someone official mentioned a lessening of ASF % for bards but this never happened. Is this still in the works or did it slip through the cracks? It makes a big difference in my build, whether I'll be wearing armor at lvl 30 or clothing.