I am very puzzled, if I strip EVERYTHING from my rogue, it get its full Dex bonus added to AC. If I put any item, the Dex bonus get limited to +3 :/ My rogue is a half-ling rogue. It has 20 of dex, thus natural ac bonus of +5 Currently it has 18 of AC without amour. Then I place on it gloves of dexterity +4 It become instead 16 AC. When I click on AC, I see instead of applying +5 of Dex bonus, or +7 of dex bonus, it applies +3 of dex bonus, and warns that the gloves of dexterity are limiting the bonus. This also applies to any amulet, armour, etc... Why is that?
All armor has a Dex limit so if your rogue has a +5 Dex but the armor he wears has a +4 max, you don't get the benefit of the higher (natural) Dex. Since your rogue's natural Dex is better than the glove the glove supersedes his Dex making his AC worse- it doesn't add to it. If you want a higher AC try using a Cat's Grace spell on your rogue- IIRC that will add to his Dex, giving him +7- unless the games engine totally prohibits that, which would make my statement totally inaccurate...:blank:
What is your strength? Sounds like you are getting encumbered which also reduces your max bonus from Dex
Emcuberance do not sums all stuff in inventory too? By "equip" I mean move from inventory to paperdoll, I am not moving items between characters. If I take out all items of the character paperdoll (and leave on inventory) it gets full dex bonus. As soon I put any item (even a ring of invisibility for example) the dex bonus become limited to 3.
Everything on your character should count against no matter if you equip it or not. Something seems wonky though. But what is your strength and how much are you carrying. Maybe it is following the correct rules, but in a strange way. Too low strength will seriosly hamper a character in the beginning, even if you'er running a finesse build
I did a few tests and the encumbrance theory seems very likely. I made a halfling with 20 dex and got the following results: 20 dex, no items: 16 AC 20 dex, +4 gloves: 18 AC 20 dex, encumbered and naked: 16 AC 20 dex, encumbered and wearing any item: 15 AC (+ bonuses, if any) What appears to happen is that the DEX limit from encumbrance is applied through an item. If you look at the AC details it will say something like "bonus reduced by Item: X", where X will be the first item (weapons are ignored) you put on. If you're not wearing an item there's no item to apply the DEX limit through. My guess is that they're using the same function as they use to limit DEX bonus when wearing armor and apply that on the first item you put on, but they forgot that it's possible to be encumbered even without any items equipped. In short, the rules are applied correctly unless you're both naked and encumbered.
I did some testing here, and figured it also has to do with some imprecision. The reason why I was getting encuberance penalty without being encumbered is that I had the exact weight. Halflings have the limit being 3/4 of normal, this probably introduces some floating point imprecisions. My rogue was supposed to have a limit of 35, and I put exactly 35 of weight on her, including very light items (potions, scrolls, rings, ammo, that sort of stuff). The weight display remained white and saying that it was below the lowest limit, the portrait had no icon, but the AC penalty was there. Then I moved a coat (that weighted 5) to another character, closed her inventory, and opened again. Now she had full AC. Some items seemly cause bizarre AC interactions (the drow ranger scimitars you get on the quarry quest make the AC show you are hasted, and give you +1 of AC, and if you put any other weapon on your character, you keep that bonus unless you close and open again your inventory and it recalculates the AC)
