Written by Brian Holder, AKA Alomar, NWN Stratics

The one central theme to any role playing game is creating a character that you bring to life. In doing this we picture how we want this character to come to life, what they look like, what they wear, and so on. One key step in this is what the character's armor/clothing looks like. In Neverwinter Nights there is an amazing array of choices in this area, but coming up with good looking functional armor is not necessarily an easy task. This guide's purpose is to make that process easier, and make it so you can truly make your character appear the way you want them to appear.

Armor Categories

Armor is categorized in NWN by the torso piece. If you choose a platemail torso then this will be the base AC, weight, cost, etc of the armor item. All of the other piece DO NOT matter for this calculation. This is important if you are trying to create something your wizard can wear. Pay special attention to choosing this piece, as you will need to add to the AC, or subtract from it to get the correct amount of protection depending on the armor you are trying to create. Below is a chart of what the default armor pieces fall under.

If you want the armor to act as it should, then you must use the same Armor Category the armor fits in. If you want a mage to wear your outfit, you are better off sticking with the "none" armor category. Another option dealing with giving out additional armor properties can allow you to use different armors to simulate the armor you want to create. However if you go this route some aspects of the base armor cannot be changed including, weight, spell failure, base cost, and maximum dexterity bonus. As you can see that is why sticking to the correct armor type is very important.

Armor Appearance

The easiest way to get your armor looking the way you want is to first go to the color tab. In the color tab use the following choices: Leather1 - leave light brown, Leather2 - Change to Black, Cloth1 - Change to Bright Blue, Cloth2 - Change to Bright Red, Metal1 - leave light gray, Metal2 - Change to Light Purple. Now this is only temporary, and yes, your model will look like a rainbow should you leave them this way. The reason to make this change is so that it is very obvious what parts of which pieces are assigned which color.

Here you can see what the default armor looks like when I have made these changes. It shows how clearly you can now tell what color a part is actually going to end up.

Using the color tab to define armor colorization areas

Now that you can quickly determine what color a part is using, you can begin the process of making your armor. Choose your chest piece (torso) first. Try to pick a chest piece that corresponds to the actual armor you are trying to create. If one does not suit what you want the armor to look like, try to stick as close as possible (one range higher or lower) Once you have chosen the torso piece you like, begin changing all the other pieces to match up the armor the way you want.

Here is the part where you get to use those obvious colors to your advantage. Most good looking armor combinations stick to only a few colors. A main color and some highlights of other colors on certain parts, or perhaps different color pants and torso pieces, or whatever you had in mind. The obvious colors make it much easier to see which pieces will match up. In addition, if you only want a few colors, but you want certain colors in certain places, you now have more ways to get to that appearance.

Here is an armor set I made using this method. It takes a little getting used to seeing the colors in this format, and then realizing what you can do with the end result. But here is the armor before I applied the final coloration:

Tweaking the color set

Here is the armor after I changed the colors to the final set:

Final color set

As you can see because I knew exactly what was being chosen from which material, the end result actually only used 4 colors, but I was able to use them such that they compliment each other. My end results on this were Leather1- Dark Brown(sleeves), Leather 2 - GreyBrown(boots), Cloth1 - Medium Blue(pants, shoulders), Cloth2 - Dark Brown(same as Leather 1, for the pouches), Metal1 - Medium Grey(chain mail), Metal2 - Medium Blue (Chain mail decorative sections).

Since it is now easy to tell what you are really affecting by using the different colors, you can also change this up a little bit to get this:

Alternat color set

Now I changed the chainmail highlights to a light grey, and pulled all the other colors to the medium blues.

Once you get the hang of how to use multiple materials as the same color, you can make some really nice looking armor. Using the step of changing the materials to all the obvious colors in your initial step just gets you thinking about which materials you can assign the same color to and makes it easier to get to your final look.

Armor Function

Now your armor looks great, but you ended up having to use a torso piece that does not exactly match the armor you are trying to create. If the armor is for an NPC, then this is easy, simply give your NPC the needed armor feats (light/medium/heavy), and assign your armor either Armor Bonus +?? or Decreased AC/AC Armor Modifier -?? from the properties tab. For instance if the armor you are making is chainmail, but you ended up with a torso piece of cloth (he hides his chainmail under clothing!) then you would want to add in Armor Bonus +4 to give the armor the correct 4 AC, even though by default it would have been 0. However you will be altering the cost of the item if you are giving AC bonuses to it, so it is best to stay as close to the items AC value as possible. You will also be making the item have a base required level beyond 1 if you have a modifier of two or more. NPC's also allow the DM to adjust other areas of the NPC's stat to adjust for having armor that isn't the correct type.

For a PC this is a little harder. This is why you should try to make armor to be in the correct category. If you make armor above its level a character may not have the correct armor feat which may prevent them from wearing the armor. If you make it to much below the correct level you are giving the character the benefits of lighter armor (higher max dex, less spell fail, etc...) Depending on the game situation you cannot give out a feat to your PC just because they want their armor to look like this. Sadly you cannot add armor proficiency feats to any item the character could carry around. The only feats you can add to items are combat and spell based feats. You also run into the same problems as NPCs where adding modifiers will alter the price of the armor as well as its required level. As you can tell having to adjust for armor falling outside its base category can get complicated fast.

Summary

Although you can create an amazing number of looks for your characters you must still be cautious in your creation process. Always try to start with a torso piece that corresponds to the armor you are trying to make. Try to pick colors that bring out the highlights of the images, so you can avoid the single color rut that is easy to fall into when creating clothes.