To Hit penalties on heavy armor

[Viper]

These penalties seem a little severe ( if I am understanding them correctly ). If you deck your fighter out in heavy armor..the cumalative to hit penalties will be 50% or more. I am carrying around a bunch of heavy armor at the moment ( my characters are all level 17 ) but still wearing iron breastplates, and iron greaves as I do no want to swing and miss on a constant basis.

 

Or do I have this wrong..Is this a penalty on the wearer, or the mob attacking the wearer. In which case I am making the game a lot harder for myself than it needs to be.

[Lilith]

Yeah, at low levels the to-hit penalty sucks and it's not worth it except for chest armour (and shields for non-melee characters). Eventually, if you keep raising your primary attack stat as you level up, your hit rate will pretty much stay at 95% no matter how much armour you're wearing or who you're fighting: at that point you can wear whatever armour you like.

[Aoslare]

Also, as the game goes on you will find more and more magical (or otherwise special) armor pieces that give you cool bonuses, but also give you lower to-hit penalties. So it becomes less of an issue.

[Rowen]

Depending on the difficulty you are playing on, you could get by without using armor that has to-hit penalties at all.