Back to the original point of this thread.

Padding/Sharpening now has very strict guidlines, and truly has a minor benefit as for how much better it makes your amor, and I really do mean minor.

The reason it has a minor benefit, is so that one isn't able to bypass class/race restrictions to weasel around the balance issues for your character.

Yes, I also had some midnight-blue starry silk wizard's robes that blocked 18 or 19 damage back in the day. While we all might think fondly of 19 point silk robes, they were a stupid idea that unbalanced the game.

They can have a sharpening/padding peddle every single day, but the max you can pad armor will still remain 4 times, Your armor will last a tiny bit longer, and it will block a tiny percent more, but it's not going to get noticibly better.

As for the complaints about giant armor and zerker body armor, take it to the info boards and I'll join that discussion.