Another question on Tome Armours.

[Josh_Kablack]

How does a character acquire proficiency in an armor that is nonstandard for their class?

Does it just not happen - do characters have to sink the level into multiclassing?

Are the core Armor Prof feats still used in tome, despite being rather unlike most tome feats?

Am I missing a Tome Armor Proficiency Feat somewhere? (If not should I write tomelike scaling version of light, medium and heavy armor prof?)

Is there an Exploit system like the bit about learning exotic weapons?

[Judging__Eagle]

Based on weight.

For unusual armours, give it a day of wearing it and a DC 10 int check that you can't take 10 on. Really, armour isn't that big of a deal to figure out; I've personally worn everything from leather armour to double chain (srsly, two layers of chain is a lot lighter than you'd think, or is for me) to head to toe formed plates. It straps to you, you lose some articulation; but if your full plate does not allow you to curl up into a ball on the ground, either it, or you, are doing something wrong.

If non proficiency is achieved, up the ACP and ASP as if it's an armour type the creature can't wear yet.

[Josh_Kablack]

While I'm not gonna disagree with JE's experience, I want to point out that I'm not at all going for realism in a D&D setting.

While there are up to like a dozen exotic weapons that someone might care about in 3.x D&D there are exactly three flavors of armor proficiency. And most classes come with light armor built in.

So while it's completely reasonable to give XWPs away for far less than the cost of a rare-and-precious feat but I'm not so sure that it's reasonable to give away medium and heavy proficiencies for a cheap-as-free training montage.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I would be quite interested in seeing tome feats for armor proficiency.

[Josh_Kablack]

I would be quite interested in seeing tome feats for armor proficiency

Okay then. In lieu of a better answer coming from another Denizen, what Imma gonna do with armor is rewrite the: Armor Check Penalty, Arcane Spell Failure, Armor Stealth Penalty, and Max Dex Bonus paragraph of Races of War by striking out the complicating bits:

Thusly:

Armor you wear has an Armor Check Penalty, and armor you aren't proficient with has an Armor Check Penalty that is 4 points higher. Your Armor Check Penalty is applied to any Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Jump, Sleight of Hand, or Tumble checks you make. Your Swim Checks are penalized by double your Armor Check Penalty. If you cast arcane spells in armor which has an armor check penalty, your spells with somatic components have a 5% chance of failing for every point of armor check penalty.

Armor you wear also has an Armor Stealth Penalty. This number is reduced by 1 for every two points your BAB exceeds the Armor Check Penalty of the Armor. The Modified Armor Stealth Penalty is applied as a penalty to any Hide and Move Silently checks you make.

Finally, Armor has a maximum Dexterity Bonus that you can take advantage of while wearing that armor. That is, if your armor has a max dex bonus of +4 and you have a +5 dexterity bonus, then you may only apply a +4 bonus towards your armor class while wearing that armor. Just like stealthiness, however, a more experienced warrior has an easier time defending himself in heavier armor. The Max Dex Bonus of an armor is increased by 1 for every two points your BAB exceeds the Armor Check Penalty of the armor.

Now characters can already get armor proficiencies from one of their classes class (or occasionally from their race or type or something). So if armor proficiencies are available as feats, then the feats have to be both up to the tome-standard of "this is a big deal" and also sometimes worth buying for classes that get the base proficiency anyways.

This lets me work a simpler-to-compute and applies-to-fewer-than-all characters version of the complications back in for the sake of opening more archetypes up, having a way to keep opposed checks on the RNG and I suppose "realism"

Armor Mastery: Light Armor [Combat]
You are proficient in wearing light armor
Benefits: You suffer only the usual armor check penalties of any light armor worn
+1: You may completely ignore the Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chance for any light armor which has an Armor Check Penalty which is less than half of your Base Attack Bonus
+6:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus of any light armor you wear as though it were two points higher than normal
+11:  You may totally ignore Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chances for any light armor you wear and the weight of light armor you wear does not count towards your encumberance. .
+16:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus of any light armor you wear as though it were four points higher than normal.

Armor Mastery: Medium Armor [Combat]
You are proficient in wearing medium armor
Benefits: You suffer only the usual armor check penalties of any medium armor worn
+1: You may completely ignore the Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chance for any medium armor which has an Armor Check Penalty which is less than half of your Base Attack Bonus
+6:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus and the armor bonus of any medium armor you wear as though they were each one point higher than normal
+11:  You may totally ignore Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chances for any light armor and the weight of medium armor worn does not count towards your encumberance. .
+16:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus and the armor bonus of any medium armor you wear as though they were each two points higher than normal

Armor Mastery: Heavy Armor [Combat]
You are proficient in wearing heavy armor that is nonstandard for your class
Benefits: You suffer only the usual armor check penalties of any heavy armor worn
+1: You may completely ignore the Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chance for any heavy armor which has an Armor Check Penalty which is less than half of your Base Attack Bonus
+6:  You treat the armor bonus of any heavy armor you wear as though it was two points higher than normal
+11:  You may totally ignore Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chances for any heavy armor and the weight of heavy armor you wear does not count towards your encumberance. .
+16:  You treat the armor bonus of any heavy armor you wear as though it was four points higher than normal

[JonSetanta]

See? You've made better than anyone could answer for you.

[Josh_Kablack]

And here I am using my own fingers like a sucker! [/homer]

More seriously, while I now know what I'm doing for my game. I am still curious what the intent of the Tome authors was here.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The light armor proficiency feat is pretty much crap. It gives nothing that you couldn't otherwise get by carefully selecting your armor (aside from the base proficiency, of course). I'm not about to suggest anything better, but 'characters who want an armor proficiency that they don't just get through multiclassing' seems like a fairly small category.

[Leress]

Why is Medium Armor Mastery shittier than the other two? Why would I even take any of these since they give less than other tome feats? Half of the abilities are just getting rid of penalties and they also don't give any abilities at all.

[LR]

I had the same problem about a month ago. I agonized while trying to make [Combat] feats, but then realized that the types of characters that use [Combat] feats probably wouldn't bother with armor proficiency feats and that Tomes has plenty of normal feats that are worth taking. So I made this:

Armor Training [General]

Benefit: You gain proficiency with all armor and shields, including great shields. If you would have proficiency with a type of armor or shield without this feat, then you can waive training times and use your BAB (at +1/+5/+10/+15 scaling) to qualify for the benefits of that type of armor or shield.

ASF should apply to all casters and shouldn't apply if you're wearing armor that you're proficient in. I don't see why it needs to be any more complicated than that.

[Judging__Eagle]

Josh, remember, it's equipment, not abilities. Forcing people to have to burn a feat means you are limiting the amount of times someone will wear Coral armour, or a Still Suit; even though the adventure completely calls for that.

Armour is just bulky, solid, heavier than normal, clothing. Only nude creatures will have trouble grasping the idea of "wear stuff on body".

..... wait, you're talking about the weight categories, not specialties of the gear worn.

Honestly... I dunno. At a larp I play at I am one of the few people that does "head to toe" formed plate armour on leather, but my character has the bulk of their build/xp spent on stuff like "alchemy", and "ingredient income"; while all of their total "combat" skills amount to less than 1/4 of their total build.

They're more alchemist, craftsman, mage and scientist than they are a fighter.

It's a matter of whether you want to enforce, or break, tropes when it comes to equipment and characters. Wearing armour has as many downsides as upsides; and quite seriously, less than 5% of the population at most larps will ever consider any sort of actually heavy armour as their gear.

D&D adventurers can get to handwave the annoying strategic problems of "acquiring", "storage" and "carrying" their armour (I honestly wish I could in RL with my ugly plate, but w/e it saves my PC's life), but the tactical ones of "reduced movement", "increased clumsiness" and "uncomfortableness" should really not go away.

[Josh_Kablack]

..... wait, you're talking about the weight categories, not specialties of the gear worn.

Yes. Light, Medium or Heavy.

If you have the category you get to wear anything in that category without the nonproficiency penalty.

D&D 3.x, has all of 3 armor proficiencies, so by extension so does Tome D&D.

The light armor proficiency feat is pretty much crap. It gives nothing that you couldn't otherwise get by carefully selecting your armor (aside from the base proficiency, of course).

Well in light of the Tome armor list and Tome disdain for mithralization, it does give characters with a truly maximum dex a reason to wear something other than Mage Armor or Magic Vestment on a loincloth.

I'm not about to suggest anything better, but 'characters who want an armor proficiency that they don't just get through multiclassing' seems like a fairly small category.

Not given the available classes in this game. In the stuff I've pulled outta the tome and offa this board there are a bunch of non-clerical divine casters, "no-asf if proficient" arcane casters and a couple fire-mage-like pseudo casters. It's entirely reasonable to expect somebody to play one and want to gain proficiency with a heavier armor for less than losing a caster level.

Why is Medium Armor Mastery shittier than the other two? Why would I even take any of these since they give less than other tome feats? Half of the abilities are just getting rid of penalties and they also don't give any abilities at all.

Right.

One denizen derides light as totally useless and the next says medium is the worst. This is unsurprising, but clearly we are not all on the same page here.

Before I even try to justify my admittedly questionable design decisions - lemme rectify that. I am talking about this Page I know the tables are fubared, but you can either work with them or you can download the PDF.

Within that listing of tome armors

• Non armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +9,
  an armor bonus of +2
  and a combined total of +11 (magic clothing for all three)
• Light armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +8 (grey armor or padded armor)
  an armor bonus of +5 (mithral shirt or brigandine)
  and a combined total of +11 (mithral shirt, grey armor)
• Medium armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +5 (dragonscale shirt or mithral suit)
  an armor bonus of +7 (adamantine breastplate)
  and a combined total of +11 (dragonscale shirt or mithral suit)
• Heavy armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +6 (sun plate)
  an armor bonus of +12 (mechanus armor)
  and a combined total of +16 (sun plate)

And as for tome feats just getting rid of penalties, Tome armors have built in scaling abilities anyways, I am worried about the additional bookingkeeping and potential overlap between any proficiency feat and the item itself. But I am open to interesting suggestions here to replace levels of "now you have even fewer penalties". Chance of crit negation? Ability to redirect attack against you to be a sunder attempt on the armor? Weapon breaking? Weapon catching?

[Leress]

Right.

One denizen derides light as totally useless and the next says medium is the worst. This is unsurprising, but clearly we are not all on the same page here.

Well, my comment is just an addition to CatharzGodfoot's. Yes the Medium Armor Mastery is worst than useless.

Before I even try to justify my admittedly questionable design decisions - lemme rectify that. I am talking about this Page I know the tables are fubared, but you can either work with them or you can download the PDF.

The link itself is FUBARed

Within that listing of tome armors

• Non armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +9,
  an armor bonus of +2
  and a combined total of +11 (magic clothing for all three)
• Light armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +8 (grey armor or padded armor) an armor bonus of +5 (mithral shirt or brigandine)
  and a combined total of +11 (mithral shirt, grey armor)
• Medium armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +5 (dragonscale shirt or mithral suit)
  an armor bonus of +7 (adamantine breastplate)
  and a combined total of +11 (dragonscale shirt or mithral suit)
• Heavy armor maxes out at a dex bonus of +6 (sun plate)
  an armor bonus of +12 (mechanus armor)
  and a combined total of +16 (sun plate)

That just shows that Medium is the worst still since it increases the AC to 13 while Light goes up to 15.

And as for tome feats just getting rid of penalties,
1. Hunter and Sniper as written in Races of War mainly just reduce and eliminate penalties

Bullshit

Hunter [Combat]
You can move around and shoot things with surprising effectiveness.
Benefits: The penalties for using a ranged weapon from an unstable platform (such as a ship or a moving horse) are halved.
+1: shot on the run – you may take a standard action to attack with a ranged weapon in the middle of a move action, taking some of your movement before and some of your movement after your attack. That still counts as your standard and move action for the round.
+6: You suffer no penalties for firing from unstable ground, a running steed, or any of that.
+11: You may take a full round action to take a double move and make a single ranged attack from any point during your movement.
+16: You may take a full round action to run a full four times your speed and make a single ranged attack from any point during your movement. You retain your Dexterity modifier to AC while running.

Abilities are given at +1, +11, and +16

Sniper [Combat]
Your shooting is precise and dangerous.
Benefits: Your range increments are 50% longer than they would ordinarily be. Any benefit of being within 30' of an opponent is retained out to 60'.
+1: Precise Shot - You do not suffer a -4 penalty when firing a ranged weapon into melee and never hit an unintended target in close combats or grapples.
+6: Sharp Shooting – Your ranged attacks ignore Cover Bonuses (total cover still bones you).
+11: Opponents struck by your ranged attacks do not automatically know what square your attack came from, and must attempt to find you normally.
+16: Any time you hit an opponent with a ranged weapon, it is counted as a critical threat. If your weapon already had a 19-20 threat range, increase its critical multiplier by 1.

Sniper give abilities at +0 and +16

2. Tome armors have built in scaling abilities anyways, I am worried about the additional bookingkeeping and potential overlap between any proficiency feat and the item itself. But I am open to interesting suggestions here to replace levels of "now you have even fewer penalties".

Then just make it an exploit.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well, my comment is just an addition to CatharzGodfoot's. Yes the Medium Armor Mastery is worst than useless.

It's late and I am not thinking clearly, but I am still not seeing why you feel that way.

The link itself is FUBARed

Thanks. Fixed.
If somehow not actually fixed, see Races of War, post 5, Fantastic Armor Section in PDF

That just shows that Medium is the worst still since it increases the AC to 13 while Light goes up to 15.

Wait, what?

The initial thought was that each feat provides a potential +4 to AC. Light Armor got Max Dex increased by 2+2, medium armor got both max dex and Armor Bonus increased by 1+1 and heavy armor got armor bonus increased by 2+2. This was primarily a gut reaction and really may not be the way to go, but now I doubt you are even understanding what I've been writing.

Did I massively typo the feat or something?

Because the way I meant it to work is that the best case combined Max Dex + armor of Medium Armor goes to +15 for Mithral Suit or Dragonscale Shirt - which each improve from +6 armor +5 max dex to +8 armor +7 max dex with the 16th level mods.

My loose thinking there was that the increase to heavy armor is the easiest for characters to benefit from, since it doesn't require crazy-go-nuts dex mods.

Bullshit

Ok, you got me on that one

In my defense, I had edited that out before you finished your post.

Then just make it an exploit.

In that case, every PC will shortly be walking around in the heaviest armor that still allows their dex bonus.

What I don't like there is that's probably bad for what it does to AC vs monsters, definitely bad for what it does to AC between different classes in the same party and not at all what I want for the setting of this particular game.

[Red_Rob]

As far as I can see, Tome just assumes characters will use the proficiencies given by their classes or use the Core proficiency feats.

If you want a scaling armour proficiency feat, how about rather than 3 different feats, you have one feat that ups the level of armour you can wear by one as one of its benefits? Something like:
Encased in Steel
+0: The ACP of any armour you wear is decreased by one.
+1: You gain Proficiency with the next highest level of armour.
+6: You gain Medium Fortification whilst wearing armour.
+11: The ACP of any armour you wear is decreased to 0.
+16: You may choose one set of armour you own which you can call from any location as an immediate action, and appears on you Guyver-style.

Because ASF is factored from ACP in Tome you don't need to explicitly state it is reduced along with ACP. Plus, any combat oriented character can take a level of Tome Fighter and get all the armour prof's, Combat sense, all good saves and a boatload of skill points. Round here, we call a one level Tome Fighter dip Taking a Level in Bad Ass

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm gonna just list a bunch of potential abilities which might work for Tomelike armor feats

• Easy-on-Easy-Off: you drastically reduce the time needed to don or remove armor. It goes from several minutes to something you are expected to do in combat
• Crit reduction/Crit Negation: Fortification percentages are extra bookkepping, but this could alternatively be handled as damage reduction vs crits (ala tome's mithral shirt) or as conversion of crits to nonlethal damage or a reduced crit multiplier or something
• Not Dead Yet: this is handle either as you can go further than -10 into the negative while wearing armor or some mechanic where the first attack to take you below zero HP only takes you to -1 HP regardless of actual damage dealt so long as you are wearing armor.
• Summoned: A better version of Easy-on-Easy-Off. Like an anime magical girl transform, you pull your armor out of magicspace and suit up in a flashy montage when you need it
• Pretty Princess Dress Up: Not just any magical girl transform, you're one of those who gets multiple different outfits you can don from the aether as a swift action and each outfit has a different bonus attached to it. (see Cutie Honey, Shadow Lady, FF X-2, Erza Scarlett)
• Can't Touch This: you get to apply the armor's armor bonus against Touch / Ghost Touch attacks or other such things armor bonuses don't normally apply against

Now which of those abilities would make the most sense to work into a Tome [Combat] armor proficiency feat or three?

[Josh_Kablack]

Now moving from brainstorming to a new draft, how's this for a powered-up, Tome-fit three feat system?

Armor Mastery: Light Armor [Combat]
You are proficient in wearing light armor
Benefits: You suffer only the usual armor check penalties of any light armor worn
+1: You may completely ignore the Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chance for any light armor which has an Armor Check Penalty which is less than half of your Base Attack Bonus
+6:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus of any light armor you wear as though it were two points higher.
+11:  Magical Dress-Up Montage: As a swift action, you may change out of your current outfit and into any suit of light armor you own. No matter where the armor is stored, nor what restraints are upon you, the armor instantly appears upon your person.
+16:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus of any light armor you wear as though it were four points higher than normal. (I think I want something better here)


Armor Mastery: Medium Armor [Combat]
You are proficient in wearing medium armor
Benefits: You suffer only the usual armor check penalties of any medium armor worn
+1: You may completely ignore the Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chance for any medium armor which has an Armor Check Penalty which is less than half of your Base Attack Bonus
+6:  You may treat the maximum dexterity bonus and the armor bonus of any medium armor you wear as though they were each one point higher.
+11: Not Dead Yet: While you are wearing medium armor you cannot be slain without being knocked out first. Any attack which would reduce you to -10 or fewer hit points, or any effect which would kill you outright instead merely reduce you to -1 HP. This ability does not apply while you are at negative hit points.
+16:  You apply the armor bonus granted by medium armor you wear to your Touch AC.

Armor Mastery: Heavy Armor [Combat]
You are proficient in wearing heavy armor that is nonstandard for your class
Benefits: You suffer only the usual armor check penalties of any heavy armor worn
+1: You may completely ignore the Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure chance for any heavy armor which has an Armor Check Penalty which is less than half of your Base Attack Bonus
+6:  You treat the armor bonus of any heavy armor you wear as though it was two points higher.
+11:  It's just a flesh wound: If you are wearing heavy armor you may use an immediate action to reduce a critical hit you suffer to merely a normal hit.
+16:  Whenever it would be more advantageous for you to do so, you may consider any heavy armor you wear to be medium or light armor instead. Thus you may move at full speed in heavy armor by treating it as light, you may apply feats that apply to light or medium armor to your heavy armor, and so forth.

[Red_Rob]

Okay, here's how I see it:

Light armour feat:
Well, firstly everyone except wizards (and monks i suppose) gets this for free, so we need to evaluate it from their perspective. The minimum ACP that you would apply this to would be -1, so you need at least BaB +3 to benefit from the +1 ability, which they don't get till level 6. Seems a long time to wait for your first ability, why not just have it be the +6? The second ability, upping the Max Dex, works against the first because most of the armours with low max dex have high ACP's and vice versa. Also, most light armours have a high max dex anyway, so you need about a +8 dex mod to take advantage of this which you won't be getting till higher levels anyway. Dress up power is fun, I would keep that, but the other abilities come a lot later than advertised and work against each other.

Medium armour feat:
Well, ACP for these averages -3 to -4 so you won't be getting your first benefit until level 7 if you're a warrior, or level 14 (!) for a mage. The max dex and armour is fine for its level, +2 to AC isn't going to break anything. I'm a little unsure if Not Dead Yet's second line of text is meant to represent the first, or is a seperate ability. It could be read that immunity to KO means immortality, which could lead to some abuse. We have actually instituted this ability as a standard rule for PC's in our game, so I don't see it being a major problem in play. The touch A/C boost seems fine, but I don't have any experience of high level play so I can't really judge.

Heavy armour feat:
The minimum ACP of any Heavy Armour worth the name (discounting adventure-specific stuff like Coral and Clay) is Silk Steel with -4. This means the first ability comes on line for good BaB characters at level 9, Med BaB at 13 and low BaB at 18. That has to be a record for a +1 ability. +2 AC is fine as before. It's just a flesh wound is nice, although further swift action tax at this level may be too much given the quickened spells, Kiai strikes, Foil actions, Challenges and other feat abilities that use them. The +16 ability doesn't do anthing, because move speed is based off ACP in Tome, not armour weight. About the only thing it interacts with is letting you use Not Dead Yet in heavy armour, which seems a bit niche.

So, some problems. Well, firstly I would suggest that Armour Proficiency feats don't really fit into the neat "Combat, Skill, Metamagic" triumvirate set up in Tome. Sure, armour is used in combat, but warrior types already have all the armour proficiencies, so basing it off BaB just means you bone the people who actually want to take these feats. Perhaps have a "General" feat type that just scales to level for things like this? Secondly, removing ACP and ASF based on BaB doesn't seem to work too well IMHO. Unless you were aiming for character to take these feats and see no extra benefits for 6 levels I'd rework this aspect of the feats. The + to armour and Dex max thing needs to work the opposite way to how you have it now. Light armour needs a base AC upgrade, and heavy armour needs a max dex increase, because these are the things those armours lack. The +11 abilities are all flavourful, but I'd give some real abilities before that, not just static number changes because these are boring. Most of those +11 or +16 abilities could be reduced to +6 or even (for some)+1 in my opinion without unbalancing things.

[TarkisFlux]

Well, firstly everyone except wizards (and monks i suppose) gets this for free...

Wrong.

Now characters can already get armor proficiencies from one of their classes class (or occasionally from their race or type or something). So if armor proficiencies are available as feats, then the feats have to be both up to the tome-standard of "this is a big deal" and also sometimes worth buying for classes that get the base proficiency anyways.

Classes just give the basic proficiency, not the updated feats. The feats are being written so that the "spend a feat on armor proficiency" option (as opposed to the take a level in a different class option) is less shitty.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Given the powers of Tome armors, armor proficiency is almost worth a feat anyway.

[JonSetanta]

Too many armor types and the arbitrary categories therein.

There should be one type: Armor. It would scale to represent the 3 categories with respective skill penalty.

Is the character proficient in Armor? Y/N
That's all you would check.

Then you would only need one feat.