Pathfinder Player Companion: Armor Master's Handbook (PFRPG)

Dragon78 wrote:

I can see "potion master" or "scroll master" but not "immovable rod master" not so much. Though could put it in a "rod master" book but I think people might get the wrong idea for about one;)

I've actually pitched Player Companion: Rod, Staff, and Wand.

I'm NOT going to reveal how that meeting went anytime soon, though. :)

I want this for my Staff Magus. I want this very, very much.

Hopefully this won't be full of overly complicated and/or overly specific feats. There's a distinct lack of simple feats that let you improve on core mechanics, like:

* treat armor or shield as one category lighter
* reduce Armor Check Penalty
* reduce Arcane Spell Failure
* increase Max Dex
* increase armored speed

Obvious, simple, uncomplicated gimmes that the game needs. Instead we'll probably get stuff like "you gain +2 to hit with shield bash when you are staggered and your target is prone", and "you can sleep in armor without penalty and if you do so in a forest you gain +1 AC for fifteen minutes".

Yeah, I'd love for PF to get a version of nimbleness and/or twilight from 3.5's Magic Item Compendium, but giving players a mithral-lite power that stacks with mithral or a 10% reduction in ASF for only a +1 doesn't sound like it would rate very highly among the devs.

From what I've been hearing about Advanced Weapon Training from the Weapon Master's Handbook, I have high hopes for Advanced Armor Mastery although I'm curious if they meant Advanced Armor Training given that Armor Mastery comes in at 19th level for fighters. I certainly hope they meant Armor Training.

Come on Paizo, give me a reason to wear heavy armour and play a walking bulldozer!

Hopefully this won't be full of overly complicated and/or overly specific feats. There's a distinct lack of simple feats that let you improve on core mechanics, like:

* treat armor or shield as one category lighter
* reduce Armor Check Penalty
* reduce Arcane Spell Failure
* increase Max Dex
* increase armored speed

Obvious, simple, uncomplicated gimmes that the game needs. Instead we'll probably get stuff like "you gain +2 to hit with shield bash when you are staggered and your target is prone", and "you can sleep in armor without penalty and if you do so in a forest you gain +1 AC for fifteen minutes".

I am pretty sure there is a feat that helps reduce armor penalties to certain skills. There is also armor materials. Let's please not make more avenues to powergame, because then you have those who will solely focus on having 0 check penalties all the time and a max Dex of +10 or some such. It is fine the way it is.

And let's not make the Fighter more useless, one of their main sticks is armor training which does just that.

Also there is already a feat that decreases Arcane Spell Failure, it's in the corebook.

Increasing armor speed, Fighter. I feel like the more rules we get that make power grabs from all classes without actually just taking a dive and multiclassing, the more blurred every class will be.

As far as I know, besides a slight reduction with the dark wood special material (and putting it down), there is no way to reduce the ACP from a tower shield. Not even armor training.

I am pretty sure there is a feat that helps reduce armor penalties to certain skills. There is also armor materials. Let's please not make more avenues to powergame, because then you have those who will solely focus on having 0 check penalties all the time and a max Dex of +10 or some such. It is fine the way it is.

And let's not make the Fighter more useless, one of their main sticks is armor training which does just that.

Also there is already a feat that decreases Arcane Spell Failure, it's in the corebook.

Increasing armor speed, Fighter. I feel like the more rules we get that make power grabs from all classes without actually just taking a dive and multiclassing, the more blurred every class will be.

I can assure you that powergamers in this game are not overly concerned with check penalties and max dex bonuses on armor.

As far as I know, besides a slight reduction with the dark wood special material (and putting it down), there is no way to reduce the ACP from a tower shield. Not even armor training.

Tower Shield Specialist fighter archetype does that now. It's not worth the cost, but it reduces the ACP and increases the Max Dex Bonus on a tower shield.

Great! Is "Cloak Master Handbook" far behind, because I've been waiting for one for ages...

[tangent] There was an old fantasy book, The Burning Realm, which had a 'cloak fighter' character who was actually pretty cool, if about as realistically viable as a spiked chain or starknife. [/tangent]

Part of me wants a dual shield wielding option because it's cool. The evil(er) part of me wants a dual shield wielding option because of the whining that will ensue.

Some interesting new options for offensive use of armor and shields, such as armor spikes/shield spikes/spiked gauntlets/spiked helms/spiked holy water, could be interesting.

Ditto some sort of technique similar to that from Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed in which someone can use specific types of armor or shield to improve AC even more when using Fighting Defensively or Total Defense (hiding behind a shield, or presenting the most heavily armored portions of one's body towards an attack, etc.) could be cool. Using such a technique, a more heavily armored / shielded individual might be able to 'turtle' for a round or two to give allies time to catch up on healing or whatever.

Part of me wants a dual shield wielding option because it's cool. The evil(er) part of me wants a dual shield wielding option because of the whining that will ensue.

Dual shield wielding is perfectly viable already... and yes, people whine about it.

Dual shield wielding is perfectly viable already... and yes, people whine about it.

Where can I find out more about this? Is it an official Paizo product?

CBDunkerson wrote:

Dual shield wielding is perfectly viable already... and yes, people whine about it.

Where can I find out more about this? Is it an official Paizo product?

Yes, official Paizo product.

Core Rulebook... Two-Weapon Fighting

Oh, I was hoping you meant something that gives you the AC bonus from both shields.

That would be new, but seems unlikely as it would violate the rule against stacking bonuses of the same type. You can get the bonuses/enchantments from either shield on any given round, but not both at once.

Gorbacz wrote:

Great! Is "Cloak Master Handbook" far behind, because I've been waiting for one for ages...

[tangent] There was an old fantasy book, The Burning Realm, which had a 'cloak fighter' character who was actually pretty cool, if about as realistically viable as a spiked chain or starknife. [/tangent]

As I recall, he did most of his cloakfighting in the first book, The Shattered World.

I wonder if this will allow us to trade out various armor training for special abilities the way the WMPC does weapon training. If so, with these two books, you can essentially make a regular fighter something different from the core entirely.

I wonder if this will allow us to trade out various armor training for special abilities the way the WMPC does weapon training. If so, with these two books, you can essentially make a regular fighter something different from the core entirely.

Well the description talks about "Advanced Armor Mastery" so I would assume so, though I suspect that they meant "Advanced Armor Training" since Armor Mastery becomes available to the core fighter at level 19.

In any case, I definitely want it to happen. Making a non-archetyped fighter that can function pretty well would be amazing. Hell, I would settle for making it good enough so that trading out Armor Training via archetypes isn't always the standard.

I would settle for making it good enough so that trading out Armor Training via archetypes isn't always the standard.

What's that? Sorry, I can't hear you over all these mutagens I'm quaffing.

Major_Blackhart wrote:

Well the description talks about "Advanced Armor Mastery" so I would assume so, though I suspect that they meant "Advanced Armor Training" since Armor Mastery becomes available to the core fighter at level 19.

Yes, it's Advanced Armor Training, and yes, the plan is for it to be similar to Advanced Weapon Training.

Did I really just see a reference to The Burning Realm? I stumbled across that in my desperate attempts for some Fantasy I had not read yet...the most memorable part for me was the cloak-fighter. The rest was very "meh".

Interested to see what this book has to offer to make sword and board (or, in my personal preference, hammer and board) more attractive as an option. I don't think upping the DPR of a shield user is the right answer, so making the defensive bonuses significant enough to matter (your shield bonus to saves!) or providing unique utility that isn't as available to 2h users (shield bash to daze an enemy!) would be great.

Also dual shield style plz

I hope we get something for a armored dwarf wizard =)

Pretty please, can we have heavy-armor-using Swashbuckler and/or Brawler archetypes?

Something that let´s you move faster and better in armor opening up armors for other materials than mithril would be very nice.

Armor training 2 does that doesn't it?

Armor training 2 does that doesn't it?

Sure, but not everyone gets armor training!

You can if you VMC the fighter.

I might have overlooked this if it is already available, but is there a wizard option to on bond to armor to gain full speed and bypass spell failure.

I might have overlooked this if it is already available, but is there a wizard option to on bond to armor to gain full speed and bypass spell failure.

Not yet. I wouldn't hold your breath for one... but maybe I'll be surprised. ^_^

I'm just curious what we'll be giving up if we take Advanced Armor Training. Maybe you only get the standard benefits (along with some extras) when wearing a specific type of armor like light, medium and heavy? Or perhaps even going as far as to only gaining the benefits with specific armors like full plate, lemallar, etc.

i hope a system like weapon master handbook who can create our own armor.

Same.

i hope a system like weapon master handbook who can create our own armor.

Yes ^^

As for new magical armor and shield special abilities I'd like to ask we get some good new ones, as most of the old ones are pretty bad (or terribly overcosted or both... do you know anyone willing to invest a +5 magical ability into spell resistance(19) for example? :P).
Something in the vein of liberating but working against domination effects would be great (especially now that we have the mesmerist around...). Also a magical ability to give you a chance to defend against spells that don't allow any kind of save like enervation does would be useful in the extreme for your average melee type.

But above all, please give us some new wffective magical armor special abilities!

I'm hoping for armor and shield tricks analogous to the weapon tricks from Weapon Master's Handbook, myself...providing either some active defenses, either for yourself or others nearby, or some offensive twists.

I would still like to see unarmored options for every class that uses armor.

Not for every class, but perhaps a Fighter or Cavalier option would be extremely welcome.

I really don't think you'll see unarmored archetypes in an Armor Master's Handbook.

I'd like to see them too, but this isn't the likely place for it.

Let's hold out for the Unarmored Master's Handbook later on?

I think unarmored archetypes would fit.

After all, it could divide the book in armor, shield, and unarmored sections.

As I noted earlier, I do not expected to put any unarmored material in the Armor Master's Handbook.

I expect to used all the space for armor mastery-related things.

I don't have a problem with unarmored character ideas, I rather like such characters, but this is not the 32-pages I feel make the best fit for those idea.

How about in the other direction, ways for wizards or monks to make less debilitating use of armor? Bards being able to improve their armor casting?

Monks in armor...scary.

I can see that as an archetype, and they lose their Monk AC bonus in place of it (no Wis bonus to AC and no incremental increases)

Silken Ceremonial Armor and Haramaki are essentially 'armor for unarmored characters' already. They are effectively just clothing / don't impose any penalties or restrictions, but grant a +1 armor bonus... which can then be enchanted like any other kind of armor.

Thus, any benefits which apply to those could be considered options for 'unarmored' characters. For example, an alternative for 'Armor Training' that increased the armor bonus would be great for 'unarmored' characters.

Similarly, options which reduce armor penalties could effectively make some light armors viable for 'unarmored' characters/classes by effectively eliminating the issue(s) they have with armor.

Let's let Full Plate Freddie have this one; we can get options for Loin Cloth Larry in the Fanservice Master's Handbook.

I don't have a problem with unarmored character ideas, I rather like such characters, but this is not the 32-pages I feel make the best fit for those idea.

Get ready for the Unarmored Master's Handbook ;-)

One question I have is...why isn't this book going to be a March release? There's nothing for March concerning a Player Companion, why was this bumped up to April?

One question I have is...why isn't this book going to be a March release? There's nothing for March concerning a Player Companion, why was this bumped up to April?

My understanding is that it's an issue of scheduling of resources beyond this line. Sometimes, something has to give. Way back when we first built this year's schedule, it was clear there would be a major issue managing everything we wanted to put out in Feb/Mar/Apr. When we try something like that and fail, book get pushed back, and that's not ideal for us, or customers, or anyone really. So it made more sense to decide up front to not have a March PC, so everyone (customers, retailers, and us alike) would know that and could plan accordingly.

Note that questions like that are above my paygrade, so this is my impression from inside the trenches, rather than some formal Paizo statement. A weekend musing to answer a reasonable question, when I don't have access to an official answer. I could be way off.

One question I have is...why isn't this book going to be a March release? There's nothing for March concerning a Player Companion, why was this bumped up to April?

From casual observation of the product schedule, March is when Paizo's releasing Inner Sea Faiths, that massive 92-page Campaign Setting line product. Inner Sea Faiths is currently the size of a standard campaign setting product and a player companion product combined, so my guess is that it was deemed necessary to skip the Player Companion line for a month for the sake of the budget.

Inner Sea Faiths is, indeed, the reason for no March Player Companion.

I hope to one day see a unarmored master's handbook.

Wow, got pushed back.

Owens, I hope you realise you owe me from the missing samurai archetype in WMH.