Is Unfettered Shirt worth it?


Advice

Lantern Lodge

My PFS Paladin has abysmally bad CMD. Anything that can grapple me, can and will succeed.

I'm thinking of ways to overcome this weakness and I happened to chance across the Unfettered Shirt.

Unfettered Shirt:
Unfettered Shirt
Source Ultimate Equipment pg. 223
Aura moderate abjuration and transmutation; CL 7th
Slot chest; Price 10,000 gp; Weight —
Description
This loose, often ruffled, shirt is cut in a style designed to avoid hindering its wearer’s movement.

Once per day on command, the wearer can gain the benefits of freedom of movement for 10 minutes.

Freedom of Movement is an amazing spell and Unfettered Shirt gives access to it. Albeit usable only 10mins once a day.

The other option of a Ring of Freedom of Movement seems way too expensive for me to ever get in PFS. (Without not buying anything else.)

My character is lv 8 now, should I get this? Or should I use my 16k current gold to grab a holy weapon property instead?


I usually see pallies add holy via divine bond and you should be able to get by on that.

Grab can be deadly with constrict, swallow whole, or other rider effects (con drain etc). I haven't actually seen anyone with this item but there are far worse choices you could make.

Lantern Lodge

Ya, grab is pretty scary. Even more so, since I do have another character that focus on grappling.

I'm quite worried about grapple, hence the need for Unfettered Shirt.

However, I am also just as worried about the 10k gp price and the once per day limit. I mean even boots of speed allows you to use it in 1 round increments, for Unfettered Shirt its a one off 10 mins use.

10k is a lot to spend on an item in PFS. I'm hopping for some feed back before committing to the purchase.


I use an unfettered shirt in a homegame on my cleric and I've never regretted it.

10 minutes is a long time in a dungeon. Lasts long enough for atleast 2 fights. The idea is to use it reactively.

Ex. Monster grabs you. You use Unfettered Shirt. It immediately fails it's maintain the grapple check on it's turn and spits you out. If you were swallowed you auto succeed your check to get back to it's mouth and then it has to spit you out since grapple checks fail automatically.

Lantern Lodge

@Scavion, That is how I'm planning to go about using it.

With the possibility of underwater combat or facing spells like black tentacles as you reach higher levels, FoM, just seems too important to pass up.

More so, since as a melee Paladin I have to get close to actually hit the enemies.

Question: My alternate option is to get something like Winged Boots instead. It would give me more movement options. Its main problem is it still won't help me against actually being grappled.

What do you all think? Fly 3/day or FoM 1/D?


Tough choice!
But I think you have more options with the winged boots.
They have loads of out of combat applications.

Lantern Lodge

Choices choices... I could use pots of fly.... AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!!!

I can't make up my mind... :(

Anyone else with insight on Unfettered Shirt?

Scarab Sages

The shirt is the better choice here I think. As you said, you can fly with potions, you can add holy via Divine Bond, but you can't add Freedom of Movement easily.

(For now. Per d20pfsrd it looks like Inner Sea Gods has an interesting channel feat, but it looks like it's Deity restricted, and it will be some time before we know if it's PFS legal.)


You are part of a team. You are facing a grapple monsters. Since probably not everyone will have freedom of movement, we can probably assume the someone will get swallowed/constricted whatever and hopefully that the rest of the team can kill the bad thing before that poor person is dead.

Who would be better to be swallowed than the paladin? If your CMB is bad you must have good CON so you can take it. You have swift action healing available. Basically it seems to me it is your job to be the guy in the things throat.

I don't know what I would buy instead, but I'm sure there are a lot of things that are more useful than avoiding one grapple a day on a character who can probably survive quite a while being grappled.

Lantern Lodge

Dave Justus wrote:

You are part of a team. You are facing a grapple monsters. Since probably not everyone will have freedom of movement, we can probably assume the someone will get swallowed/constricted whatever and hopefully that the rest of the team can kill the bad thing before that poor person is dead.

Who would be better to be swallowed than the paladin? If your CMB is bad you must have good CON so you can take it. You have swift action healing available. Basically it seems to me it is your job to be the guy in the things throat.

I don't know what I would buy instead, but I'm sure there are a lot of things that are more useful than avoiding one grapple a day on a character who can probably survive quite a while being grappled.

Actually, I'm not that scared about being swallowed.

What I'm really scared of is being grappled ---> Pinned ---> Tied up... T_T

Or ... Black Tentacles... one of these and I'm useless to the party.

Scarab Sages

Actually, you would probably be best served by a dip into Nature Oracle. Natures whispers allows you to use CHA for AC and CMD, that should make it harder to grapple you. As a bonus, half of your non-oracle levels count towards improving your curse, so you will get the level 5 curse upgrade even with only one oracle level.


I'd take a 10k expenditure for a guaranteed get-away for most grapple situations over spending an entire level to dip oracle.


Go for it Secane - it will be useful in many other situations as well. Scrolls of Freedom of Movement are a good alternative, but don't work when you're grabbed!

Sounds perfect for your character.

Dark Archive

yeah, your character might not be grabbed by a monster and swallowed but got caught in black tentacles and a cloud kill at the same time.. Not good!!!

Lantern Lodge

@Imbicatus, I already have a lvl of Oracle. Since this is a PFS character, he is an Oracle of Lore, which makes the most sense, since it is part of his reason for joining the society. To seek out more knowledge about demons and other fiends.

@Everyone,

Thanks for the inputs! I'm going to grab Unfettered Shirt right away!

Lantern Lodge

I've had plenty of characters with Unfettered Shirt in various home games and have never regretted the decision. I love Rings of Freedom Of Movement, but the reality is that they're very expensive.

Boots of Flying give you more combat options and will get used alot.

Unfettered shirt will be used infrequently, and you might even go a whole PFS scenario without ever using it, BUT it will keep you alive when you would otherwise die (or at least keep you from being useless in a critical battle).

Boots of Flying are a more useful tool.

Unfettered Shirt is an insurance policy.

I wouldn't say one or the other is a bad choice, but my experience has been very positive with Unfettered Shirt.

Another thought - Flying doesn't really help you in melee combat, and if you need to fly to attack a flying opponent, the Wizard (Fly) or Cleric (Air Walk) usually sees the sense in casting on you so you can engage the aerial opponent.

Lantern Lodge

Captain Zoom wrote:
Another thought - Flying doesn't really help you in melee combat, and if you need to fly to attack a flying opponent, the Wizard (Fly) or Cleric (Air Walk) usually sees the sense in casting on you so you can engage the aerial opponent.

lol, in an ideal world my character would have both.

I do love that with a boots of fly you can skim around at ground level at speed 60ft and overcome difficult terrain. So, currently I can down a pot of fly to fly if there is a real need for it.

He also have a +3 str Comp Longbow as a backup weapon vs air targets. My Paladin has an 8 for Dex, so he is not going to shoot anything well armored, but it is there as a backup weapon.

Against flying foes, my biggest problem would be non-evil flying monsters like Rocs or worse something that is non-evil and can shoot back. Also flying monsters that are large with reach, high damage dealers, able to grab you or have a higher speed then the fly spell.
Against such foes, the fact that my paladin is flying makes no difference if he is going to be the only 1 flying. He would just be overwhelmed and forced to land one way or another.

I realised the flaws of my Paladin character as I was making him. But unless I want to be stuck playing different variations of archers, I have to accept that there are some things my character would just happen to have a harder time against.

Unfettered Shirt on other hand is something I want to get to help me avoid being helpless in fights where my Paladin should be able to deal with. It is just embarrassing to sit out a fight against a demon or evil spellcaster siting on the ground just because you got stuck in a Black Tentacle spell.

Liberty's Edge

I have an Unfettered Shirt on my PFS Sorcerer, and it's already saved his life several times. Or at least it's kept him from being completely useless for an entire encounter on several occasions, at any rate. He can cast Liberating Command because grappling is such a pain, but the spell help everyone except the caster so I needed the Unfettered Shirt. And seriously, Black Tentacles happens all the time when there's an enemy caster at 7-11 tier.

Shadow Lodge

About a week ago, I started putting together a list of items you should consider getting when getting into bad situations.

Grapples is on that list, here are the items:

Considering the slot is important. The shoulder and feet slots tend to be particularly valuable.


I suppose that another option would be to get an oil of the Grease spell. It would last for 1 minute and give a +10 circumstance bonus on Escape Artist checks to escape a grapple or to the CMD to avoid being grappled. It’s not as good as an unfettered shirt, but it only costs 50 gold.


3/4 of my party ended up getting an Unfettered Shirt because it's just that useful. Grappling can seriously ruin your day and this item saves you from that, and a host of other annoying issues as well.

The problem of using a Grease oil is getting it out and applying it while grappled and possibly pinned.

Lantern Lodge

@ ChaiGuy and Bjørn Røyrvik,

Ah! Oil of Grease reminds me of some old tales of the 3.5 era, where I was told players would lube themselves up with Alchemical grease (5gp) every 4 hours as a precautionary measure.

Alchemical grease, very cheap, half as good as grease and last for 4 hours. :D

As much as I want to do the above in PFS, it seems spreading oil on yourself is not appreciated by most PFS players or GMs.

Scarab Sages

Well, if your Oralce Curse is deafness, you would be this guy.

Lantern Lodge

LOLOLOL!!!!

Awww... now you make me want to make a new character...

Sorry Imbicatus, my Paladin's curses are Legalistic AND Haunted. (He is based of the common ideal of feys can't lie and can use magic.

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