Requesting Clearification: Mithril's Medium > Light property + Magus

[Krzysztofer]

I am working on my Improvised Weapon Master which is a Hunter/Magus right now. One of the drawbacks of the build is that I won't be getting the Magus Medium Armor casting for a while though Hunter gives me proficiency in Medium Armor. So I was wondering if Mithril makes Medium Armor count as light for the purposes of the Magus's spellcasting ability (and not getting spell failure chance). Below is the rules as written:

Magus: "He can cast spells while wearing light armor without incurring the normal arcane spell failure chance. Like any other arcane spellcaster, a magus wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or a shield incurs a chance of arcane spell failure if the spell in question has a somatic component."

Mithril: "Most Mithril armor's are one catagory lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are treated as light. This decrease does not apply to proficiency in wearing the armor"

The big assumption is the 'other limitations' portion of this. I have heard of Mithril Full Plate Barbarians still getting bonuses from wearing 'medium armor' but that is movement related. Spellcasting is sort of movement/agility related (somatic) so I could only hope that Mithril also knocks down the armor type as well.

Let me know your thoughts, as with any gray area I will clear it with the local PFS Leader before attempting such in either case. I just didn't see this topic covered using a search and wanted to get other opinions. Thanks!

[Artoo]

The only thing the decrease in category doesn't apply for is the proficiency required to not apply the armor check penalty to your attack rolls.

So yes, you can wear a mithral breastplate as a first level magus and have no ASF as a result of it.

[zVulture]

Artoo wrote:

The only thing the decrease in category doesn't apply for is the proficiency required to not apply the armor check penalty to your attack rolls.

So yes, you can wear a mithral breastplate as a first level magus and have no ASF as a result of it.

Thanks for the quick reply. I am working around the limitations of Improvised Weapons as a kind of personal challenge. Arcane Strike to make the weapon magical to overcome DR (and add damage), items of special materials to overcome DR (worst case arrows are improvised daggers), buff/utility from Feral Hunter and spellstrike with Magus to deal decent damage. To say the least this is probably one of the most interesting builds I have done and that is not counting the amusement value of hitting people with random objects (Android Arm, Folding Chair, Shovel, etc).

With no money going towards my weapons I was going to focus primarily on buffing my AC and stats out. So this was good to figure out for saving up the 4k for the Medium Mithril cost.

[Jiggy]

PFS does not have any campaign-specific rules on this topic, and therefore the campaign defaults to standard Pathfinder RPG game rules. As such, I'll flag the thread to get moved to the Rules forum where PFRPG game rules questions are handled, so you can get appropriate traffic/comments. :)