Elemental Body and Armour


Rules Questions


Hi everyone,

So I'm trying to do something pretty interesting in my current game and I have to prepare my character for a number of eventualities. I've been doing pretty good so far but I've reached an important snag: I can't manage to find any loophole that would allow me to retain an armour bonus while polymorphed into an elemental while using Elemental Body IV.

Now I know it's petty and kind of pushing it, but it's really the last piece of the puzzle that I need to be wholly satisfied with my build. So thanks in advance forums, do your thing!


The Wild armour Enchant lets you keep armour bonuses wile wild shaped.
It uses the Baleful Polymorph spell as its bace.

WILD wrote:
Moderate transmutation; CL 9th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, baleful polymorph; Price +3 bonus.

Ask your DM if you could come up with an Elemental armour Enchant.

Elemental wrote:

The wearer of a suit of armor or a shield with this ability preserves his armor bonus (and any enhancement bonus) while in an Elemental Body spell is on them. The type of Element is chosen during construction of the Enchantment. Armor and shields with this ability usually appear to be covered in Elemental patterns. While the wearer has an Elemental Body spell is on them, the armor cannot be seen.

Moderate transmutation; CL 9th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Elemental Body II; Price +3 bonus.

NOTE: this is something I am suggesting, it is not in the Rules.


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Druids local 704 recommends a wand of mage armor for such occasions, or letting the party wizard borrow your pearl of power for an extra casting.


Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.


Azten wrote:
Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.

He'd have to get armor or barding made for the new form and put it on. The polymorph rules work by type , and the elemental type is one of the ones that sucks your armor into your new form.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Azten wrote:
Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.
He'd have to get armor or barding made for the new form and put it on. The polymorph rules work by type , and the elemental type is one of the ones that sucks your armor into your new form.

I also think the OP is asking about interacting with the spell, witch turns you to a Huge Elemental. So putting on the same armour after the transformation may not work.


Dr Styx wrote:


I also think the OP is asking about interacting with the spell, witch turns you to a Huge Elemental. So putting on the same armour after the transformation may not work.

I'm saying put on different armor, get wild armor, or cast mage armor. Depending on your budget and how much time you spend in form.

Grand Lodge

If you turned in to an elemental of the same size as your character, couldn't you just take off your armor and put it back on after you cast the spell?

Alternatively, get fitting armor, take it off, turn into an elemental of any size, and put it back on.


Jurassic Pratt wrote:
If you turned in to an elemental of the same size as your character, couldn't you just take off your armor and put it back on after you cast the spell?

Dm's call. I would likely say no.

The elemental is on the list of things that sucks your armor into you on the polymorph list, which tells me they don't normally have a body type for stadnard equipment.

While an elemental can approximate a humanoid shape, I've never seen an elemental wearing armor. You would probably need to adjust the armor to deal with the fact that you don't actually have an elbow joint, you're just acting like it. And you probably won't remember to fake it every single move you make in the middle of combat.

Grand Lodge

I see them being on the list of things that meld your armor because they don't have to take a humanoid form. But if they do, there's no real reason they shouldn't be able to wear armor.

But the truth is the rules are silent on this matter. Nothing says elementals can't wear armor, nothing says they can. Definitely a GM discretion issue.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Azten wrote:
Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.
He'd have to get armor or barding made for the new form and put it on. The polymorph rules work by type , and the elemental type is one of the ones that sucks your armor into your new form.

Yeah, but if you are going to be stuck with one form, elemental might not be a bad choice.

Elementals have the tall reach template (like giants) and they can use weapons (Their subtype gives them weapon proficiencies if they have a humanoid shape; you don't get the subtype, but you do get opposable thumbs...)

So you could just run around as a giant stone man and buy armor/weapons for that size. Earth elementals ahve great stats (bonuses to str, natural armor, and con), so you could do a sturdy reach build.

It is a poor man's goliath druid- you give up the convenience of automatically resizing weapons, but you retain things like earthglide, as well as most other wildshape forms (mostly thinking of things like a tiny bird for stealth missions)


I prefer to combine tactics wear the armor put on mage armor in case you have to switch

Silver Crusade

Vaite Belleran wrote:

Hi everyone,

So I'm trying to do something pretty interesting in my current game and I have to prepare my character for a number of eventualities. I've been doing pretty good so far but I've reached an important snag: I can't manage to find any loophole that would allow me to retain an armour bonus while polymorphed into an elemental while using Elemental Body IV.

Now I know it's petty and kind of pushing it, but it's really the last piece of the puzzle that I need to be wholly satisfied with my build. So thanks in advance forums, do your thing!

Take a level of Wizard/Sorcerer and -

Conjuration School (take Mage Armor as the specialized School spell)
Magical Knack
Master of Pentacles (Dark Archive if you are in PFS)
Rod of Extend
3 PoP 1
Now you can have 25 hours of Mage Armor once you reach level 5.


The next problem I see is that with armour on the exterior of the Elemental is you would lose some of its abilities...

Air: the Whirlwind would drop the armour.

Earth: the armour would not earth glide with you.

Fire: not only would the armour stop the Burn from affecting attackers, but if it was not protected from fire, the armour would be constantly damaged.

Water: the Vortex would drop the armour.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

What class are you?

Not telling you to change your class, but potentially if you want to try a similar build in the future many oracles have a revelation that lets them gain an armor bonus for hour per level, it typically starts at +4 and increases by 2 every couple of levels and gets some other neat tricks. There is even a mystery that gives you the elemental body spells as bonus spells.


I'm actually playing a Skald in a mythic campaign and gaining access to this spell ability through one of my mythic path abilities (Divine Source).

I definitely see a lot of good alternatives going on but mostly I just see I'm going to end up having to use Bracers of Armour to get an armour bonus higher than +4 while I'm polymorphed

@Dr Styx: it would be cool to houserule an armour enchantment but I also know what I'm asking for is rather powerful and I doubt my DM would go for it if it isn't rules legal

@Jurrasic Pratt and BigNorseWolf: I hadn't thought about having a second set of armour handy for post transformation. If I can find the gold loose for this it could be a good alternative if my DM rules in my favour

@Pixierose: yes I saw those abilities and I'm really quite jealous of them, would love to have the freedom to multiclass but for fluff and build reasons it isn't really an option at this point


Dr Styx wrote:

The next problem I see is that with armour on the exterior of the Elemental is you would lose some of its abilities...

Air: the Whirlwind would drop the armour.

Earth: the armour would not earth glide with you.

Fire: not only would the armour stop the Burn from affecting attackers, but if it was not protected from fire, the armour would be constantly damaged.

Water: the Vortex would drop the armour.

1. this is stepping into house rule territory.

2. Earthglide works on all of the user's gear and equipment.

There is no shortage of class abilities and spells that grant earthglide without polymorphing the user.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Azten wrote:
Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.
He'd have to get armor or barding made for the new form and put it on. The polymorph rules work by type , and the elemental type is one of the ones that sucks your armor into your new form.

Suppose you had something that explicity does not merge armour when polymorphing. If you then pick an elemental form of the same size as you, are you now wearing the armour as an elemental?


Folding Plate

Bit of fanagling to keep the amulet from merging, but I see nothing to suggest that it would fail to work on a nonhumanoid.

Probably are not proficient with heavy armor though.

Scarab Breastplate

Mistmail

Both also may work, but probably will have to add Fitting to them.


The Sideromancer wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Azten wrote:
Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.
He'd have to get armor or barding made for the new form and put it on. The polymorph rules work by type , and the elemental type is one of the ones that sucks your armor into your new form.
Suppose you had something that explicity does not merge armour when polymorphing. If you then pick an elemental form of the same size as you, are you now wearing the armour as an elemental?

If you mean wild armor , yes it works. Elemental form or animal they work off of wild shape, wild armor works with wild shape


BigNorseWolf wrote:
The Sideromancer wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Azten wrote:
Elementals can be humanoid in shape. They can wear armor. Since you are polymorphing into a form that is humanoid you're fine.
He'd have to get armor or barding made for the new form and put it on. The polymorph rules work by type , and the elemental type is one of the ones that sucks your armor into your new form.
Suppose you had something that explicity does not merge armour when polymorphing. If you then pick an elemental form of the same size as you, are you now wearing the armour as an elemental?
If you mean wild armor , yes it works. Elemental form or animal they work off of wild shape, wild armor works with wild shape

Druid yes, Wild no.

AoN, Gorum wrote:
Druids are permitted to wear metal armor, though they do not automatically gain proficiency in any other categories of armor. They cannot cast spells while wearing metal armor, nor does it meld with them when they use wild shape;


I have no idea how that's supposed to work. If it doesn't meld, what does it do--break for larger forms or just clatter to the ground for smaller forms?


Dr Styx wrote:

The next problem I see is that with armour on the exterior of the Elemental is you would lose some of its abilities...

Air: the Whirlwind would drop the armour.

Earth: the armour would not earth glide with you.

Fire: not only would the armour stop the Burn from affecting attackers, but if it was not protected from fire, the armour would be constantly damaged.

Water: the Vortex would drop the armour.

While I can't speak about the shape change of water/air (not familiar enough with a pseudo shape change like that), and fire... yeah, it is hard to argue 'fire bad' (especially the 'no metal' druids)....

But that claim about earthglide is sketchy. Earthglide in general is sketchy. There are a half dozen ways to get the ability as a PC, and each one works a little differently. And none of them mention losing equipment. This include classes that even sometimes use weapons and armor- such as oracles and monks (well, weapons for the latter).

So I can't say you'd lose the armor, or the right to earthglide while using armor.

BigNorseWolf wrote:
I prefer to combine tactics wear the armor put on mage armor in case you have to switch

And I prefer being a giant rock man over being a bird or an octopus (movement, and a maneuver style ability- how many reasons do you have to turn from being a great melee build other than those?)


The sideromancer wrote:
Druid yes, Wild no.

I have no idea what you're responding to.


I asked about using the effect of Elemental Body for a Medium elemental when under conditions where the armour does not merge. I think of Wild armour as merging but still granting its bonus, so the conditions I was thinking of was the case of a Gorumite Druid wearing metal armour.


I may have found a solution and wanted to hear your interpretation of it.

What if I used Djezet Skin with the Fitting armour special ability?

Bonus question: if I craft the djezet skin myself, could I use a different base armour than leather armour?


Vaite Belleran wrote:

I may have found a solution and wanted to hear your interpretation of it.

What if I used Djezet Skin with the Fitting armour special ability?

Bonus question: if I craft the djezet skin myself, could I use a different base armour than leather armour?

I have a Djezet skin on a character that is planning to do the same elemental trick and my GM, based on wording, already gave his blessing.

Bonus answer: RAW no.


RAW just assume your form and THEN activate the Djezet skin. Elementals can talk.


@Excucior: I found this line in the Magic Item Creation section that could lead me to believe using a different base armour is viable.

Magic Item Creation

Magic Item Creation wrote:
"Some new items are really existing magic items with a different weapon or armor type, such as a dagger of venom that is a rapier instead of a dagger or a lion’s shield that’s a wooden shield instead of a metal shield. For these items, just replace the price of the non-magical masterwork item with the cost of the new type of item. For example, a rapier of venom has a price of 8,320 gp instead of the dagger of venom‘s price of 8,302 gp."

Anyone have thoughts or comments about this?


Subject to GM fiat, sure. But only subject to GM fiat.

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