Wizards in half-plate


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells


Suppose you're a wizard, and you find some half-plate. Is there a good reason not to put it on? Your proficiency modifier to AC goes down, but this is more than made up for by the +5 item bonus from the half-plate. At all levels, it seems that the proficiency modifier drops by -2, for a net gain of +3 to AC for taking the half-plate.

I don't see any other penalties for characters wearing armor in which they are untrained, including spellcasters. Is this by design, or am I missing something? This is not a complaint, but it's potentially a pretty big change, so I want to make sure I have it right.


Riley Gibbs wrote:

Suppose you're a wizard, and you find some half-plate. Is there a good reason not to put it on? Your proficiency modifier to AC goes down, but this is more than made up for by the +5 item bonus from the half-plate. At all levels, it seems that the proficiency modifier drops by -2, for a net gain of +3 to AC for taking the half-plate.

I don't see any other penalties for characters wearing armor in which they are untrained, including spellcasters. Is this by design, or am I missing something? This is not a complaint, but it's potentially a pretty big change, so I want to make sure I have it right.

I would say yes, but I will go further and challenge the full Pathfinder 2e Wizard.

Unfortunately I don't have much time to test it, but still I would like to see this:

Full armored wizard (heavy plate)
Main attribute: STR
Secondary attribute: CHA + CON
Dump Intelligence (it's worthless anyhow)

Don't buy spells (in the end you don't have that much slots to cast them)
Increase resonance points, use cantrips.

What you think?


Yes, INT is useless in this particular build (sadly, your class only lets you bump your int so you'll end up with a 16 STR max).

I think this is a feature, not a bug. Being able to make such diverse builds out of a single class is cool.

If you take the Fighter multiclass feat you gain proficiency with armor, weapon and shields. This is an interesting character to try out.


Offensive cantrips will suffer if you don't invest in Dex to hit (most of them), or Int for the save (Electric Arc).

If you're going for this build you want to fill up your slots with True Strike and use Magical Striker feat.


I'm not sure that is the point he was trying to make. In this current iteration every wizard will simply wear half plate for the AC. Not that battle mages don't exist, but that there is no point to not wearing armor. There used to be massive drawbacks for wearing armor as an arcane spellcaster, you could take feats and archetypes to mitigate it, but here you don't need to. That is not build diversity, that is broken.


Xenocrat wrote:

Offensive cantrips will suffer if you don't invest in Dex to hit (most of them), or Int for the save (Electric Arc).

If you're going for this build you want to fill up your slots with True Strike and use Magical Striker feat.

You seem to be always trying to help. Thank you very much.


Mage Armor works fine, especially if you have a high Dex (for ranged touch attacks) and provides a higher TAC than some heavier armors, no ACP for sneaking under invisibility or trying to break a grapple, and no speed penalty. It's a bit more costly at some values and can't take armor runes (it can take trinkets).

If anything medium and especially heavy armor kind of suck, given that many classes have an incentive to invest in Dex for plenty of other reasons (ranged attacks, skills, reflex saves).


Why is it "broken"? Sorc/wiz are the only spellcasters that don't come with some armor training, and they have the lowest hitpoints. Is magic missile soooo good that you that have to wear a dress in order to cast it?


Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

The old prohibition against armor wearing arcane spellcasters was arbitrary and capricious and existed solely to prevent game imbalance. I'm not sure the current "let 'em wear armor" is going to work out without some other way to balance the spellcasters' power, but you have to start somewhere, and for my money it's better than keeping the old nonsense, which is basically just saying "that's the way it's always been, and that's the way it always will be". Which is not an attitude that Paizo endorses, from what I've seen.


Ed Reppert wrote:
The old prohibition against armor wearing arcane spellcasters was arbitrary and capricious and existed solely to prevent game imbalance. I'm not sure the current "let 'em wear armor" is going to work out without some other way to balance the spellcasters' power, but you have to start somewhere, and for my money it's better than keeping the old nonsense, which is basically just saying "that's the way it's always been, and that's the way it always will be". Which is not an attitude that Paizo endorses, from what I've seen.

The spellcasters don't have much combat power to balance anymore. They're utility and debuff/buff monkeys, with pretty weak options on all fronts.

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Player Rules / Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells / Wizards in half-plate All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells