Mithral Shirt: This extremely light chain shirt is made of very fine mithral links. Speed while wearing a mithral shirt is 30 feet for Medium creatures, or 20 feet for Small. The armor has an arcane spell failure chance of 10%, a maximum Dexterity bonus of +6, and no armor check penalty. It is considered light armor and weighs 10 pounds.
No aura (nonmagical); Price 1,100 gp.
(Copied from the Sovelior 3.5 SRD site).
Simply put, as the subject says, a mithral shirt isn't masterwork? It is a special material that requires experts to manipulate, it is lighter than standard armor, but it doesn't count as Masterwork? Wouldn't that mean that you would have to purchase a Masterwork Mithral Shirt (which does absolutely nothing except to allow you to cast spells on it, since it already has a 0 Armor Check penalty) in order to then have magic put upon it?
It costs 11x the cost of a normal Chain Shirt, weighs less than half as much, but is NOT considered Masterwork???
Syrinx
I don't profess to be a rules-lawyer but wouldn't the lack of an armor check penalty and price in excess of 300 gp make the case moot?
The price of the masterwork quality is included in the pricing of the material, acording to the DMG.
Ah... Wonderful. I'll point that out to the player who brought this to my attention. Thanks as always!
Syrinx