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Well mithral breastplate (since it's the closest "best" comparision for the celestial armor) is going to have Max Dex of +6 and at +5 heavy fortification will be +11 on AC with 75% chance of negating crits --
Celestial armor will have +8 max dex and +9 on AC with the ability to fly once per day for 5 minutes.
AC wise they come out even however on the extra perks I would think that the Mithral Breastplate is just a bit better since flight is rather easy to achieve.
Cost does go to the celestial armor though. So yeah 50/50 on it I guess. Mithral Full plate +5 (of course not for the light armor people so of lesser real comparision) is +14 with max Dex of +3 but then it is the "best" armor of the game...
Mithral Breastplate isn't light armor though. You still need medium armor proficiency to use it. Mithral is no longer the "lol what's heavy armor?" it was in 3.x.
It counts as light armor for the sake of things like ranger abilities, but you still need proper proficiency for it. Celestial Armor is light armor period, full stop. Beyond that, casting fly is easy to achieve if you have a spellcaster there to cast it on you. Celestial Armor removes that neccesity. Plus, it costs less, and gives you equal AC. Lastly, it fits under your normal shirt, which makes you far more inconspicuous - perfectly fitting for those who wear light armor.
I can't think of any cases where a light armor user would want mithral breastplate over Celestial Armor, unless they mix in fighter levels to get better armor proficiency - and at that point they're better off grabbing mithral full plate. Medium armor is meant for clerics or other mid-range fightans. For bards and rogues, celestial is definitely the way to go.
I can safely say that Celestial Armor will never be worthless due to the giant dexterity allowance and its availability as light armor.I don't know -- it's more rad when they aren't passed into worthlessness when you can't keep them updated to match the equipment you need for your level. I mean yeah nice +2 chain mail that's light and can let you fly while hiding under your clothes... but not so nice when you can get +5 heavy fortification mithral chain mail that does most of that and gives more of a bonus.I prefer having Celestial Armor as a unique magic item that can't be further enchanted, if just because it's a thankful break from the drudgery of a +1 flaming decapitating oiled up beautified mithril chainmail.
Having unique magic items just be unique magic items and still be awesome is pretty rad.
It certainly has value for covert missions of all kind. Being able to be hidden beneath normal clothing is a huge advantage.
OTOH, Abraham is of course correct that you'll sooner or later not wear it anymore as your normal armour, unless you are a rogue or bard. And even then you'll be able to afford better armour later on.
I think I'll take James suggestion to make it a fixed price, which gets more expensive for heavier armour.
I prefer having Celestial Armor as a unique magic item that can't be further enchanted, if just because it's a thankful break from the drudgery of a +1 flaming decapitating oiled up beautified mithril chainmail.
Having unique magic items just be unique magic items and still be awesome is pretty rad.
+1
Celestial Armor is not primarily meant to be used by full BAB classes, but by rogues and bards, and perhaps Rangers.And even if your dexscore is better than 26 a Celestial Armor gives you a +9 AC, not bad even if you have a +26 dex score.
As for fighters, they do get Armor training so the should be able to use mithral fullplates even at higher levels. Fighters do get armor training and Paladins and Barbarians seldom have very high dex score.
And seriously, how many play level 20 campaigns?
Well you don't have to get to 20th level to afford +5 heavy fortification breast plate.
It's 104,200 gp so around level 15 it's do able if expensive. However a +5 mithral breast plate is only 54,200 gp and could come in about 14th level.
Actually the celestial armor could do nicely for an archer fighter. With his extra +4 to maximum Dex he can get all the way up to a +12 Dex Mod (Dex of 34) and still get the full use out of it AC wise.
All in all the question is where do you want your AC to come from and how much dex are you going to have.
Actually, it's important to note - if a wizard can help you fly, a cleric can cast Magic Vestment, thus giving Celestial Armor the higher AC ;)
Actually, it's important to note - if a wizard can help you fly, a cleric can cast Magic Vestment, thus giving Celestial Armor the higher AC ;)
Very true, and in which case you have the AC boost from Dex to help too -- for an archer fighter this is a great boon (not that it's bad for anyone else!).
Well you don't have to get to 20th level to afford +5 heavy fortification breast plate.
It's 104,200 gp so around level 15 it's do able if expensive. However a +5 mithral breast plate is only 54,200 gp and could come in about 14th level.
Actually the celestial armor could do nicely for an archer fighter. With his extra +4 to maximum Dex he can get all the way up to a +12 Dex Mod (Dex of 34) and still get the full use out of it AC wise.
All in all the question is where do you want your AC to come from and how much dex are you going to have.
Yep. That's choices. I really like that players actually have to make choices. The whole concept of "let me have it all" never appealed to me.
To me, the maximum Dexterity bonus of +8 is a bonus to a light armor, not to a heavy armpr.However, I can't see why a specific armor couldn't be further enhanced.
Say pay extra and make it +5 fortificated.
I don't know -- it's more rad when they aren't passed into worthlessness when you can't keep them updated to match the equipment you need for your level. I mean yeah nice +2 chain mail that's light and can let you fly while hiding under your clothes... but not so nice when you can get +5 heavy fortification mithral chain mail that does most of that and gives more of a bonus.I prefer having Celestial Armor as a unique magic item that can't be further enchanted, if just because it's a thankful break from the drudgery of a +1 flaming decapitating oiled up beautified mithril chainmail.
Having unique magic items just be unique magic items and still be awesome is pretty rad.
What he said...
I wish at least the combat plusses could be adjusted.
Alot of cool unique weapons never see action in game because they're the best choice for just a few levels and then phase out. A player would rather choose to keep upgrading his main weapon then spend a load of gps on a specific weapon, only to then sell the specific weapon back at a 50% loss a few levels later.
I agree celestial armor may be an exception to this rule. Characters with high dexterities may op for celestial armor all the way to L20.
So:
A) Allowing bonus modificaiton would increase the use of specific weapons and armor (and I think that's inherently a good thing), and
B) Since people will want to adjust the properties of celestial armor more often than anything else it would have been nice to have some rules on how to upgrade celestial armor, or apply a celestial template to other armors.FYI: I asked the celestial armor question a few weeks ago, and received some good answers here:
link
Linked for you.
I want to know what campaigns you guys are playing that your character can sit down with an in-game medieval Excel sheet and crunch numbers regarding the specific AC values of armor from the heavens versus armor from the elves...
And for that matter how dry does a campaign have to be to make players complain about the fact that their item will be outdated in 8 levels? Does losing 2 AC in the future really destroy your character concept? Leave metagaming where it belongs, in 4th edition and Warhammer : p
Celestial Armor sounds like an awesome item, and most characters would be really excited to find it.
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Really? You're telling folks that they're wrong for playing the game how they want?
Sorry to break it to you, but there are a LOT of people who enjoy playing with the number crunch as much or more than the actual game itself.
Personally, I sometimes have to wait a month or two between games, so the crunchiness gives me something fun to play with when I'm jonesing for a hit but still have two weeks until the next game date. It has nothing to do with a *dry game*. Besides, there is nothing wrong with planning ahead for your character, and examining armor class totals between armors is no different than examining damage potential between weapons. Are you going to complain about folks who pick up two shortswords because their character will be picking up twf in a few levels?
Also, I remember a few folks who would come to the game with a power attack/armor class chart so once they estimated what the bad guys ac was, they could power attack for the optimum damage. If they found that fun, would you keep them from doing that at your game just because you didn't enjoy it?
Losing 2 ac in the future might not be concept destroying, however why lose 2 ac if you don't need to? The concept is the same as complaining about fighters always using martial or exotic weapons, instead of simple weapons. Fighters can use simple weapons, but most don't since there are better ones in the very next table over.
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Also, I remember a few folks who would come to the game with a power attack/armor class chart so once they estimated what the bad guys ac was, they could power attack for the optimum damage. If they found that fun, would you keep them from doing that at your game just because you didn't enjoy it?
I've done that, and I'm not a min/max-er/munchkin/cheesemonkey/whatever.
I got power attack and never used it because I wasn't confident, so I ran up the chart on someone else's advice and then I was able to use y feat sometimes.
I totally agree with your post - horses for courses.
The other thing that didn't seem to get a clear answer was whether or not you can further enchant specific items; it seems like you should be able to. For instance, if a level 9 caster can make Celestial +3 Chainmail, a level 15 caster should be able to make +4 Celestial armour, right? Everything else is just haggling over the price? I think the biggest discussion is how much such additions should cost.
Some people seem to be saying that you cannot further enchant specific items, but it doesn't say that anywhere. And if you cannot further enchant Celestial armour, then surely you cannot further enchant Elven Chain either, as they are both the same class of specific item??
Thanks so much.
In this case if you want to make celestial armor +5 just mark up the price with the difference between a +3 and a +5 armor, so for 16,000 gold more you have it +5, adding fortification and such can be done too according to the same principle.
Only thing I would not recommend you to do is to change the actual armor type, do not make it a celestial fullplate or breastplate, it is already pretty cheap for what it does, specific items are not made to find loopholes in the pricing. Basically an item should always be priced according to the impact it has by it's own merrit.
There was a 3rd party book that statted up a special material that celestial armor was made of -- "Celestrum," like mithral only even lighter, looks like silver or gold, and can be mined and worked only on the Upper Planes while reciting hymns to the powers of Good (otherwise it becomes corrupted and unworkable).
The same book also had rules for orichalcum, dragonsteel, and some cool woods for druids that mimicked special materials for penetrating DR.
I've recently become obsessed with special materials, thanks in large part to those snippets.
Isn't there a rule that you can't upgrade specific items?
I seem to remember having read that in a discussion between me and one of my GMs.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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There was a 3rd party book that statted up a special material that celestial armor was made of -- "Celestrum," like mithral only even lighter, looks like silver or gold, and can be mined and worked only on the Upper Planes while reciting hymns to the powers of Good (otherwise it becomes corrupted and unworkable).
The same book also had rules for orichalcum, dragonsteel, and some cool woods for druids that mimicked special materials for penetrating DR.
I've recently become obsessed with special materials, thanks in large part to those snippets.
Wow, threadromancy much?
Don't forget Ferroplasm from the psionic folks.
Yeah, I noticed at the time that everyone, including the Dev, ignored my comment about making it from Mithral. :)
Per the rules, there's nothing that stops it.
An item made from mithral weighs half as much as the same item made from other metals.
Since silver/gold is an 'other metal'. You can theoretically replace the silver and gold with mithral in the shirt, and gain the boosts for it. RAI I think it's not intended, but strict RAW it's allowed.
I'd say the same thing for Adamantine, but Adamantine actually references 'steel' in it's paragraph, so it's a bit fuzzier. The part about what you can put it on only says metal, but the bit below about items states steel, so an argument could be made that you can only replace steel with adamantine.
Trikk,
Since I never said it weighed half as much as two different things, your logic is flawed.
The Celestial Armor is a specific armor, and it weighs a specific amount, check the magic item table. It doesn't say 'Weighs half as much as an iron shirt', nor does mithral say it halves the weight of iron.
Mithral says any item made from metal weighs half as much. The celestial armor has a specific weight that is not 'half the weight of iron', it's the specific weight of itself.
Therefor applying mithral to the specific weight of the CA is not applying half twice. It's applying it once to the normal weight of gold and silver.
And, to be honest, gold/silver is not like aluminum, it's more like lead. Take a lead/zinc alloy, and you have gold/silver alloy for density and weight. The reason the gold is lighter than steel is that the magic in the shirt negates part of the weight, other wise the gold shirt would be probably twice as heavy as the steel equivalent. Making it of mithral would mean the magical property that makes it lighter would make the mithral even lighter than it already is.
Again, I do not say this is RAI, or even balanced. It is however RAW.
I always took the gold or silver to be the color of celestial armor rather than the main material the armor is made of.
Can you add armor enhancements that do not have a numerical bonus like energy resistance or jousting to named armor like celestial armor?
I'm playing a character who in my pictured endgame build would have have a mithral breastplate of leadership with the comfort, jousting and possibly a few other enhancements as his armor.
Also if you want the fortification quality and celestial armor then build it into a pair of +1 Bracers of Defense, unless you are an archer you are not doing anything better with your hands slot.
Can be interpreted either way. While you could make a mithral chain, it might prevent it from being enchanted as celestial since that states specifically gold.
Can be interpreted either way. While you could make a mithral chain, it might prevent it from being enchanted as celestial since that states specifically gold.
That would negate being able to make mithral full plate too, since the description of full plate specifically says it's steel.
Can you add armor enhancements that do not have a numerical bonus like energy resistance or jousting to named armor like celestial armor?
Yes, since it's not a bonus enhancement. The problem with further enchanting with bonus enchantments is they are priced on a scale, so we don't know how to price it to go from +2 to +3, since we don't know how the flying bit affects it.
However, flat fee enchantments, are not problematic. They just add a flat cost to add the ability. So those should be copacetic.
Can be interpreted either way. While you could make a mithral chain, it might prevent it from being enchanted as celestial since that states specifically gold.That would negate being able to make mithral full plate too, since the description of full plate specifically says it's steel.
The difference being the order of operation. When creating a mithril fullplate you craft it out of mithril instead of steel. When creating a celestial chain you craft a chain out of gold, then you enchant it. You could create a chain out of mithril, but then it wouldnt be an appropriate base item for celestial chain.
Both are valid interpretations.
To mdt's point, mithral can supposedly be used to make any item that is made of metal, only "items not primarily of metal are not meaningfully affected by being partially made of mithral." Gold and silver are metals (very heavy metals at that) and can be replaced with mithral, in fact "mithral weapons count as silver for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction." So we could just more or less replace all of the silver in the armor with mithral, and it would appear to have changed little at all! :P
Can be interpreted either way. While you could make a mithral chain, it might prevent it from being enchanted as celestial since that states specifically gold.That would negate being able to make mithral full plate too, since the description of full plate specifically says it's steel.The difference being the order of operation. When creating a mithril fullplate you craft it out of mithril instead of steel. When creating a celestial chain you craft a chain out of gold, then you enchant it. You could create a chain out of mithril, but then it wouldnt be an appropriate base item for celestial chain.
Both are valid interpretations.
The problem is the order of operations.
To make +2 mithral plate, first you make mithral plate, and then you enchant it. Unfortunately, you can't make mithral plate, since plate is made from steel, not mithral.
The argument you are making either applies to both situations or neither.
The issue being that nothing in the description of the magic item says 'This unique enchantment only works on specially prepared gold'. It actually says it can be gold or silver, and mithral is treated as silver for many things. This seems to indicate that it's not the metal so much as the preparation of the metal, since the shirt is either gold or silver.
Again, I think RAI is that the armor has to be made from gold and/or silver. But as it's written, that's not a requirement.
Elven Chain, by contrast, specifically says 'this is made from mithral', which means that you can't replace it with say, adamantine, and still get the same effect (since that would then double the weight and make it medium).
Yar.
Celestial Armor
22400gp+3 Enhancement - 9000gp
Fly once per day - 5400gp
Elven Chain like quality - 1000gp (Elven chain 5150gp - mithral chain 4150gp)
Max dex increased +6, armor check penalty decreased by -3, arcane spell failure decreased by 15%. These are the only unaccounted for properties and they are the remaining 7000gp to make the cost.
This is the exact same reverse engineering I did for my RL game a while ago to create a theoretical non-magical Celestial Armor. Just though I'd mention that. *shrugs*
~P
Yar.
That's why I prefer my idea of non-magical Celestial Armor. This way "Celestial" is NOT an enchantment to put on any armor, but is the base item, just as padded armor, scale mail, and full-plate are base items. It becomes a new non-magical armor called Celestial Mail with the following stats:
Light Armor
Market price: 8000 gp
AC +6
Max Dex +8
ACP -2
ASF 15%
Can only be created by good aligned outsiders*
*normally it is creator must only be good, but I prefer this (good outsider) as it makes it rarer and gives it a more appropriate flavor (imo).
This is a house rule item, as the RAW does not really say anything on reverse engineering items either way, but there it is. I haven't decided yet for my home game if I'd allow it being made from different materials, but if I do, I will include the caveat that it uses the price adjustment of a Medium sized armor. Thus, Non-magical Adamantine Celestial Mail would cost 18000 gp. Non-magical Mithral Celestial Mail would cost 12000 gp. It could then be enchanted normally (make it +1 for an extra 1000, as per the magic item rules).
Again, this is what I'm doing for my home game (and it is not easy to come by, requiring a good aligned outsider to make it for you, possibly of a minimum HD as well). The RAW as it stands doesn't really say if this can or cannot be done (as far as I'm aware).
~P
I removed a couple posts. Be nice.
Elven chainmail and the mithral shirt are nothing more than armor made of mithral. They're listed as examples of types of armor made of mithral... we could have also listed mithral breastplates or mithral scale mail or mithral half-plate, but we didn't.
Then how come a mithral shirt and a mithral chain shirt have different weight values? If a mithral shirt was simply a chain shirt made form mithral, would it not weigh 12.5 pounds?
Perhaps it, like the elven chainmail, was always meant to be a uniquely distinct set of armor (and not a mithral chain shirt)?