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I know there have been plenty of questions asked about construct armor since it became available in UM. A FAQ/errata was released here to answers some of it. For convenience, it's under the spoiler.
The construct armor is treated as breastplate for the purpose of AC. If something targets you, it must first hit your AC. If it hits you, the attack has to get through the construct's DR or hardness and its hit points. In effect, the construct armor acts much like a pool of temporary hit points: you don't take any damage from attacks that target your AC until the construct is destroyed.
Attacks that bypass your AC bypass this protection and affects you normally (this includes most area effects). If the construct is resistant or immune to a particular attack, the attack bypasses this protection and affects you normally. Basically, the construct armor is good at mitigating damage from melee and ranged attacks, but doesn't protect you like you were the actual construct.
For example, a wood golem is immune to and healed by cold; if you're wearing wood golem armor, hitting you with a ray of frost doesn't harm the armor, heals the armor if the attack deals at least 3 points of cold damage, and deals 1d3 points of cold damage to you. Fortunately, you don't gain the construct's weaknesses; just because a wood golem has vulnerability to fire doesn't mean you take 150% fire damage when wearing wood golem armor.
The "benefits" in this section refer to the construct armor counting as breastplate and to its hit point buffer against melee and ranged attacks. The "penalties" in this section refer to the construct armor counting as breastplate.
Because the "counts as breastplate" section doesn't say it affects your speed (presumably because the construct is partially animate and able to help you move), it does not affect your speed.
Update: Page 114—In the Construct Armor modification, in the first paragraph, in the second sentence, change “first target the construct” to “damage the construct.” In the third sentence, change “regains all the hindrances” to “retains all the hindrances.”
—Sean K Reynolds, 11/16/11
I'm still having a bit of difficulty with utilizing these rules, but I'd like to use a suit of construct armor for a major NPC in an upcoming campaign I'm writing, and so would appreciate any help I could get in adjusting and dealing with the variant.
My goal is to use an iron golem shield guardian for the base construct, but I need to reduce it down to Medium size, as per the Bestiary adjustments; so, firstly, I need to make certain I've got the hang of that. Do I just reverse the stat alterations for increasing a Medium creature to Large? The entry seems to imply so.
Secondly, I need to figure out how that's going to affect the price, overall. Of course, the actual construct armor and shield guardian mods have their own costs that are described separately, so no problem there. But, I'm having trouble figuring out the cost of a Medium iron golem, what with all the talk of special abilities and costs per ability but this ability is actually two, and so forth. I don't want to do anything else special to the base golem, other than reduce its size by the one category.
Any tips would be appreciated.
(edited briefly for spelling)
