So, as everyone knows, without the +3 wild enhancement bonus to their armor, druids lose their armor bonus when they wild shape. If you don't want to drop the money for the +3 bonus, then your other option is to group with a benevolent arcane caster who doesn't mind dropping mage armor on you.
I have a society druid. I would love to get some rhino hide armor, but the rules of society explicitly prohibit you from upgrading named items, so I can't get wild put on it. I tend to turn into a huge allosaurus, so I thought that perhaps I could just get a set of rhino hide armor made for a huge unusual creature, using the rules from the "Armor for Unusual Creatures" table. It states that the cost of such an item would be x8 what it says on the Armor and Shields table. The base cost for Hide Armor (rhino hide says it is is hide armor in the description) is 15 gp, x8 would be 120 gp. Rhino Hide is normally 5165 gp; assuming it already includes the cost of regular hide armor in the price, that would mean it would cost 5270 for Huge Rhino Hide armor for an unusual creature. Correct me if I've made any errors.
I could, hypothetically, pull out the armor, ask that my party help equip me with it once I've wild shaped, and then don the armor afterward.
It's fairly restrictive, since I could probably really only use it for that one form, and I would have to turn into the allosaurus in advance rather than being able to do it on the spot. I think that fact keeps this from being terribly broken, but I'd like to get people's takes on both the viability of this and whether it is legitimate. Thanks!
