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Does Mithral Breastplate and a Bard with medium armor proficiency allow the bard to cast spells?
Does Mithral Full Plate and a Ranger with Heavy Armor Proficiency allow a ranger to use his bonus feats gained by his combat style?
Thanks.
Sorry, I disagree.
The Bard's ability to cast spells is based on it being light armor. Mithral Breastplate is still medium armor. Elven Chain works since it is light armor.
A bard can cast bard spells while wearing light armor and use a shield without incurring the normal arcane spell failure chance.
Similarly, here is the passage on the Ranger combat style feats:
The benefits of the ranger’s chosen style feats apply only when he wears light, medium, or no armor. He loses all benefits of his combat style feats when wearing heavy armor.
Mithral does not change the type of armor it is.
Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. This decrease does not apply to proficiency in wearing the armor.
Compare this with Elven Chain.
This extremely light chainmail is made of very fine mithral links. This armor is treated, in all ways, like light armor, including when determining proficiency.
The Mithral Breastplate is still medium armor and the Mithral Plate is still heavy armor. It isn't a limitation caused by the armor that prevents these things, it is the classification of the armor type. You get the improved movement rates caused by being lighter and the limitation on running doesn't apply, but the basic type of armor is unchanged.
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StabbittyDoom is correct. Mithral armor counts as light in all ways except proficiency. So a bard can cast spells in a mithral breastplate with no chance of ASF. If he doesn't have medium armor proficiency, then he does suffer from the -1 proficiency penalty. The armor training trait will cancel that out, however.
The class feature calls out the type of armor. The type of armor isn't changed by Mithral.
Sorry, still seems like Mithral Full Plate wouldn't allow a ranger to use his or her combat style feats and Mithral Breast Plate wouldn't allow the Bard (or others) to cast without chance of Arcane Spell Failure.
The phrase other limitations I take as referring to things like speed, footnote 2 on pg. 151 where you are limited to 3 times your speed, sleeping without fatigue in medium armor, and that sort of thing.
If there is an FAQ or something that clearly indicates your interpretation is the correct one, please point me to it.
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The type of armor isn't changed by Mithral.
Yes it is, it is treated as being one step lighter.
You can argue down to the meaning of every little word if you want, but the plain-text meaning is pretty obvious: for everything other than proficiency, treat it as if it were one category lighter.
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The class feature calls out the type of armor. The type of armor isn't changed by Mithral.
Sorry, still seems like Mithral Full Plate wouldn't allow a ranger to use his or her combat style feats and Mithral Breast Plate wouldn't allow the Bard (or others) to cast without chance of Arcane Spell Failure.
The phrase other limitations I take as referring to things like speed, footnote 2 on pg. 151 where you are limited to 3 times your speed, sleeping without fatigue in medium armor, and that sort of thing.
If there is an FAQ or something that clearly indicates your interpretation is the correct one, please point me to it.
What makes "other limitations" apply to those things by not limitations imposed by class abilities?
You won't get a FAQ because Paizo doesn't FAQ things just because one person is confused about it.
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Bretl you are incorrect. Now if you can show how spellcasting is not under "other limitations" then it might change things but so far I have not seen a quote that supports that. The purpose of mithral is to reduce the effective category of the armor for all purposes other than proficiency.
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BretI, for about 3 generations of this game (3.0/3.5/PF) Mithral armor has reduced the armor type to 1 step lower. While PF did change one element (the level of training required) they added that specific exception to the rules rather than removing all of the rest.
Here is a quote from 3.5:
Mithral: Mithral is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than iron but just as hard. When worked like steel, it becomes a wonderful material from which to create armor and is occasionally used for other items as well. Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations (for example, whether a barbarian can use her fast movement ability while wearing the armor or not). Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from mithral are decreased by 10%, maximum Dexterity bonus is increased by 2, and armor check penalties are lessened by 3 (to a minimum of 0).
Contrast it with the PF version:
Mithral: Mithral is a very rare silvery, glistening metal that is lighter than steel but just as hard. When worked like steel, it becomes a wonderful material from which to create armor, and is occasionally used for other items as well. Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. Heavy armors are treated as medium, and medium armors are treated as light, but light armors are still treated as light. This decrease does not apply to proficiency in wearing the armor. A character wearing mithral full plate must be proficient in wearing heavy armor to avoid adding the armor’s check penalty to all his attack rolls and skill checks that involve moving. Spell failure chances for armors and shields made from mithral are decreased by 10%, maximum Dexterity bonuses are increased by 2, and armor check penalties are decreased by 3 (to a minimum of 0).
As you can see, they removed the example and added the bit about proficiency but kept everything else basically the same.
The example shows that yes, it does apply to class based abilities that are limited by armor type.Why did they remove the example? Well, they removed most examples in the conversion. Probably because they were trying to condense two books into one and they were working from the SRD.
Point being, yes, you treat medium mithral armor as light armor for anything that is limiting (except proficiency). This means you treat it as light armor for class abilities that limit you to light armor. You treat it as medium armor for class abilities that are not limiting (such as the Armor Master archetype abilities that benefit you for wearing medium armor ).
Why did they remove the example?
I think it was a copyright issue. I don't think examples where something they could legally copy. This was because the actual SRD didn't have the examples but the books did and only the SRD was free game.
graystone, that was part of the answer I posted after asking the question (it wasn't a question I had, it was one of those rhetorical type questions).
Paizo could have come up with it's own example, so it wasn't just the lack of example in the SRD/legal issues. It was probably also that they needed to save space and probably figured that since people were coming from 3.5 with an adequate knowledge base they could get away with fewer examples. It is one of the flaws of Pathfinder (lack of adequate explanation/examples that 3.5 had).
I was just agreeing/expanding on it Gauss. I'm pretty sure legal was why examples where out. Why they didn't put more back in? Who knows. I agree you'd see a lot less questions is the tossed a few in.
I was just agreeing/expanding on it Gauss. I'm pretty sure legal was why examples where out. Why they didn't put more back in? Who knows. I agree you'd see a lot less questions is the tossed a few in.
Yeah, the reason the examples were removed is entirely legal. You can trace it back to the open resource docs that Wizards made (and still has) available. Not adding them back in? Part of it is space saving. Part of it might be how many relevant examples from the CRB would still apply without butting up against potential copyright issues.
*shrug*
Of course, I've seen the removal of examples used as a justification for a change of intent (it was a really bad argument, but still ...).
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Not adding them back in? Part of it is space saving. Part of it might be how many relevant examples from the CRB would still apply without butting up against potential copyright issues.
*shrug*
Of course, I've seen the removal of examples used as a justification for a change of intent (it was a really bad argument, but still ...).
I always figured that they didn't think examples were needed since the intent was already known from 3.5, so space freed up without having to cut anything important. That works short term, but the further away from 3.5 we get, the less relevant it seems.
I posted this because I found out today there was someone (not Bret) who didn't understand it on the facebook group. I was curious if there was really a debate on this subject.
There has been some debate on that it counts as for enchants as it seems to be a gray area. [myself, I think it's go with the lower] I think Bret is in a distinct minority in thinking that it doesn't count the lower for things like class abilities.