I guess a 0 armour check penalty allows someone to wear any armour with out any penalties...


Homebrew and House Rules

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LucasB wrote:
So... I am aware that the void in the Rules to this game are rather broken and exploited by players. So let me reaffirm these things that Paizo failed to express in the rules.

Unless, of course, it's deliberate. Let me help you to become more comfortable with this edge-condition you've brought up.

First up, using mithral doesn't eliminate ACP for all armors... it's just a reduction, and only some armor have low-enough ACP to be reduced to zero. So the system appropriately models the idea that armor which already doesn't impede movement much might be made of materials that make them effortless to use. It makes sense that if you wear carbon-fiber/kevlar composite body armor, you might be able to make it thin enough and flexible enough that a gymnast untrained with its use might perform very, very well while wearing it.

Second, the animal thing in particular is itself an edge-condition. Armor of any type for an animal involves GM ruling. While some horses might accept barding, others may not. Pretty much no matter how thin and "comfortable" you make a suit of armor, you're never going to convince a cat to wear it. You're entering the territory of needing a Handle Animal trick in order to train the animal to be willing to wear the stuff and not stop in the middle of the street to try to chew it off.

So yeah, the rules allow a wizard to wear some armor without penalty. And they allow some animals to maybe wear some armor without spending a feat. But it's both realistic and balanced by other factors.

Silver Crusade

If I was writing the game I'd take a compromise position that I believe best reflects something approximating reality.

Wearing armour would be a trick, not a feat. Animals CAN be trained to wear armour but that training represents a lot less than a feat does IMAO.

And yes, I clearly understand the above (and this thread) belong in a different forum. But the thread is here and I wanted to get my 2 cents in :-)

Sovereign Court

Faelyn wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Matthew Downie wrote:
I've never seen a martial wearing armor they don't have the proficiency for anyway.
Really? I've seen bunches with only Light Armor Prof (mostly rogues) who have Armor Expert and wear a mithril breastplate.
By martial I think they are referring to paladin/fighter/cavalier. Those are typically the front-liners, classes whose abilities pretty much only revolve around combat.

Okay - still true of Swashbucklers then.


My Psions often wear Mithril Shirts (Leather/Masterwork Studded before they can afford it) . . . at least, until they get Inertial Armor lasts long enough (or my Metamorph types can boost their Dex high enough the Mithril Shirts interfere with it)


Crimeo wrote:

You suffer at least 3 other penalties for light armors with 0 checks:

1) I believe in every instance, at least some spell failure %? Or most, at least, it's been awhile since trying to optimize that on a character.

2) You paid money for it.

3) It counts toward your load capacity.

And in many cases, especially for an animal, another major penalty:

4) It tells all the enemy archers that this fluffy animal is a target.

You forgot shocking grasp and lightning elementals have an easier time hitting them.


GeneticDrift wrote:
I usually see clerics do this with full plate and a tower shield. if you don't care about rolling to hit, there is not much of a penalty.

Do note that Initiative is a Dex-based check which means such a cleric will almost always go last with his nice -16 to initiative (-14 with masterwork/magical gear).

Relevant Rules:
Nonproficient with Armor Worn wrote:
A character who wears armor and/or uses a shield with which he is not proficient takes the armor's (and/or shield's) armor check penalty on attack rolls as well as on all Dex- and Str-based ability and skill checks. The penalty for non-proficiency with armor stacks with the penalty for shields.
Initiative Checks wrote:
At the start of a battle, each combatant makes an initiative check. An initiative check is a Dexterity check. Each character applies his or her Dexterity modifier to the roll, as well as other modifiers from feats, spells, and other effects. Characters act in order, counting down from the highest result to the lowest. In every round that follows, the characters act in the same order (unless a character takes an action that results in his or her initiative changing; see Special Initiative Actions).


Just a Mort wrote:
If your fluffy has been following you clawing bad guys, he would have gotten shot at, anyway. At least he gets the benefit of armor protection.

Well, if I'm an archer, and I have the choice of shooting some old guy in a leather vest holding a stick, and a f~!#ing tiger charging across the battlefield, I'm shooting the f#@$ing tiger, whether he's wearing barding or not.

Serisan wrote:
For the thrifty, there's also darkleaf leather lamellar, which is only 810gp. For the discerning wizard, darkleaf quilted armor provides extra protection against arrows, bolts, and other "small ranged piercing weapons" without the pain of spell failure or ACP, albeit with a painful 7.5 lbs weight for Medium creatures.

Minor correction: Darkleaf cloth calls out that it cannot reduce the arcane spell failure chance to 0, only to a minimum of 5%.

Regarding the overall topic:

In a world where putting barding on combat animals is far more common than in ours, I would expect normal combat training for an animal to include acclimating it to wearing armor.


Berti Blackfoot wrote:

My players all take the light armor proficiency for their ACs, if they didn't, I wouldn't let them wear armor. That's not screwing players, that's following the rules. (Warhorses with boarding are a different matter, for me at least)

Now if they wanted to buy mithral, I'd tell them before, or let them erase it and add the gold back.

Though I suppose, what the op is saying is certainly RAW

Actually you are not following the rules. The rules don't say you need feat X to wear armor. They just so you take penalties. The rules also allow for you to spend gold by lessening or eliminating those penalties. Saying "I don't like it is one thing", but saying "this is the rule" when it is not the rule is another thing altogether.

There is nothing wrong without houserules. Look at what section of the forums we are in, but don't pretend they are rules, just because you don't like the rule.

edit: I didn't know this started in the rules forum. In that case you were most definitely wrong.


This really isn't worth a house rule, and I get the sense you're doing this in response to a specific player doing something you dislike: Like having a pet with a really good AC. Which is a silly problem, anyways, since AC is going to be trivial later on and Touch AC totally ignores this. But house rules are not how you handle such conflicts.

Regardless: This costs +16,000 gp to execute, assuming a large-sized horse-shaped creature. If he's willing to invest that much into his horse, he's either super high-level, and this doesn't matter, or he's investing an enormous amount of his wealth into this.

This isn't a hack. This is a guy paying a ton to get a good benefit.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
LucasB wrote:

I am a firm believer that Paizo put these armour feats (light,Med,Heavy) into the game for a reason! Remember there is always a reason for these FEATS!

Here is my logic and I don't expect all of you to understand it.

Paizo didn't put the armor feats in the game. WotC did.

We all understand your logic. We don't agree that your premises are valid.

Speaking of which, WotC intended zero armor check to be a thing. In variant D20 rules, which they wrote alongside 3.Xe, it's made very explicitly clear. Star Wars D20 has a vest themed after Han Solo that's got a -1 ACP that the player can have form fitted to be a 0 ACP light armor.

It's basically saying, wearing this armor is as easy and natural as your own skin. There's no world in which this is an exploit.


Well, 'Exploit' and 'not valid' are both a bit harsh but it's easily believable that some tables may not like the practice. Even the OP wasn't alone in saying so, a few others voiced as well. RAW and for the general majority however it is indeed fair game.


Image of cat wearing leather armor.

What actual cat battle armor may look like.


Melkiador wrote:

Image of cat wearing leather armor.

What actual cat battle armor may look like.

I thought you were going to show He-Man's Battlecat.

Scarab Sages

There is armor for all kinds of animals.

And your little dog, too!

The Exchange

Lessah wrote:
GeneticDrift wrote:
I usually see clerics do this with full plate and a tower shield. if you don't care about rolling to hit, there is not much of a penalty.

Do note that Initiative is a Dex-based check which means such a cleric will almost always go last with his nice -16 to initiative (-14 with masterwork/magical gear).

** spoiler omitted **

Interesting. In this case it's my character (minus tower shield). My +2 init will change a lot, but not significantly lol. I'm normally last.


Witches do well wearing full plate and tower shields. Their use of hexes doesn't care if you have an ACP of -16.


Only non-proficient wearers/users of such armor and shields take the initiative penalty. The bigger trick is if they do anything that requires the affected attack rolls and/or skill checks. If the wearer is barely able to wear the stuff, they're sucking the encumbrance penalties in addition...

Oh, and house cat/feline 'samurai' armor. Rawr.


Also, While the category of the armor changes from Medium to Light that is only for speed and encumbrance effects, the Animal Companion would actually need both Light and Medium armor proficiency feats to wear Medium Mithral armor.

Quote:
Most mithral armors are one category lighter than normal for purposes of movement and other limitations. 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.

So thats a 2 feat investment for your Animal Companion if you dont want their attacks to suffer.

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