Armored Coats and Special Materials.

[swoosh]

Came up with a player in a game I'm starting to run.

What sort of special materials would you apply to an armored coat? It's made out of leather, so my initial instinct was to treat it as studded leather, but the fluff description makes it sound like the metal plates are a very integral part of the armor's design, much moreso than studded leather's as the metal seems to be the bulk of the armor's weight and the primary reason it's classified as medium armor. So I think it makes sense. Ish?

I'm also admittedly considering calling it metal for mechanical reasons because basically the only niche an armored coat provides would be 0 ACP mithral armor if you can't fit any extra ACP reduction for a breastplate and don't have 22 Dex so you save a tiny bit of gold and weight over a chain shirt.

Thoughts?

[Claxon]

For what it's worth an armored coat is basically a worse version of kikko armor (mechanically). Mithral kikko armor has an armor check penalty of 0.

[Cussune]

Armored coat's easier to put on and take off, though.

There have been some other threads on this - basic consensus looks to be "table variance" plus "anything a druid can't wear counts as metal". Folks can see either side, but generally it's thought that the metal plates are what provide the better armor. It's a safe assumption - but some DMs may get caught up on the leather coat aspect.

When I had a character with gold to burn, I just made it out of both darkleaf and mithril. To look rad.

[Claxon]

It is technically true that an armored coat is easier to put on or take off. But, light armor (which mithral kikko mostly counts as) doesn't cause any penalties for sleeping in.

And while not definitive, Herolab appears to treat the armored coat as metal armor allowing the application of adamantine and mithral and disallowing things like dragonhide or eel hide.