Does a Vest of Stable Mutation Stack with a Headband of Mental Superiority?

[Gallant Armor]

As the title says: Does a Vest of Stable Mutation Stack with a Headband of Mental Superiority?

Vest of Stable Mutation

Headband of Mental Superiority

I couldn't find an answer for this and it doesn't seem clear cut to me.

Reasons for not stacking:
The items use the same base spells
It could be unbalanced for the price if they stacked

Reasons for stacking:
The vest doesn't give an enhancement bonus to stats, it negates a penalty.
If it doesn't stack there is no reason for the vest to exist given the price (unless a GM doesn't allow item stacking at 1.5x price).

[Gauss]

Yes, they work together.
One eliminates a penalty, the other provides an enhancement bonus.
The spells used to create the magic item are not relevant.

[Claxon]

Why wouldn't they stack? They don't even remotely do the same thing.

The headband increases your int/wis/cha via an enhancement bonus. It wont stack with other enhancement bonuses.

If you had a base 14 mental stat, a +2 headband would make it a 16.

The vest of stable mutation prevents the penalty that normally occurs when drinking mutagen, which happens to be a -2. Without it, the earlier example character would be reduced to an effective 12 while benefiting from mutagen without the headband, and effective 14 with the headband. However, with both the headband and vest you remain at 16 the whole time.

Besides, honestly it's not that powerful. The penalties are temporary, and wis penalties only affect wis based skills and will saves, cha affects pretty much only charisma based saves. Wis and charisma based saves don't happen often during combat. Int affects the DC of extracts, but you can't use extracts offensively anyways...so it really doesn't matter. Oh and int based skills, which maybe matters a little bit because of knowledge skills.

[Gallant Armor]

Thanks for the feedback. I was considering getting it around levels 14-16 when the duration of mutagens is basically all day and multiple mental stats can be affected.

The main reason I asked is that the spells in the item might make them not stack. I've heard that argument made before for other items and effects.

[Claxon]

Claxon wrote:

Besides, honestly it's not that powerful. The penalties are temporary, and wis penalties only affect wis based skills and will saves, cha affects pretty much only charisma based skills. Wis and charisma based [b]skills[b] don't happen often during combat. Int affects the DC of extracts, but you can't use extracts offensively anyways...so it really doesn't matter. Oh and int based skills, which maybe matters a little bit because of knowledge skills.

Correcting my use of the word save instead of skills.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Gallant Armor wrote:

As the title says: Does a Vest of Stable Mutation Stack with a Headband of Mental Superiority?

Vest of Stable Mutation

Headband of Mental Superiority

I couldn't find an answer for this and it doesn't seem clear cut to me.

Reasons for not stacking:
The items use the same base spells
It could be unbalanced for the price if they stacked

Reasons for stacking:
The vest doesn't give an enhancement bonus to stats, it negates a penalty.
If it doesn't stack there is no reason for the vest to exist given the price (unless a GM doesn't allow item stacking at 1.5x price).

The Vest is irrelevant as it gives no bonuses at all. The bonuses are from the mutagen. THOSE are the bonuses you need to check. Since the mutagen bonus is an alchemical bonus, it would stack with the enhancement bonus.

[jbadams]

Gallant Armor wrote:

The main reason I asked is that the spells in the item might make them not stack. I've heard that argument made before for other items and effects.

Literally the only time the spells required to craft an item are relevant is when you're crafting the item - and even then they can be ignored if you're willing to increase the crafting DC - you don't even consider them when trying to figure out the effects of an item, whether an item's effects stack with other effects, etc. Anyone you've seen argue otherwise is misunderstanding the item's stat block. There's a reason they're listed as "construction requirements" rather than as part of the item description.

//EDIT: Obviously the above doesn't apply to spell like effects granted by the item or spells the item can cast, which would be described in the body text of the item.

[Selvaxri]

i have a question- does the vest work with cognigens? since, it specifies "mutagen" and i just want to verify if a cognigen is a type of mutagen.