The mithral chain shirt is nearly useless

[Colette Brunel]

The mithral chain shirt is nearly useless. It costs 18,000 sp. It is a master-quality chain shirt, and it lacks an armor check penalty, but it still has the noisy trait, unlike the elven chain shirt. However, an expert-quality chain shirt for 350 sp already lacks an armor check penalty, and so does a master-quality chain shirt for 3,600 sp.

The only benefit is that the mithral shirt has Bulk 1 instead of Bulk 2, which is a very narrow benefit. Why even bother with the overpriced mithral chain shirt that earns terribly little in return?

For that matter, the listed mithral shirt is also more expensive than buying a chain shirt made of mithral using the rules for special materials, which would cost "only" 12,000 sp rather than 18,000 sp. This has to be a mistake. Such a mithral shirt is still nearly useless, by the way.

What am I missing here?

[Doktor Weasel]

I'm not sure where you're getting some of your numbers. I'm looking at page 356 and apparently the Elven Chain shirt is only available in master and legendary quality. Master is 2,000 gp (so 20,000 sp) and Legendary is 36,000 gp (a whoping 360,000 sp). So master elven chain is more expensive than master mithril by 2,000 sp. And both are listed at 1 bulk.

Though it is odd that the master quality mithril chain shirt listed is more expensive than making one with the special materials rules. I'm thinking there might be a typo there.

I'm using the PDF released on launch day, if you're using the printed version maybe the numbers are different? Or maybe the PDF has been updated since then? Some things being listed in SP while others are in GP does also make it a bit non-intuitive to compare. I tripped myself up several times looking at one set of numbers in SP and another in GP.

[Colette Brunel]

I am looking at the mithral chain shirt in page 356, not the elven chain shirt, though the elven chain shirt is fairly bad for its price as well.

[Doktor Weasel]

D'oh! I took a long time writing that, and working things out, but didn't realize I was completely misreading what you were saying the whole time, I thought all the comparisons were between mithril chain shirt and elven chain, not mithril and standard steel. I critical failed my reading roll. I'm sorry about that. I feel really stupid right now.

Ok, on to what you actually said. You're totally right. That is weird. The only benefit of mithril over a standard chain shirt is bulk 1 vs 2. And it even has 1 less hardness than the standard expert chain shirt. Master Mithril is 9 for items, but standard steel is also 9 and expert takes it to 10. A Master Chain Shirt has a hardness of 12, so mithril is a downgrade in hardness. That is just plain terrible. Mithril chain shirts used to be the best light armor in PF1, now they're just overly expensive and only save weight. At least elven chain removes the noisy trait, but is way too expensive for what it does. So yeah, they need to work on the quality of mithril, have it give some actual benefit to match the cost, especially for such an iconic item. Mithril armor in general is just a weight reduction with no other benefit. So it's just for people with far more money than strength I guess. I suppose it's ok for a silver weapon replacement if you're concerned about the low hardness of sliver, and again have a lot of surplus money. But that's about it.

One solution would be to make the mithril chain shirt lose the noisy quality and change elven chain back to being mithril chainmail that counts as light armor. Maybe increase the Dex Modifier cap for mithril too. Then the mithril chain shirt would actually be better if you had a 22 dex, but that only will happen at 20th level, or by having Anklets of Alacrity with a 20 dex.

Likewise adamantine armor is not very useful, only provides hardness. Although it is good for shields.

[Cantriped]

The special materials are extremely lackluster as written; though I love the new format.

I hope that they change Mithril, Darkwood, and Spidersilk (when they get around to showing some love for cloth/leather armor) to increase the Maximum Dexterity Cap by 1 in addition to Bulk Reduction.

Conversely, perhaps Adamantine (and Gloucite) should increase the item's AC (but not TAC) Bonus.

Finally, having full entries for the 'normal' materials would be handy in case a player wanted to craft say; a suit of oaken plate mail, or a steel staff.

[Neodymium]

On a similar note; Legendary Elven Chain seems almost entirely pointless. The benefits of Master quality already negate Noisy(it's only a 1 increase to the only -1 check penalty) for a chain shirt. And mithral reduces the bulk. Legendary only increases the hardness(and still not enough to prevent an adamantine weapon from halving it).

Or did i miss something?

[willuwontu]

Neodymium wrote:

On a similar note; Legendary Elven Chain seems almost entirely pointless. The benefits of Master quality already negate Noisy(it's only a 1 increase to the only -1 check penalty) for a chain shirt. And mithral reduces the bulk. Legendary only increases the hardness(and still not enough to prevent an adamantine weapon from halving it).

Or did i miss something?

It also increases the number of potency runes allowed on it.

[thorin001]

willuwontu wrote:

Neodymium wrote:

On a similar note; Legendary Elven Chain seems almost entirely pointless. The benefits of Master quality already negate Noisy(it's only a 1 increase to the only -1 check penalty) for a chain shirt. And mithral reduces the bulk. Legendary only increases the hardness(and still not enough to prevent an adamantine weapon from halving it).

Or did i miss something?

It also increases the number of potency runes allowed on it.

And the maximum potency rune allowed.