Pretty much what the title says. What's it for? Here is the text, all eleven words of it.
Adamantine armor has a shiny, black appearance and is
amazingly durable.
And that's all. Adamantine weapons still chop through most other materials like hot knives through other, softer knives, but adamantine armor no longer grants any kind of resistance. As far as I can tell it's just really, really hard. Useful if you are, say being attacked with one of the aforementioned adamantine weapons, and totally useless for anything other than looking stylish otherwise.
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There are some monsters that attack your armor.
Better Hardness helps vs those.
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I asked the same question earlier. As written, it's not totally useless but it doesn't seem to be a very good use of your money. Adamantine shields, on the other hand, would be very useful.
Pit Wizard wrote: I asked the same question earlier. As written, it's not totally useless but it doesn't seem to be a very good use of your money. Adamantine shields, on the other hand, would be very useful. The Sturdy enchantment for shields is cheaper and stronger than Adamantine, and comes online earlier (compare 7th-level Sturdy to 8th-level Adamantine, and 13th-level Sturdy to 16th-level Adamantine). It's also not Invested, so doesn't count against your 10-item limit.
Only advantages of an adamantine shield would be in an anti-magic field, which you will hardly ever encounter due to rarity. Overall, adamantine doesn't seem too useful for defense.
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sherlock1701 wrote: Pit Wizard wrote: I asked the same question earlier. As written, it's not totally useless but it doesn't seem to be a very good use of your money. Adamantine shields, on the other hand, would be very useful. The Sturdy enchantment for shields is cheaper and stronger than Adamantine, and comes online earlier (compare 7th-level Sturdy to 8th-level Adamantine, and 13th-level Sturdy to 16th-level Adamantine). It's also not Invested, so doesn't count against your 10-item limit.
Only advantages of an adamantine shield would be in an anti-magic field, which you will hardly ever encounter due to rarity. Overall, adamantine doesn't seem too useful for defense. Wouldn't you be able to make a Sturdy Adamantine shield?
Skull wrote: sherlock1701 wrote: Pit Wizard wrote: I asked the same question earlier. As written, it's not totally useless but it doesn't seem to be a very good use of your money. Adamantine shields, on the other hand, would be very useful. The Sturdy enchantment for shields is cheaper and stronger than Adamantine, and comes online earlier (compare 7th-level Sturdy to 8th-level Adamantine, and 13th-level Sturdy to 16th-level Adamantine). It's also not Invested, so doesn't count against your 10-item limit.
Only advantages of an adamantine shield would be in an anti-magic field, which you will hardly ever encounter due to rarity. Overall, adamantine doesn't seem too useful for defense. Wouldn't you be able to make a Sturdy Adamantine shield? technically, "sturdy" is a magical item. so the properties are fixed.
And thank god for that, because in the playtest that actually the sturdy shields did include some tier of adamantine in between, it was really clunky imo.
So an adamantine sturdy shield would have to be a custom item, so it's up to the gm. It does sound like a reasonable one though.
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Shields can't have runes, sturdy isn't a rune.
Adamantine shields have three benefits I can think of
- They come in Buckler form (sturdy do not)
- They count as adamantine weapons when shield bashing
- They function in anti magic and are not going to trigger magical detection abilities/spells/effects. (dispel magic works on shields like the sturdy shield btw)
Surdy shield is a "usually better" case.
Oh and Adamantine shields can be upgraded to their high grade forms. Sturdy, you just have to buy it at each level (cheaper price, but quickly racks up)
sherlock1701 wrote: Pit Wizard wrote: I asked the same question earlier. As written, it's not totally useless but it doesn't seem to be a very good use of your money. Adamantine shields, on the other hand, would be very useful. The Sturdy enchantment for shields is cheaper and stronger than Adamantine, and comes online earlier (compare 7th-level Sturdy to 8th-level Adamantine, and 13th-level Sturdy to 16th-level Adamantine). It's also not Invested, so doesn't count against your 10-item limit.
Only advantages of an adamantine shield would be in an anti-magic field, which you will hardly ever encounter due to rarity. Overall, adamantine doesn't seem too useful for defense. Which is sadly ironic given that adamantine literally means "unbreakable."
Well dang. I've always been a fan of adamantine armor and was hoping there was something I missed due to being tired. Thanks for the info, folks.
Looks like my future characters are just sticking to weapons and shields if they take special materials at all.
If you have the money for adamantine armour why not.
It is less gutting than losing your expensive magical armour if it does take direct damage.
:P
The Gleeful Grognard wrote: If you have the money for adamantine armour why not.
It is less gutting than losing your expensive magical armour if it does take direct damage.
:P
Mostly because A, for a comparable price I could buy an armor material like mithril or dragonhide which, while not built as Tonka tough as adamantine actually grants me a benefit for spending the money on it in the form of increased defenses or protection from baddies, and B, because the book specifically calls out that damaging your armor directly is meant to be a fairly rare occurrence.
Pg 272 wrote: Normally an item takes damage only when
a creature is directly attacking it—commonly targeted
items include doors and traps. A creature that attacks
you doesn’t normally damage your armor or other gear,
even if it hits you ...and some monsters have exceptional
abilities that can damage your items.
So maybe in the rare circumstance where I'm fighting the Rust King, CR 15 rust monster (Which actually sounds kind of fun) I can see having drastically increased item hardness, but it still doesn't feel justifiable when compared to other materials which give increased hardness along with other benefits.
Yeah, it seems that some kind of buff to adamantine armor is needed in the first round of errata...
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