Say I wanted to wear +1 explorer's clothing or +1 padded armor under my +1 breastplate, is that doable? I know the bonuses to AC won't stack, I'm just thinking I'd like to have the second set on hand if we get ambushed at night while we're sleeping outside our armor or something like that.
Also, if this is doable, could I have explorer's clothing with property runes underneath armor which has its own separate set of property runes?
I'm leaning towards yes, since it seems like the investment system is meant to be pretty versatile (limited by GM's discretion of course).
Since only 19th level Rangers can sleep well in decent armor, I expect many people will want "Comfort" armor for nights.
And yes, you could wear them together. They wouldn't do anything of course. You likely know that stacking isn't a thing, especially to get above well-tuned maximums. So no on the extra runes. To me that flies against the whole PF2 balance system. If a choice seems both tricky and something everybody would have to do, you're likely tricking yourself.
This is the sort of area where the runes of one would be suppressed by the runes of the other, likely depending on the order they were equipped.
Again, you should know by now that workarounds like that aren't a thing.
I see no rule or reason to say no..
Checking balance...
It would still count as one of your invested item, and money.
And that a ring of energy resist is level 6: 245 gp while a rune of energy resist is Level 8; Price 420 gp.
So yea, I'd allow it.
I'll also point out Bracers of Armor exist.
I'd say softer underarmor padding is part of the actual armor; after all, not even the toughest half-orc would want to wear chain or plate directly on his skin. So there'd be no room there for additional armor layers under the actual armor. And even if it were somehow possible, that should certainly not allow you to have more armor runes active at the same time, that would certainly be one of those "too good to be true" cases.
You would of course carry a second set of comfort "pyjama armor" in your backpack that you change into for nights by the campfire. And since those aren't usually very hard to put on, it shouldn't be much of an issue to change into them as part of taking of your main armor for the night, especially, if it was just explorer's clothing.
There is a precedent for wearing padded armor underneath other armors, right there in the Core Rulebook.
I'm just not certain I can opt to do it with Medium armor.
I'd still say that even though the rules allow you to wear the padding part of the heavy armor by itself as padded armor, if you wear the heavy armor over it, for the purposes of runes, AC, etc. it is not two seperate armors worn over each other, but one armor. After all, without the padding, what remains of the heavy armor becomes unwearable on its own. I don't think this should be read as allowing a separate padded armor underneath a complete (i.e. padding and plates) heavy armor.
It also reads as if its intended to have all armor runes of the associated heavy armor apply to you even if you're only currently wearing the padding as light armor. That seems odd, I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.
About medium armor, I'd say no. This seems to be a special case of only those armors specifically being able to be split up into a lighter padding that can be worn on its own and the plate parts that can be added to the padding to make it a full heavy armor.
My two cents: If you want to wear a breastplate with some adventurers clothing underneath, go ahead. You will have to attune the adventurers clothes to benefit from the runes, but you will not gain the benefit of the clothes runes under the armor.
Same with Leather armor and any heavy armor. I feel like adventurers clothes are light enough to wear under just about anything, or at least to incorporate them into the "outfit". So if you want the emergency armor, feel free, but know that they are not gaining you any additional runes under other armor.
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I'm also inclined to say that only one armor's runes work at a time, even if you wear more than one armor at once, because of how it would affect the Runescarred archetype.
"I am part of a magical lineage stretching back to the pinnacle of human achievement, and because of this I have the essence of magic itself inscribed upon my flesh."
"That's cool bro. I just wore this extra-thick shirt under my breastplate, and now I can goes invisible!"This also brings up the stickiness of using light armor-only runes while wearing heavier armors because that armor is still technically equipped to you.
To me that doesn't overcome the "primary" armors runes from overpowering the Adventurer's Clothes runes. And adventurer's Clothes are not light or medium or heavy as per the rules, so they couldn't have any type specific runes anyway.
Now if your player wants to wear a Light suit of armor under their plate, that is getting into territory where you are dealing with additional check penalty and all sorts of other stuff.
Padded Armor I could see being incorporated into Plate Mail, so could stand in for your "pajama" armor, but again, any runes on it should be suppressed while under the plate, so no big deal.
Investing an extra set of armor with an invisibility rune doesn't seem notably better than Investing a Cloak of Elvenkind or similar item. I guess at higher levels you could throw multiple property runes on a higher level armor, but those runes already cost more than a separate invested item as a balance point.
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GM hat: If a player asked me if they can do this, I would say yes. If they invest it, then it and all its runes will become active the moment you take off your over-armor, otherwise you would have to stop and perform the invest an item activity (maybe 3 actions for adventurer's clothes?)
Player hat: I could see myself doing this. It could make a lot of sense, depending on what utility armor runes you have available, etc.
Realism hat: I don't particularly see what's wrong with substituting some of the under layers of heavier armors with explorer's clothing. That's not the kind of minor issues I care about anyway. I wouldn't let heavier armors than padded slide, however.
Here's what page 276 has to say:
'Heavy armor comes with a padded armor undercoat included in its Price, though it loses the comfort trait when worn under heavy armor. You can wear just that padded armor undercoat to sleep in, if your heavy armor is destroyed, or when otherwise not wearing the full heavy armor. This allows you to keep the armor invested and benefit from the power of any runes on the associated heavy armor, but no one else can wear your heavy armor without the padded undercoat.'
Sounds like if you have +3 greater resilient plate armour, you have +3 greater resilient padded armour for 'free' too without spending.
Extrapolating from there, I don't see a huge jump conceptually to granting explorer's clothes that ability with medium armour. I'm reluctant to go farther since at some point it's just not worth it, but there's precedent at least.
What I'm now curious about is if you can have special fine designer explorer's clothes, the kind you can wear to both ball and crawl..