So, let's say that you want you want to wear full plate, but you don't start proficient with it. Getting there at low levels is easy enough, if you start off as a human. Just have Versatile Heritage or that the General Training feat (or both, if you start out with no armor proficiencies whatsoever). At level 1, that means you can start out wearing medium armor. Nice!
But of course, you want the heavy stuff. To get that, you're going to take the Sentinel Dedication feat at level 2, which gets you proficient in Heavy Armor if you are already proficient with light and medium armor (which you already are, of course).
Where this gets interesting is when your class boosts your armor proficiency. Normally, characters like wizards and rogues only get to increase their proficiency with the armor that their class gives them. But the Sentinel Dedication helps with that:
Whenever you gain a class feature that grants you expert or greater proficiency in any type of armor (but not unarmored defense), you also gain that proficiency in the armor types granted to you by this feat. If you are at least 13th level and you have a class feature that grants you expert proficiency in unarmored defense, you also become an expert in the armor types granted to you by this feat.
Bolding by me for emphasis.
This means that when your wizard hits 13th level, she's an expert with both unarmed defense (due to her class) and heavy armor (due to this feat), but not with light armor and medium armor (since those were gotten through Armor Proficiency feats and not Sentinel Dedication).
It's not really a complaint or anything, I just thought it was kind of interesting how these different elements interacted.
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The sentinel quote you just put there says it won't upgrade if unarmored defense goes up so the wizard will stay at only trained with heavy.
You would need light or medium to go to expert from your class unarmored isn't counted for the feat.
"If you are at least 13th level and you have a class feature that grants you expert proficiency in unarmored defense, you also become an expert in the armor types granted to you by this feat."
The proficiency will get upgraded to Expert, but only at 13th level. For the Wizard, this doesn't matter (they get Expert Unarmored at 13th). For other classes (like the Monk, or an Animal Instinct Barbarian with Animal Skin) it's a significant delay.
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On Topic though, I don't think that's right. The Feat grants you Light and Medium, and if you already have those, it also grants Heavy.
Note that it doesn't say "If you already were trained in light armor and medium armor, you gain training in heavy armor instead", it says
"If you already were trained in light armor and medium armor, you gain training in heavy armor as well"
So at 13th level, the Wizard would be Expert in Unarmored, Light, Medium and Heavy.
Hm. A separate question. Let's say we're building a character with a class that doesn't have Medium or Heavy proficiency - for example, Alchemist with Light Armour Proficiency only.
They take Sentinel Feat on level 2, gaining Medium Armour proficiency, all cool.
What happens when they get to level 3, and take the Armour Proficiency feat? I mean, obviously, they immediately get Heavy Armour Proficiency.
However, would Sentinel provide increased expertise then? I wonder because of the exact wording:
If you already were trained in light armor and medium armor, you gain training in heavy armor as well.
Or would the character have to wait until level 4 to take the Sentinel feat to get that benefit?
