RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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The spell Mage Armor was basically designed to improve a wizard's AC from "terrible" to "below average"; and in that, it functions well.
However, in the past decade of gameplay, I note that any and all shapeshifter druids, animal companions, and high-dex classes use it to very cheaply add +4 to AC, with no check penalty or max dexterity, all the time. Given that a +4 bracer of armor costs 16000 gp (AC-boosting ring or amulet is even more expensive) and a 1st-level pearl of power costs only 1000, I'd say the Mage Armor spell (or a wand thereof) is undercosted.
Imho it does make the game less fun if PCs are unhittable or near-unhittable. And pretty much all the "unhittable" builds I've seen at mid level use Mage Armor.
I'm curious what other people think of this, and how to deal with it? Making it self-only doesn't help because characters can just UMD it. I'm tempted to give it a max dex of +4 and make it block any class abilities that require you to be unarmored; that way arcane casters can still use it as intended, but everybody else it's more in line with other options.
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I see the opposite being the real problem. Bracers of Armor are way overpriced which pushes people towards other solutions. That this solution happens to be a spell and very effective at it... is par for the course in pathfinder.
These grievances can also be said for spells such as Mirror Image, Blur, or Displacement. Spells made to boost the survivability of squishy classes but still extremely good for whoever has them on a wand.
However, in the past decade of gameplay, I note that any and all shapeshifter druids, animal companions, and high-dex classes use it to very cheaply add +4 to AC, with no check penalty or max dexterity, all the time.
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Animal Companions don't even need Light Armor Prof if the ACP is 0 so there's not much difference to barding. Not an issue.Shapeshifter druids are below the AC curve without it, so that gets a pass. The Wild armor ability overtakes it at higher levels but it is, like the bracers, overpriced for mid level play.
High-dex classes that break the +7 Dex soft cap for armor do benefit the most, and could use a closer look. But in return they swear off magic armor abilities like Fortification. That said, later on they do get overtaken by Bracers either way.
Imho it does make the game less fun if PCs are unhittable or near-unhittable. And pretty much all the "unhittable" builds I've seen at mid level use Mage Armor.
About 90% of all charisma-stacking builds dip a level into Scaled Fist (). That doesn't make Scaled Fist unbalanced or particularly stronger than normal monk. It's a player issue, not a content issue. Same with the 5 Str/Cha Goblin with 30 Dex at lv 8.
I'm curious what other people think of this, and how to deal with it? Making it self-only doesn't help because characters can just UMD it. I'm tempted to give it a max dex of +4 and make it block any class abilities that require you to be unarmored; that way arcane casters can still use it as intended, but everybody else it's more in line with other options.
I'd skip the unarmored clause. Unnecessarily harsh towards a very specific subset of builds. You could implement a Max Dex of +8 though, that would place it more in line with light armor options.
Wands aren't really a problem since they will all be 1st level and if you want to keep MA going for any length of time you will be buying a lot of wands or paying a lot more for higher level wands.
It lasts an hour even at 1st level. Not great if you're worried about getting ambushed in the wilderness, but enough for a typical dungeon exploration session.
There are ways of circumventing MA, especially once Dispel Magic is available.
Casters don't care much about AC, martial enemies and big dumb monsters don't know Dispel Magic, single enemies don't have the action economy to spare. So that usually only matters in encounters against a balanced team of enemies, which in my experience are rare.
Making it self-only doesn't help because characters can just UMD it.
That would actually nerf it quite a bit. The druid's animal companion can't do it, the monk can't do it without putting a lot of resources/skill ranks into it. Anyone who can UMD wands potentially has access to lots of other self-only buffs, like Mage Armor.
In my experience, casters seldom bother with mage armor after they have gained a few levels and have a few magic protection items. There are typically way better ways of being non-hittable in combat.
In my experience, casters seldom bother with mage armor after they have gained a few levels and have a few magic protection items. There are typically way better ways of being non-hittable in combat.
Eh. While they do have better options, +4 AC for 12 hours is definitely worth a 1st level spell-slot, even if it never actually saves you from being hit that day.
It seems like it can be addressed with encounter design, too.
1) If encounters are split among the entire day, mage armor loses a lot of value. Maybe something harasses the group again and again, maybe you have to dig for hours to progress within the dungeon, maybe it's just a random encounter.
2) If enemies target touch AC or CMD, mage armor loses value, too. Maybe a ray attack gets combined with sneak attack, maybe adventurers get bull rushed into a pit, maybe it's a class ability to target touch AC (bolt aces can pull it at level 1).
Of course a GM shouldn't overdo it. If regular AC remains as an important defensive value, players have something to flock towards to. Reducing the importance of regular AC too much means further encouraging the already dominant paradigm "kill it before it kills you".
I see the opposite being the real problem. Bracers of Armor are way overpriced which pushes people towards other solutions.
I agree with this.
Looking at the LIGHT ARMOUR there are 3 sets of armour with 0 ACP and 0% ASF. One of these gives +2AC, which means you could get the same bonus as Mage Armour for only ~4,000gp, as opposed to the 16,000gp bracers. You can also wear a Mithral Buckler and make that even cheaper.
A Pearl of Power is cheaper than that, but it also only helps if you have someone in the party to cast it. And even a 15th level Wizard doesn't cover you for 24 hours a day, so if you get ambushed as you're preparing for bed then you're out of luck.
I honestly just don't think +4AC is really breking the game.
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Until your DEX reaches 24 a mithral chain shirt is the go-to armor for most DEX based builds. Unless you are a druid, monk or arcane caster it is way better than any other option. At 1,100 GP it gives the same AC bonus as mage armor can be is effective 24/7. That does not even factor in that enchanting armor is dirt cheap, adding a + 1 bonus only costs an additional 1,000 GP. A +4 mithral chain shirt goes for 17,100 GP. This is only slightly more than a +4 bracer but gives you +8 AC. Until your DEX reaches 30 you are actually going to have a higher AC with the +4 mithral shirt than you will with the +4 bracers. For most DEX based builds the maximum DEX bonus only comes into play at high levels.
That leaves druids, monks, sorcerers and wizards as the only characters facing the issue. Sorcerers and wizards have crap for AC but have the spell on their list so at high level will probably just be casting the spell. At mid to high level, it is a better use of your low-level slots. DEX based druids are rare, but they do exist, but they can use darkleaf cloth hide armor instead of a mithral chain shirt. It is slightly more expensive, but it functions similarly. Non-DEX based druids don’t have to worry about the max DEX bonus so will use normal armor when not in wild shape. Monks are extremely MAD, and most will be maxing out STR in order to do damage. DEX based monks are not that efficient even if they have a high AC.
So, really the only thing gaining real benefit from mage armor items are wildshaped druids and monks. Both of these are also going to be in the thick of combat so will be subject to more attacks than a lot of other characters. Neither one of them will normally be using armor so the +4 bonus is not that big of a deal.
Since wands only last 1 hour that means those using them will probably not have it active at all times. This is especially true when they wake up. So, an encounter while the party is at rest will mean they don’t have it up. Using wands will be cheaper at first, but in the long run they will end up being a slow drain on the characters wealth. After the character has purchased about 21 wands, they will be losing gold steadily. You hit the point of diminishing returns around 5 months or so.
Mage Armor makes sense within the contrived context of Paizo's attempts at game balance*.
There are two sets of light armor that give you a +4 armor bonus. A full caster that wishes to wear light armor incurs a one-in-five chance of spell failure--unless they invest in feats. Mage Armor effectively gives a full caster the ability to wear light armor while ignoring that very real danger. That's what informs the cost of Bracers of Armor, not the pursuit of classes who can't normally cast Mage Armor to get a measly +4 armor bonus (which can't stack with stuff most of them would be better off trying to get past the first few levels).
* I swear, I'm not trying to be insulting to the people who brought us the game. It just is what it is.
The problem doesn't seem to be with the spell, but with wands themselves. They are just too efficient for certain low level spells. Also our implementation of wands isn't the way wands are used in any other fantasy media, which is weird for immersion.
But there's not anything to be done about it. That's just the way the game is.
Yes, Mage Armor and Bracers of Armor are very imbalanced. But that doesn't automatically mean Mage Armor is too strong, it can also mean the bracers are overpriced.
Imho it does make the game less fun if PCs are unhittable or near-unhittable. And pretty much all the "unhittable" builds I've seen at mid level use Mage Armor.
Have you tried asking your players not to build unhittable characters, instead? it seems you want to nerf entire classes because of very select, rare builds.
I have played a Monk with pre-nerf Crane Wing, and still almost died multiple times because I didn't have Mage Armor. WS Druids can buy barding to equip after WSing, so a nerf would mainly ensure that they never turn into anything other than Deinonychus/Dire Tiger/Allosaurus. Some archetypes, like Eldritch Scoundrel Rogue or Beastkin Berserker Barbarian are all but unplayable without Mage Armor.
Quite frankly, the "how dare martial classes copy 0.1% of the power of classes that make you almost literal gods" mindset worries me. Why must casters always get the best of everything? Why is martials benefitting from spells a bad thing?
I don't get it.
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Mage Armor makes sense within the contrived context of Paizo's attempts at game balance*.
There are two sets of light armor that give you a +4 armor bonus. A full caster that wishes to wear light armor incurs a one-in-five chance of spell failure--unless they invest in feats. Mage Armor effectively gives a full caster the ability to wear light armor while ignoring that very real danger. That's what informs the cost of Bracers of Armor, not the pursuit of classes who can't normally cast Mage Armor to get a measly +4 armor bonus (which can't stack with stuff most of them would be better off trying to get past the first few levels).
* I swear, I'm not trying to be insulting to the people who brought us the game. It just is what it is.
To be fair, the major factors haven't really changed in the last 20+ years: Mithril Armor, the Mage Armor spell, and wand mechanics haven't changed much (if at all) since DnD3 launched back in 1999. Paizo tweaked some AC numbers, but not really significantly...
Even before DnD3, there was an 'AC 6*' armor spell in the earlier editions that is pretty similar to PF Mage Armor (and an illusionary 'AC 3*' 'Phantom Armor' spell at some point), but a lot of the surrounding mechanics radically changed with DnD3 so a direct comparison isn't very helpful.
So, Mage Armor is presumably something that Paizo declined to 'fix' because they didn't consider it 'broken' (or at least not broken enough to worry about)...
*
Yeah, I could have worded that better!
*pulls out a bullhorn and starts a riot*
WHAT DO WE WANT!?!
CHEAPER BRACERS OF ARMOR!!
WHAT DO WE WANT!?!!
CHEAPER BRACERS OF ARMOR!!
WHAT DO WE WANT!?!?!
CHEAPER BRACERS OF ARMOR!!!
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Anecdotally, I played a witch for 17 levels in Strange Aeons and rarely cast Mage Armour. At low levels having the extra spell slot to use in a combat was more valuable than gambling on maybe getting hit, at high levels the AC was irrelevant. There’s a golden zone around L5-10 where it lasts long enough to cover an adventuring day and there are cases where the difference between AC 11 and 15 is still relevant.
Then. playing Jade Regent I have one of those niche builds that benefits from it (Sacred Fist warpriest), so the wizard is casting it every day… but Sacred Fist isn’t what you’d call an optimal archetype in the first place, so I’m using up one of the wizard’s spell slots to get back to having the same AC as the unarchetyped class.
In both cases we are playing APs not PFS, so the concept of always being able to lay your hands on a wand of whatever first level spell you want whenever you want doesn’t exist. I think PFS has warped the view of the game towards one where the perfect magic item is always available, rather than the (again anecdotal, but my experience of actual play) reality of sometimes making do with what you loot.
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I'm also surprised that "round down to nearest integer" was never defined or given a symbol (there are several ways: ⎣X⎦, ⤓(X), [X]). Simple notation like X^2 was never used.
Descriptive language easily quadruples the word count and introduces confusion that could have been easily avoided with notation. Players would have learned something useful if they hadn't picked it up from 8-11th grade in school.
I think they defined 'rounding' pretty clearly:
PRPG Core Rulebook pg. 11 The Pathfinder RPG uses a number of terms, abbreviations, and definitions in presenting the rules of the game. The following are among the most common.Source
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Rounding: Occasionally the rules ask you to round a result or value. Unless otherwise stated, always round down. For example, if you are asked to take half of 7, the result would be 3.
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The more 'arcane symbols' you add to the rules, the harder it is for people to pick it up easily, so descriptive language is a much better option in general.