Metal carapace and plate in treasure interaction

[Powers128]

I have now realized you can make yourself renewable adamantine shields with both of these impulses. Seems to be a legitimate use. A lot better than the shield they give you and it will scale with the rank of plate in treasure to give you better shields once they're available. Improves my opinion on metal carapace that's for sure. What's the thoughts on this?

[Xenocrat]

Plate in Treasure only coats an outer layer. It’ll trigger weaknesses (sickness if hit/bitten) but clearly wouldn’t change the structural strength of a shield.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

You can, but honestly it's pretty weaksauce, because it's stupidly action intensive and also isn't likely to last very long compared to just investing in a Sturdy Shield.

You spend 1 action for Metal Carapace. You spend another action for Plate in Treasure. Let's also not forget that you need to spend a third action for Raise Shield, otherwise you can't block with it. Oh, and you need the Shield Block general feat as well, since you don't get it inherently. So it basically takes your entire turn, and you need an enemy stupid enough to go after you, so it will work on enemies like animals and...that's it.

Don't get me wrong, Plate in Treasure isn't actually a bad feat, since it lets you activate certain weaknesses/ignore certain resistances on the fly, but in this case, it's basically an action tax to be worse than if you just bought a Sturdy Shield and used it instead. Which is likely to have higher Hardness, way more HP, and doesn't require 2 actions at the start of combat to set up, which can be used for other more valuable buffs, or for certain specialty impulses.

[Powers128]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

You can, but honestly it's pretty weaksauce, because it's stupidly action intensive and also isn't likely to last very long compared to just investing in a Sturdy Shield.

You spend 1 action for Metal Carapace. You spend another action for Plate in Treasure. Let's also not forget that you need to spend a third action for Raise Shield, otherwise you can't block with it. Oh, and you need the Shield Block general feat as well, since you don't get it inherently. So it basically takes your entire turn, and you need an enemy stupid enough to go after you, so it will work on enemies like animals and...that's it.

Don't get me wrong, Plate in Treasure isn't actually a bad feat, since it lets you activate certain weaknesses/ignore certain resistances on the fly, but in this case, it's basically an action tax to be worse than if you just bought a Sturdy Shield and used it instead. Which is likely to have higher Hardness, way more HP, and doesn't require 2 actions at the start of combat to set up, which can be used for other more valuable buffs, or for certain specialty impulses.

Yeah, it'll probably boil down to one adamantine shield per combat. You can reasonably fit a one action per minute activity into your exploration to start with it.

Also, metal carapace gives you a native shield block reaction and can also be kept up in exploration mode FYI

[Powers128]

Xenocrat wrote:

Plate in Treasure only coats an outer layer. It’ll trigger weaknesses (sickness if hit/bitten) but clearly wouldn’t change the structural strength of a shield.

"Functions as an item of that metal." That's clearer than the bit about structural integrity which to me just seems to be saying you can't reinforce a structure with it, not that you can't make shields

[Perpdepog]

Powers128 wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

Plate in Treasure only coats an outer layer. It’ll trigger weaknesses (sickness if hit/bitten) but clearly wouldn’t change the structural strength of a shield.

"Functions as an item of that metal." That's clearer than the bit about structural integrity which to me just seems to be saying you can't reinforce a structure with it, not that you can't make shields

I'm pretty sure "structural integrity" is referring to the structure of whatever item you are plating in treasure, not, say, specifically items with the Structure trait. It's saying that your items hardness and HP don't change based on what you cover the item in. Your major sturdy shield isn't going to suddenly become super flimsy if you decide to make it out of cold iron, for example, just like a basic steel shield wouldn't suddenly gain loads of hardness from being covered in adamantine. Both would trigger any special weaknesses or effects from being covered in that material, however.

[shroudb]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

You can, but honestly it's pretty weaksauce, because it's stupidly action intensive and also isn't likely to last very long compared to just investing in a Sturdy Shield.

You spend 1 action for Metal Carapace. You spend another action for Plate in Treasure. Let's also not forget that you need to spend a third action for Raise Shield, otherwise you can't block with it. Oh, and you need the Shield Block general feat as well, since you don't get it inherently. So it basically takes your entire turn, and you need an enemy stupid enough to go after you, so it will work on enemies like animals and...that's it.

Don't get me wrong, Plate in Treasure isn't actually a bad feat, since it lets you activate certain weaknesses/ignore certain resistances on the fly, but in this case, it's basically an action tax to be worse than if you just bought a Sturdy Shield and used it instead. Which is likely to have higher Hardness, way more HP, and doesn't require 2 actions at the start of combat to set up, which can be used for other more valuable buffs, or for certain specialty impulses.

Tbf, you do get Shield block for free through Metal Carapace.

Clad in Metal would need to be minimum rank 5 to make an adamantine shield (since adamantine shield is level 8 item, you need rank 5 Clad in Metal to make) so minimum Kineticist level 9.

At level 9, your Metal Carapace is giving an extra 2 hardness and an extra 8 HP to the shield.

So you end up at level 9 with a shield with Hardness 12 and 48 HP, compared to the level 7 sturdy shield that has 10 hardness and 40 HP.

It would take 2 actions to setup initially, but you can remake the shields for the rest of the combat with just 1 action.

At level 14 you also get to raise the shield as a free action each turn.

At that level, your standard grade adamantine shield (base hardness 10 base hp 20, is now up by +4 hardness and +16 hp, so you are making 14 hardness 56 hp shields, which is almost the same hardness as the level 13 sturdy shields (sturdy has 15 hardness instead of 14, sturdy has a lot more hp (160 vs 56), but the impulse ones can be remade with 1 action if they break)

Given that they also give you a general feat for free (shield block) and that you can raise them as a free action, it certainly ain't bad.

---

The above is assuming that you only make standard grade adamantine shields. Although a case can be made if an item made by a level 11+ impulse is a higher level item, which would allow someone to make higher grade adamantine shields which have higher hp totals and higher hardness.

personally, due to other item making spells saying you make base level items, i rule that you only make base level items, so that's why i went with the standard grade, but other, more forgiving, GMs may allow the interpetation that you can make higher level items as well.