Metal Carapace & unarmored query ?

[orphias]

Does the kineticist feat Metal Carapace stack with your unarmored defence proficiency?

Metal Carapace
Sheets of bent and rusted metal cover you in an armored shell. The carapace is medium armor but uses your highest armor proficiency. The carapace's statistics are: AC Bonus +3; Dex Cap +2; Check Penalty –2; Speed Penalty –5 feet; Strength +2; Bulk 2; Group plate; Armor Traits noisy. Any bonuses, runes, and magical abilities of your actual armor are suppressed, but any that could apply to the metal carapace are replicated onto it.

When you use this impulse, you can also create a rusty steel shield in a free hand, which uses the statistics of a regular steel shield. You can Shield Block with this shield even if you don't have that feat. The hand wielding this shield counts as a free hand for using impulses. The shield crumbles to flakes of rust if it becomes broken or leaves your grasp. The impulse lasts for 10 minutes, and you can Dismiss this impulse. If you use this impulse again, any existing one ends. The metal is rusted and fragile. If you take damage from a critical hit, the metal shatters and the impulse ends.

Level (+3) The shield's Hardness increases by 1, its HP by 4, and its BT by 2.

[Perpdepog]

Unarmored defense isn't an armor proficiency, so no.

[Easl]

Kineticists gain both 'light armor proficiency' and 'unarmored defense' at the same levels and rates, so unless you have some weird combo you're trying to pull off, the pragmatic answer is 'metal carapace uses and advances with your class defense proficiency.' Trained at Level 1, Expert at Level 13, Master at Level 19.

[TheFinish]

I assume you're trying to play a Monk with Kine dedication and Metal Carapace, but Unarmored Defence is not an Armor Proficiency and so Metal Carapace never uses your Unarmored Proficiency.

[Finoan]

I'm a bit thrown off by the OP's use of the word 'stack'.

You certainly aren't going to add both your unarmored proficiency and your highest armor proficiency together and then put the Metal Carapace item bonus on top of that.

Quote:

The carapace is medium armor but uses your highest armor proficiency.

It is debatable if your proficiency in Unarmored defense qualifies as an armor proficiency or not.

But as noted above, it is likely equal to your light armor proficiency unless you are running with some combo like Dual Class variant rules and have a Kineticist/Monk (and if you are running that, you should mention that in the post).

[Easl]

Finoan wrote:

It is debatable if your proficiency in Unarmored defense qualifies as an armor proficiency or not.

I would generally count it.

Player core 1, p271: "The armor’s category—unarmored, light armor, medium armor, or heavy armor..." So unarmored is a category of armor, and thus it's reasonable to conclude 'unarmored proficiency' is a type of armor proficiency. The table on p273 has 'unarmored' as a category. Explorer's Clothing has a dex cap, it has an armor group, it has an armor trait, and it takes armor runes. IOW, it's armor. But it uses unarmored proficiency. So again, that seems to indicate that the devs are lumping 'unarmored proficiency' in with light, medium, heavy armor proficiency for rules purposes.

But this does not mean I'd blindly allow some stacking or strange combo without further details. If OP has some unusual combo in mind, it's better to describe it specifically. Asking a general rules question when you have a specific concept in mind can often lead to inaccurate answers.

If this is a monk thing, then note I'd certainly count the metal carapace as wearing armor for monk abilities that have the "...whenever you’re not wearing armor..." requirement on them. I.e., those abilities wouldn't work.

[Super Zero]

Finoan wrote:

I'm a bit thrown off by the OP's use of the word 'stack'.

You certainly aren't going to add both your unarmored proficiency and your highest armor proficiency together and then put the Metal Carapace item bonus on top of that.

Quote:

The carapace is medium armor but uses your highest armor proficiency.

It is debatable if your proficiency in Unarmored defense qualifies as an armor proficiency or not.

But as noted above, it is likely equal to your light armor proficiency unless you are running with some combo like Dual Class variant rules and have a Kineticist/Monk (and if you are running that, you should mention that in the post).

Dual class would get the armor proficiency from Kineticist, but a caster or Monk with Kineticist multiclass won't.

(Although the Monk also probably doesn't want to wear armor anyway.)

[orphias]

My concern was if unarmored defence was considered an armor proficiency and would thus add to the metal carrapace armor modifer

[Baarogue]

My kneejerk response was "of course not, as it's specifically UNarmored" but Easl convinced me otherwise

But note Easl's final sentence as well. You would be "armored" while wearing Metal Carapace

[Easl]

orphias wrote:

My concern was if unarmored defence was considered an armor proficiency and would thus add to the metal carrapace armor modifer

I personally would count "unarmored defense" as one of the options where it says "uses your highest armor proficiency", yes. So monks and wizards (just to pick two examples) with a Kineticist archetype can gain their regular class-based bonus to AC while using it. But be careful with the monk; most of its stances and at least one of its class abilities say they only work unarmored or not wearing armor; in my opinion, when you summon metal carapace, you become armored.

[HammerJack]

Baarogue wrote:

My kneejerk response was "of course not, as it's specifically UNarmored" but Easl convinced me otherwise

But note Easl's final sentence as well. You would be "armored" while wearing Metal Carapace

You should not have been convinced. Easl is incorrect. Unarmored proficiency is not an armor proficiency.

Using the idea that Explorer's Clothing is armor as a supporting argument is especially strange, because it is explicitly not.

[Easl]

HammerJack wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

My kneejerk response was "of course not, as it's specifically UNarmored" but Easl convinced me otherwise

But note Easl's final sentence as well. You would be "armored" while wearing Metal Carapace

You should not have been convinced. Easl is incorrect. Unarmored proficiency is not an armor proficiency.

Using the idea that Explorer's Clothing is armor as a supporting argument is especially strange, because it is explicitly not.

So where metal carapace says "Any bonuses, runes, and magical abilities of your actual armor are suppressed, but any that could apply to the metal carapace are replicated onto it", you're telling me that a kineticist wearing explorers clothing with Armor Potency +2, Raiment, and Resilient on it cannot replicate those runes onto their carapace, because explorers clothing doesn't count as the "actual armor" specified in the description?

That does not seem RAI to me.

Paizo uses the term "defense proficiency" in it's PC1 p92 'Initial Proficiencies" section. I think that's what they mean in the impulse descriptions. In any event, I'll continue to read metal carapace and armor in earth as referring to highest defense proficiency, and I'll read "actual armor" to include runed-up exlporer's clothing, allowing the kineticist to replicate those runes onto their impulse armor. You would not, Hammerjack?

[Errenor]

Easl wrote:

Paizo uses the term "defense proficiency" in it's PC1 p92 'Initial Proficiencies" section. I think that's what they mean in the impulse descriptions. In any event, I'll continue to read metal carapace and armor in earth as referring to highest defense proficiency, and I'll read "actual armor" to include runed-up exlporer's clothing, allowing the kineticist to replicate those runes onto their impulse armor. You would not, Hammerjack?

I could also suggest reading 'armor proficiency' as 'Armor Class proficiency' if it would be easier to people. I suppose nobody would argue that unarmored defense proficiency isn't 'Armor Class proficiency'. And language vagueness or inexactness in the rules isn't that rare.