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Dark_Juggernaut
2010-09-11, 06:05 AM
So I'm surfing the web for some way to help my girlfriends rogue armor up. She's already packing a +7 mod from Dex. I find a few threads here and check what is mentioned. Nimbleness seems great as long as you reference magic of faerun (has that been errata'd?). I come across Celestial Armor.

I've come across this armor whilst skimming the DMG in the past and, for one reason or another, never found myself to impressed by it. As I read on, and really payed attention to exactly what it IS and what people THINK it is, I realized it's gods gift to dext based characters. So before I spend her hard earned gold on this expensive beauty, I'd like to confirm some stuff with you guys.

It's +3 Chain-MAIL(not shirt). Meaning it has a base armor bonus of +5 with a +3 enhancement on it for a total of +8 armor bonus?

Does it count as a +3 Armor when trying to upgrade it with further enchanting? I hope to be able to add nimbleness at cost later(making it +4?).

I read in the past threads mention of there being a +1 version of it, which I have no idea where to start looking for. Any ideas?

Lastly, as I understand it, you cannot make it out of mithral or is that a purely DM driven question? My personal opinion would be no since it's not an armor mod, but a creation, which would require precise materials that have their own magical reactions to the spells/effects used to make the final result. That being said, I play with a bunch of kooks who on occasion make retarded rules based more on logic than balance (like allowing people to stand from prone as a swift action or letting grappling were-tigers full attack as houserules).

On a side note, my fellow gamers mentioned Reticulated armor as a mundane modification to armor, where can I find this? I keep getting directed to WoW trash in my google searches for it.

Tyger
2010-09-11, 06:11 AM
Yes, its +3 Chainmail, so +8 to total AC.

Technically, it is only +3 armor for purposes of further enchantments, though it should be higher, what with the DEX bonus changes and the Fly spell.

And no, it doesn't specify that its made of Mithril, so there is no rule saying you can't make a Mithril version of this for even more DEX. That said, the implications of the text suggest that its already Mithril - but RAW, its not.

All that in mind, its totally DM fiat to allow the above. Like all custom magic item creation.

AslanCross
2010-09-11, 06:16 AM
I've made a scaled down version of it (+2 bonus) for one of my campaigns. The cost came out to 17400 GP. I've always treated it as mithral, but Tyger is right. It is not explicitly stated to be mithral (though my reverse-engineered version is based on the assumption that it is).

Eldariel
2010-09-11, 06:31 AM
I've had one enhanced for permanent flight more than once. They are awesome indeed. Also, Nimbleness to get rid of the pesky ACP ("so light it can be worn under clothing unnoticed...") and go up to 28 Dex. My favorite piece of armor ever.

And yeah, the price comes about right for a +3 Mithril Chainmail with Fly 1/day as an extra ability (priced according to the "add abilities"-clause in the DMG).

Dark_Juggernaut
2010-09-11, 06:35 AM
Thanks folks, helps a lot.

I also just thought of something else. The enchantments needed to make the armor probably makes whatever it's made of LIGHTER and MORE flexible than Mithral can be, making it pointless to do so.

Any word on this 'Reticulated' thing?

Tyger
2010-09-11, 06:36 AM
I've had one enhanced for permanent flight more than once. They are awesome indeed. Also, Nimbleness to get rid of the pesky ACP ("so light it can be worn under clothing unnoticed...") and go up to 28 Dex. My favorite piece of armor ever.

And yeah, the price comes about right for a +3 Mithril Chainmail with Fly 1/day as an extra ability (priced according to the "add abilities"-clause in the DMG).

Out of curiousity, how did you price the permanent Fly model? Would be a great suit for my bard.


Thanks folks, helps a lot.

I also just thought of something else. The enchantments needed to make the armor probably makes whatever it's made of LIGHTER and MORE flexible than Mithral can be, making it pointless to do so.

Any word on this 'Reticulated' thing?

That's a good ruling, but RAW, you can add mithril to this suit, for even more lightness and flexibility. :) Just saying.

Eldariel
2010-09-11, 07:28 AM
Out of curiousity, how did you price the permanent Fly model? Would be a great suit for my bard.

We used the Creating Magic Items (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm)-guidelines; Fly 1/day at CL 5 is (3 Lvl*5 CL*2000)/5 = 6000gp. Continuous Fly is 3*5*2000*2 = 60k gp. So, you need to pay 54k in the process. Or well, that's what I did. The other option is Use-Activated Fly without charge limit which comes down at 30k. And 2/day or 3/day is easier; divide 5 by number - I've used 3/day version in the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Worked great.

Tyger
2010-09-11, 07:31 AM
We used the Creating Magic Items (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm)-guidelines; Fly 1/day at CL 5 is (3 Lvl*5 CL*2000)/5 = 6000gp. Continuous Fly is 3*5*2000*2 = 60k gp. So, you need to pay 54k in the process. Or well, that's what I did. The other option is Use-Activated Fly without charge limit which comes down at 30k. And 2/day or 3/day is easier; divide 5 by number - I've used 3/day version in the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Worked great.

That seems right, based on the formula, but there are better, and cheaper means out there, so the formula likely needs to be tossed. The Phoenix Cloak (MiC) grants all day fly, perfect maneuverability at your land speed... so it might be slower or faster than the Fly spell. And its 50K flat.

Eldariel
2010-09-11, 08:41 AM
That seems right, based on the formula, but there are better, and cheaper means out there, so the formula likely needs to be tossed. The Phoenix Cloak (MiC) grants all day fly, perfect maneuverability at your land speed... so it might be slower or faster than the Fly spell. And its 50K flat.

Yeah, I know. Didn't back then tho. We had plenty of wealth that game.

Peregrine
2010-09-11, 10:11 AM
A while back I started compiling a list of magic items broken down by cost (to guide custom or modified magic items), but it seems I didn't get around to the celestial armor. Or else I got to it and gave up trying to analyse it. Because it just doesn't make sense.

According to the SRD, celestial armor costs 22,400gp to buy or 12,500gp + 1,004XP to make. The XP cost means the features alone should be worth 25 × 1,004 = 25,100gp; the base armour is extra. The 12,500gp materials cost doesn't match up with the XP cost either; like the market price, it's too low.

If the market price and materials price are both assumed to be correct, then it has a base item cost of 2,600gp and 19,800gp (9,900gp + 792XP) worth of magical abilities. We know it has a +3 enhancement, for 9000gp (4500gp + 360XP), and fly on command 1/day. That costs 3 × 5 × 1,800gp ÷ 5 = 5,400gp (2,700gp + 216XP); it's probably ×1.5 for multiple abilities, thus 8,100gp (4,050gp + 324XP). That only accounts for 17,100gp (8550gp + 684XP) worth in magical abilities.

If the lightness is a magical ability, we can't account for more than 300gp of base item cost (masterwork chainmail). If it's a material, it should cost quite a bit more than mithral (4,150gp base item cost). And if it were some combination of both, then the base item could be mithral, but that's still 4,150gp. Not 2,600gp.

The XP cost could only work if there were a spell with an XP component required for the crafting. There isn't one listed, but let's suppose. The values so far would suggest an XP cost of 212XP; a highly unusual number!

So yeah. The difficulty of analysing celestial armor makes it hard to design similar armours with different features or determine whether making it out of mithral would be appropriate (though I for one would certainly say no, as mithral's advantages are supposed to be relative to steel).

ericgrau
2010-09-11, 10:49 AM
Considering the above fly item is only 30' and the fly spell is 60', I'd say the armor is actually the better deal b/c it's much faster for not much more gold and doesn't take an additional item slot. The extra speed more than negates all the drawbacks of good maneuverability, namely paying a little speed to do certain things that perfect does without paying speed.

Breaking down the armor: 21,800 gp for all magical enhancements (b/c we can tell 600 of the cost to create didn't get doubled). 5400 for fly on command. That leaves 16,400 for everything else. AFAIK there's no way to tell whether it is +4 equivalent armor with +400 gold worth of spells or +3 equivalent armor with +7,400 worth of spells. I'd lean towards +4 b/c what it gives is already better than nimbleness. So now if someone wants to upgrade it to a +4 enhancement bonus, the total effective bonus is +5 and the cost to upgrade is the difference between 16,000 gp (4x4x1k) and 25,000 gp (5x5x1k), or 9,000 gp. Instead of 7,000 gp for 9,000 gp => 16,000 gp.

Fizban
2010-09-11, 11:07 AM
I'd just ignore the given xp cost to create, since you've already shown it doesn't make sense in either direction. It's probably some sort of partial holdover or mixup from 3.0.

So for price breakdown, that's 22,400gp to start. My breakdown is 22,400 -9,000 -8,100= 5,300. Assuming a mithral chainmail base, 5,300-4,150= 1,150, or 5,300-450 =4,850 for steel. So, the price of celestialization is either 1,150gp on mithral or 4,850gp on steel, flat gp cost enhancement.

Re: the nimbleness property; it's been updated in the Magic Item Compendium, but it's a lot worse now, so you might want to just stick with what you're already using.

It's not very rogue friendly, but I think an awesome suit of armor would be +1 Nimbleness Illithidwrought Halfweight Mithral Mechanus Gear. It's basically Samus' armor, light armor with +10 AC, +3 max dex, -4 check penalty, and only weighing 19 lbs. Since light armor doesn't reduce speed, that should negate the drawback of Mechanus Gear completely, and as long as you're a little bit psionic you should be keeping pace with everyone else on AC, with more capacity later since your bonuses aren't enhancement.

^The only problem with assuming that part of the celestialness is a +X ability, is that that's not how the pricing system works. While you might do that when breaking something down for analysis, if you're actually upgrading something in game you pay the difference in the + values. So upgrading any suit of armor with +3 in enhancements to +4 in enhancements, weather it's basic +3 leather or celestial armor or some fancy relic, will always be 7,000gp.

It actually really annoys me: it's a great system for simplicity, but it also means whenever you make a specific armor or weapon, you're actually just making a flat cost ability that will get ripped out and put on an item the player actually wants. Rhino Hide is pretty cool, but hide armor sucks, so the only way anyone will ever use it is if they rip the flat cost ability out and put it on something useful. Naturally the DM can just say no, but the pricing guidelines for weapons and armor are the only formulas that are supposed to actually work, so I want to build stuff with them, and it sucks to see a cool ability tied to a crappy armor :smallannoyed:.

Kantolin
2010-09-11, 02:15 PM
If you use the incredibly rarely used DMG2's rules on making very select pieces of armour (Of which one is 'Celestial Armour'), it's strictly cheaper to get Soulforged Celestial Armour, and thematically appropriate.

I love the armour myself - all my light armour wearers tend to end up in it.

Dark_Juggernaut
2010-09-11, 03:48 PM
From what I read, Soulforged affinity for celestial armor only decreases the cost to make it, but doesn't effect it's market price, so there's no reason to bother unless you're the crafter :smallfrown:

Still no word on what "Reticulated" is in 3.5 eh?

aeauseth
2010-09-13, 11:05 AM
Slightly off topic, but check out Mithralmist Shirt (CA or MIC). It should provide your rogue concealment without interfearing with your vision. Can you say "sneak attack abuse"?

There is also a Weightless (Arms&Armor) enhancement that increases max Dex by 2. Check out this Armor Class Guide (http://aaronwiki.us/index.php?title=Armor_Class_Guide).

As to making the Celestial Armor +4 you just pay the difference between +3 and +4 like any normal enhancement upgrade. This will max at +5 BTW until you go Epic, so top end non-Epic Celestial Armor is:

Weightless Celestial Armor +2: +10 AC, max +10 Dex, ACP 0, 5% spell failure. (~49,400 gp)

Darrin
2010-09-13, 03:39 PM
Still no word on what "Reticulated" is in 3.5 eh?

It sounds like homebrew, more specifically, someone porting over the Reticulated Webbing enhancement from World of Warcraft. I checked the d20 Warcraft RPG, but I didn't see anything about it.

Can you be more specific about what "Reticulated" is supposed to do? Perhaps your fellow gamer is mis-remembering some other 3.x enhancement that might be known under a different name.

Sounds to me like "reticulated" is some kind of webbing placed over/under the armor to make it stronger or harder to penetrate. Or it could mean the armor plates have been divided into sections, making them more flexible, possibly reducing ACP/ASF/Dex penalty.

If that's the case, you might want to take a look at Sectioned Armor in the Planar Handbook. The owner can add/remove layers to modify the encumbrance class and other modifiers.

The other possibility could be the "Master's Forge" article in Dragon #358. The crafter takes the Artisan Crafter feat, he can add various mundane modifications to weapons/armor to improve certain qualities. "Caster Armor". for example, reduces ASF by 5% (+400/+800/+1000 GP). "Reinforced Armor" increases the armor bonus by +1 and also the weight by +10% (+800/+1000/+1200 GP). "Segmented Armor" increases the Max Dex by +1 (+200/+200/+300 GP). "Vital Coverage" increases the AC on crit threats by +2 (+200/+400/+1000 GP).

Steveotep
2010-09-13, 08:09 PM
Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved has Articulated Armour (not reticulated), which takes a feat to use but provides extra AC when you are not flatfooted. The armour has lots of little plates for flexibility, but a section can be locked together by a trained user to give extra protection.