Soviet Onion
2010-09-16, 04:34 AM
In one of the campaigns I am playing, my wizard character has struck up a friendly relationship with a specter. As an incorporeal being, her inability to touch inanimate material objects distresses her. As an experiment, I was going to see if it's possible to cast Mage Armor on her. As with magic missile, this is a "force" spell effect, and as such shouldn't carry the 50% chance of failure that other types of magic do against incorporeals. My hope is this would surround her with a kind of force field fitted to her body that would allow her to use her fingers, manipulate objects etc. with the Mage Armor acting as a medium. If this works, I plan to look into acquiring a "Ghost Touch" magic item with a Mage Armor effect that she could wear, and that would permanently imbue her with Mage Armor as long as she has it on.
I'm not certain that this will work, and some of the questions I need answered don't seem to have ever come up before. It's an unusual situation.
1. How closely fitted to the skin is Mage Armor? I know that it's not a floating disk of force detached from the body, as with "Shield", but are we talking millimeters? Does it fit in between the digits of your fingers? In between every strand of hair?
2. Does Mage Armor allow tactile sensation to filter through? She's a specter, and force effects "press up" against her, so is there enough "give" to the armor that it could act as a medium for tactile sensation, or is it totally static and unable to do this?
3. Incorporeal undead have no Strength score. If she were to interact with the material world with the armor as mediator, would she even be able to lift anything? My DM doesn't think it should matter, and since this possibility doesn't seem to have come up before, the DM suggested making up a Strength score to reflect what the specter had in life. The reason Strength is usually left out of their stats is because it's never relevant . . . under normal circumstances. I could work a "Bull's Strength" into the item, if necessary.
4. Mage Armor gives an armor bonus of +4; a magic item of this kind could have anywhere from +1 to +8. In combat, Mage Armor is not impenetrable, so would ordinary objects be able to pass through her if she pressed on them too hard? Or is it like a suit of plate armor, which would never be penetrated from something like picking up a comb and is thus not relevant to anything outside combat?
I'm not certain that this will work, and some of the questions I need answered don't seem to have ever come up before. It's an unusual situation.
1. How closely fitted to the skin is Mage Armor? I know that it's not a floating disk of force detached from the body, as with "Shield", but are we talking millimeters? Does it fit in between the digits of your fingers? In between every strand of hair?
2. Does Mage Armor allow tactile sensation to filter through? She's a specter, and force effects "press up" against her, so is there enough "give" to the armor that it could act as a medium for tactile sensation, or is it totally static and unable to do this?
3. Incorporeal undead have no Strength score. If she were to interact with the material world with the armor as mediator, would she even be able to lift anything? My DM doesn't think it should matter, and since this possibility doesn't seem to have come up before, the DM suggested making up a Strength score to reflect what the specter had in life. The reason Strength is usually left out of their stats is because it's never relevant . . . under normal circumstances. I could work a "Bull's Strength" into the item, if necessary.
4. Mage Armor gives an armor bonus of +4; a magic item of this kind could have anywhere from +1 to +8. In combat, Mage Armor is not impenetrable, so would ordinary objects be able to pass through her if she pressed on them too hard? Or is it like a suit of plate armor, which would never be penetrated from something like picking up a comb and is thus not relevant to anything outside combat?