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View Full Version : exotic armours - worth a feat?



big teej
2010-11-08, 12:35 PM
greetings members of the playground, I recently got my hands on races of stone and I'm wondering


is exotic armour worth a feat?
if so, why?
if not, why?

are some worth it and some not?


*for the record, my group tends to hand out some feats for free 'if it fits' and occaisionally waive feat prereqs if we feel that its not worth a feat.

(for example, a stump blade is not worth a feat in our group)

thanks in advance.

mangosta71
2010-11-08, 12:47 PM
I don't see any reason "exotic" armor should require a feat to wear. It's not any better than standard armor.

big teej
2010-11-08, 12:52 PM
I don't see any reason "exotic" armor should require a feat to wear. It's not any better than standard armor.

that was my opinion of it, I was looking at mountian plate (a concept I have in mind demands I go for the most over the top armour I can find)

and I didn't see anything worth justifying the cost of a feat. I just wanted to see if this was a general consensus, and if there are any armours that ARE worth feats that I should be made aware of.

I personally hold that there isn't an armour that requires a feat (but I'd have to go back and reread the fluff/flavor text of each armour to really dig my heels in on that)

any dissenting opinions? (discounting the opinion that 'the book says its worth a feat' not due to its invalidity, merely due to the irrelevance of it to the discussion)

Ernir
2010-11-08, 12:58 PM
There are worse feats out there, but I'd think about it at least three times before deciding that taking an EAP would be a good use of my precious feat slots.

The reason? The difference between wearing Full Plate (which is handed out for free with a bunch of classes) and one of the exotic armors just isn't big enough.

You might want to ask your DM to trade away your Tower Shield Proficiency or something for Mountain Plate Proficiency.

Person_Man
2010-11-08, 01:30 PM
No and no.

A pseudo-exception is Dragonfire Adepts. Their breath weapon and many of their Invocations do not require attack rolls, and they do not use most Armor Check penalty Skills. Thus they can wear any armor WITHOUT proficiency, because the penalties are effectively meaningless to them.

Keld Denar
2010-11-08, 01:52 PM
Gnome Twistcloth is actually pretty decent if you get it chanted up with Magic Vestiments. Its normally +0 AC with no upper end on Dex bonus, but if you take EAP with it, you can apply the enhancement bonus to your touch AC. 5 points of touch AC is pretty significant, especially on a high dex build that'll already have a 25+ touch AC. Touch attacks are generally bad for your health, but are generally relatively low on total AB (either due to PAing away all of the bonus, or because spellcasters have crappy ABs).

If you had the Rogue ACF from Complete Mage (Spell Reflection), its even better, because you can reflect those nasty rays back on the caster when they miss you. How you like a taste of your own Enervation, Mr Mage!

faceroll
2010-11-08, 02:03 PM
They aren't worth it. If you want high AC, low dex, go full plate, then mithril mechanus gear (+10 AC, max dex +2). Neither require feats to use. Put a bunch of ranks in craft: armor, and when you've got enough cash to afford the raw materials, you should have enough ranks/apprentices and be able to make the armor yourself for 1/3 the cost.

Noodles2375
2010-11-08, 02:10 PM
No and no.

A pseudo-exception is Dragonfire Adepts. Their breath weapon and many of their Invocations do not require attack rolls, and they do not use most Armor Check penalty Skills. Thus they can wear any armor WITHOUT proficiency, because the penalties are effectively meaningless to them.

Are you using "pseudo-example" here because the Dragonfire Adept's invocations are spell-like and all are said to have somatic components?

I guess you could wear the armor, you just couldn't USE any of your invocations?

Keld Denar
2010-11-08, 02:20 PM
If you only use 24 hour invocations (like Beguiling Voice or See the Unseen), you can either activate them before you suit up, or you can simply try them over and over again until you roll what you need. Out of combat when there is no time crunch, a couple extra minutes tops mean very little.

Your main weapon, your Breath Weapon, doesn't include an attack roll and is a SU, which means that for its use, ACP and ASF don't matter in the slightest.

Zaq
2010-11-08, 03:04 PM
The problem with the DFA wearing armor without proficiency is that wearing armor with which you're not proficient tanks your initiative. If you want to apply those nice status effects with your breath weapon (slow, entangled, what have you), it's nice to do so before your enemies have a chance to do what they want to do. Even if you're just a blaster and don't care about status effects, you're still generally more likely to hit a nice clump of enemies if you go earlier rather than later.

I'm not saying that it's not worth considering. Just that there IS a very real downside.

Telonius
2010-11-08, 03:20 PM
The only armor I can think of that would even come close to being worth a feat is Vassal of Bahamut's Platinum Armor from BoED, and even that's stretching it. (You have to blow two feats to qualify for the PrC if you're interested in it, proving once again that good guys in general, and good melee guys in particular, can't have nice things).

big teej
2010-11-08, 03:27 PM
as intriguing as the psuedo exception is, the purpose of this thread is to discuss whether ANY of the exotic armours in (races of stone) any book are worth a feat, and if so, why.

as it stands we have (from what I see) a unanimous vote for "no, they do not"


There are worse feats out there, but I'd think about it at least three times before deciding that taking an EAP would be a good use of my precious feat slots.

The reason? The difference between wearing Full Plate (which is handed out for free with a bunch of classes) and one of the exotic armors just isn't big enough.

You might want to ask your DM to trade away your Tower Shield Proficiency or something for Mountain Plate Proficiency.

I'm the current DM, and as the one with the most experience with 3.x (the system our group uses) I'm workin on any house rules we may want to apply to ALL our games (regardless of DM) hence the question.
as it stands, I'm pushing the 'never worth a feat' aka 'falls under normal light/medium/heavy rules

one of my players so far has seconded this stance



No and no.

A pseudo-exception is Dragonfire Adepts. Their breath weapon and many of their Invocations do not require attack rolls, and they do not use most Armor Check penalty Skills. Thus they can wear any armor WITHOUT proficiency, because the penalties are effectively meaningless to them.

for the record, our group bans anything we don't have the book for.

and I'm not sure any of our DM's would let that fly.... sounds cheesy to me, but hey I'm low op :smallsmile:


carry on playgrounders

Cyrion
2010-11-08, 03:32 PM
I think both the exotic armor and exotic weapon proficiencies in Races of Stone and Races of the Wild are ill thought out. There just isn't a big enough benefit or difference in the gear that warrants a feat choice. At the very least, I think it should all be fluffed the same way that the racial weapons in the PH are fluffed- for their intended races they're regular armor or martial weapons instead of exotic.

DeltaEmil
2010-11-08, 03:40 PM
Exotic proficiency feats are meant to give you a special ability when using the specific equipment (although most of them suck or are system mastery traps), like using a bastard sword in one hand without any penalties when having the exotic weapon proficiency (bastard sword) feat.

For the armors, I see nothing of value or additional benefits that warrant the feat, at all. Just having higher AC (and worse max dex bonus) is not enough.

The equipment section for Races of Stone was probably written by somebody who though exotic meant weird or foreign in the case of D&D.

Black_Zawisza
2010-11-08, 03:50 PM
They aren't worth it. If you want high AC, low dex, go full plate, then mithril mechanus gear (+10 AC, max dex +2). Neither require feats to use. Put a bunch of ranks in craft: armor, and when you've got enough cash to afford the raw materials, you should have enough ranks/apprentices and be able to make the armor yourself for 1/3 the cost.
Which book is the mechanus from? If you can direct me to a website, that'd be even better.

hamishspence
2010-11-08, 03:51 PM
Planar Handbook.

grarrrg
2010-11-08, 04:00 PM
Double no on being worth a feat.

I present as a (counter?)example, the Clockwork Armor (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070212a).
Not only does it go above and beyond standard 'armor use', requiring 10 minutes to put it on, a DC check (!) to 'set the controls', a +4 Str AND Dex bonus (!!),+8 AC, (possibly with no Dex limit) and a +5 movement boost, BUT it also only requires Heavy Armor Proficiency.

If ever there was armor that 'should' require an Exotic Feat, this should probably be it. And yet it doesn't.

big teej
2010-11-08, 04:21 PM
Double no on being worth a feat.

I present as a (counter?)example, the Clockwork Armor (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070212a).
Not only does it go above and beyond standard 'armor use', requiring 10 minutes to put it on, a DC check (!) to 'set the controls', a +4 Str AND Dex bonus (!!),+8 AC, (possibly with no Dex limit) and a +5 movement boost, BUT it also only requires Heavy Armor Proficiency.

If ever there was armor that 'should' require an Exotic Feat, this should probably be it. And yet it doesn't.

if THIS doesn't require a feat....

I think I'm chucking exotic armour proficiency out our groups window...

VirOath
2010-11-08, 04:21 PM
Double no on being worth a feat.

I present as a (counter?)example, the Clockwork Armor (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070212a).
Not only does it go above and beyond standard 'armor use', requiring 10 minutes to put it on, a DC check (!) to 'set the controls', a +4 Str AND Dex bonus (!!),+8 AC, (possibly with no Dex limit) and a +5 movement boost, BUT it also only requires Heavy Armor Proficiency.

If ever there was armor that 'should' require an Exotic Feat, this should probably be it. And yet it doesn't.

Read the downsides. Fail a cold based save and suck. And the armor can be attacked directly, having an AC of 5+dex mod of the wearer without the need of a feat or suffering AoOs like normal sundering. Powerful armor, no question, but has some serious weaknesses and flaws. Not worth a feat.

grarrrg
2010-11-08, 04:45 PM
Read the downsides.

Ahh, but the question revolves around "Exotic" armor proficiency. Not whether the armor is 'good/balanced'.

Mountain Plate is, at the end of the day, still a big plate you strap to your body. The materials might be 'Exotic', but the use isn't. There really is no 'special training' required to strap heavy things to your torso. (outside of the normal Heavy Armor Prof. that is)

Clockwork armor is VERY different from standard armor. And yet DOESN'T need an Exotic prof. That's my point.

faceroll
2010-11-08, 05:18 PM
Ahh, but the question revolves around "Exotic" armor proficiency. Not whether the armor is 'good/balanced'.

Mountain Plate is, at the end of the day, still a big plate you strap to your body. The materials might be 'Exotic', but the use isn't. There really is no 'special training' required to strap heavy things to your torso. (outside of the normal Heavy Armor Prof. that is)

Clockwork armor is VERY different from standard armor. And yet DOESN'T need an Exotic prof. That's my point.

Exotic Proficiencies exist in the second half of 3.5 for balance purposes, not fluff. Don't be misled by crap like ninja stars or nunchuks.

AmberVael
2010-11-08, 05:23 PM
Gnome Twistcloth is actually pretty decent if you get it chanted up with Magic Vestiments. Its normally +0 AC with no upper end on Dex bonus, but if you take EAP with it, you can apply the enhancement bonus to your touch AC. 5 points of touch AC is pretty significant, especially on a high dex build that'll already have a 25+ touch AC. Touch attacks are generally bad for your health, but are generally relatively low on total AB (either due to PAing away all of the bonus, or because spellcasters have crappy ABs).

If you had the Rogue ACF from Complete Mage (Spell Reflection), its even better, because you can reflect those nasty rays back on the caster when they miss you. How you like a taste of your own Enervation, Mr Mage!

It starts off at +1, actually, so it is even a little better than that. I'd agree and say that under the right circumstances, Gnome Twistcloth is certainly worth its feat.

big teej
2010-11-08, 06:23 PM
It starts off at +1, actually, so it is even a little better than that. I'd agree and say that under the right circumstances, Gnome Twistcloth is certainly worth its feat.

but, correct me if I'm wrong, ONLY if you add a bunch of stuff to it correct?

the cloth in and of itself isn't.

Keld Denar
2010-11-08, 06:27 PM
Well, it is the property of the cloth that makes it amazing. No other armor even has the option of counting for your touch AC (unless you are a dwarf psion who takes a feat and expends your psionic focus...blah!). Having the option to add your armor bonus to your touch AC is something that is situationally nice, especially if you can soup it up with Magic Vestaments. Even if you can't, its great armor for wizards or other unarmored casters as a free enchantment deposit location, and there are some REALLY good low level enchantments that you can get between that, a mithril buckler (also 0 ACP/ASF), and bracers of armor.