Help Me Take My Pants Off!

[F.H. Zebedee]

So, I have a friend who is a fan of Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, and she wants to try building a Golf Bag melee character who works on similar principles (switching armor and gear at the moment's notice, in order to best be ready for a situation).

So far, we've got the putting the armor ON property taken care of (Called property from the Magic Item Compendium). So her character can put on armor pretty much instantly, allowing her to instantly adapt to situations that require different gear setups.

The problem is, I haven't been able to find anything that'll let her get rid of the armor. So while she can go encumbrance free all day, only donning armor when necessary, she's stuck lugging it around, and can't do any on-the-fly changes.

So, now my question is, is there anything a character can do to remove armor instantly, or at least in under a round? And are there any utility spells/enchantments out there that would let her teleport her armor back to storage when she's not using it?

Otherwise, we're stuck with the kind of lame solution of having a mule/hirelings carrying her armor around for her while we're in the field, and then having to strip out of her armor laboriously in order to be able to switch, again.

(I'm aware this strategy is a bit inefficient, but our DM is a little Monty Haul, so we can get away with blowing our GP on tricks like this)

So, tl;dr: Character needs way to remove armor as quickly as possible, an ideally, some spell or trick that will let her send it back to storage.

[Phelix-Mu]

Ring of arming item, which I believe was reprinted in the Magic Item Compendium, lets one switch between two sets of equips. Affordable and extremely useful.

EDIT: I also recall a very cool item from the 3.0 Arms and Equipment Guide, called tesselated armour. Full plate made out of animated little pieces that can be disassembled down into coin-sized pieces with a command word, and the pieces fly into a little box. Great visual. Pricing is probably off, due to 3.0-ness.

[Zaq]

Quick-escape armor. Arms and Equipment Guide, page 16. It's a mundane addition to any armor, costs 300 gp, and lets you take off armor as a standard action. The downside is that it can only be crafted into the armor (rather than adding to existing armor), and it takes twice as long to don it properly. Still, it's an option, particularly if you have magical help putting the armor on in the first place.

[Unusual Muse]

Why exactly would you need to switch armor at a moment's notice? You'd need a really versatile character indeed to be optimized for both heavy armor usage and light/no-armor usage. What classes/feats do you have? What sort of encounters do you expect to run into that would make this useful?

The GBOW is a little more understandable with regard to overcoming DR, but even that is superceded eventually with the right weapon materials/enchantments, and once you reach high enough level where there are that many DRs you need to overcome, action economy is really important and you probably don't want to waste a standard action switching things out when there might be ways to meet the situation with a single armor/weapon setup that is also optimized to your character build. Just a thought.

[F.H. Zebedee]

Why exactly would you need to switch armor at a moment's notice? You'd need a really versatile character indeed to be optimized for both heavy armor usage and light/no-armor usage. What classes/feats do you have? What sort of encounters do you expect to run into that would make this useful?

Rule of Cool and Rule of Fun mostly. Truth be told, it really isn't needed. But there is something kinda awesome about having armor for fighting melee opponents, and a set for fighting wizards, and a set for underwater fights, and a flying armor, and so on and so forth. I file it under the same category as oversized weapons or TWF; it's really not the most efficient way to do things, but if you want a really memorable and visually interesting character, it can do that job very well.

We don't actually know the class/race combination yet, as we're rolling up our characters (first session is Sunday), and we wanted to leave it open in case there was any class/race specific tricks.

There are two facets of our DM that makes this idea a bit more viable. As I said, he tends to go over wealth by level by a decent amount, which makes expensive concepts like this a bit more doable, and secondly, he REAAALLY likes springing surprise enemies on us (shapeshifters, dragons, vampires, etc.). So being able to adapt on the fly can be kinda helpful when it turns out you really need to be fireproof, or you got flung off a bridge and don't want to drown, or so on and so forth.

Ultimately, yeah, it's not the most useful setup, but she wants to play it, and if she has fun, mission accomplished. :)

As for the other stuff posted, I've manged to find the Quick Escape armor, which neatly takes care of one of the issues. It's also quite convenient in that it's an additional cost, so Called+Quick Escape is a convenient 2,300 GP package that can be tacked onto any armor she has crafted.

Ring of Arming is also pretty sweet, though, now that I've looked into that. I'll have to discuss the options with her, since they have interesting expense implications. (The rings can be loaded, wizard style, before adventuring, but it limits her to three loadouts with two rings, whereas Calling allows vast flexibility, but becomes more expensive once you get over four suits of armor)

And Tesselated Armor will go on the list of neat stuff to look into. It doesn't have an obvious niche, but it is cool looking as heck, so one never knows.

Thanks for all the info everybody, it gives me the fodder I need to work on making this build functional and hopefully, crowd pleasing for when she busts it out in the session. :D

[Arbane]

Why exactly would you need to switch armor at a moment's notice?


Because Erza's schtick is being a heavily-armored version of Cutey Honey.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Why exactly would you need to switch armor at a moment's notice? You'd need a really versatile character indeed to be optimized for both heavy armor usage and light/no-armor usage. What classes/feats do you have? What sort of encounters do you expect to run into that would make this useful?

The GBOW is a little more understandable with regard to overcoming DR, but even that is superceded eventually with the right weapon materials/enchantments, and once you reach high enough level where there are that many DRs you need to overcome, action economy is really important and you probably don't want to waste a standard action switching things out when there might be ways to meet the situation with a single armor/weapon setup that is also optimized to your character build. Just a thought.

Erza Scarlate (a character OP and his friend is trying to emulate) is a master of X-quiping (switching armour and weapons at a moment notice) and she has tons of magic armours which give her some awesome abilities.

[Togath]

There's also the "called" armour property from MIC, which allows you to summon and equip a piece of armour or outfit at will, though it would cost 4k gold for each piece if I'm remembering correctly.
I think there's also a psionic power that can summon armour, but I can't remember it's name.

[Gotterdammerung]

So, I have a friend who is a fan of Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, and she wants to try building a Golf Bag melee character who works on similar principles (switching armor and gear at the moment's notice, in order to best be ready for a situation).

So far, we've got the putting the armor ON property taken care of (Called property from the Magic Item Compendium). So her character can put on armor pretty much instantly, allowing her to instantly adapt to situations that require different gear setups.

The problem is, I haven't been able to find anything that'll let her get rid of the armor. So while she can go encumbrance free all day, only donning armor when necessary, she's stuck lugging it around, and can't do any on-the-fly changes.

So, now my question is, is there anything a character can do to remove armor instantly, or at least in under a round? And are there any utility spells/enchantments out there that would let her teleport her armor back to storage when she's not using it?

Otherwise, we're stuck with the kind of lame solution of having a mule/hirelings carrying her armor around for her while we're in the field, and then having to strip out of her armor laboriously in order to be able to switch, again.

(I'm aware this strategy is a bit inefficient, but our DM is a little Monty Haul, so we can get away with blowing our GP on tricks like this)

So, tl;dr: Character needs way to remove armor as quickly as possible, an ideally, some spell or trick that will let her send it back to storage.

Honestly, if your wanting accuracy for an Erza character, I would recommend tweaking the Binder chassis and possibly reaching into incarnum for some inspiration to just homebrew a new unique erza base class. You can mine the anime and manga for details about the outfits available to her and their general abilities then translate those abilities into balanced Binds.

[Togath]

Honestly, if your wanting accuracy for an Erza character, I would recommend tweaking the Binder chassis and possibly reaching into incarnum for some inspiration to just homebrew a new unique erza base class. You can mine the anime and manga for details about the outfits available to her and their general abilities then translate those abilities into balanced Binds.

Binder would give at will armour(via Savnok), I'd forgotten about that one.
It would probably be the cheapest option.

[Gildedragon]

Another option is going the BoED Luminous Armour spells. "Summon" the armor by casting the spell, and it looks as you like it

[Mato]

Dragon Mag printed sectioned armor. By adding or removing sections you can alter it's basic properties.

By accepting a -20 penalty to Sleight of Hand, you can steal a section of armor as a Free Action, then drop it as another Free Action...

[doko239]

If you're open to Pathfinder stuff, there's an item called Folding Plate. It's an amulet that unfolds into a set of +1 Full Plate at a command word, then folds back at another command word. Pretty much exactly what you're looking for.

There's also a 2nd-level Cleric spell in Pathfinder called Instant Armor, that creates a Force-based suit of armor of a kind you specify, from chainmail to full plate. The lower the base armor type, the higher the enhancement bonus.

[Deepbluediver]

@Zebedee
I would use as many different solutions as you can. Just when your enemies think they've figured you out, switch tricks!


Why exactly would you need to switch armor at a moment's notice?

Armor can have a fair number of different enhancements on it.

Just off the top of my head you can start with:
heavy anti-melee armor (dwarven mountain plate, etc)
Spell-resistant armor
energy-immune armor (for those trips to different planes)
swimming armor
a lightweight armor (for movement or skill checks)
spikey armor, for if something tries to swallow me
and if I can get it, armor that lets me fly


Now maybe you can double up on some of those, but in many cases getting multiple armors all with low level enchants or modifications might actually be cheaper than trying to stack all that one one armor.

[rot42]

and if I can get it, armor that lets me fly


Celestial Armor, DMG 220.

Another option for getting armor on quickly is the Swift Ready spell from Forge of War. Does pretty much what you expect from the name.

[Gavinfoxx]

This person is going to have wayyyyy more than WBL, to do this...

[Togath]

This person is going to have wayyyyy more than WBL, to do this...

The binder option is actually a way around that, though it would need refluffing.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Some refluffed Chameleon/Master of Masks would work as well, maybe on top of a binder base. That would be a lot of quick changing versatile competence.

[JeminiZero]

How do you feel about homebrew? Because this can be solved with one simple item:

Morphic Armor The Morphic Armor can change both form and function according to the wearers will. Although comparatively expensive, it provides unparalleled versatility to those who choose this option. Each Morphic Armor has a point limit. This armor can assume the form and function of any enchanted steel armor whose gold cost does not exceed its point limit. The wearer can reshape the armor with a move action. (Or standard action, or whatever is up to your GM).

For example, lets say that Erza is wearing Morphic Armor with a 10,000 point limit. She has currently shaped it as a +3 Steel Chain Shirt (cost 250 + 9,000 = 9,250). With a move action, she can reshape it into a +1 Steel Full Plate with Light Fortification 25% and Glamered (total enhancement bonus +2, cost: 1,650 + 4,000 + 2,700 = 8,350 gp), or any other steel armor whose cost does not exceed 10,000 gp.

Cost: Morphic Armor simply cost three times their point limit. (Or four times, or whatever is up to your GM).

Special: Morphic Armor has a base form of some mundane masterwoek steel armor which it reverts to when placed in an antimagic field. This mundane form is determine at creation and cannot be changed thereafter.

[Hat-Trick]

There's an enchantment for shields called Variable in the MIC that allows you to change it into a buckler, light/heavy, or tower shield on command as a swift action. Seems like a fitting item for such a character, though its enchantment bonus and special things would be static.

[Zanthy1]

How do you feel about homebrew? Because this can be solved with one simple item:

Morphic Armor The Morphic Armor can change both form and function according to the wearers will. Although comparatively expensive, it provides unparalleled versatility to those who choose this option. Each Morphic Armor has a point limit. This armor can assume the form and function of any enchanted steel armor whose gold cost does not exceed its point limit. The wearer can reshape the armor with a move action. (Or standard action, or whatever is up to your GM).

For example, lets say that Erza is wearing Morphic Armor with a 10,000 point limit. She has currently shaped it as a +3 Steel Chain Shirt (cost 250 + 9,000 = 9,250). With a move action, she can reshape it into a +1 Steel Full Plate with Light Fortification 25% and Glamered (total enhancement bonus +2, cost: 1,650 + 4,000 + 2,700 = 8,350 gp), or any other steel armor whose cost does not exceed 10,000 gp.

Cost: Morphic Armor simply cost three times their point limit. (Or four times, or whatever is up to your GM).

Special: Morphic Armor has a base form of some mundane masterwoek steel armor which it reverts to when placed in an antimagic field. This mundane form is determine at creation and cannot be changed thereafter.

I wish my DM allowed Homebrew, because this is so awesome! I will work to pester him into allowing it someday, this is awesome! Well done JeminiZero!

[Sith_Happens]

Ring of Arming is also pretty sweet, though, now that I've looked into that. I'll have to discuss the options with her, since they have interesting expense implications. (The rings can be loaded, wizard style, before adventuring, but it limits her to three loadouts with two rings, whereas Calling allows vast flexibility, but becomes more expensive once you get over four suits of armor)

Make that four loadouts with three rings (Hand of Glory for the third).

[Hat-Trick]

On that note, no one's stopping you from having ten rings, you just can't have any two on at any one time. Have fun with that.

[Elycium]

Otherwise, we're stuck with the kind of lame solution of having a mule/hirelings carrying her armor around for her while we're in the field, and then having to strip out of her armor laboriously in order to be able to switch, again.


I know that this won’t answer your question, but if I were the dude doing that, I wouldn’t complain, especially if she looks like Erza.

[Gildedragon]

The Armour obviously needs the Gloryborn template to be as ridiculously impractical looking as possible

[SaintNick]

Not sure if Pathfinder is an option, but there's the Aegis Psionic class that does something similar. You might consider a Soulknife/Aegis/Metaforge option to be able to customize your weapon/armor on the fly without a heavy gold investment.

[DarkEternal]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but I have seen a lot of animes in my 29 years of life, and rarely have I found one that manages to piss me off as much as Fairy Tail.

[Elycium]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but I have seen a lot of animes in my 29 years of life, and rarely have I found one that manages to piss me off as much as Fairy Tail.

I havent see that much anime, but I do understand why it piss you off so much.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand, but I have seen a lot of animes in my 29 years of life, and rarely have I found one that manages to piss me off as much as Fairy Tail.

Okay, I gotta ask. Why?

I've seen the show and I think it's alright even if it does seem to hit every cliché in the book.

[Elycium]

Okay, I gotta ask. Why?

I've seen the show and I think it's alright even if it does seem to hit every cliché in the book.


3 words: excessive nakama punch.

[DarkEternal]

Because it sabotages itself constantly. I like the characters, I really do. Erza is a good example of one the rare female characters in shounen anime that I really dig(One Piece being the other, but then again, I'm extremely biased towards One Piece where I like pretty much everything), but they just want me to scream -insert expletive word here- in most episodes. Let's even take out of the equation it is predictable and that the main character is always in the spotlight(mind you, I've seen some odd 100 episodes, so not everything just yet, but I think 100 episodes is enough to make some sort of a general agreement here), but the fact that they change their story altogether, and everything is always nice and peachy.

"What, that dramatic moment which changed a couple of peoples lives forever and made them grow into different people? Oh wait, everything is okay, carry on! Friends forever!"

I know that anime(shounen one at the very least) is all about going through power ups and the like, but in the case of Fairy Tail it is just absurd, and not in a good way, honestly DBZ was more consistent and that's saying much. That character that wiped the floor with the main one all the time, and in reality(in DnD terms) has like 10 levels of you of wizard-cleric-druid, whatever you want? I'll just get pissed off enough and kick his arse, no problem.

I still watch it, because I like it. It's got some really nice moments, but God help me if not in every arc I find asking myself: "Why am I going through this? It's the same thing over and over again. Same pattern, everything, and even the good things they do to develop the characters, they will just retcon at the end."

[Hat-Trick]

All reasons why I shy away from Shonen these days. The last anime I watched in that genre that I enjoyed was Gurren Lagann, because it tells its story in 26 episodes, develops characters, and has all the over the top action I've come to enjoy from such series.

Another thing that might help with the character concept is a Metalline enchanted weapon, allows you to change the metal its made out of to get through those pesky DRs.