Reducing ACP

[javijuji]

So I am working on crafting the biggest baddest armor I could and this is what I have so far:

Thaalud Stone Armor 6,000gp +12 +0 -8 40% 20ft 15ft 180lb
Riverine 25k
Base:
Market Price: 31000gp
1/3: 10334gp

Enchant:
Weightless (+2) Dex +4, ACP -5
Nimbleness (+1) Dex +1, ACP -2

I do not care about ASF% since this character is an Artificer (I have heavy weapon prof so its all ok).

There is one thing that worries me. It takes me 640 weeks to craft this? (Without Enchantments)

Armor DC = 22
Craft (Armorsmithing) = 22 (Taking 10)

22x22= 484 Sp of work a week

Armor Price = 310000 Sp

310000/484 = 640 weeks = roughly 12 years.

Is this correct?

If this is so I will just purchase it. But I doubht my DM will allow me to purchase an armor of such a rare material on the material plane.

[Chilingsworth]

Umm, how can you make Thaalud Stone Armor out of riverine?:smallconfused:

Also, you can get rid of that last point of ACP by building in the segmented property from Dragon mag #358. That will also add a point of max dex bonus.

[tyckspoon]

You can voluntarily increase the Craft DC in order to produce an item faster; if you could hit a DC 32 regularly, for example, you could do 32x32 = 1024 sp of progress every week, which would get it done more than twice as quickly. Which is still a really long time, but hey, you're talking about an item that would be the signature life's work of a master armorer here..

What you want to do is Fabricate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm) that sucker. If you can afford to buy that armor, buying or crafting a scroll of Fabricate should be quite affordable.

[Chilingsworth]

What is the "raw material" form of riverine, anyway? Does it even have a raw material form, or do riverine objects have to be made in a single step: something like "elemental planar water+wall of force encapsulation= riverine item."?

[Flickerdart]

A single casting of fabricate will turn a bunch of riverine into the armour if you can hit the DC to craft it in the first place.

[SowZ]

Umm, how can you make Thaalud Stone Armor out of riverine?:smallconfused:

Also, you can get rid of that last point of ACP by building in the segmented property from Dragon mag #358. That will also add a point of max dex bonus.

I'm now picturing the AC you could get from gear alone, since such an investment in the armor means I assume you want to be tanky. I believe Riverine actually limits your AC, total, though. Since it means you can't get a Ring of Deflection. Your DM may allow it. I would, as a DM. Your paying quite a bit for it, regardless.

Anyways, 10 flat, a +6 Dex bonus, (with segmented,) +5 Thaluud Stone Armor, +5 Animated Shield, +5 Natural AC amulet, (and assuming you can,) +5 Ring of Protection, and a Parrying Weapon. That's fifty one AC. Not bad for a squishy.

[Chilingsworth]

Yeah, I don't think you can do this, assuming this is the armor you're talking about:

THAALUD STONE ARMOR
Thaalud stone armor is a mighty suit of plate armor composed
of heavy stone plates held together by metal rivets and hinged
joints. The stone used is a rare variety that is very dense and
resistant to chips and fractures. The breastplate is hinged
like the visor of a helmet, so the tomb tapper can use its
powerful chest maw in battle. The armor is extremely heavy
but provides little hindrance to greater tomb tappers. It is
normally found sized for Huge creatures, but versions of
smaller size could be constructed by someone of appropriate
skill. The statistics below are for a set of the armor sized for
a Medium creature.

Thaalud Stone Armor: heavy armor; cost 2,800 gp;
armor bonus +12; max Dex bonus +0; armor check penalty
–8; arcane spell failure 40%; speed 30 ft./20 ft., 20 ft./15
ft.; weight 180 lb.

In otherwords, one of the reasons the armor has its abilities is the properties of the stone it's made of. i.e. the stone itself is a special material. You generally can't make an armor out of two special materials.
To put it another way: If you made Thaalud Stone Armor out of riverine, it wouldn't be Thaalud Stone Armor. It would be something else, probably riverine fullplate.

On another note: That item description came from brilliantgameologists, so apparently at least some of the site is working now.

[SowZ]

Yeah, I don't think you can do this, assuming this is the armor you're talking about:

THAALUD STONE ARMOR
Thaalud stone armor is a mighty suit of plate armor composed
of heavy stone plates held together by metal rivets and hinged
joints. The stone used is a rare variety that is very dense and
resistant to chips and fractures. The breastplate is hinged
like the visor of a helmet, so the tomb tapper can use its
powerful chest maw in battle. The armor is extremely heavy
but provides little hindrance to greater tomb tappers. It is
normally found sized for Huge creatures, but versions of
smaller size could be constructed by someone of appropriate
skill. The statistics below are for a set of the armor sized for
a Medium creature.

Thaalud Stone Armor: heavy armor; cost 2,800 gp;
armor bonus +12; max Dex bonus +0; armor check penalty
–8; arcane spell failure 40%; speed 30 ft./20 ft., 20 ft./15
ft.; weight 180 lb.

In otherwords, one of the reasons the armor has its abilities is the properties of the stone it's made of. i.e. the stone itself is a special material. You generally can't make an armor out of two special materials.
To put it another way: If you made Thaalud Stone Armor out of riverine, it wouldn't be Thaalud Stone Armor. It would be something else, probably riverine fullplate.

On another note: That item description came from brilliantgameologists, so apparently at least some of the site is working now.

It sounds like he is correct. But, on the bright side, Riverine is not necessarily worth it anyway since as previously stated, it means you can't wear a Ring of Protection so your AC potential drops by 5 which is a big deal when you want to be tanky.

[javijuji]

Umm, how can you make Thaalud Stone Armor out of riverine?:smallconfused:

Also, you can get rid of that last point of ACP by building in the segmented property from Dragon mag #358. That will also add a point of max dex bonus.

The Segmented property increases Max Dex Bonus by 1. I found nothing about it reducing ACP.

[javijuji]

Umm, how can you make Thaalud Stone Armor out of riverine?:smallconfused:

Also, you can get rid of that last point of ACP by building in the segmented property from Dragon mag #358. That will also add a point of max dex bonus.

I missed that. Thank you. What about the Metal Rivets? It sais the armor is held by Metal Rivets. Could the material on these be changed to further improve it?

[javijuji]

Also I think I forgot to reduce ACP by 1 from being Masterwork....

[Darrin]

Weightless (+2) Dex +4, ACP -5


Where did this enhancement come from? I don't recognize it.


I missed that. Thank you. What about the Metal Rivets? It sais the armor is held by Metal Rivets. Could the material on these be changed to further improve it?

I don't think so. Even if you replaced the rivets with a special material, this wouldn't be enough to derive any special benefit from it, since the stone itself would still constitute the majority of material in the armor. I'm not sure if there's a specific rule on this, but I think if an item is made out of two special materials, whichever material is in the majority is the one that "counts".

As has already been pointed out, replacing the metal rivets with riverine would just pointlessly increase the cost without adding much of a benefit. The only instance I can think of where this might make a difference is if you had a druid that wanted to replace the metal rivets with ironwood. As a DM, I would allow this, but I'm not sure that's RAW, and ironwood is really difficult to price, because I don't think the designers ever bothered to tell us how much it costs.

Now, you could add armor spikes or netcutter spikes (RotW) to the armor, and make those out of a special material. That would add something, although unless it's Warning or Defending, it probably wouldn't be all that defensive.

If you're looking for something else to add to the armor, consider the templates from DMGII:

Feycraft: +1 to verbal Bluff checks
Fireshaped: +2 on saves vs. fire effects
Githcraft: +1 on Concentration checks
Gloryborn: +1 to AC when charging
Hellforged: MaxDex decreases by 1, ACP decreases by 1, ASF +5%, +1 AC when adjacent to an ally
Pitspawned: inflicts 1 damage to anyone that hits you in melee
Soulforged: +2 bonus on checks to resist bull rushes and trips

[kardar233]

Where did this enhancement come from? I don't recognize it.

I'm fairly sure it's from Underdark.

[Darrin]

I'm fairly sure it's from Underdark.

No, that's Half-Weight, which, while quite nifty, has no effect on ACP. (It's also a +3 enhancement, unless you pair it with Illithidwrought.)

[javijuji]

It's from "Arms and Armor". 3rd party book.

I would like to apply a lot of those templates but as I said I am crafting this myself. So I have no way of saying that I crafted this in one of the 9 hells to get the Hellforged template for example.

Also from an optimization point of view these are awesome;:

Feycraft: +1 to verbal Bluff checks
Fireshaped: +2 on saves vs. fire effects
Githcraft: +1 on Concentration checks
Gloryborn: +1 to AC when charging
Hellforged: MaxDex decreases by 1, ACP decreases by 1, ASF +5%, +1 AC when adjacent to an ally
Pitspawned: inflicts 1 damage to anyone that hits you in melee
Soulforged: +2 bonus on checks to resist bull rushes and trips
__________________

But how does one explain having all of these from an RP point of view?

[TuggyNE]

I don't think so. Even if you replaced the rivets with a special material, this wouldn't be enough to derive any special benefit from it, since the stone itself would still constitute the majority of material in the armor. I'm not sure if there's a specific rule on this, but I think if an item is made out of two special materials, whichever material is in the majority is the one that "counts".

There is.
If you make a suit of armor or weapon out of more than one special material, you get the benefit of only the most prevalent material.

(I may not have access to many books, but I try to make the best of what I've got. :smallwink:)

[Chilingsworth]

The Segmented property increases Max Dex Bonus by 1. I found nothing about it reducing ACP.

I misremembered, sorry. But yeah, making it masterwork, and adding the two enhancements you already have would reduce your ACP to zero.

[Mithril Leaf]

If you're using Arms and Armor just use double plate, it can be made of anything instead of just stone.

[Alienist]

You can voluntarily increase the Craft DC in order to produce an item faster; if you could hit a DC 32 regularly, for example, you could do 32x32 = 1024 sp of progress every week, which would get it done more than twice as quickly. Which is still a really long time, but hey, you're talking about an item that would be the signature life's work of a master armorer here..


Just a nitpick, by RAW you can't just add an arbitrary number to the difficulty, you increase the difficulty by +10. RAI may allow you to do this more than once, it's not entirely clear, but it seems clear that it would be in steps of 10. Since Masterwork is 20*, you'd then be looking at hitting crafting 'sweet spots' of 30 and 40.

*The crafting dcs for mithril and adamantium are subsumed into the masterwork dc, I assume this is the case unless either of the materials has a higher crafting dc than 20 (if so, I humbly withdraw mine objection)



What you want to do is Fabricate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm) that sucker. If you can afford to buy that armor, buying or crafting a scroll of Fabricate should be quite affordable.

Yes to Fabricate.
Raw material cost is one third of market price (for base armour, before any enchanting shenanigans). Cost of Fabricate is what ... 50gp x caster level? Minimum 450. Even if it cost you 1000gp for the fabricate, it would still be worthwhile for a base materials cost higher than 3000gp.

Or, if you want it now rather than waiting five years for it.

NB: yes, you just broke the economy with a level 5 spell. Congrats. Use this power only for good.