Help with picking enchantments for armor?

[IIzak]

I need help figuring out exactly which enchantments would be best for my warforged artificer's plating, any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Darth Stabber]

Glamered armor is nice, energy resist, shadow, silent moves, and ghost touch are all situationally okay. My personal favorite is fortification, but unless you shell out for the better versions they would be redundant with warforged.

[IIzak]

Why is fortification redundant? Also, would it just be better to add modifiers? like just make it +6 armor or something like that? or would abilities be better?

[Darth Stabber]

Why is fortification redundant? Also, would it just be better to add modifiers? like just make it +6 armor or something like that? or would abilities be better?

Light fortification is baked into warforged.

[IIzak]

Wow sorry, total brain fart there.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Soulfire, Mindarmor & Landing are generally useful imo. Add Proof against Transmutation when you can afford it.

[NevinPL]

Axe\spear\hammerblock is nice. Especially when stacked with some n/- damage reduction.
Blueshine is nice for protecting your pimped out armor from Rust Monsters, etc., and its bling gives you +2 to Hide.
It all depends on your armor role, but some general enhancements Darth Stabber provided, should work for everyone.


like just make it +6 armor or something like that?
Non-epic armor can go only to +5.


or would abilities be better?
You tell us. It's your butt it's gonna protect, so what do you want, need ?

[IIzak]

Non-epic armor can go only to +5.


You tell us. It's your butt it's gonna protect, so what do you want, need ?

I knew that about the +5, i'm just really dumb tonight for some reason. I feel like its kind of a toss up as to abilities or bonus, because there's the fact that I'm going to have more magic items than I know what to do with. These suggestions on enhancements are all very helpful though, thanks you guys very much for responding so quickly.

[captain fubar]

blue shine would remove the warforged racial vulnarability to rust in adition to giving imunity to acid and some stealth. normaly this ability just makes a item more durable but in the case of warforged since you are that item it is a great deal, even better it has a fixed price so you can add it to nearly any enhancments you already have with out breaking the bank (or your craft reserves as the case may be).

[TuggyNE]

Axe\spear\hammerblock is nice. Especially when stacked with some n/- damage reduction.

DR (almost) never stacks, so not so much.

[NevinPL]

DR (almost) never stacks, so not so much.
IIRC, 5/slashing "stacks" with 2/- giving 7/slashing, and 2/- in the end. That's not true ?

[Darrin]

blue shine would remove the warforged racial vulnarability to rust in adition to giving imunity to acid and some stealth.

The Durable property (500 GP, Dungeonscape) is 1/3rd the cost of Blueshine and also protects against green slime.

Could you give us an idea of your budget and sources available?

Soulfire (+4 enhancement, BoED) is one of the best, as is Freedom (+5 enhancement, MIC), but those are both very expensive. Normally my go-to with limited funds would be Fortification, but you've already got some of that via being Warforged.

First, I'd start with Easy Travel (+1500 GP, MIC) and Anti-Impact (+2000 GP, Complete Warrior). And I like sleepyphoenixx's suggestion, Mind Armor (+3000 GP, MIC) is a great bargain. Falling... eh. There are cheapers ways to get feather fall.

Poison Spikes is kinda fun (+1 enhancement, BoVD). Armor spikes with a permanent poison attack. The poison itself isn't all that strong (Fort save DC 16, 1d3 Str primary/secondary), but hey, everyone fails a Fort save eventually. Normally there's a chance you might poison yourself on an attack roll of "1", but oh look, Warforged are immune to poison.

There's really not a lot of decent armor enhancements in the +2 to +3 range, so it might be best to save up for Soulfire.

[Darth Stabber]

IIRC, 5/slashing "stacks" with 2/- giving 7/slashing, and 2/- in the end. That's not true ?

Nope! If you have 2/- and 5/slashing you take 5 off of non-slashing and 2 out slashing.

[TuggyNE]

Nope! If you have 2/- and 5/slashing you take 5 off of non-slashing and 2 out slashing.

This is correct.

In general, DR never stacks unless it very specifically says it does, and I'm having a hard time remembering an instance where this occurs; in particular, adamantine armor's DR doesn't stack with barbarian DR. Oh, here's one: the epic feat Damage Reduction stacks with barbarian DR and a few other things, but not most other sources.

[Spuddles]

If you are going to be using both hands in combat, get +5 armor and a +1 mithral buckler with all your fav. enchantments.

These won't work with warforged (unless they take the unarmored body feat) but the Chahar-Aina and Dastana (OA), stack with certain armors and shields, respectively. I believe WotC ruled that while a +5 chain shirt and a +5 Chahar-Aina won't give you +15 armor, their special abilities will stack. So you can get some pretty cheap abilities on your armor if you have a chain shirt, a buckler, a dastana, and chahar-aina by avoiding much of the power function in the cost formula for magic armor.

[GreenETC]

This also depends on the level that you're playing at. If you're playing at low levels, Displacement and Blur are pretty awesome, but by high levels they become negated by True Seeing, though Gleaming works better then.

[Immabozo]

the axe block/spearblock/mace block enchantments dont stack, but they do play nice together to effectively give you DR 2/-

Correct me if I am wrong, but your armor/weapons can have a +5 and a +5 equivalent enchanments, as long as it is worth less than 200k, before being epic, right?

[TuggyNE]

Correct me if I am wrong, but your armor/weapons can have a +5 and a +5 equivalent enchanments, as long as it is worth less than 200k, before being epic, right?

Yeah, that's right.

[Immabozo]

Yeah, that's right.

but expensive, haha

[Darth Stabber]

the axe block/spearblock/mace block enchantments dont stack, but they do play nice together to effectively give you DR 2/-

Correct me if I am wrong, but your armor/weapons can have a +5 and a +5 equivalent enchanments, as long as it is worth less than 200k, before being epic, right?

Any combination of enhancement bonus and abilities so long as the total does not exceed 10, and enhancement does not exceed 5. So it could be +1 with +9 in abilities.

[Immabozo]

Any combination of enhancement bonus and abilities so long as the total does not exceed 10, and enhancement does not exceed 5. So it could be +1 with +9 in abilities.

I'm fairly sure that I read somewhere a specification of +5/+5. But if I am wrong, I will gladly accept I am wrong. I've wanted to pile bonuses onto my animated +1 heavy shield and been unable to because of the +1/+5 limit I was hitting, or thought I was hitting.

[Spuddles]

I'm fairly sure that I read somewhere a specification of +5/+5. But if I am wrong, I will gladly accept I am wrong. I've wanted to pile bonuses onto my animated +1 heavy shield and been unable to because of the +1/+5 limit I was hitting, or thought I was hitting.

There's no such rule that I am aware of. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicArmor.htm)

[Immabozo]

There's no such rule that I am aware of. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicArmor.htm)

Ok, so as long as the combined total is less than +10 and the straight up + is no more than +5. Thank you for clearing that up

[IIzak]

Thanks for all the replies, and sorry I took a bit getting back. This is going to be like an overtime thing, I'm trying to plan out as much as I can because I want to enchant my armor and everytime I do its permenant and I don't want to mess up. The character is a craftsman at heart and likes to make ton's of things, so money is never really an issue for our group (It usually isn't for an artificer) and right now we are at lvl 9, but I'm pretty sure we are going to play this campaign to at least lvl 20 if not beyond.

[Coidzor]

Do you have decent access to magic vestment (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicVestment.htm)?

[NevinPL]

Nope! If you have 2/- and 5/slashing you take 5 off of non-slashing and 2 out slashing.
That sucks. I thought that n/- stacked with everything :(
In that case, Barbarian really sucks like people say.
Whole life living a lie... ;(

[TuggyNE]

That sucks. I thought that n/- stacked with everything :(
In that case, Barbarian really sucks like people say.
Whole life living a lie... ;(

Heh, yeah. Barbarian DR does not even stack with most other DR/- sources, such as adamantine armor. (Similarly, Mineral Warrior is less impressive on a Barbarian, or with stoneskin, and so on.)

[Immabozo]

That sucks. I thought that n/- stacked with everything :(
In that case, Barbarian really sucks like people say.
Whole life living a lie... ;(

I have a friend who is currently living this lie and of our DMs, 1 didn't catch it and the other was too weak on game mechanics to catch it. What can I point him to?

[TuggyNE]

I have a friend who is currently living this lie and of our DMs, 1 didn't catch it and the other was too weak on game mechanics to catch it. What can I point him to?

Here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction), at the bottom of the entry.

If a creature has damage reduction from more than one source, the two forms of damage reduction do not stack. Instead, the creature gets the benefit of the best damage reduction in a given situation.

[Immabozo]

Here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#damageReduction), at the bottom of the entry.

Thank you damn text minimum