[PF] Piecemeal Armor

[Baron Malkar]

On a lark I decided to try my hand at making a suit of piecemeal armor for an archer I am working on and ended up with a result that makes me think I screwed up somewhere.

Combining Do-maru torso armor, horn lamellar arm armor, and Hide leg armor I get a medium armor bonus of +8, a max dex bonus of +4, an armor check penalty of -4, and a spell failure chance of just 30%.

That seems considerably better than any other suit of medium armor in the game. Also if you add an armored kilt to this suit to make it heavy armor it seems to out perform those as well.

Did I make a mistake?

[Yora]

Let's see:

{table=head]Name | AC | Max. Dex | penalty | Spell failure | Speed | Weight
Do-maru torso | +5 | +4 | –4 | 25% | 20 ft. | 30 lbs.
Lamellar, horn arms | +1 | +5 | -2 | 25% | 30 ft. | 5 lbs.
Hide legs | +1 | +4 | –2 | 10% | 30 ft. | 7 lbs.[/table]
+1 AC for a full suit and +5% spell failure for mismatched parts.

Which gets a total of +8 AC, +4 max. Dex, 30% spell failure, 20 ft. speed, and 42 lbs. of weight. While it doesn't say so in the rules, armor check penalty is apparently only the worst one and not added up, so that would be -4.

Seems correct to me.

Do-maru seems to be a special case, since as described the normal armor is just a breastplate without arm or leg parts, so adding those to it would of course make it a lot better.

[Baron Malkar]

Darn it. I am trying to make a ranger who makes all of his weapons and armor out of primitive materials (bone, horn, leather, stone) in as much of a hodge podge way as possible and somehow they keep ending up better than more traditional materials.:smallfurious:

Does anyone know of a way to make a bow seem more primitive?

[Bhaakon]

It's a stick and string. Even a composite bow is crafted from horn, wood, and animal glues. You don't get much more primitive than that.

[Yora]

The lamination process of a composite bow is relatively complex though and at least craftsmen of high quality bows let the components and the finished bow dry for months or even years in controlled air conditions.

A regular longbow is just a correctly selected piece of wood carved into the correct shape. While there are all kinds of tools that can make the work faster and easier, in the end it's still just cutting away the wood that shouldn't be on the bow. They were used by stone age hunters, it's a very primitive construction. (At least the building process is. When selecting the right type of tree of the correct size and age and a perfectly grown specimen, the microscopic structure of the wood itself is actually extremely sophisticated and the key to the effictiveness of the bow.)

Though I have to say, a do-maru doesn't really strike me as a simple or primitive type of armor. They are still made from steel plates with a special coating of water-resistant paint and tied together with large amount of silk string.
I would probably go with horn lamellar torso, leather lamellar legs, and hide or leather arms.

As a melee weapon, I would suggest a shortspear. Again, one of the most simple yet best weapons there is.

[Baron Malkar]

You are quite right about how complex a bow can be to make, hence my desire to make it feel more primitive. As for your suggestions for armor, every option you presented was strictly worse than the one in my original post and while Do-maru have been known to be made from steel the majority were simply leather scales bound together with cord and lacquered into plates. Finally I decided to go with a Tepoztopilli for my melee weapon to keep with the feel of the character.

[Yora]

If you want a simple bow, just take a regular longbow. If you know how to select it and cut it the right way, it can be an extremely good bow, but it's still just a piece of carved wood without any specials or gimicks.

Do-maru is a rather lose term used for a range of different armors. The one in Ultimate Combat seems to be meant to represent the most refined and sturdiest variants. If you simply want to use the construction method but have it made out of leather scales, use the leather lamellar torso.