Adamantine or AC

[Frostfel Wizard]

being very new I don't know a lot of things I should it seems. I've been looking all over for the answer to this and haven't found it anywhere. A thread was talking about how good an Adamantine Breastplate is. To me it seems that it would be more useful to raise your AC and potentially have a swing entirely miss you, rather than preventing 2 damage, which by the point you can afford something like that, hardly seems worth it to me. Is there something I am missing?

[Namfuak]

I don't think anyone talks about adamantine as an armor material. Do you mean mithril? If so, mithril drops the armor weight category of any armor by one, lowest light (as well as reducing Arcane Spell Failure, armor check penalty, and increasing the max dex to ac). Mithril breastplates are often worn by rogues and other light armor users to get a little extra AC without a whole lot of cost (at the level where they get a choice in this sort of thing), and ditto for mithril full plate on medium armor users. Also, wizards and other no armor spellcasters like mithril twilight chainmail because it has no arcane spell failure chance, so it's a nice bit of passive AC.

[Frostfel Wizard]

Well I've seen the adamantine breastplate mentioned in specific a couple times. And the material description mention that it gives DR 1/- if it's light armor, DR 2/- for medium, and DR 3/- for heavy. I was thinking maybe that this was in addition to the standard bonus to AC but I couldn't fin that anywhere. Also, I have collected and read ever 3.x sourcebook, so it could just be one of those crappy additions somewhere.

[Fax Celestis]

Well I've seen the adamantine breastplate mentioned in specific a couple times. And the material description mention that it gives DR 1/- if it's light armor, DR 2/- for medium, and DR 3/- for heavy. I was thinking maybe that this was in addition to the standard bonus to AC but I couldn't fin that anywhere. Also, I have collected and read ever 3.x sourcebook, so it could just be one of those crappy additions somewhere.

Armor special materials (such as adamantine) provide their benefits in addition to their typical AC and other effects. Adamantine breastplate gives DR 2/-- in addition to its standard AC.

That said, it's still not very good. DR is only worth it at very low levels or in excessively large quantities.

[Frostfel Wizard]

Thank you :smallsmile:. I didn't think to look at general rules for special materials. Seems rather obvious now though XD.

[Chronos]

Adamantine can be worth it on full plate, because if you're the type to wear heavy armor and don't have much dex, well, what else are you going to make your armor out of? DR 3 might not be much, but it's still something.

I can't see it on a breastplate, though. If you're not limited to medium armor, wear full plate, and if you are, wear mithral full plate.

[Frostfel Wizard]

I was building a cleric and I thought of using mithril fullplate. I looked it up three times to make sure I wasn't cheating XD.

[Silvanoshei]

Yeah, well... at least Adamantine is useful for weapons and armor. Mithril is completely worthless as a weapon. That said, if your campaign's DM is a A-hole and is sundering your weapons, Adamantine is the ticket.