MukkTB
2015-05-10, 09:44 PM
What is armor?
I have come across a series of questions that relate to armor. Is mage armor actually armor? What kind of things make legal targets for magic vestment? Which items effect abilities that are keyed off wearing armor? Monks surely don’t lose their wisdom bonus to AC if mage armor is cast on them? What about if a monk gets an oracle revelation like ice armor? Would he lose his wisdom bonus if he put that on? What about trying to apply magic vestment to ice armor? My goal, given that we do not have a FAQ to answer the questions, is to find out if there is an answer that is closer to RAW than any other interpretation. I would prefer an answer that discourages cheese, and makes sense. If the answer is truly ambiguous I also want to be sure of that.
This is my best interpretation. If I am wrong I need clear counter arguments to be able to fix a thing. Please provide links to the relevant rules.
Armor is worn.
The first question is, what constitutes wearing an item? The section ‘Magic Items on the Body’ in the core rulebook states that, “items must be worn on (or over) a particular part of the body, known as a “slot.”” The section goes on to say that armor goes in the armor body slot. There is no prohibition that a character cannot physically have on 2 items. Nothing says you cannot put 5 rings on various fingers. But somehow the extra ones do not qualify as being worn in a slot. “A character can only effectively wear two magic rings. A third magic ring doesn't work if the wearer is already wearing two magic rings.” Note that nothing prohibits putting the third ring on a finger, it just doesn’t provide its normal benefits. For magic items, “a character may carry or possess as many items of the same type as he wishes. However, items beyond those in the slots listed above have no effect.” Wearing a magic item for the purposes of getting bonuses from it requires more than just putting it on. You have to somehow select that item as the magic item you are wearing in that slot.
In terms of disqualifying something from being armor, this is a mixed bag. You can physically wear armor on top of other armor, such as a breastplate over a quilted cloth. By the logic of magic items, it is okay to do this as long as it physically makes sense. Only one of the two things counts as being worn for the purposes of game mechanics. You can’t get the 6 AC from the breastplate and benefit from any magic on the quilted cloth. Overall this means that something oddly shaped or worn on top of regular equipment could still be armor.
It does seem that a thing has to occupy the armor body slot to be armor. If a thing occupies the belt slot, and provides and provides an armor bonus to AC that’s all well and good. The thing is not armor. It is something else, which I will call ‘armor like.’
Armor is badly defined.
The section on armor does not contain a clear and simple definition on what armor is. It is reasonable to assume that anything listed on the table is a kind of armor. But does that also mean that anything not listed on the table is not armor unless stated otherwise? That would be a pretty reasonable standard. It is armor if it is listed on the table of different types of armor. It is armor if it says that it is armor.
We do have a clear answer that there are armor like things that are not armor in the statement; “The armor bonus from a suit of armor doesn't stack with other effects or items that grant an armor bonus.” I’m going to try to avoid quibbling over ‘a thing can be armor but not a suit of armor.’ I’m going to take a wild guess and say that a ‘suit of armor’ is the exact same thing as ‘an armor.’ Choosing to use one term or the other was an artistic decision and not a technical one. Reading it any other way brings madness.
Bracers of Armor (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/a-b/bracers-of-armor)
These bracers occupy the wrist slot, so there is no question of the bracers themselves being armor. Most people will tell you that bracers of armor are fine for monks. There is no armor. That’s why the high cost of the item is justified. However the bracers create “an invisible but tangible field of force.” For however much it sounds like fluff, this is a RAW part of the item. And this field of force sounds suspiciously like armor in some respects. It gives a character an armor bonus, “just as though he were wearing armor.” I’m going to play semantics. “As though” is a synonym for “like”. “As though he were,” and “Like he was,” mean the same thing. The thing that the bracers create is ‘armor like.’ It is not armor and the RAW do not ever explicitly give it the armor tag. Nothing in the description calls it out as being armor, only like armor. We know that there are things that can be like armor from the armor section of the rules. These bracers don’t make sense if they actually are armor, because the characters they are intended for need them to not be armor. Bracers of Armor are not armor themselves and the effect that they create is not armor.
Mage Armor (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mage-armor)
Mage armor is the principle spell required for constructing Bracers of Armor. Not many people are confused by Bracers of Armor, but some people are unsure about Mage Armor. That is why I started with the bracers first. Mage Armor has the same, “invisible but tangible field of force.” We should ignore the name as pure fluff, but the forcefield is very RAW. The simple solution is that whatever the bracers of armor force field is, the mage armor force field is the same thing. It is not exactly that simple. For one thing the sources are different, a magic item, and a spell.
The real start of the confusion is that this is a conjuration, creation spell. See conjuration (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Conjuration)for details. We need to be very clear. This kind of conjuration creates a thing. It doesn’t have ongoing effects except for any magic required to hold the thing together. Whatever additional effects occur, they occur because the nature of the thing conjured. If the spell directly had an effect to increase armor, it wouldn’t be a conjuration. It would be an abjuration. Take Stinking Cloud (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/stinking-cloud) as an example of a conjuration. The spell makes the cloud. The cloud makes people sick. In the case of Mage Armor, the spell makes a thing. The thing provides an armor bonus to AC. A reasonable person may wonder if this thing is technically armor. We believe however, that there are things that provide an armor bonus to AC that are merely armor like. This thing qualifies as armor like, but nothing states that it is actually armor.
The second line creates more confusion without providing clarity. It states, “Unlike mundane armor, mage armor…” This leads to the idea that mage armor is a kind of armor that is different from mundane armor. If the writer wanted to differentiate mage armor from armor in general, he would have same “unlike armor, mage armor…” All this really does though is create ambiguity. The writer could have added the words, “unlike saltwater fish, mage armor cannot be fried and eaten.” For however stupid it would be to include this in the description of mage armor, it would be true. It would not imply that mage armor was a kind of freshwater fish.
It makes sense then to put mage armor in the ‘armor like’ category. Mage armor creates a thing that is like armor, but is not necessarily armor. There is not statement, “this is a kind of armor.” The thing the conjuration creates doesn’t explicitly occupy the armor slot. You still may retain the non-AC bonuses of magic armor you are wearing while receiving the benefits to AC from mage armor because the magic armor still fills your armor body slot. You cannot cast magic vestment on mage armor. The spell does not disable monk abilities.
Oracle ‘Armor’ Revelations
You can summon a variety of things as an oracle that provide an armor bonus to AC. A “coat of starry radiance,” “an armor made of bones,” “armor of ice,” “a cloak of shadowy darkness,” and so on. Are these armors? Are they armor like things? Well I’ve wrestled with the idea a bit, and I have the RAW solution, but it is weird. All these things clearly have the same idea behind them. They are a revelations intended to give the Oracle an AC bonus. I bet the writer did not intend for these things to differ all that much mechanically. They just threw flavor text into the description as they felt like. Unfortunately when we parse RAW we have to include the flavor text that has been woven in with other bits.
First off we need to touch on the part that these abilities create or summon things just like mage armor. Once they exist, we are interested in the nature of the thing that was created, not the ability that created the thing.
The thing that is described as “a cloak of shadowy darkness,” is actually a cloak. It occupies the shoulder slot so you cannot have it and a cloak of resistance +1 at the same time. This cloak provides an armor bonus to AC. Given that a cloak is listed as part of many outfits, you can cast magic vestment on it. A monk can have this without losing class abilities.
The thing described as “an armor made of bones,” is a true honest to god armor. It says it is armor. You can cast magic vestment on it. It occupies your armor slot and you cannot benefit from any other armor while wearing it. This includes effects not related to AC such as fortification, ghost touch or light. You pick one item to occupy this slot, and if you want the AC from the bones, the bones are all you can fit in the slot. A monk cannot have “armor made of bones” without losing class abilities for being armored.
This goes on. Some things are armor. Some things are coats, cloaks, shields and Nethys knows what else. The ancestor spirit shield revelation is particularly goofy. It is a shield that gives an armor bonus, not a shield bonus. They take up a slot appropriate for an item of their type. Most of them are candidates for magic vestment, as long as whatever they are constitute a part of an outfit, or they are called out as armor or shields. Monks can freely use some of them and cannot use others without drawbacks.
Any other effect that may or may not apply to these items is purely dependent on the revelation says the item that it makes is.
Magic Vestment
This spell can affect armor or shields. It does not affect things that are like armor or like shields.
There is a bigger question as to whether a magic item can make up an outfit of regular clothing. I feel, and research shows other people that hold the same opinion, that regular clothing is not referring to whether the item is magic or not, but whether the item is clothing or not. A breastplate is not regular clothing because it is armor. A stuffed alligator you tied to your head is not regular clothing. Clothing is clothing. This would include any item listed as a part of an outfit here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/goods-and-services/containers-bags-boxes-more). An item is a regular item of clothing regardless of its material or the magic in it if it shows up on any outfit.
If the intent was to eliminate magic items and items made of exotic materials as candidates, the word that would have been used would have been “mundane,” as in, “mundane clothing.” This would have signaled a non-magic non-fantastic item. Regular means usual practice (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/regular). In a fantasy setting, magic is a regularly occurring thing. It would not be irregular to wear a shirt with some enchantment on it. It would still be seen as strange and irregular to strap an alligator to your head.
Fluff and not Fluff
Names for given items and abilities do not inform you about the RAW nature of the ability. There are misnomers and things that can be confusing. For example a Fireball whose elemental descriptor has been changed to cold is still called a fireball. But the name doesn’t allow fire resistance to apply. The only RAW part of a name is that name’s function as a label for the ability, spell, or item.
Fluff interspersed among RAW in the description of an item or ability is still RAW. A DM can house rule fluff to be different, but otherwise a player is stuck with the fluff as well as the harder aspects.
Monk Limitations
I assume that a monk can benefit from armor bonuses to AC and does not count as armored as long as he does not have an item that occupies the armor body slot.
TL:DR & Summary
A thing is armor if:
-It appears on the table of armors.
-It says that it is armor.
A thing that provides an armor bonus to AC is not necessarily armor.
I have come across a series of questions that relate to armor. Is mage armor actually armor? What kind of things make legal targets for magic vestment? Which items effect abilities that are keyed off wearing armor? Monks surely don’t lose their wisdom bonus to AC if mage armor is cast on them? What about if a monk gets an oracle revelation like ice armor? Would he lose his wisdom bonus if he put that on? What about trying to apply magic vestment to ice armor? My goal, given that we do not have a FAQ to answer the questions, is to find out if there is an answer that is closer to RAW than any other interpretation. I would prefer an answer that discourages cheese, and makes sense. If the answer is truly ambiguous I also want to be sure of that.
This is my best interpretation. If I am wrong I need clear counter arguments to be able to fix a thing. Please provide links to the relevant rules.
Armor is worn.
The first question is, what constitutes wearing an item? The section ‘Magic Items on the Body’ in the core rulebook states that, “items must be worn on (or over) a particular part of the body, known as a “slot.”” The section goes on to say that armor goes in the armor body slot. There is no prohibition that a character cannot physically have on 2 items. Nothing says you cannot put 5 rings on various fingers. But somehow the extra ones do not qualify as being worn in a slot. “A character can only effectively wear two magic rings. A third magic ring doesn't work if the wearer is already wearing two magic rings.” Note that nothing prohibits putting the third ring on a finger, it just doesn’t provide its normal benefits. For magic items, “a character may carry or possess as many items of the same type as he wishes. However, items beyond those in the slots listed above have no effect.” Wearing a magic item for the purposes of getting bonuses from it requires more than just putting it on. You have to somehow select that item as the magic item you are wearing in that slot.
In terms of disqualifying something from being armor, this is a mixed bag. You can physically wear armor on top of other armor, such as a breastplate over a quilted cloth. By the logic of magic items, it is okay to do this as long as it physically makes sense. Only one of the two things counts as being worn for the purposes of game mechanics. You can’t get the 6 AC from the breastplate and benefit from any magic on the quilted cloth. Overall this means that something oddly shaped or worn on top of regular equipment could still be armor.
It does seem that a thing has to occupy the armor body slot to be armor. If a thing occupies the belt slot, and provides and provides an armor bonus to AC that’s all well and good. The thing is not armor. It is something else, which I will call ‘armor like.’
Armor is badly defined.
The section on armor does not contain a clear and simple definition on what armor is. It is reasonable to assume that anything listed on the table is a kind of armor. But does that also mean that anything not listed on the table is not armor unless stated otherwise? That would be a pretty reasonable standard. It is armor if it is listed on the table of different types of armor. It is armor if it says that it is armor.
We do have a clear answer that there are armor like things that are not armor in the statement; “The armor bonus from a suit of armor doesn't stack with other effects or items that grant an armor bonus.” I’m going to try to avoid quibbling over ‘a thing can be armor but not a suit of armor.’ I’m going to take a wild guess and say that a ‘suit of armor’ is the exact same thing as ‘an armor.’ Choosing to use one term or the other was an artistic decision and not a technical one. Reading it any other way brings madness.
Bracers of Armor (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/a-b/bracers-of-armor)
These bracers occupy the wrist slot, so there is no question of the bracers themselves being armor. Most people will tell you that bracers of armor are fine for monks. There is no armor. That’s why the high cost of the item is justified. However the bracers create “an invisible but tangible field of force.” For however much it sounds like fluff, this is a RAW part of the item. And this field of force sounds suspiciously like armor in some respects. It gives a character an armor bonus, “just as though he were wearing armor.” I’m going to play semantics. “As though” is a synonym for “like”. “As though he were,” and “Like he was,” mean the same thing. The thing that the bracers create is ‘armor like.’ It is not armor and the RAW do not ever explicitly give it the armor tag. Nothing in the description calls it out as being armor, only like armor. We know that there are things that can be like armor from the armor section of the rules. These bracers don’t make sense if they actually are armor, because the characters they are intended for need them to not be armor. Bracers of Armor are not armor themselves and the effect that they create is not armor.
Mage Armor (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/mage-armor)
Mage armor is the principle spell required for constructing Bracers of Armor. Not many people are confused by Bracers of Armor, but some people are unsure about Mage Armor. That is why I started with the bracers first. Mage Armor has the same, “invisible but tangible field of force.” We should ignore the name as pure fluff, but the forcefield is very RAW. The simple solution is that whatever the bracers of armor force field is, the mage armor force field is the same thing. It is not exactly that simple. For one thing the sources are different, a magic item, and a spell.
The real start of the confusion is that this is a conjuration, creation spell. See conjuration (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Conjuration)for details. We need to be very clear. This kind of conjuration creates a thing. It doesn’t have ongoing effects except for any magic required to hold the thing together. Whatever additional effects occur, they occur because the nature of the thing conjured. If the spell directly had an effect to increase armor, it wouldn’t be a conjuration. It would be an abjuration. Take Stinking Cloud (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/stinking-cloud) as an example of a conjuration. The spell makes the cloud. The cloud makes people sick. In the case of Mage Armor, the spell makes a thing. The thing provides an armor bonus to AC. A reasonable person may wonder if this thing is technically armor. We believe however, that there are things that provide an armor bonus to AC that are merely armor like. This thing qualifies as armor like, but nothing states that it is actually armor.
The second line creates more confusion without providing clarity. It states, “Unlike mundane armor, mage armor…” This leads to the idea that mage armor is a kind of armor that is different from mundane armor. If the writer wanted to differentiate mage armor from armor in general, he would have same “unlike armor, mage armor…” All this really does though is create ambiguity. The writer could have added the words, “unlike saltwater fish, mage armor cannot be fried and eaten.” For however stupid it would be to include this in the description of mage armor, it would be true. It would not imply that mage armor was a kind of freshwater fish.
It makes sense then to put mage armor in the ‘armor like’ category. Mage armor creates a thing that is like armor, but is not necessarily armor. There is not statement, “this is a kind of armor.” The thing the conjuration creates doesn’t explicitly occupy the armor slot. You still may retain the non-AC bonuses of magic armor you are wearing while receiving the benefits to AC from mage armor because the magic armor still fills your armor body slot. You cannot cast magic vestment on mage armor. The spell does not disable monk abilities.
Oracle ‘Armor’ Revelations
You can summon a variety of things as an oracle that provide an armor bonus to AC. A “coat of starry radiance,” “an armor made of bones,” “armor of ice,” “a cloak of shadowy darkness,” and so on. Are these armors? Are they armor like things? Well I’ve wrestled with the idea a bit, and I have the RAW solution, but it is weird. All these things clearly have the same idea behind them. They are a revelations intended to give the Oracle an AC bonus. I bet the writer did not intend for these things to differ all that much mechanically. They just threw flavor text into the description as they felt like. Unfortunately when we parse RAW we have to include the flavor text that has been woven in with other bits.
First off we need to touch on the part that these abilities create or summon things just like mage armor. Once they exist, we are interested in the nature of the thing that was created, not the ability that created the thing.
The thing that is described as “a cloak of shadowy darkness,” is actually a cloak. It occupies the shoulder slot so you cannot have it and a cloak of resistance +1 at the same time. This cloak provides an armor bonus to AC. Given that a cloak is listed as part of many outfits, you can cast magic vestment on it. A monk can have this without losing class abilities.
The thing described as “an armor made of bones,” is a true honest to god armor. It says it is armor. You can cast magic vestment on it. It occupies your armor slot and you cannot benefit from any other armor while wearing it. This includes effects not related to AC such as fortification, ghost touch or light. You pick one item to occupy this slot, and if you want the AC from the bones, the bones are all you can fit in the slot. A monk cannot have “armor made of bones” without losing class abilities for being armored.
This goes on. Some things are armor. Some things are coats, cloaks, shields and Nethys knows what else. The ancestor spirit shield revelation is particularly goofy. It is a shield that gives an armor bonus, not a shield bonus. They take up a slot appropriate for an item of their type. Most of them are candidates for magic vestment, as long as whatever they are constitute a part of an outfit, or they are called out as armor or shields. Monks can freely use some of them and cannot use others without drawbacks.
Any other effect that may or may not apply to these items is purely dependent on the revelation says the item that it makes is.
Magic Vestment
This spell can affect armor or shields. It does not affect things that are like armor or like shields.
There is a bigger question as to whether a magic item can make up an outfit of regular clothing. I feel, and research shows other people that hold the same opinion, that regular clothing is not referring to whether the item is magic or not, but whether the item is clothing or not. A breastplate is not regular clothing because it is armor. A stuffed alligator you tied to your head is not regular clothing. Clothing is clothing. This would include any item listed as a part of an outfit here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/goods-and-services/containers-bags-boxes-more). An item is a regular item of clothing regardless of its material or the magic in it if it shows up on any outfit.
If the intent was to eliminate magic items and items made of exotic materials as candidates, the word that would have been used would have been “mundane,” as in, “mundane clothing.” This would have signaled a non-magic non-fantastic item. Regular means usual practice (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/regular). In a fantasy setting, magic is a regularly occurring thing. It would not be irregular to wear a shirt with some enchantment on it. It would still be seen as strange and irregular to strap an alligator to your head.
Fluff and not Fluff
Names for given items and abilities do not inform you about the RAW nature of the ability. There are misnomers and things that can be confusing. For example a Fireball whose elemental descriptor has been changed to cold is still called a fireball. But the name doesn’t allow fire resistance to apply. The only RAW part of a name is that name’s function as a label for the ability, spell, or item.
Fluff interspersed among RAW in the description of an item or ability is still RAW. A DM can house rule fluff to be different, but otherwise a player is stuck with the fluff as well as the harder aspects.
Monk Limitations
I assume that a monk can benefit from armor bonuses to AC and does not count as armored as long as he does not have an item that occupies the armor body slot.
TL:DR & Summary
A thing is armor if:
-It appears on the table of armors.
-It says that it is armor.
A thing that provides an armor bonus to AC is not necessarily armor.