Best heavy armor without proficiency

[Unbodied]

I'm building a Forgeborn brutal disruptor and felt pretty clever when I discovered that by using a trait and taking the armor skill alternate Racial Trait it would be possible to use mithral Hellknight Plate with no penalty. Then I discovered the Comfort enchantment which if I understand the magic armor/weapons rules properly only costs money and doesn't take up any space that I could have used for other enchantments.

It wouldn't have been a problem, I could simply switch to even heavier armor... Except that while it has a low armor check penalty Hellknight Plate there are no other suits of armor in Pathfinder that I can find that grant a higher AC bonus. Which makes double stacking the racial trait and Trait trait pointless. So I have to ask, are there any sets of armor out there somewhere in Pathfinder that gives better bonuses than Hellknight Plate? And made of metal so they can come in Mithral editions?

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Heavy armor in Pathfinder is kind of an ordeal; unlike the other armor categories, its really just straight improvements all the way up the price range, with the possible exceptions of O-Yoroi and Tatami-Do, which have decent max dex numbers.

[Unbodied]

By the way, does Mithral heavy armor reduce your speed? The Forgeborn get the Slow and Steady trait, before I decided to go with heavy armor I planned to trade it out with normal speed. If I use mithral Hellknight Plate for example would it be preferable to have normal speed or slow but steady speed?


Heavy armor in Pathfinder is kind of an ordeal; unlike the other armor categories, its really just straight improvements all the way up the price range, with the possible exceptions of O-Yoroi and Tatami-Do, which have decent max dex numbers.
Um. Not really sure what you're trying to say here.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

What I am saying is no, hellknight plate is the best nonmagical heavy armor in pathfinder.

[Mithril Leaf]

No, unlike 3.5 which had Mechanus Gear and Stone Plate, Full Plate is the highest AC armor in Pathfinder.

You also might be forced to combine them if you consider that you Hellknight Plate is just Masterwork Full Plate, and thus it might be unable to double dip on the -1 ACF from Masterwork.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Stone plate does exist, but provides the same AC as full plate. Worse speed and dex bonus too.

[Oberon Kenobi]

On the plus side, Stoneplate can have a few unique nonmagical mods (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor#TOC-Armor-Modifications) added in. Up to you whether you think the lower speed and higher ACP is worth it, though. Lower speed wouldn't be a big deal if you have slow and steady.

[Mithril Leaf]

Stone plate does exist, but provides the same AC as full plate. Worse speed and dex bonus too.

Apologies, I specifically meant Thaalud Stone Armor, that insane armor that grants +12 AC from Anauroch the Empire of Shade.

[grarrrg]

By the way, does Mithral heavy armor reduce your speed?

Mithral only drops you one category, so Heavy > Medium. You would still have the Movement penalty.

[Oberon Kenobi]

That is the truth. Also, good earlier point re: Hellknight Plate already being masterwork. Hadn't realized that (or had forgotten). In that case, Full Plate is the same thing only cheaper.

And since Mithral heavy armor and Slow and Steady speed both leave you at 20 feet, I'd just recommend masterwork Stone Plate. No speed penalty compared to your other options because Slow and Steady, and that money you're saving by not making it Mithral can be spent on those jazzy modifications I linked earlier.

[Unbodied]

No, unlike 3.5 which had Mechanus Gear and Stone Plate, Full Plate is the highest AC armor in Pathfinder.

You also might be forced to combine them if you consider that you Hellknight Plate is just Masterwork Full Plate, and thus it might be unable to double dip on the -1 ACF from Masterwork.So if I get Mithral Hellknight Plate or Mithral Full Plate the armor check penalty would be the same? How big would the penalty be before applying Comfort or Trait reductions?



On the plus side, Stoneplate can have a few unique nonmagical mods (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor#TOC-Armor-Modifications) added in. Up to you whether you think the lower speed and higher ACP is worth it, though. Lower speed wouldn't be a big deal if you have slow and steady.
But Stone Plate can't be made of mithral can it? Cryptics don't get proficiency with anything but light armor so I need to reduce the penalties to zero.


Mithral only drops you one category, so Heavy > Medium. You would still have the Movement penalty.On the other hand doesn't Full Plate just reduce you to 20 ft anyway? So is there even a point with Slow and Steady for anything but Stone Plate?


That is the truth. Also, good earlier point re: Hellknight Plate already being masterwork. Hadn't realized that (or had forgotten). In that case, Full Plate is the same thing only cheaper.

And since Mithral heavy armor and Slow and Steady speed both leave you at 20 feet, I'd just recommend masterwork Stone Plate. No speed penalty compared to your other options because Slow and Steady, and that money you're saving by not making it Mithral can be spent on those jazzy modifications I linked earlier.
As mentioned earlier I'm not proficient which is why I need to cheat by reducing penalties.

Also I can't see anything about those modifications being limited to Stone Plate.

[Extra Anchovies]

It would be nice if you could, when using obscure content like Forgeborn alternate racial traits, provide a book/page citation and/or

What exactly are you trying to do? Are you trying to get the highest [armor bonus + max dex] that you can? What's your current Dexterity modifier, and how high do you plan to increase it? Breastplate has a potential AC only 1 point lower than full plate, and it's much less restrictive. Also, heavy armor is super-duper expensive (comparing hellknight plate to breastplate, you're paying 1600 more GP for 1 more AC and a check penalty 1 point larger), so medium is probably a better choice than heavy. Tatami-Do is half the price of Hellknight Plate for the same potential AC, but it has a check penalty one point larger.

However, you can't afford to take on even a single point of check penalty from medium or heavy armor, because you're an average-BAB class with no to-hit boosts and applying your ACP to attack rolls would kill you. There's no way that I know of to reduce ACP by more than 3 (from Mithral), which kind of puts heavy armor out of the question entirely (the lowest ACP you can get on heavy armor is -2 from Mithral Hellknight Plate). Note that mithral breastplate still counts as medium armor for proficiency purposes, so you'd have to stick with a mithral armored coat or just use light armor unless you want armor check penalties to your attack rolls.

That's not too much of a bad thing; a Mithral Chain shirt has a potential 10 AC to the Hellknight Plate's 12.

[Oberon Kenobi]

Yeah, that racial trait wasn't on pfsrd so I figured it was very beefy. I found it elsewhere with a Google though.

Mithral Hellknight armor would still be -3, not -2; it's described as expensive and fancy masterwork full plate, and the masterwork bonus doesn't stack with mithral.

You'd need the Comfort enchant, the alternate race trait and that one trait-trait, but yeah, you could get rid of the rest of that ACP. Neat trick.

[JDL]

As others have said, Hellknight plate's ACP is lower than fullplate as it's treated as a masterwork item, therefore you cannot 'stack' this with the benefits of mithral.

Potential ACP reduction:

Fullplate (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor/full-plate): -7
Mithral (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/special-materials#TOC-Mithral): -4
Comfort (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-armor/magic-armor-and-shield-special-abilities/comfort): -3
Armor Expert (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/combat-traits/armor-expert): -2
Forgeborn Second Skin: -1

Don't see where you're gonna get that extra -1 removed. May as well just wear a mithral breastplate of comfort and call it a day, since the +1 natural armor bonus from Forgeborn makes up the total difference in values to AC compared to fullplate anyhow, assuming you don't have another permanent source of natural armor. Plus you save a trait for something else and a heap of gold.

[Oberon Kenobi]

Fullplate's acp is only -6, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor) actually.

[JDL]

Good one, I was staring at Agile. Yep, you can trade a trait and 1,100 gp for +1 AC, assuming you have some other source of natural armor bonus planned.

[Crake]

Can you have Mithril Hellknight armor? Hellknight armor seems to be a uniquie set of armor, and arguably would have it's own construction constraints to work with hellknights. The Hellknight PrC alone reduce the ACP to -2, along with armor expert and the comfort for a final ACP of 0.


As others have said, Hellknight plate's ACP is lower than fullplate as it's treated as a masterwork item, therefore you cannot 'stack' this with the benefits of mithral.

Potential ACP reduction:

Fullplate (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor/full-plate): -7
Mithral (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/special-materials#TOC-Mithral): -4
Comfort (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-armor/magic-armor-and-shield-special-abilities/comfort): -3
Armor Expert (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/traits/combat-traits/armor-expert): -2
Forgeborn Second Skin: -1

Don't see where you're gonna get that extra -1 removed. May as well just wear a mithral breastplate of comfort and call it a day, since the +1 natural armor bonus from Forgeborn makes up the total difference in values to AC compared to fullplate anyhow, assuming you don't have another permanent source of natural armor. Plus you save a trait for something else and a heap of gold.

Why you start at -7 for fullplate when it's -6, I'm not too sure, but using that same breakdown, you could get to 0.

[Unbodied]

So the best option would be to keep the natural armor bonus, take a armor expert trait and then get Mithral Field Plate with a Comfort enchantment?

Edit:
Wait that's also Masterwork? Bloody h*ll why are there so many bloody traps?

Edit2:
Or isn't it? I'm confused now.

Benefit: Field plate is effectively the same as masterwork banded mail. You can purchase masterwork field plate.