Armor Master's Handbook Is Out, Thoughts and Impressions

[NightbringerGGZ]

Well the book is out and I've started reviewing it so that I might revise my Fighter guide. So far my first impression is that the Fighter specific stuff isn't as impressive as what we received in Weapon Master's Handbook, but this book is chock full of feats and there are some potentially interesting combinations there.

We get Advanced Armor Training, which is similar to Advanced Weapon training, starting at level 7 though you can use feats to pick up these options starting at level 3. One thing to note, you're only sacrificing the reduction in your armor check penalty and the increase in your max dexterity bonus. The ability to move at full speed in medium/heavy armor is still retained, which is nice.


Adaptable Training - Pick from one of these skills: Acrobatics, Climb, Disguise, Escape Artist, Intimidate, Knowledge (Engineering), Profession (soldier), Ride and Swim. You use you BAB in place of ranks in that skill and the skill you choose counts as a class skill.

Armor Specialization - While wearing a specific type of armor you add 1/4 your Fighter level to your armor bonus with a max cap of 3 for light armor and 4 for medium.

Armored Juggernaut - Gain a bit of DR that scales up as you level, though lighter armors will have less DR. This stacks with the DR from having Adamantine armor as well as your level 19 DR bonus.

Armored Master - You gain one of the new Armor Mastery feats that you qualify for. Basically get another free bonus feat.

Armored Sacrifice - When damage would knock out/kill your fighter or an adjacent ally you can redirect the damage to a suit of armor or shield, taking no damage. This can be used up to 3 times per day at level 19.

Armored Sprint - Gain Run as a bonus feat and treat heavy armor as medium armor for determining how fast you can run.

Critical Deflection - Gain a scaling bonus to AC versus critical confirmation rolls. Starts at +2, increases by 1 at level 7 and every 4 levels thereafter.

Master Armorer - Use your BAB as your ranks in Craft (armor) and you gain Craft Magic Arms and Armor as well as Master Craftsman as bonus feats.

Quick Donning - Equip and remove armor at faster speeds, if you're wearing hastily donned armor you can make a Strength or Dexterity check to treat the armor has having been properly equipped. You can also choose to to remove portions of your armor when making a combat maneuver check, escape artist check or strength check to escape an effect that restricts your ability to move or act gaining a bonus to your check for every 1 point by which you reduce your armor bonus, up to half the armor's base bonus.

Steel Headbutt - You get a free attack at BAB - 5 on a full attack. It only gets to add half your strength to the damage roll, but you can enchant your helmet as a weapon separately from any enchantments in place on your armor.

Unmoving - You gain a bonus to your CMD against a chosen maneuver (Sunder is excluded) that scales with your level and how heavy the armor that you're wearing is.


So, some of these are decent but I'm not anywhere near as excited as I was about the AWT options. Steel Headbutt is, even with the penalty to the attack roll and weak damage. A 1d4+1/2 Strength attack roll is still going to wind up as an extra 3-5 damage. Armored Sacrifice could be potentially be a lifesaver, and getting multiple uses in a day are nice. What are your thoughts?

[Florian]

Adaptable Training and Master Craftsman look useful. I actually like that Profession (Soldier) is an option here, as that influences the mass battle system.

The rest? A bit underwhelming.

[NightbringerGGZ]

Adaptable Training and Master Craftsman look useful. I actually like that Profession (Soldier) is an option here, as that influences the mass battle system.

The rest? A bit underwhelming.

I agree, but at least they won't have as big of an impact on my Fighter guide as the AWT options did =). A bunch of the feats that were added will change things up though. I'm going to be tweaking Mobile Fighter and Sword & Board builds for one thing.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Combining Armored Sacrifice with adamantine armor could work pretty well. Like other people have said, not game-changing like the other one, but nice in and of itself. I'd like to roll up an actual tank fighter now, since it looks like it would actually work now...

[Elder_Basilisk]

Well the book is out and I've started reviewing it so that I might revise my Fighter guide. So far my first impression is that the Fighter specific stuff isn't as impressive as what we received in Weapon Master's Handbook, but this book is chock full of feats and there are some potentially interesting combinations there.

We get Advanced Armor Training, which is similar to Advanced Weapon training, starting at level 7 though you can use feats to pick up these options starting at level 3. One thing to note, you're only sacrificing the reduction in your armor check penalty and the increase in your max dexterity bonus. The ability to move at full speed in medium/heavy armor is still retained, which is nice.


Adaptable Training - Pick from one of these skills: Acrobatics, Climb, Disguise, Escape Artist, Intimidate, Knowledge (Engineering), Profession (soldier), Ride and Swim. You use you BAB in place of ranks in that skill and the skill you choose counts as a class skill.

Armor Specialization - While wearing a specific type of armor you add 1/4 your Fighter level to your armor bonus with a max cap of 3 for light armor and 4 for medium.

Armored Juggernaut - Gain a bit of DR that scales up as you level, though lighter armors will have less DR. This stacks with the DR from having Adamantine armor as well as your level 19 DR bonus.

Armored Master - You gain one of the new Armor Mastery feats that you qualify for. Basically get another free bonus feat.

Armored Sacrifice - When damage would knock out/kill your fighter or an adjacent ally you can redirect the damage to a suit of armor or shield, taking no damage. This can be used up to 3 times per day at level 19.

Armored Sprint - Gain Run as a bonus feat and treat heavy armor as medium armor for determining how fast you can run.

Critical Deflection - Gain a scaling bonus to AC versus critical confirmation rolls. Starts at +2, increases by 1 at level 7 and every 4 levels thereafter.

Master Armorer - Use your BAB as your ranks in Craft (armor) and you gain Craft Magic Arms and Armor as well as Master Craftsman as bonus feats.

Quick Donning - Equip and remove armor at faster speeds, if you're wearing hastily donned armor you can make a Strength or Dexterity check to treat the armor has having been properly equipped. You can also choose to to remove portions of your armor when making a combat maneuver check, escape artist check or strength check to escape an effect that restricts your ability to move or act gaining a bonus to your check for every 1 point by which you reduce your armor bonus, up to half the armor's base bonus.

Steel Headbutt - You get a free attack at BAB - 5 on a full attack. It only gets to add half your strength to the damage roll, but you can enchant your helmet as a weapon separately from any enchantments in place on your armor.

Unmoving - You gain a bonus to your CMD against a chosen maneuver (Sunder is excluded) that scales with your level and how heavy the armor that you're wearing is.


So, some of these are decent but I'm not anywhere near as excited as I was about the AWT options. Steel Headbutt is, even with the penalty to the attack roll and weak damage. A 1d4+1/2 Strength attack roll is still going to wind up as an extra 3-5 damage. Armored Sacrifice could be potentially be a lifesaver, and getting multiple uses in a day are nice. What are your thoughts?

Steel headbut has potential in some builds (particularly multiclassed ones). 1d4+1/2 strength isn't much. 1d4+ 1/2 strength + weapon training + greater magic weapon + boosted inspire courage + sneak attack + holy would add up pretty quickly. Find a way to get it on a paladin or cavalier and stack smite evil or challenge on top of it for even more bonus.

Armor specialization looks like a strong late game choice. Fighters who started with a mediocre dex bonus will have trouble maxing out the dex bonus on mithral fullplate much less their potential max dex with armor training. At level 20, the feat will amount to +5 AC which should be enough to make a big difference in survivability. My guess is that it probably starts being good around level 12 when it's worth 3 points.

Armored sacrifice has potential too--especially since it works for you or for allies.

[NightbringerGGZ]

A "Sword and Board" build using a Buckler might be interesting. Upsetting Shield Style will let you bash with a buckler as if it were a light shield and when you do so your target suffers a -2 attack penalty on attack rolls against you. The feat chain will let you make AoOs against him when he misses on an attack (by 5 or more) and makes the attack penalty affect the target no matter who he attacks. Stumbling Bash lets you apply a -2 penalty to AC when you shield bash a target, and Toppling Bash gives you a free trip attempt (at a -5 penalty).

A Fighter could have fun with that build, especially if you add in AWT Trained Grace. Alternatively you could go with the Shielded Fighter archetype, though trading away both AWT and AAT hurts the flexibility of that build. I'd probably have fun with a Weapon Master that fights with two Bucklers. :smallbiggrin:

[Ninjaxenomorph]

So how much IS that DR from Juggernaut?

[NightbringerGGZ]

So how much IS that DR from Juggernaut?

At level 3 , DR 1/- while wearing heavy armor.
At level 7, DR 2/- while wearing heavy armor, DR 1/- with medium.
At level 11, DR 3/- with heavy, DR 2/- with medium, DR 1/- with light.

This stacks with Adamantine armor and the bonus is increased by 5 when you gain Armor Mastery at level 19 (it technically doesn't stack). That's a maximum of DR 11/- at level 19 if you haven't traded away Armor Mastery. DR 6/- at level 11. Pretty decent actually.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Not too bad. Makes me want to play a vanilla fighter. I'll try to pick this book up over the weekend, give it a look. Is there a Armor Mastery feat similar to Weapon Material Mastery? That always struck me as an interesting idea.

[NightbringerGGZ]

Not too bad. Makes me want to play a vanilla fighter. I'll try to pick this book up over the weekend, give it a look. Is there a Armor Mastery feat similar to Weapon Material Mastery? That always struck me as an interesting idea.

Yes. You've got Armor Material Expertise and Armor Material Mastery, as well as Shield Material Expertise and Shield Material Mastery.

The shield options are limited to Darkwood, Dragonhide and Living Steel and can be used twice per day. Darkwood lets you deal bleed damage equal to 1 plus the shields enhancement bonus as a free action on an attack with a shield. Dragon hide lets you reduce energy damage as an immediate action (by 10, based on the type of dragon). Living Steel lets ou attempt a free action Sunder when you shield bash, but only against a metal weapon.

The armor options include Adamantine, Angelskin, Darkleaf Cloth, Dragonhide, Elyssian Bronze, Fire-Forged Steel, Frost-Forged Steel, Horacalcum, Living Steel, Mithral and Noqual.

You can use the abilities twice per day except for Horacalcum which can only be used once per day, giving you the ability to spend a swift action for a single round of Haste. Adamantine lets you covert half of lethal damage taken into non-lethal as an immediate action. Noqual increases the armor's resistance bonus for saves to +4. Darkleaf Cloth gives you woodland stride (as a Druid) for 1 minute (swift action). Dragonhide is identical to the shield version. Angelskin lets you shine as the Daylight spell for 1 round (swift action). Elyssian Bronze duplicates Adamantine but only against attacks from magical beasts or monstrous humanoids. Fire/Frost Forged Steel gives you a swift action to treat any unarmed strikes, shield bashes, attacks with spiked gauntlets or attacks with armor spikes as having the Flaming or Frost properties for 1 minute. Loving steel gives you an immediate action to use the metal's ability to damage a weapon after you've been struck (immediate action).

The Mastery feats give you two extra uses of the ability gained from the feats.

As for going with a Fighter, I hope you don't go with a Core Fighter as just using the base book doesn't give you many options. :smallbiggrin: Going without archetypes is a viable strategy though. I'd also point out the Tactician, which only trades away Armor Training 3 and is amazing for utility builds. There are a lot of neat little tricks I'm learning about as I've been doing a write-up on nearly every Combat Feat. For instance, combine Abundant Tactics with the Barroom Brawler feat and you're pretty close to Martial Flexibility.

[Psyren]

The style feats are a bit underwhelming but I definitely like Upsetting Shield Style. You could make a nasty AoO-focused Swashbuckler with it. The tower shield one isn't bad either since it can block spells.

Overall though, WMH had more goodies than this does.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I'm not insane. When I said 'core fighter' I should have said 'unarchetyped fighter using 1st party stuff'. And no, tactician trades away Weapon Training I Bravery, which is really useful with Improved Bravery in UI.

[Florian]

You could make a nasty AoO-focused Swashbuckler with it. The tower shield one isn't bad either since it can block spells.

Agreed. It looks good on a Swashbuckler, but compared to a plain old SnB Fighter build, it actually will become kind of a trap.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Aww. I was hoping Shielded Mage would help magi out, help me fulfill my dream of a shielded battlemage without having to be multiclassed... It is decent, however, for an actual eldritch knight, since it effectively eliminates the limitations of any shield except tower shields. At least Unhindering Shield works...

Edit: It could actually work, but you would have to take Quick Draw and use a light quickdraw shield.

[Triskavanski]

With the combonation of amg and wmg a fighter could easily end up with more skill points than a rouge. There are even feats in ultimate intrigue that help with that too

A few feats. Unburdening shield lets a monk use a shield without losing his monk powers. Gauntlet style is pretty good for someone focusing in close weapons

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Mobile Bulwark Style makes tower shields viable, I definitely want to try that one out. Removes the penalty completely by the last feat (level 7), turns the total cover action to swift or immediate (a guy 5-foot steps up to you, you put up tower shield as immediate action, denying him any attacks on you would be an amazing tactic to use), and making it so you can also shield an ally.

Now I REALLY want to build just a straight-forward tank fighter. By 8th level, you could get a minimum 27 AC with nonmagical full plate and tower shield, with only 3 feats invested. With adamantine armor you could have DR 5/-. Using Mobile Bulwark style with Enlarge Person or another size-altering effect, you could use your tower shield to shield an entire party. All that would be an investment of... six feats and one AAT option (Shield/Armor Focus, all 3 mobile bulwark feats, and the Armored Juggernaut and Armor Specialization taken as a feat and the 7th level Armor Training). A normal fighter as 9 feats by that level (10 for human), so you have some space for AWT options and other damage-boosting abilities. Though personally, Improved Bravery and Inspiring Bravery would be appealing to me.

[Sayt]

Can I get a logic check? Combat Maneuver Rolls are attack rolls. Bulette Rampage gives you a damage roll of (+6/8+ArmourToAC+(1.5*Str)). Power Attack gives a bonus on damage rolls, so you'd get the damage bonus based on the Bulette Rampage damage, no?

Also seems like it'd be pretty good on an Animal Companion in Heavy Barding and the Trample USR, though I'm not sure it'd be able to do both at the same time?

Does anyone find it weird that Spring-Heeled Style can't be used without armour?


Also, Secured armour seems really good, considering going up from Medium to Heavy fortification is usually a +2 enhancement bonus.

[Kraken]

Is there anything in there that reduces ASF for armor? Hellknight signifier/enforcer, mithril (or similar), and the arcane armor mastery feats are the only things I know of that exist up to this point. Of course there's still spell, but getting that on all your spells for the day without using up higher level slots is tricky, unless you can somehow keep arcane concordance up all day, or hate your DM and are using sacred geometry.

[Sayt]

Is there anything in there that reduces ASF for armor? Hellknight signifier/enforcer, mithril (or similar), and the arcane armor mastery feats are the only things I know of that exist up to this point. Of course there's still spell, but getting that on all your spells for the day without using up higher level slots is tricky, unless you can somehow keep arcane concordance up all day, or hate your DM and are using sacred geometry.

Well, there's Shielded Mage, which takes 15% off a shield's ASF.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

No, but there is a feat that completely eliminates the ASF for (non-tower) shields, which also makes it so you can complete somatic components while wearing a shield.