Mud armor optimization

[daremetoidareyo]

I'm working on a personal survival survival handbook. I just finished scouring every source i have for survival skill related goodies and I found mud armor in Races of Faerun.

Creatures with access to the right sort of clays and soils (generally found in warm forests, jungles, and swamps) sometimes plaster their skin and hair with mud, creating a crude but effective form of armor. Applying mud armor requires a successful Survival check (DC 10). Mud armor crumbles into uselessness after 1d2 days. Adorning yourself or another creature with mud armor takes 10 minutes, as does washing it off. Wild dwarves are the only people who normally employ mud armor. Cost 0gp, AC bonus +1, max dex bonus: +5; armor check penalty -1, arcane spell failure 0%, 30’, 20’ 8 lbs

Anyway to optimize armor that you glob on but it falls off after 2 days? Bonus points if you can do it with a ranger chassis.

Also, if any of you have Player's guide to Eberron, could you control f and search for "survival" and "track", and report any non-feat hits and PM them to me?

[ben-zayb]

It costs 0gp, so can't it technically be Crafted in no time?

For some reason, this reminds me of Peter Parker's web adhesive. So maybe someone can find a way to make this useful due to its supposed disadvantage of lasting only a limited time?

[Inevitability]

The upper layers of rainforest soil largely consist of dead material, right? Cover it in Unguent of Timelessness to create armor that'll last for years.

The armor is also interesting for wizards. Even if you don't enchant it, you have a free permanent +1 AC bonus.

[Extra Anchovies]

I wonder how this stuff would interact with Transmute Mud to Rock.

[Bullet06320]

mix the mud with Vermeil: a red powder that causes The Red Curse and obscures magical auras. Dragon 315

[MasterFu]

A 19th level warrior who has specialized in mud armor could parlay his training into a +4 bonus on Intimidate checks (and a +2 DC to resist intimidation attempts).

[daremetoidareyo]

The invest armor feat?
Armor crystals
Adamantine Armor spikes + better weapon crystals?

Out of ideas after that

[DrMotives]

The invest armor feat?
Armor crystals
Adamantine Armor spikes + better weapon crystals?

Out of ideas after that

I love this. I think the modern equivalent would be to take an old broken down car from the junkyard that's held together with rust & duct tape, and put some new rims on it.

[Hamste]

Is it light armor or does it not have a classification?

[Telonius]

With a value of 0 gp, that might actually be usable by a Vow of Poverty character.

[Bronk]

The armor is also interesting for wizards. Even if you don't enchant it, you have a free permanent +1 AC bonus.

You could also make it last a lot longer - maybe indefinitely? - by using an arming ring to take it off and put it back on again. That has the bonus of being a lot faster (a standard action versus ten minutes) and probably a lot cleaner too.

[daremetoidareyo]

Create Frenzy dog opens up a neat combo. In that you can get animals to apply mud armor to themselves. Free barding!

[Bullet06320]

Create Frenzy dog opens up a neat combo. In that you can get animals to apply mud armor to themselves. Free barding!

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/fx20011025a

heres the link for create frenzy dog

so they roll over in the mud?

[Troacctid]

Leather barding is only 20 gp, requires no proficiency, and gives twice the AC.

[Darrin]

Well, we seem to have solved the duration issue, for the most part (Ring of Arming and/or Unguent of Timelessness). I don't see anything in the rules that says we can't make masterwork mud armor. So presumably it can be enchanted. Ironsoul Forgemaster, anyone?

Something else occurs to me... I don't see anything in the rules that says you can't use special materials (other than common sense, of course). Riverine mud armor, shall we say?

[daremetoidareyo]

Well, we seem to have solved the duration issue, for the most part (Ring of Arming and/or Unguent of Timelessness). I don't see anything in the rules that says we can't make masterwork mud armor. So presumably it can be enchanted. Ironsoul Forgemaster, anyone?

Something else occurs to me... I don't see anything in the rules that says you can't use special materials (other than common sense, of course). Riverine mud armor, shall we say?

Special materials would probably up that survival check pretty significantly.

dwarfcraft seems like an easy template to add. Paired with ironsoul forgemaster and armor spikes/razors.

[Zaq]

Is it light armor or does it not have a classification?

It appears to be considered light armor (see the table on Races of Faerun pg. 157), so it won't help Monks, Ninjas, or anyone who is not allowed to wear any armor at all.

I feel like we can do something goofy with Rebuild Item, though I admit that it's probably harder to learn a 3rd level LCT utterance (which a Truenamer learns at ECL 11) than to just get some Unguent of Timelessness.

Part of me wants to try to make some kind of argument that mud armor that's been enhanced in some way and then removed can still count as the same suit of armor if you then apply the same mud to another creature, but I can't think of anything that's actually interesting to do with that, and it's kind of veering outside the scope of the rules anyway.

I do like the mental image of an Artificer using Lesser Armor Enhancement to turn it into glamered (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicArmor.htm#glamered) armor, but that isn't actually useful so much as it is amusing. Particularly because mud armor explicitly involves caking mud into your hair.

The material component for Heroics (which everyone ignores because it has no cost and therefore is found in a spell component pouch for free, but whatever) is a bit of armor that has been used by a 15th level Fighter. There's nothing saying that armor couldn't have been mud armor. Maybe that's a retroactive explanation of why it has no listed cost? Again, not really so much useful as simply amusing.