daremetoidareyo
2017-05-18, 07:37 PM
I'm working on polishing the survival survival handbook. Survival (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?500214-Survival-Skill-Survival-Guide&p=21901674) I thought it would be neat to link the mud armor ability of the skill to some ideas on how to best take advantage of it. This is the second time that I've posted a thread about mud armor, (the first is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?500133-Mud-armor-optimization)) but I suspect that there are more gold nuggets in them thar optimization hills. The major contributions are listed below. But first, let's look at what we are talking about:
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
Contributions thus far: Many Thanks to the plurality of helpers!
Somehow take advantage of the limited duration of the armor itself.
Cover your mud armor sourced from regions high in dead materials with ungeant of timelessness to make it more permanent
Transmute Rock to Mud and vice versa?
Mix the mud with Vermeil: a red powder that causes The Red Curse and obscures magical auras. Dragon 315
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).
The invest armor feat?
Armor crystals
Adamantine Armor spikes + better weapon crystals
Vow of Poverty armor
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.
create frenzy dog (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/fx20011025a), raptors, vultures and dire vultures can give themselves +1 armor bonuses due to survival checks
Can't we make masterwork mud armor. So presumably it can be enchanted. Ironsoul Forgemaster, anyone
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.
Something funky 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)?
Artificer using Lesser Armor Enhancement to turn it into 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.
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
Contributions thus far: Many Thanks to the plurality of helpers!
Somehow take advantage of the limited duration of the armor itself.
Cover your mud armor sourced from regions high in dead materials with ungeant of timelessness to make it more permanent
Transmute Rock to Mud and vice versa?
Mix the mud with Vermeil: a red powder that causes The Red Curse and obscures magical auras. Dragon 315
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).
The invest armor feat?
Armor crystals
Adamantine Armor spikes + better weapon crystals
Vow of Poverty armor
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.
create frenzy dog (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/fx20011025a), raptors, vultures and dire vultures can give themselves +1 armor bonuses due to survival checks
Can't we make masterwork mud armor. So presumably it can be enchanted. Ironsoul Forgemaster, anyone
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.
Something funky 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)?
Artificer using Lesser Armor Enhancement to turn it into 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.