Sundering the Aegis Astral Suit

[darkcser]

I've been thinking about playing an Aegis for some time but it seems like the Astral Suit by RAW is rather vulnerable to sunder (and PF seems to allow worn armor to be sundered).

By RAW it seems to have no enhancement bonus to armor so this means

As medium armor
hardness 10 (metal for chain mail and breastplate)
hp 30 (5 x armor bonus of +6)

As heavy armor
hardness 10 (half/full plate)
hp 40/45 (5 x armor bonus +8/+9)

Even if the improved armor customization is taken to the max (4 times at level 20), it's still only providing an additional +20 hp and no additional hardness (since it's an armor bonus not an enhancement bonus).

Now adamantine weapons become fairly easy to buy starting at level 6 or so (wealth by level at level 6 is 16,000 gp, 25% of that is 4,000 gp -enough for an adamantine lucerne hammer). Power attack, powerful build and other size effects can probably pump the damage up easily so that that the armor is destroyed in an attack or two.

This feels like a huge oversight. Maybe it's due to the fact that worn armor couldn't be sundered in 3.5. It seems odd for Astral Suits that provide DR/- (like adamantine armor) starting at level 2 to be so weak otherwise.

It also brings up the question of what happens if the armor is sundered -do all customizations disappear until the armor is reformed? Even if you have the Quicken Suit feat (form suit as a free action once a round) it still leaves you vulnerable since you can only use it on your turn.

This seems like a huge weakness for the Aegis class as a fairly typical attack pattern is to PA to sunder the armor, and then apply the PA damage to the now armorless defender in the follow up iterative attacks. For people with regular armor they have the benefit of special materials like mithril and adamantine as well as the enhancement bonus boost to hardness and hp (+2 hardness/+10 hp per +1 enhancement bonus).

Have I overlooked something?

Note that the Mind Blade from Soul Knife starts out at hardness 10 and 10 hp but can have actual enhancement bonuses so with a +5 bonus that's hardness 20 and 60 hp total at level 15.

So... how should we fix this?

My original instinct was to just treat the astral suit as adamantine starting at level 2 since this where DR2/- kicks in -very much like a suit of medium adamantine armor. This would give it hardness 20 and 1/3 more hp so total of 40hp for medium and around 60hp for heavy. Furthermore it prevents the "bypass hardness less than 20" of adamantine weapons. This is better but seems very front loaded.

What if we treat each point of DR/- like an enhancement bonus of +1 instead? Concept wise this makes sense as the armor becomes tougher as it provides more DR. This would mean +4 hardness and +20 hp at level 2, +10 hardness and +50 hp at level 11 (now protected vs. adamantine hardness bypass) and ultimately maxing out at +16 hardness and +80 hp at level 20 (or +24/+120 if you maxed out the improved DR customization as well). I would also suggest that the suit can be reformed in place using the regular times without having to be dismissed and then reformed.

This might seem a bit excessive at higher levels but keep in mind that the Astral Suit is pretty much everything to the Aegis. If the suit is destroyed, and has to be reformed then it means that he has lost all of the buffs (attributes, DR, size, movement mode, resistances, etc.) until his next turn in addition to his armor. It also makes sense theme wise as this was intended as an ultimate defense type of character.

Finally the simplest way is just to say that the suit can't be sundered at all but since veils (aka soulmelds) can now be sundered I guess we should stick to convention. As for those that hate sunder in general for "the wealth it destroys" there always make whole to repair magic items in PF now. Yes, I played mad amounts of 3.0/3.5 but then stopped because of 4. Only just started looking into PF again a few days ago.

btw: Random question about psychoactive skins or maybe astral suits in question... I understand that fluff wise the aegis can choose the appearance of the suit but can the psychoactive skin form look like regular skin (or does it have the odd coloration as usually seen in the illustrations)? Likewise I assume that the armor forms can look like normal armor of various materials (e.g. mithril chain mail) or something exotic like a translucent plate with glowing glyphs crawling on it? The goal is to have a normal look, and completely different looks for the armored forms.

Been thinking about a disguise/transformation concept to blend in with the common people. It's really too bad they don't have disguise as a class skill. Most adventurers tend to be easily identified by their equipment or the magic they radiate so an Aegis would be great for being unnoticed until they transform.

Fairize! I mean it's henshin time...

[exelsisxax]

Fix what? you can just get it back next turn if an opponent is dumb enough to eat an AoO trying to sunder you(which you should succeed at and ruin the attempt). I don't see the problem - the suit can't be destroyed, only dismissed. Not like a fighter who gets his vorpal sword sundered.

[Andor13]

Yeah, I don't see the problem. I've never seen anyone try to sunder armour, ever.

And if you're fighting someone whose shtick is destroying armour then the Aegis is uniquely strong against them as, unlike every normal armour wearer, they can just make it again next round. Plus with superior movement and built in ranged option, they can always kite.

Also you can give an Aegis suit an enhancement bonus with crystal spaulders (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/equipment/psionic-items/crystalline-focus-items/).

[darkcser]

Fix what? you can just get it back next turn if an opponent is dumb enough to eat an AoO trying to sunder you(which you should succeed at and ruin the attempt). I don't see the problem - the suit can't be destroyed, only dismissed. Not like a fighter who gets his vorpal sword sundered.

Most people who try to sunder probably have improved sunder which avoids the AoO so they can also PA for the additional damage. Even if they don't, sundering with a reach weapon like the lucerne hammer (which seems like a decent choice with its bonus to sunder) should avoid the AoO as well.

My point is an Aegis is unlikely to survive to his next turn to reform his armor as the vast majority of his defenses and buffs are tied to his armor. Most characters have defense and movement items spread out over multiple items like rings, amulets, boots, cloaks, belts, etc. Not a real problem if you destroy one. With the Aegis, most of his defense and utility capability are all lumped into a very fragile basket. Not only is AC and DR (two of his most important defense assets) but he also loses save enhancers (dex/con bonus, evasion, stalwart), energy resistance/immunity, vision enhancements (darkvision, blindsense, tremorsense, etc.), and movement modes like flight/climb. This basically means he'll instantly become a prime target for everyone as a front line combatant.

As for a fighter losing his vorpal sword... he can just pull out another sword from his handysack where he presumably carries several backup weapons. Yes, the backups are probably not vorpal but then again he should've just spent 3000gp to make it an adamantine vorpal sword in the first place... which would make it super useful in bypassing hardness...

[Rynjin]

Most people who try to sunder probably have improved sunder which avoids the AoO so they can also PA for the additional damage. Even if they don't, sundering with a reach weapon like the lucerne hammer (which seems like a decent choice with its bonus to sunder) should avoid the AoO as well.

If your opponent has built to Sunder, there is literally nothing you can do to stop them. As any class, with any equipment. They will full attack to Sunder, and whatever they're aiming at WILL break, with only minimal investment in it.

Worrying about it is silly; if a GM over-uses Sunder as a tactic your **** will break and you will die, period. No good GM will do so.

[exelsisxax]

Most people who try to sunder probably have improved sunder which avoids the AoO so they can also PA for the additional damage. Even if they don't, sundering with a reach weapon like the lucerne hammer (which seems like a decent choice with its bonus to sunder) should avoid the AoO as well.

My point is an Aegis is unlikely to survive to his next turn to reform his armor as the vast majority of his defenses and buffs are tied to his armor. Most characters have defense and movement items spread out over multiple items like rings, amulets, boots, cloaks, belts, etc. Not a real problem if you destroy one. With the Aegis, most of his defense and utility capability are all lumped into a very fragile basket. Not only is AC and DR (two of his most important defense assets) but he also loses save enhancers (dex/con bonus, evasion, stalwart), energy resistance/immunity, vision enhancements (darkvision, blindsense, tremorsense, etc.), and movement modes like flight/climb. This basically means he'll instantly become a prime target for everyone as a front line combatant.

As for a fighter losing his vorpal sword... he can just pull out another sword from his handysack where he presumably carries several backup weapons. Yes, the backups are probably not vorpal but then again he should've just spent 3000gp to make it an adamantine vorpal sword in the first place... which would make it super useful in bypassing hardness...

If you're fighting a sunder-based enemy, you already win. Your equipment is going to get trashed, but you then proceed to turn them into meat.

Also, aegis that doesn't have a reach or size bonus is terrible, and doesn't count as a reasonable example. This is like saying that wizards are weak because their BaB is too low to use grapple on a tarrasque. You're doing it wrong. Nobody can sunder an aegis and keep attacking in the same turn unless the aegis is bad or the fight is already horrifically unfair.

The point is that the fighter just lost something permanently, and the aegis lost something until next turn, when they can choose to get it back for nothing but some actions and requires no support whatsoever. Your fighter needed to have a backup weapon and a handy haversack to even get it without getting stabbed, the aegis needs nothing.

[Lotheb]

You can keep your astral suit in astral skin form and wear regular armor on top of it if you're certain this will come up

[Andor13]

You can keep your astral suit in astral skin form and wear regular armor on top of it if you're certain this will come up

This. As you noted the Aegis's armour is a fantastic pile of utility, offense and defense. What it is not, is great armour. To make it into powerful armour requires a prestige class. An Aegis is more powerful if he wears actual armour with the astral suit under it in skin mode.

As a side note if an Aegis is defensively focused most of his AC isn't going to be coming from the suit, because the suit isn't great for that, so your argument fails on that ground too. A defense focused Aegis is going to have to hunt around for items to give all the bonuses that the suit can't. Natural armour, deflection, shield...

When I played an aegis however, he was a lot stronger on offense than defense.

I seriously don't see how they are more vulnerable to a sunder build than any other class. You may as well complain about how weak a wizard is if someone sunders their arcane focus.

If you're seriously concerned about it as a player, put a couple of customization points into Initiators Soul and keep a counter handy.

[Zaq]

Are you even allowed to sunder armor in PF? In 3.5, the sunder rules explicitly say that you can’t sunder armor that someone else is wearing.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

There’s an interesting style that debuffs someone when you sunder their armor and apply the broken condition (until they took it off they were Fatigued), I always though it was interesting. But again, next to useless against an Aegis.