Interactions with Magic Vestment

[YellowJohn]

A selection of questions about the Magic Vestment spell and how it interacts with various things:


Magic Vestment
Transmutation
Level: Clr 3, Strength 3, War 3
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Armor or shield touched
Duration: 1 hour/level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless, object)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless, object)
You imbue a suit of armor or a shield with an enhancement bonus of +1 per four caster levels (maximum +5 at 20th level).

An outfit of regular clothing counts as armor that grants no AC bonus for the purpose of this spell.

1) Can you combine Magic Vestment with Luminous Armour; either by casting MV on the LA directly or by casting it on your clothing and having it stack?

2) Can I stack Magic Vestment with my Dyrr's Impervious Vestments?

3) The Empyreal property (BoED) allows you to transfer your armour's enhancement bonus to saves in a similar way to a defending weapon.
Assuming you are using the rules from the Arms and Equipment guide (and MIC) to put Armour Abilities on a robe, could you put the Empyreal property on your robe, cast Magic Vestment, and transfer the resulting Enhancement bonus to saves?

4) Can you combine 1 or 2 with 3?

My current thought is that it *should* work, waiting to see what ways people shoot it down :smallsmile:

[Firest Kathon]

1) No, neither variant works.
1a) The Luminous Armor is a spell effect, and therefor not a valid target for Magic Vestment
1b) Magic Vestment increases the armor bonus of the target armor, it is not an independent value. Therefor you have the (enhanced) armor bonus from your robe and the armor bonus from Luminous Armor, and those do not stack, only the higher value takes effect

2) Yes. Due to the way it is worded, the Vestments are simply a silk armor and can be enchanted and targeted as such.

3) Yes (but note that you will also need to add a +1 bonus to the robe before the empyreal property, and that bonus and the bonus of Magic Vestment do not stack

4) 2+3 yes, 1+3 no for the same reasons as above

[YellowJohn]

Thanks :smallsmile:

I do need some clarification though, as your answers to 2 & 3 seem inconsistent.
In both cases you have an item of clothing that provides an armour bonus. In both cases, that bonus is based off of Mage Armour (the spell used in their creation).
Did you perhaps mis-remember which spell one of these was based on?
My opinion is that it should stack in either case, as you have a piece of clothing with an armour bonus which can then be increased with an enhancement bonus - just like a normal suit of armour.


I was going to argue the call on 1b on the grounds that Enhancement bonuses are not Armour bonuses and thus should stack, but instead I did some digging and found the relevant rule squirreled away under Bonus Types:


Enhancement Bonus
An enhancement bonus represents an increase in the sturdiness and/or effectiveness of armor...
Since enhancement bonuses to armor or natural armor effectively increase the armor or natural armor's bonus to AC, they don't apply against touch attacks.

There still might be some wiggle room in that word 'Effectively', but that's not a level of nit-picking I'm willing to stoop to :smallamused:

[RSGA]

Thanks :smallsmile:

I do need some clarification though, as your answers to 2 & 3 seem inconsistent.
In both cases you have an item of clothing that provides an armour bonus. In both cases, that bonus is based off of Mage Armour (the spell used in their creation).
Did you perhaps mis-remember which spell one of these was based on?
My opinion is that it should stack in either case, as you have a piece of clothing with an armour bonus which can then be increased with an enhancement bonus - just like a normal suit of armour.


I was going to argue the call on 1b on the grounds that Enhancement bonuses are not Armour bonuses and thus should stack, but instead I did some digging and found the relevant rule squirreled away under Bonus Types:



There still might be some wiggle room in that word 'Effectively', but that's not a level of nit-picking I'm willing to stoop to :smallamused:

It's because the vestment says it has a +5 armor bonus as part of itself, not that it's casting mage armor+1 on whoever wears it. It can be Magic Vestment-ed because the spell says that it can target clothing as though it were armor with 0 Armor Bonus instead of a - Armor bonus that clothes normally have.

Adding abilities to armors requires that it has a +1 Enhancement bonus, which Impervious Vestment doesn't have because it's created as a Wonderous Item and is using slightly different rules. But after that point, it is armor and can get the stuff added to it as long as you go through the steps.

[Khedrac]

I was going to argue the call on 1b on the grounds that Enhancement bonuses are not Armour bonuses and thus should stack, but instead I did some digging and found the relevant rule squirreled away under Bonus Types:
Enhancement bonuses don't stack, but neither to they apply to your armor class directly (I am told there is one item where the author got it wrong and it provides an enhancement bonus).

The very specifically enhance something else. For magic vestment this is the item it is applied to, and the spell has a specific rule to allow it to be applied to normal clothing, counting the normal clothing as providing an armor bonus of 0.
For magic armor the enchanement bonus increases the armor bopnus of the armor (for for a +2 chain shirt that is 4 (armor ) + 2 enchancement = 6 (armor).
If you apply magic vestment to magic armor you use the higher enhancement bonus (they don't stack) to calculate the new armor bonus.
So for the +2 chain shirt with magic vestment at CL12 (=+3) is 4 (armor) + max {2, 3} (enhancment) = 7 (armor).

If you apply the magic vestment to a normal shirt then you use the higher of the two armor bonuses - the enhancment bonuses are still not affecting the AC directly - they modify the components of the AC.

The spell barkskin contains a clarification that it stacks with natural armor to remind people that a spell that usually gives 2 (or more) points of natural armor is actually giving +2 enhancement to a base natural armor of 0, hence it does stack with sources of natural armor (so long as they are not also enhancements to the base 0).

As for mage armor, the spell provides a straight armor bonus of 4 and thus does not stack with other armor or enchanted clothing.

Oriental Adventures does contain a couple of items that provide armor bonuses yet stack with armor - they are specific exceptions (and really should not have been written that way) and thus cannot be used as a guide to anyting without the same explicit text stating it stacks.

As for the effect on touch attacks, that has to be determined by each armor bonus source seperately (natural armor no, armor no, dodge yes, deflection yes, etc.) but if you have both mage armor and wear magic armor, when attacked by an incorporeal touch attack the mage armor applies since its 4 points of armor bonus is more than the magic armor's 0 points versus incorporeal touch.

[YellowJohn]

Adding abilities to armors requires that it has a +1 Enhancement bonus, which Impervious Vestment doesn't have because it's created as a Wonderous Item and is using slightly different rules. But after that point, it is armor and can get the stuff added to it as long as you go through the steps.

Gotcha, I think I see why the confusion - the rules for putting armour abilities on a robe (or bracers of armour, but they aren't clothing) bypass the need for an enhancement bonus. Indeed, there doesn't seem to be a way to put a permanent enhancement bonus on a robe, which is why I need to faff around with the Magic Vestment spell rather than just enchanting it. I say 'based off of Mage Armour' because in both cases that's the spell used in the enchanting process :smallsmile: