Super high dexterity and armour

[Particle_Man]

What are the options for armour when a character’s dexterity gets extremely high (like thirty or so, I think?). Is it just bracers of armour at that point? I think celestial armour is the point at which armour remains competitive for the longest as dex gets higher but I could be wrong.

[the_tick_rules]

celestial armor has a dex bonus of 8. the nimbleness magical property can push it to 9. there is a crafting property in dragon magazine 358 that can push it up to 10.

[Particle_Man]

Interesting. Where is the nimbleness armour property from?

[rrwoods]

http://www.wdtaylor.net/calculator.html is always your best bet for figuring out how best to increase your AC with items

EDIT: if all I put in is a +10 dex bonus, it says to use Nightscale armor. It’s in the Underdark sourcebook and it’s a light armor that gives +2 AC and has a +10 max dex for 1000 gp.

But you can get more specific than that, and even turn off recommendations for specific kinds of armor that aren’t available in your game (or just feel too weird or whatever)

[the_tick_rules]

Interesting. Where is the nimbleness armour property from?

it's in several places, the most recent version is from the magic item compendium. it's a +1 property that raises max dex bonus by one and drops armor check penalty by two.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Gnome twist cloth (Races of Stone) is exotic armor, has a +1 armor bonus, it applies to touch attacks, and it has no max Dex bonus. It's good for adding enhancements to, but not much else. Stupidly, monks still can't wear it (even if you waste a feat on it), even if it's basically just a cloth shirt with cloth strips on it.

[Particle_Man]

Touch ac is nice!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Touch ac is nice!It's a pretty good target for magic vestments.

[Maat Mons]

You can use MIC rules to add up to a +8 armor bonus to an item occupying the body slot. It frees up your Braces of Armor for more armor special abilities, as per AEG. While you're at it, you can stick a +5 deflection bonus to AC and a +5 enhancement bonus to natural armor onto the body-slot item too.

Monk's Belt is another good item if you're too dexy for your armor.

[ShurikVch]

How about a shield? Most shields have no max Dex...

Also, Carapace Symbionts (Dragon #308) are all grant +4 natural AC to their host; but I don't sure if usage of Carapace Symbiont prevents from wearing armor or not

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You could use the various mage armor or luminous armor spells or the inertial armor psionic power, which (unlike mage armor and its derivatives) scales proportionally to the number of power points spent, and thus can gain you tons of armor even at low level if you've got a high enough ML and enough power point expenditure mitigation.

Or you could go high-op, buy fifty +1 morphing/sizing/ringsword*/defending arrows, cast greater magic weapon on them so they're +5 arrows, then morph them into poison rings, chain them together, and wear them all. +250 bonus to your armor, right there.





*From the Arms & Equipment Guide; lift the ringsword property off the ringsword via the rules in the MIC, enhance the arrows when they're morphed into regular weapon form, then daisy-chain them together.

[Biggus]

If you have lots of money to spend, there's Armor of the Celestial Battalion, which has a base max. Dex of +10, so with Nimbleness and Segmented can be got up to +12.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/magicItems/armor.htm#armoroftheCelestialBattalion

But yeah, armor is pretty weak for ultra-high Dex types, past a certain point you're nearly always better off without it.

[the_tick_rules]

Touch ac is nice!

there is a +1 property in magic item compendium called ghost ward that lets an armor's enhancement bonus count against touch attacks. put that on the celestial armor i mentioned earlier and dang.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Hire the spellcasting services of a high level druid and either a wizard or sorcerer (or someone else with access to polymorph). Have the arcanist cast polymorph on you (giving you the plant type via treant or something similar), followed by awaken with the Sudden Empower and Sudden Maximize feats applied. You now have Int/Wis/Cha scores of 18+(3d6 x 1/2). Get yourself a monk's belt, and combine with mage armor/greater mage armor/luminous armor/inertial armor/etc to stack your larger-than-average Wis bonus to AC with an armor bonus to AC. Apparently shirts count as armor for enhancements but not for wearing, so turn your shirt into a +1 whatever "armor" and get magic vestments cast on it. Then combine that with multiple +1 defending weapons with greater magic weapon cast on them. Then watch as most of that AC is wasted because most enemies would have to roll a 50 + their bonuses to be able to hit you (or just hit with a nat 20 regardless of what you do).

You're best off getting a decent-to-high AC without spending nearly that much effort, then get the highest miss chances and immunities you can manage for cheap. Miss chances are usually your best bet, because they don't have all the issues that AC alone has.

[Drelua]

Yeah, Celestial Armor is great for high dex characters, even if your dex bonus is higher than 8 it can still be worth it. Compared to +1 AC, (before enchantments) no max dex, +5 AC with a max dex of 8 is still more AC unless your dex is +12, where it breaks even. Assuming your GM lets you improve unique magic items, which I don't think is allowed in PFS but apart from that should be fine. You just have to decide if any of the item's other abilities should count as effective enhancement for pricing. It costs more than +4 armor but less than +5, so increasing the enhancement bonus would either cost 7k (16k-9 for +3 to +4) or 9k. (25k-16)

It's even better if your GM's nice enough to allow you to make a Celestial Breastplate. 1 more max dex, 1 less ACP. Always seems weird to me when unique armor's worth tens of thousands, but they cheaped out on the base item when they could have spent an extra 50gp for a strictly better option.

[Thurbane]

Just a little side note: I just recently discovered that armor augment crystals from the MIC can be attached to any magic item that gives an AC bonus (bracers or armor, robe of the archmagi etc.), so you don't need to be wearing actual armor to use them. Also means theoretically more than one slot where you can use these crystals.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Just a little side note: I just recently discovered that armor augment crystals from the MIC can be attached to any magic item that gives an AC bonus (bracers or armor, robe of the archmagi etc.), so you don't need to be wearing actual armor to use them. Also means theoretically more than one slot where you can use these crystals.Feel free to use the rules in the very same book to stack multiple armor crystals together. Much cheaper than spending money on magic armor abilities (not that you can't do that, too).

[Kazyan]

Bondleaf Wrap, from A&EG, is like the Twistcloth: +1 AC and no limits on max Dex.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Bondleaf Wrap, from A&EG, is like the Twistcloth: +1 AC and no limits on max Dex.Costs a LOT more money, and it doesn't apply the AC bonus to touch attacks against you. It also requires a feat to use (although twist cloth does, too), and it isn't usable until 24 hours after first being donned.

Honestly, unless you have some serious cheese that can be done to living leaf armor, I wouldn't bother.

[Erik the Green]

Regarding Celestial Armor, it's a little rules-lawyer-ish, but neither 3.5 nor PF1 explicitly say that it is made from mithral, just that it looks silvery (or goldy). Throw that on plus the Feycraft template and you get +3 chainmail (light), 9 lbs., max dex bonus +10, no ACP or ASF @ 23, 900 GP before other enhancements are added, such as Fortification or Soulfire.
Or, if you can convince your DM to allow it's importation from Faerun, glassteel plus Feycraft gets you exactly the same stats plus an bonus non-magical +1 enhancement to AC, all for only 8000 GP more ;)

[Melcar]

What are the options for armour when a character’s dexterity gets extremely high (like thirty or so, I think?). Is it just bracers of armour at that point? I think celestial armour is the point at which armour remains competitive for the longest as dex gets higher but I could be wrong.

Segmented from DR#358, nimble enchantment and Mithral

[tyckspoon]

Costs a LOT more money, and it doesn't apply the AC bonus to touch attacks against you. It also requires a feat to use (although twist cloth does, too), and it isn't usable until 24 hours after first being donned.


Worth noting you don't actually need the feat just to wear Twist Cloth - the feat enables its special trait, but there is nothing stopping your hypothetical ultra-high Dex character from wearing it just to have a place to hang armor properties. And since it has no ACP to start with there's absolutely no penalty to wearing it while non-proficient.

[AOKost]

Well, it really depends on what is allowed within your (DMs) world... I have something akin to a minor dissertation on a piece of "Celestial armor" that's an glorious monstrous abomination of crafting techniques and templates layered onto a Chain Shirt that doesn't even count as armor for classes that that's important for XD

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?529348-3-PF-New-Item-Celestial-Chain-Shirt-2-varients