Armor Stacking Shenanigans

[Athan Artilliam]

Could I wear a Chahar-aina & Dastana, enchant them with armor enhancement bonuses, maybe make them out of adamantine, then cast Luminous Armor & have it all stack?

It says that they stack with the Foundation Armor as long as its light armor & any Shields, so technically they are their own slot. Dastana are a little bit of an odd one since they specifically are called bracers & that is a slot already. I would propose that Dastana could be enchanted with any Arms slot magic, such as Bracers of Archery & wouldnt exactly fit with standard armor/shield enchantment.

A Chahar-aina counts as medium armor so if you make it out of Adamantine it would grant you DR/2 as well. If you make it out of Mithral it wouldnt improve much of anything but it should knock it down to light armor at least

[flappeercraft]

If I’m not mistaken in the dragon magazine OA update it explicitly states enhancement bonuses to the chahar-aina and dastana don’t stack with each other or the foundational armor, but that properties do.

Also, both the chahar-aina and the dastana stack with only a few types of armor that are mentioned according to OA. Luminous armor is not mentioned to stack, so that would probably not stack either.

[Athan Artilliam]

I wasnt trying to stack multiple enhancement bonuses to the bracers & chest plate. Just the way it might interact with the spell summoned armor

[animewatcha]

Due to incompatibility and kinda compatibility. You should get luminous armor AC bonus. No enhancement bonus to ac from char and dast / base chest. You should get properties like fire resist. You should be able to get the -4 melee penalty from luminous armor.

[Athan Artilliam]

Due to incompatibility and kinda compatibility. You should get luminous armor AC bonus. No enhancement bonus to ac from char and dast / base chest. You should get properties like fire resist. You should be able to get the -4 melee penalty from luminous armor.

Why wouldn't I get the enhancement bonus or adamantine DR?

[animewatcha]

IIRC, the enhancement to ac would count toward 'toward same source of armor bonus' because WOTC is stupid (alongside having to take up magic item slots) and Char and Dast can only stack with very specific armors. Luminous armor came out after the source for Char and Dast and wasn't addressed by WOTC (they were busy making money with bazillion other books and things). Ddamantine DR might be able to swing.

[Khedrac]

Why wouldn't I get the enhancement bonus or adamantine DR?

Remember - you never* get the enhancement bonus to your armor class - instead it enhances the armor bonus of the item it is on and that is what you get to your AC. Hence the +N enhancement bonus of one item cannot affect the armor bonus provided by another item. In this case the armor field created by the luminous armor spell counts as another item - the enhancement bonus of the dastana cannot affect it because it is on the dastana not the luminous armor.

*Apparantly there is one exception where one gets an enhancment bonus to AC, but I don't recall what it is.

[Athan Artilliam]

Remember - you never* get the enhancement bonus to your armor class - instead it enhances the armor bonus of the item it is on and that is what you get to your AC. Hence the +N enhancement bonus of one item cannot affect the armor bonus provided by another item. In this case the armor field created by the luminous armor spell counts as another item - the enhancement bonus of the dastana cannot affect it because it is on the dastana not the luminous armor.

*Apparantly there is one exception where one gets an enhancment bonus to AC, but I don't recall what it is.

Right. The Chahar-aina says it stacks with the foundational armor, & that you cant only gain the benefits of an enhancement bonus to one bodyslot regardless of other stacking rules so the "formula" looks like this

Foundation Armor = 8 from Luminous Armor (no enhancement)
Chahar-aina = +5 Adamantine, counts as Medium armor itself
Dastana. = ÷1 Armor stacks with light armor & chahar-aina

The only RAW flaw is that the two boost items technically say they can only stack with the four basic light armors. I believe the RAI of this is to keep people from stacking them nonsensically with something like a Mithral Breastplate which is technically light armor but would be hard pressed to have another chestplate strapped onto it