Armored spells

[Cowboy_ninja]

my sorc doesnt want to waste a spells known on "mage armor" is there a feat that will allow my sorc to wear armor?

[Gerrtt]

Sure there are.

Armor proficiency feats allow him to wear armor and the still spell feat allows him to cast spells in said armor without having to worry about spell failure, as do the various materials you could make said armor out of.

[Piccamo]

Or just don't put yourself in a spot where you can be hit

[MandibleBones]

Assuming you're still building your sorc, look at the Battle Sorc varient in Unearthed Arcana (it's also in the SRD), which allows you to ignore spell failure from light armor - and your BAB will be better as well.

The Warmage, a spontaneous-casting blaster (Evocation spells) from Complete Arcane, also has that ability - though the Warmage's spell selection is quite a bit more limited than a Battle Sorc's.

Both of these classes make use of Battle Caster, a feat from Complete Arcane that boosts that ability to the next category of armor (light to medium, et cetera).

[Amiria]

Why a feat ? Just wear a mithral chain shirt (10% arcane spell failure chance) with the twilight enchantment (-10%, BoED/DMGII). Or Thistledown (-5%, RoW), or Feycraft (-5%, DMGII, or one of the other arcane-spell-failure reducing armor templates, I believe Infernal and Githcraft). All of these stack (twilight, thistledown and an armor template).

And a mithral chain shirt comes also without armor check penalty so you don't have any penalties for non-proficiency.

[OzymandiasVolt]

Of course if he takes the feat he can just wear mithral full plate and revel in the enemy's confusion as the heavily-armored guy with the greatsword starts throwing out screaming magic death.

Either/or.

[Jack Mann]

If he doesn't want to lose spells known, then battle sorcerer probably isn't the variant for him.

[DreadArchon]

Even Feycraft Twilight Mithral Full Plate still has a 5% ASF.

You could just take Bracers of Armor.

[Fixer]

My conjurer master specialist wears Twilight Mithril Chain Shirt +1 and carries a Githcraft Mithril Heavy Shield +1.

0% chance spell failure
0 armor check penalty
+6 max dex
20 pounds total

My conjurer is not proficient in any armor. He simply takes the penalty of the armor check penalty to all rolls (as it is zero).

[Cade Shadow]

Of course if he takes the feat he can just wear mithral full plate and revel in the enemy's confusion as the heavily-armored guy with the greatsword starts throwing out screaming magic death.

Either/or.

What feat are you talking about? The one that allows you to increase the type of armor whose arcane spell failure you can ignore requires that you can already ignore it to a degree. (ie A bard can use it, but a sorcerer/wizard can't)

[TheOOB]

You could just take Bracers of Armor.

Eww, bracers of armor are really cost inefficiant, you are much better served with wands of mage armor then those.

[Gerrtt]

Regardless, the OP asked if there were feats that allowed a sorcerer (not a battle sorcerer, not a warmage, not a bard, a sorcerer) to wear armor. There are; light/medium/heavy armor proficiency will let him wear the armor without penalty to attacks or skills and still spell will take out the spell failure.

[TheOOB]

I do not belive there are any feats per-say that allow you to ignore ASF, and any feat that does so would be quite powerful.

I'd suggest that they "waste" a slot on mage armor at least until level 4, when they can probally afford a wand of mage armor.

[Gerrtt]

I do not belive there are any feats per-say that allow you to ignore ASF, and any feat that does so would be quite powerful.

Like, oh I don't know...still spell?

It doesn't remove the spell failure from the armor but it lets you bypass the movements, which is why the armor causes you to fail anyways. Now, is it worth it to prepare/cast all your spells as still (until epic levels when you can get auto still)? Maybe, maybe not. I'd say not. Especially since we are talking about sorcerers here and unless we are playing with the sudden metamagic version then we are really hurting ourselves in the spell-lobbing department. Even with it we are still hurting ourselves.

The fact remains that it can be done, however.

[Merlin the Tuna]

I do not belive there are any feats per-say that allow you to ignore ASF, and any feat that does so would be quite powerful.

It isn't. It was made out to be for a long time, but the high prevalence of armored casters in recent books says otherwise, as do many of the game's designers personally on the boards and blogs. Example here, relevant bit below.

The hexblade suffers a little because he came on the scene relatively early in 3.5's life. As R&D pushes the boundaries of the game, we learn that some things we thought were risky or potentially broken aren't. Other times, we learn things that look fine don't actually work in play.

Armored mages fall into the first category. Them seem really powerful, but in the long run they aren't. Spells and magic items allow an unarmored mage to build great defenses. The spell mage armor is as good as medium armor, and its duration allows most mages to keep it active at all times. If you compare the hexblade to the duskblade from PH 2, you can see how the thinking has changed.