Author Topic: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?  (Read 5173 times)

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« on: November 14, 2011, 05:56:23 PM »
The Chahar-Aine (sp?) armor from Oriental Adventures is an armor add-on that can be worn over padded, leather, or chain shirt armor (I might have forgotten one).  Similar to Dastana from the same book, they add an additional +1 armor bonus which stacks with the base armor.  Although both of these items have listed armor check penalties, they have no listed speeds, and they are not listed as either light or medium armor (they have their own section: Armor Additions, or somesuch).

Dastana require Armor Proficiency (Light) to use them correctly.  Chahar-Aine require Armor Proficiency (Medium) to use correctly.  There is no mention in the chart or in the item description, however, about reducing a character's speed.

Does wearing this item with a chain shirt reduce a character's speed?

Offline X-Codes

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2011, 06:01:14 PM »
Chahar-Aina*

RAW, no speed reduction.  Chain Shirt is base speed, and both Chahar-Aina and Dastana have "--" entries.

Offline Talore

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2011, 06:49:15 PM »
Just remember that from armour, Dastana, and Chahar-Aina, you can only benefit from one enhancement bonus to armor class. You'll still gian the benefit from putting fortification on one and twilight on another, but you can't spend 3000gp for three +1 bonuses to armour, unfortunately.
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Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2011, 08:56:59 PM »
Just remember that from armour, Dastana, and Chahar-Aina, you can only benefit from one enhancement bonus to armor class. You'll still gian the benefit from putting fortification on one and twilight on another, but you can't spend 3000gp for three +1 bonuses to armour, unfortunately.
And where is that stated?  I just searched a PDF of OA for "chahar" and that is stated nowhere in the book with reference to chahar-aina.  But the book does specifically have Chahar-Aina of Command which has "identical abilities" as a breastplate of command, which means it is +2 Chahar-Aina.  Pretty sure they would have specified that wouldn't stack with a +3 chain shirt if that were the case.

Your line of reasoning doesn't even work within the system, because an enhancement bonus on an armor item doesn't grant an enhancement bonus to AC, it increases the item's Armor (or shield) bonus to AC.

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enhancement bonus: A bonus that represents an increase in the sturdiness and/or effectiveness of armor or natural armor, or the effectiveness of a weapon, or a general bonus to an ability score. Multiple enhancement bonuses on the same object (in the case of armor and weapons), creature (in the case of natural armor), or ability score do not stack. Only the highest enhancement bonus applies. 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.

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Chahar-Aina: This “four mirror armor” can be worn over certain other types of armor to provide an additional armor bonus that stacks with both the foundation armor and any shield worn. A character can wear a chahar-aina effectively over padded, leather, or chain shirt armor. A character needs Armor Proficiency (medium) to wear a chahar-aina without penalty.

Chahar-Aina grants an armor bonus to AC that stacks with the armor bonus of the base armor.  An enhancement bonus on chahar-aina increases the armor bonus of the chahar-aina.  This doesn't negate the fact that the armor bonus from the chahar-aina stacks with the armor bonus of the base armor.

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2011, 08:59:20 PM »
I think the way it's supposed to work is that the Dastana, Chahar-Aina, and your Base Armor all have their armor values added together to make one armor value, and then the highest enhancement bonus among the three items affects that armor value.

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2011, 10:08:23 PM »
I think the way it's supposed to work is that the Dastana, Chahar-Aina, and your Base Armor all have their armor values added together to make one armor value, and then the highest enhancement bonus among the three items affects that armor value.
Keep in mind, when these items were written, they hadn't yet invented the "shield" bonus yet.  Shields provided an armor bonus to AC that specifically stacked with the armor bonus from your armor.  A +2 Heavy shield provided a +4 armor bonus to AC that stacked with the +7 to AC from your +2 breastplate, giving you a total +11 armor bonus to AC.

Dastana and Chahar-aina similarly grant an armor bonus that specifically stacks with the base armor bonus, just like shields did.

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2011, 10:26:44 PM »
Really...?

Hmm...

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Chahar-Aine (Three Mirror) armor from OA - reduction in speed?
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2011, 10:51:11 PM »
Well, it appears that Skip Williams decided to hide behind the "shield bonus" change to gimp Dastana and Chahar-aina in the 3.5 update in Dragon 318.

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Dragon 318, page 42]Both dastanas and chahar-ainas provide special armor bonuses to AC that stack with other armor bonuses granted by certain forms of light armor.
However, it is still the case that only one enhancement bonus can apply to a character's armor bonus at any time.
Thus, if a character wears +2 dastanas, a +1 chahar-aina, and a +1 cloth armor, only the +2 bonus from the dastanas increases his AC.

A character can still gain the benefit of special abilities attached to multiple pieces of armor, however, so a character wearing +2 balance dastanas and a +1 displacement chahar-aina has a +2 enhancement bonus to AC and can use the balance and displacement special abilities.

That doesn't mesh with how they worked in 3.0 at all (and also doesn't mesh with the fact that dastana were listed under the "shield" chart in Arms and Equipment Guide).  I suppose a good compromise would be to treat the chahar-aina as Skip notes above, and treat dastana as if they were shields (but still required light armor proficiency).  Either way, it's going to take a DM ruling.