Sectioned Armor explained

[Jackinthegreen]

Sectioned Armor is a masterwork suit of Full Plate that can be stripped down partially into medium armor or fully into light armor. If anyone wants to look at its stats, check the 3.5 Planar Handbook. Because of the uniqueness of the armor, one has to think how exactly a character dons and removes it.  This is my effort to make a design that hopefully works and makes sense.  Any critiques are welcome and even encouraged!


Because Sectioned Armor must be masterwork quality to begin with and already costs twice as much as regular Full Plate, it seems reasonable that the sections can operate under the Quick Escape mechanism put forth in 3.0's Arms and Equipment guide. The wearer can use a standard action to spring a lock on the armor and immediately drop the full suit.

With Sectioned Armor, it doesn't seem much of a stretch to think each section could operate like that too, with some modifications. Dropping one section takes a standard action. Dropping two, however, should take a full-round action since the combination really ought to be a move+standard. Dropping the full rig would take a full round plus the wearer's swift action for his next turn.

Donning full Sectioned Armor, under the rules of Quick Escape, would take 8 minutes and require help for the full benefit. Because of how modular it is though, I'd wager a character proficient in the use of heavy armor could cut that down to 6 minutes, without help.  Each section would take two minutes. With help it would take three minutes to fully don, one minute per section. Essentially it takes 1.5x as long to don this particular piece of gear because of piecing it together.

Special note:  Sectioned Armor works a little differently when given the Called enhancement.  Because of the armor being modular, the character can don any number of sections as a Standard action.  If already wearing partial armor of the same suit, the character may Call extra pieces on as a Standard action, up to the maximum of three sections equaling Full Plate.  To drop the sections, one should consult the rules mentioned above or perhaps add a synergy to Called to make the armor or shield appear able to be dismissed and appear in a given bag or special location on the same plane.

[veekie]

I think for sectioned armor you probably could use partial quick release as well(or is that already in? Its a little unclear). Releasing the whole armor in one press seems a bit tricky(true full plating is a layer of leather or quilt padding under a light chainmail under the actual plate parts after all, and the plate is easier to drop than chain), but you should probably shuck the heavier sections.

What about enchantments? It might make sense to have enchantments similarly layered(in order of most expensive to least, from the heavy to light), and also, how does it interact with enchantments that only work for certain armor grades?

[Jackinthegreen]

The armor does work under partial quick release, if I'm thinking what you're thinking.  Going from Heavy to Medium is a standard action.  Heavy to light is a full round (standard + move).  Dropping the entire suit would take a bit over a full round, perhaps using the swift or immediate action too.  I guess it could be likened to a 1 round casting time, where it doesn't take effect until the start of the next round.  A problem with this approach is the difference between stripping to light and dropping the whole suit isn't much with these rules, unlike the difference between casting a full-round action spell and a spell with 1 round casting time.

Enhancements should be straightforward.  The easiest approach is having standard +1 and such enchantments work for the entire suit.  A +5 suit of sectioned armor should always be +5 regardless of it being treated as full plate or a chain shirt.

Enhancements that require a specific type of armor only work when it's being treated as that type.  For example, enchanting it with Mobility would mean it only works when it's stripped to light armor.  Mithral sectioned armor has two "settings" equivalent to light, so the Mobility enhancement would work with both.  An adamantine suit of sectioned armor would grant the appropriate DR based on whether the suit was light, medium, or heavy at the time.  Sectioned armor must be made of the same material throughout the suit: It can't be made of mithral for the first two layers then adamantine for the third, full plate equivalent layer.

Armor spikes might complicate things.  It's easy to see it working on the full plate and breastplate equivalents, but the chain shirt setting could be ruled not to work since it's technically underneath the breastplate and thus having it be spiked could cause problems.  Ruling that the chain shirt does have spikes, and that the breastplate has spikes that stack on those is a possibility, but it's more arguing semantics at this stage.  If it floats the DM's boat, having the suit with armor spikes might require it taking longer to don.  I personally wouldn't go that route since it complicates things with no real gameplay improvement, but that's me.

[veekie]

And here I was thinking you could have enhancements split up by layer, and then go with two suits plus plug n play

For spikes, I guess by default they are attached to the top layer?