$ to repair magic armor

[Blightersbane]

I have always enjoyed GISH builds and the armor AC buffing spells. Latest pc is a 5 Paladin/5 fighter with redeemed +4 full plate. Awesome right? wrong! I cant afford to keep fixing my armor, the DM is just killin me with the repair costs over and over again. Nobody in party has the feats nor skills required to repair the armor, Suggestions?


psion dip for the armor and screen is almost worth the bab hit!


blightersbane the broke!

[phaedrusxy]

Umm... it's pretty hard to damage armor normally... What exactly is going on to damage it? I smell a dirty DM here...

-You can't sunder worn armor.
-It isn't damaged in typical combat. There are some monsters with the ability to rend worn armor, like bebliths, but unless you're fighting lots of those that ability should be rare.
-It is only damaged by area effect spells if the wearer rolls a natural 1 on their saving throw. Even then, the armor has hardness and gets its own saving throw to halve the damage.

[brujon]

It's probably a house rule the DM is employing. I think we need more information here.

[phaedrusxy]

Unless the armor is completely destroyed (i.e. it has lost all of its magic due to damage), Mending should repair small amounts of damage to it.

In general, just like creatures, in D&D equipment continues to function at full capacity until dropped to 0 hit points.

[SorO_Lost]

I smell bad rule handling too.

As Phae already brought up, you can't Sunder armor so very few monsters can attack it directly. Saving Throws is an in general sort of way to wear them down, but that pretty much never happens. Like say Wizard chucks a Fireball at you for 35 (10d6) damage. Since you need to roll a 1 and your DM needs to randomly roll between four objects your armor has a 1.25% chance of having to make it's own Save. Let's say you won the unlucky lottery and doubling failed there so you and your armor are taking the full brunt of the damage. Electricity/Fire deals 1/2 & Cold deals 1/4 to objects so the Fireball only deals 12 to your armor and then you apply Hardness to it and +4 Full-Plate has a Hardness of 18 which reduces the damage to 0. Yeah pretty trival huh?

But let's say you smacked in the face with Wings of Flurry or something. MiC 225 states Magical Repair costs is exactly the same if it were nonmagical and Craft says repairs are 1/5 the original price. For Masterwork Full-Plate that's only 330gp, as a 10th level Character your personal wealth should be around 49,000gp making the investment around 0.006% of your collective wealth. I hate to tell you this, but to scale you pay more in real life taxes than your character should be spending on armor repair costs.

[Blightersbane]

I do have some armor I have never heard of before, its really kinda a cool thing, but the catch is I look like a bad guy, its redeemed demon armor and its expensive to repair! All armor in this game becomes damaged, our table voted long ago that the invincibility of DnD armor would be to "cartoony". While we arent the uptight types demanding DnD reality, we do share this common logic that all armor, like anything else gets damaged gets worn, gets dirty etc. hardness of what 30 +40 for the magic = 70 every time I take 70 pts of damage my hardness goes down 1 hardness and if it gets down by 10 my armor then becomes +3, permanently unless I pay thousands to get it back up to +4. So as a result I am constantly getting 1 or 2 or 3 [points fixed here n there. At 100 gps per point, as you could imagine, this gets expensive.

We are always getting stuff fixed, repaired or replaced because of the damages incurred in combat. Fireball here, big monster rend there, a two handed power attacking Barbarian charge here, a bunch of arrow/bolt holes etc etc. Things get damaged, ruined and/or lost. This is all good, we are all dirt bikers so we know that things get broken and just camping cost money! BUUUT armor is sure expensive to fix! Not to mention I got to find a great armorer of measurable noteworthy skill so he doesn't jack up my armor!

BB

[linklord231]

Mending and Make Whole were made for this.  A wand of Mending should only cost 375 gold, and by your houserules would probably restore 1 point of "hardness" per use.  That seems like a fair ruling to me, anyway. 

[phaedrusxy]

OK, so there are houserules at play. Not that there is anything wrong with house rules, especially since the players signed off on them before the game started, but that is something you should really tell us about in your first post. Otherwise, we waste a bunch of our time telling you how the rules are supposed to work...

Since houserules led you into this mess, you may have to rely on them to get out, since otherwise you'd be violating the sense of "realism" that you were trying to achieve by implementing them in the first place. I'd say talking to the DM about using Mending, etc, isn't a bad idea, but I wouldn't expect him to let you repair your armor for free with cantrips, given the existence of this houserule in the first place...

[Jackinthegreen]

For what it's worth, it's not assumed that armor doesn't take damage or need upkeep in D&D.  It's just assumed that the upkeep happens during downtime and no one has to bother with it because it's tedious and annoying compared to having heroic adventures.  It's possible a more mundane setting like Conan/Hyborian would have rules for armor wear and mention what you'd have to do.  You'd probably have better luck asking about that on enworld though since I'm not sure if anyone here has done stuff with Conan.

It's possible the Repair Light Damage line might be houseruled to have some effect on the armor or other magic items.  Maybe such spells would give the armor what amounts to temporary hit points?  It just delays the inevitable, but it would probably be worth it.

Houseruling a feat simply called "Repair Magic Item" could work fine too.  Normally when a magic item is totally broken it requires having the feat to make it in the first place and spending half the item's worth in gold on materials for the repair.  So I suppose the feat could allow spending only half of what you normally do on repairing the armor?

Have you guys looked at ways to make your items more durable?  Races of Stone page 159 has an equipment quality called "Dwarvencraft" which is basically Masterwork and then some.  Costs more up front but it gives the item extra hardness, hit points, and better saves.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

hmm ... 'nother way to look at it, is your homegame
is Low Gear + defacto Low Treasure (because of the attrition rate),
and you have rather Low-ish downtime, because of all the repairing.

Again, there's nothing wrong with that. 
Building a PC or Party around lower than average gear/loot, requires a few changes but is do-able.

[Keldar]

Have you noticed that every time someone invokes "realism" in D&D its the Fighter that gets bent over not the guy flinging fire from his fingers?   

"Realistically" spells should be able to mitigate the cost.  If Fabricate can spin full plate out of frying pans and bootstraps, Mending, Make Whole, and the Repair spells should be able to fix boo boos in the Celestial Demon Plate.  If not, start charging like the tanks do in the shit MMOs with item wear.  Or use cheap nonmagical armor instead and make the cleric waste resources healing you more.   

[Unbeliever]

Have you noticed that every time someone invokes "realism" in D&D its the Fighter that gets bent over not the guy flinging fire from his fingers?   

Yeah, my first and not entirely constructive thought was "sounds like another way to fuck over the poor bastards in armor." 

Given the costs, the answers are pretty clear:  (i) ignore the whole thing by using magic, (ii) use magic to solve the whole problem, or (iii) get some armor that's nigh invulnerable, like adamantine or something self-healing.

[SorO_Lost]

Mine too but I'm the cynical one.

Speaking of increasing Hardness...

Magic Item Augmentation - Hardness
Obdurium: 30 hardness, 60 hp.
Matter Manipulation(SRD): +5 hardness, +15 hp.
Hardening(SRD): up to +10 hardness at cl20.
Dwarvencraft(RoS): item template, +2 hardness, +10 hp & +2 saves.
Hellforged (DMGII): item template, +1 hardness.
Soulforged (DMGII): item template, +1 hardness.
+5 Enhancement(CorE): +10 hardness, +50 hp.
Greater Crystal Of Adamant Weaponry(MiC): +10 hardness.
Augment Object(Stronghold): doubles hardness and hp for cl/days.
Sovereign Sealant (SW): wood treatment, +2 hardness.
Blood Groove (Dragon 358:39): sword property, +2 hardness.
Folded Metal (Dragon 358:40): metal weapon property, +4 hardness.
Oerthblood (Dragon 351:45): metal additive, doubles hardness.
Pure Ore (Dragon 347:47): metal additive, doubles hardness.

[ketaro]

Ditch the armor. Get a new set of fullplate made of Aurorum. It's a special material in Exalted Deeds that is just as strong as the normal steel that normal fullplate is made of EXCEPT Aurorum repairs itself if damaged or sundered.

Self repairing armor and it only costs an extra +4,000gp to attach to fullplate. That's cheaper than getting something like Adamantine Fullplate or any other armor made of something that increases its hardness and hit points.

[Jackinthegreen]

Or if you really want to shell out the money up front, armor made from Riverine (from Stormwrack) is entirely made of force (thus it can't take damage by normal means), and instead of just an armor bonus it is half armor, half deflection.

[Keldar]

Living Metal (Magic of Faerun, 179)  repairs itself as well, a 1 hp a minute, for 4500gp for heavy.  And its Dex and ACP are improved 1 point too.

Any nonmagical armor of these types is going to very quickly pay for themselves and quickly get you back to +4 on savings alone with that video gamey house rule.  And for cripes sake, take Craft (Armorsmith) and fix your own armor for a discount if you don't switch to self repairing armor!

[SorO_Lost]

Have you noticed that every time someone invokes "realism" in D&D its the Fighter that gets bent over not the guy flinging fire from his fingers?   

Speaking of, logged into DDO for the first time in months. New Monster Champion system murderscrews mundanes.

I went from walking through Epic Elite Tor (giants and dragons) barely ever getting hit on my Monk to taking 400~900 damage every. single. time. they. attack. Beating the red named dragon/giant boss combos at the end are easier than the randomly generated trash between you and them now.

[brujon]

Have you noticed that every time someone invokes "realism" in D&D its the Fighter that gets bent over not the guy flinging fire from his fingers?   

Speaking of, logged into DDO for the first time in months. New Monster Champion system murderscrews mundanes.

I went from walking through Epic Elite Tor (giants and dragons) barely ever getting hit on my Monk to taking 400~900 damage every. single. time. they. attack. Beating the red named dragon/giant boss combos at the end are easier than the randomly generated trash between you and them now.

You just described one of the several reasons i no longer care much for MMO's, especially the free to play variety.

[SorO_Lost]

It's what happens when morons have given programming access.
You know what sounds hard? Adding a zero after the present figures, that'll make it hard on them!
*sighs*