Mountain Plate

[widow]

Dragon Magazine allowed for this?  There is the Master Forge article in dragon magazine number 358.  It has additional master craft options that are non-magical and can be added to armor, weapons, and equipment.  You can have more than one on an item and they include:

Caster Armor: -5% spell Failure
Folded Metal: +4 Hardness
Lightweight: -20% weight
Reinforced: +10% weight and +1 to the base armor AC
Segmented: +1 Max Dex

These can all be added on top of whatever magic properties you add to the armor.

[Sirdanile]

Alternatively you could always be riding a mount.

I like the fallen knight thing, and 4 levels isn't bad if you use a reach weapon.

[X-Codes]

I still don't know if I like Knight for this.  Here, this is what I'd do: start with TSA, Masterwork makes it -7, Nimble makes it -5.  Since you're going with ridiculously heavy armor, you're probably going to want Deflective Armor, so Heavy Armor Optimization knocks it down to -4, which meshes perfectly with Dread Commando.  Combine with the Tooth of Savnok listed above, so your movement is unimpeded, and a Restful Crystal, since you can't remove the armor while using the Tooth, even to rest, and you're golden.

[zook1shoe]

Alternatively you could always be riding a mount.

I like the fallen knight thing, and 4 levels isn't bad if you use a reach weapon.

The Skewer-of-Gnomes is a good reach weapon. Make it a lance?

[Maat Mons]

War of the lance has improved versions of masterwork (page 25).  It goes up to 5 lower armor check penalty for 750 gp. 

[zook1shoe]

Crazy... I'll look again

[X-Codes]

War of the lance has improved versions of masterwork (page 25).  It goes up to 5 lower armor check penalty for 750 gp.

Ah, I remember that.  It also does +5 Masterwork weapons for 1500 gp.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

War of the lance has improved versions of masterwork (page 25).  It goes up to 5 lower armor check penalty for 750 gp.

Ah, I remember that.  It also does +5 Masterwork weapons for 1500 gp.

Sounds Reduculous.

[X-Codes]

War of the lance has improved versions of masterwork (page 25).  It goes up to 5 lower armor check penalty for 750 gp.

Ah, I remember that.  It also does +5 Masterwork weapons for 1500 gp.

Sounds Reduculous.

It's kinda screwed up in that it progresses linearly, but giving melee cheaper access to the much-coveted +5 enhancement bonuses to hit, and also having it scale independently of the magical enhancement bonus of the item isn't a bad idea.

In fact, if they were tracked separately, we could do something like... the quality of the sword determines the enhancement bonus to attack/damage, and [Bonus]^2x300 gp is the price tag of such an item (nobody gives a shit about the base price, so fuck that part).  As such, something like a +5 Flaming weapon is 9,500 gp.