List of non-armor armor bonuses?

[Janthkin]

I'm building a Warlock 4/Monk 1/Ur-priest 2/Eldritch Disciple 5 to (re)join an ongoing campaign.  (I ended up with Monk 1 b/c the DM doesn't want to deal with Binder for a single-level dip.)

Given that I'm looking at Wis 25 at starting time, it seems worthwhile to keep the Monk's Wis-to-AC bonus.  What isn't worthwhile is giving up my Bracer slot for Bracers of Armor (or both Ring slots for Rings of Force Armor).

Somewhere out there, I'm certain someone has compiled a list of non-armor Armor bonus items.  Anyone have a link? 

Alternatively, suggestions for my particular problem are welcome, with the following in mind:
Head is taken (+wis item);
Neck is taken (Chausible);
Bracers are likely taken (Entangling Blast has the lead right now); and
Ring slots are valuable, and I'd like to hold one of them for a Ring of Counterspells (to protect the Persisted buffs).

[Rebel7284]

Is switching monk to swordsage an option? wisdom to AC in light armor allows for some pretty awesome combinations
- those two items from oriental adventures that give +1 AC and can be enchanted separately.
- defending armor spikes
- magic vestment

Also, persist Channeled Divine Shield for DR 10/evil.

[Janthkin]

Is switching monk to swordsage an option? wisdom to AC in light armor allows for some pretty awesome combinations
- those two items from oriental adventures that give +1 AC and can be enchanted separately.
- defending armor spikes
- magic vestment

Also, persist Channeled Divine Shield for DR 10/evil.

Unfortunately not; much like Binder, asking him to learn a whole new mechanic for a 1-level dip isn't a good option.

Can you attach armor spikes to not-armor?  Could just slap a Defending enchant on any weapon I carry, I suppose; Eldritch Glaive isn't actually a Glaive, so I don't have to deal with 2-handed weapon rules.  It's a touch pricey at WBL CL 12, but I can likely fit in a +2 Defending Toothpick or something.

Magic Vestment is in play, but that's an enhancement bonus to armor; assume that I'll be casting that regardless of what source of armor bonus I can find.

Unfortunately, it's a Glaivelock build, Extend won't double the duration of a Persisted spell, and no access to Night Sticks - the single spell I'll be routinely persisting is Divine Power.

Some good thoughts in there!  Thanks!

[Captnq]

Dude. Yer a monk. Use that.

Okay. First of all, Buy two ward cestus. then get bracers of Striking and an amulet of natural weapondry. Take Defending in the Bracers of striking and let someone hit you with greater Magic Fang for the +5 enhancement bonus.

Both hands, your feet, your knees and your elbows are now +5 defending. If your DM won't allow that, buy six ward cestus with opposable so you have a "weapon" in each of your eight attack points. True, you look like a leather bondage freak, but you can drop the EB on all eight parts of your body give yourself a +40 using Defending. Assuming your DM isn't smoking crack and hasn't ruled that multiple different sources of don't stack.

Even strapping 8 ward cestus on your body lets you fight with Total Defense and add +8 to your AC. Again, leather bondage freak.

Smoking is an excellent defensive Weapon Enhancement. Gives you a 5 foot stinking cloud that you are immune to that gives you a 20% miss chance and makes people who grapple you nauseated. Not bad for a +1 bonus.

I like duststorm. +3 bonus can be expensive, but 3 Haboob spells a day that last ten minutes, unstoppable damage of 5d4 untyped, grants you total concealment, Yet you are totally immune to it. I like the idea of using both. A cloud of Sand and Farts stands in the distance and starts firing spells at you. What do you do?

Put Assassination into your bracers of Striking so you can put poison on all 8 of your attack sites. Add toxic so the poison lasts for two blows. Coat yourself with poison and murder the crap out of people with hugs while singing Barney the Big Purple Dinosaur songs.
(I love you, you love me, take 1d10 con damage from getting kneed in the groin, Mutherf**ker!) Seriously. That'll stop people from getting near you.


Sewer Urchin: Very Poisonous! Don't touch me!
The Tick: Ho ho ho! Who'd want to?

[Janthkin]

Please keep in mind this is an ACTUAL character, with the WBL of a level 12 character.  A single +5 weapon is out of reach here (base price 50k; WBL is 88k, with the "no item can use up more than 50% of WBL at creation time" rule).  Given that it took > 2 years to get from level 2 to level 12 in this campaign, I'm not going to plan my build around level 20+ wealth. 

[Captnq]

Gotcha. Limits are important to know.

Spiked Helmet: 10 gp.
Make it +1 Smoking. Cost: 8,310 gp. Green Smoke billows out of your hat on command.
Smoking just rocks.

Now, if you are just trying to boost your AC and avoid spell failure, remember, you only need on free hand to cast spells.
Extreme Steel Shield AC: 3, 20 gp ASF: 15%
Mithral +1000 gp, -10% ASF
Faecrafter +500 gp, -5% ASF

You now have a Shield that is AC: 3 for 1520 gp and does not carry with it Arcane Spell Failure.

(or make it a buckler if you need both hands free from time to time. Much cheaper. You can get by with only faecrafted.)


Add Shield Special abilities and EBs as you wish.

I recommend ASA Healing. 8,000 gp and you heal 2d8+5 if you drop into the negatives, automatically. The greater version isn't worth it.

Quickness is a +1 bonus that gives you 5 feet of movement. You ALWAYS need more speed.

Speaking of, you can get speed in your shield for 6000 gp. The boots are 12,000 gp, and last for ten rounds. The shield lasts for 3 rounds. Not as effective, but if you are trying to shoe horn in speed and keep your WBL down...


Oh, and if you do deside to get armor, remember Twilight (a +1 bonus ASA) reduces ASF by 10%. Combined with mithral and faecrafted you can get ACF down -25%. That's a suit of brestplate for a +5 AC. It'll only cost you 8,200 gp for a total +6 to your AC.


Or, buy a bracers of armor +1. Point out that it's Armor. Armor made of force, but armor. Then put Armor Special Abilities on it. For 2,000 gp you can have +1/+1 armor that comes with ghost touch. That's a 9,000 gp value for 2k. Can't beat that with a stick.

[Amechra]

Monks lose their AC bonus if they use a shield as well.

[kitep]

We've always played that you could enchant a normal set of clothes as if it were armor with an armor bonus of +0.

From the Magic Vestment spell (PHB-251)

You imbue a suit of armor or a shield with
an enhancement bonus of +1 per four
caster levels (maximum +5 at 20th level).
An outfit of regular clothing counts as armor
that grants no AC bonus for the purpose
of this spell.

I don't think it's RAW that clothes are non-armor armor and so can be enchanted as if armor, but a lot of people I know play it that way.

Good luck!

[Captnq]

Monks lose their AC bonus if they use a shield as well.

I throw out the ideas. It's up to OP to figure out what works for him.

[Jackinthegreen]

Monks lose their AC bonus if they use a shield as well.

I throw out the ideas. It's up to OP to figure out what works for him.

Do you make sure the ideas are relevant though?  In this case, it doesn't seem like you did since a shield bonus is irrelevant to a monk who wants to keep the monk's armor bonus since they are mutually exclusive.

Now, if you had mentioned a variant that allows monks to use shields, that would have been a different story.  And I think I remember seeing one, but balls if I can remember exactly where it is right now.  And Google isn't being forthcoming yet.

[SolEiji]

You could use a boot or elbow blade from Complete Scoundrel for that defending weapon.  Alternatively a Defending Unarmed Strike if you can get them enchanted somehow (but your neck is taken).  As far as armor and shield bonuses go, besides "wand of mage armor/shield", you probably will get the most AC for your buck not from armor/shield but alternate sources.  Protection Devotion feat comes to mind... do Ur-Priests get turn undead to refresh this?

I say this because honestly with Magic Vestment, it looks like you already have armor bonuses covered, and getting actual armor bonuses without wearing armor is difficult.  I honestly don't know more than that, sorry.

[Amechra]

Wait, are you allowed to do that thing in MIC that lets you combine multiple items for the same slot into one?

So you can have Bracers of Armor and Bracers of Entangling Blast as the same item.

[rot42]

Not precisely what you are seeking, but the Stony Plating graft from Magic of Eberron (p. 133) gives you a point of natural armor that stacks with everything for 2800 gp and 4 HP. Similar grafts exist for plants and dragons (and probably some others - there should be a link to the grafting guide in the Handbook Index thread).

Table 6-11 on page 234 of the Magic Item Compendium gives rules for combining common effects, including putting an armor bonus on your bracers at normal cost.

[Janthkin]

Table 6-11 on page 234 of the Magic Item Compendium gives rules for combining common effects, including putting an armor bonus on your bracers at normal cost.

Ah-ha!  I knew it was in there somewhere.

There's also various Robes in the MIC with +4 Armor; obviously directed at Arcane casters, but applicable here.  Little pricier than the Bracers of Armor, though.

I'd love to know where to find a shield-using Monk, as that opens Animated Shield (with Defending Shield Spikes) back up as an option.

Right now, options look like this:
No armor: +7 AC from Wisdom, +4 Armor (Bracers/Robe), +2 Armor Enhancement (Magical Vestments): +13 (plus dex, protection, natural armor, etc.)
With armor: +6 AC from Mith. Breastplate (that being as heavy as a Warlock can go, both proficiency & ACF-wise), +3 enhancement: +9.

[Janthkin]

Protection Devotion feat comes to mind... do Ur-Priests get turn undead to refresh this?

There's a fluff mismatch between Ur-priest & the Devotion feats, but that aside, it's not a bad option (though a feat + turn attempts to fuel is steep - DMM Persist is eating my available Rebuking in a given day).

[awaken_D_M_golem]

UrPriest has a non-evil variant,
that could use those no problem.


(minor tangent)
Psion Uncarnate is absolutely not r.a.i. ;
but has two (su) abilities that specifically
talk about keeping Armor Bonus.  In both
cases it's no longer an Armor Bonus and
is now an (su) with a different name.
I think a case can be made that r.a.w.
you'd get the bonus twice ... and ultimately
not doing all that much.  Very little twink.

[Captnq]

Actually, had this argument with someone, so it bears repeating.

If a monk casts the spell "Shield" does he lose his Wis Bonus?

Well, I came to the conclusion that the answer was, "No."

So then the point was raised, "A ring of shielding is nothing more then a force version of bracers. And if monks can use bracers of armor, then why not a shield of force?"

Which I agreed to.

So then they calculated what it would cost to make a Wall shield ring of force. Then, they put it and all the Shield ASAs into...

get this...

An Ioun Stone.

By the rules, if you are willing to pay x2 cost, you can take ANYTHING that takes up a body slot and put it into an ioun stone at twice the cost.

Then they bought a Ward Cestus, extrapolated the cost of ioun blade's ioun stone property (4,000 gp) and put it into the ward cestus, then put the ioun stone into the ward cestus' ioun stone slot.

One expensive work around, but at the level in question, actually rather cost effective.


Sorry I didn't put that part up in my previous post. It seemed fairly obvious to me. These sorts of mangled magic items gets fairly common when your campaign reaches epic.

Do you make sure the ideas are relevant though?

The ideas ARE relevant. Sorry you feel I should be spoon feeding every single work-around. If OP can't figure out the work-around on OP's own, then OP should ask. If OP doesn't TRY, OP won't learn nothing. That is the difference between a cookbook Min/Maxer and a true optimizer. One sees failure, the other sees opportunity.

I very rarely will say the words, "What You SHOULD Do Is..." I don't know what the OP is optimizing towards. In my opinion, what the OP should do is ditch the concept and start over. It makes no sense and is jumping all over the place. Then again, I don't know what the OP is shooting for. I made an NPC who was all over the place, but his thing was he was the faster running ever. That was IT. He ran. Fast. Period. (I wanted to break the sound barrier. Never did pull it off.) I find one trick characters to be boring, but that's just me. I find a dip here, dip there to be un-fun as well. But I'm not playing him.

So, it I throw out ideas, knowing that 90% will fail to hit the mark. But I pick stuff he wouldn't normally think of, in hopes of getting him to think in a new direction and fall out of old habits.

[Jackinthegreen]

Do you make sure the ideas are relevant though?

The ideas ARE relevant. Sorry you feel I should be spoon feeding every single work-around.

Then shall we ask the OP?

Janthkin, would you have even considered the idea of using a shield instead of getting the monk's AC bonus?  Have you considered it after Captnq posted the benefits of a shield?  Would you have given more of your attention to that suggestion if it had been prefaced with "The monk's AC can only grant AC.  Here are the benefits of such AC.  Using a shield, however, can get you numerous other benefits besides just increased AC."


Captnq, let's analyze your method of teaching: 

So, it I throw out ideas, knowing that 90% will fail to hit the mark. But I pick stuff he wouldn't normally think of, in hopes of getting him to think in a new direction and fall out of old habits.

I question whether you're actually invested in teaching what's right, and indeed whether you're effective at it.  Would you say such a schoolteacher who threw stuff at his students knowing that 90% will miss would be good?  I should hope not.  So why are you teaching that way?

Captnq, I know of someone who has earned his PhD studying how people learn, particularly when they have preconceived notions of what they think is "right."  Watch the video if you'd like.  The main thing he learned though, is that in order to properly teach a concept, it's best to start with the student's preconceived notions about it.  They need to be identified and analyzed by the student because just handing them the information can often simply reinforce their own ideas instead of actually teaching them what's right.

And don't think that his science work wouldn't apply to D&D.  How many posters have requests or ideas that simply don't line up with the reality of the game?  How often do they think what they want will work in the first place?  And how often does simply pointing out the good stuff lead them away from the bad or less good stuff?  Think about it and ask yourself if you're actually accomplishing what you set out to do.

One minor note: Feycraft can only be added to wooden shields, which would exclude any mithril shield as well as the buckler since bucklers are specifically made of metal and can't be wooden unless the DM allows it.  Githcraft would work though and for only 100g more.  For the +1 to all concentration checks instead of a +1 to selective Bluff checks, it's still pretty decent.


Janthkin, AC can often not be all it's cracked up to be mostly because it's cost-prohibitive for AC to keep up with the rising attack bonuses as you go up against tougher adversaries.  The general rule to judge whether you have good AC is whether it's 10 or more above your opponents' attack modifier.  Do you think you'll be in that territory?  If not, miss chances might be better for you because it's always going to be 20 or 50%.

It does look like actual armor could be prohibitive to you though, especially if you cast Divine Agility (Spell Compendium page 69) regularly or otherwise pump your unarmored AC even higher.  It sadly can't be persisted, but it does provide a +10 enhancement bonus to dexterity, so +5 AC among other benefits.

Why not obviate the need for AC in the first place?  If you take the Invisibility invocation and don't make direct attacks and such, you could simply go unnoticed and not be attacked at all, if you're going against sighted opponents who don't have See Invisibility or similar.  Do you anticipate that being a worthwhile strategy?

[Janthkin]

Janthkin, AC can often not be all it's cracked up to be mostly because it's cost-prohibitive for AC to keep up with the rising attack bonuses as you go up against tougher adversaries.  The general rule to judge whether you have good AC is whether it's 10 or more above your opponents' attack modifier.  Do you think you'll be in that territory?  If not, miss chances might be better for you because it's always going to be 20 or 50%.

It does look like actual armor could be prohibitive to you though, especially if you cast Divine Agility (Spell Compendium page 69) regularly or otherwise pump your unarmored AC even higher.  It sadly can't be persisted, but it does provide a +10 enhancement bonus to dexterity, so +5 AC among other benefits.

Why not obviate the need for AC in the first place?  If you take the Invisibility invocation and don't make direct attacks and such, you could simply go unnoticed and not be attacked at all, if you're going against sighted opponents who don't have See Invisibility or similar.  Do you anticipate that being a worthwhile strategy?

Part of the problem, of course, is my fault - I didn't provide the complete context of the game/group in the OP, which makes it far more difficult for you guys to provide any suggestions that reach past the direct question I asked.

This is a LOW-op group; as illustration, my DM is concerned that the potential 21d6 damage of a lvl 12 glaivelock w/Divine Power is overpowered.  But as such, it gives me the opportunity to play around with concepts that would never see the table in a high-op group...like an Eldritch Disciple Glaivelock with no armor.    

I do have Divine Agility in mind, and there are a suite of other AC-pumping divine spells available for in-combat buffing, too.  I'm not really aiming for "good" AC territory, so much as trying to make the best of what I do have available.  Unfortunately, the Lesser Invocation that covers Invis doesn't mesh with Eldritch Glaive, which is the concept I'm exploring with this character.  Eventually, the Greater Invocation may be an option, but I can be certain that the number of Invisible-seeing monsters will increase shortly afterwards.

[nijineko]

skin of ectoplasmic armor (complete psionic version) can be used for a +8 armor bonus.

do note that the MIC updated it to count as light armor for class ability purposes, so you'll have to either get the dm to approve two versions of it, or ignore the MIC version.