Stack armor enhancements with chain shirt and breastplate?

[The_Laughing_Man]

I think I found out an interesting way to get armor enhancements +10 more cheaply than before.

The logic goes like this:

According to SRD there are 12 magic item slots. Two of which are interesting for this:
- One vest, vestment, or shirt on the torso
- One robe or suit of armor on the body (over a vest, vestment, or shirt)

Chain shirt is described to be a shirt hence it occupies the torso slot.
Breastplate is a suit of armor which occupies the body slot.

Breastplate: A breastplate covers your front and your back. It
comes with a helmet and greaves (plates to cover your lower legs). A
light suit or skirt of studded leather beneath the breastplate protects
your limbs without restricting movement much.

Chain Shirt: A chain shirt protects your torso while leaving your
limbs free and mobile. It includes a layer of quilted fabric worn
underneath to prevent chafing and to cushion the impact of blows.
A chain shirt comes with a steel cap.

Correct?

It appears to me that you put a Chain shirt under a breastplate/half-plate/fullplate etc no problem as the occupy different body slots for magic items and gain the benefits of different armor enhacements.

Naturally the armor bonuses would not stack. Only the higher one is used. But the armor enhancements would stack!

The price of the enhancements are as follows:
+1 armor    1,000 gp
+2 armor    4,000 gp
+3 armor    9,000 gp
+4 armor    16,000 gp
+5 armor    25,000 gp
+6 armor    36,000 gp
+7 armor    49,000 gp
+8 armor    64,000 gp
+9 armor    81,000 gp
+10 armor    100,000 gp

If I were to buy a +10 armor (+5 enchantment and e.g. heavy fortification) it would cost me 100k gp.

Instead I could buy a +5 Chain shirt and +6 Breastplate (+1 enchantment and heavy fortification) and it would cost me 25k gp + 36k gp = 61k gp. A hefty 39k gp saving. I'm ignoring the price of the base armor itself here since it is negligible.

But why stop there I could also spend 100k like this:
+7 chain shirt, +7 breastplate and I still have 2k to spare. So I would have +14 enhancements out of which I could freely choose +12 as I see fit.

As a side note: On lower levels +2 chain shirt and +2 breastplate is cheaper than +3 chain shirt!

[Maat Mons]

I can tell you that you're explicitly allowed to use dastana (Arms and Equipment Guide/Oriental Adventures), a chahar-aina (Oriental Adventures), and a chain shirt in this fashion. 

Arms and equipment guide has rules for adding armor special abilities to bracers of armor on page 130. 

For fortification, a gemstone of fortification (Draconomicon, p83) gives it as a slotless item that has the same cost as adding it to +1 armor. 

[Agita]

Pretty sure you can't wear multiple pieces of armor in different slots. The text you quoted explicitly defines the body slot as the slot for armor, and a chain shirt is armor, whether it's called a "shirt" or not (it also comes with things that are very much not a "shirt", like a helmet and gauntlets), so it goes in the body slot.

You can already do this with the Dastana and Cahar-Aina Maat Mons mentioned, as well as by just carrying a buckler, but I don't think this specific way holds water.

[The_Laughing_Man]

The way think about it, is that the general rule is that armor goes to body slot. And that the with Chain shirt specific overrides general. A Chain shirt is described to be a shirt and it specifically protects your torso, hence the torso slot. Granted the steel cap is a bit of an issue. Solved by not wearing a cap and wearing the helmet from the breastplate?

[Halinn]

The way think about it, is that the general rule is that armor goes to body slot. And that the with Chain shirt specific overrides general. A Chain shirt is described to be a shirt and it specifically protects your torso, hence the torso slot. Granted the steel cap is a bit of an issue. Solved by not wearing a cap and wearing the helmet from the breastplate?

It states that it protects the torso, not that it occupies the torso slot. I also imagine issues with stacking four layers of armor (quilted fabric under the chain shirt, the chain shirt, studded leather under the breastplate and then the breastplate itself). And given that you can't even wear the full suit of chain shirt armor, a DM would be well within his rights to say that it can't be enchanted properly without including the cap (or the breastplate helmet, if you opt out of that instead).

[The_Laughing_Man]

Head slot is separate from the body slot or the torso slot.
So by raw you can wear e.g.
A hat of disguise and +1 chain shirt with steel cap.

The same applies to torso slot and body slot.
I.e you'd have a steel cap under your helmet. 

I agree that protecting torso does not equate with torso slot.
It is merely supporting the argument,
that a chain shirt is shirt and it uses the torso slot.

But as you put it, it would physically look quite ridiculous.

Alas, the issue is not explicit, that chain shirt uses the torso slot.
Instead I have reasoned that in this case specific overrides general.
General being that armors use body slot and
Specific being that chain shirt is a shirt.

I know that this is rules taken to absurdity.
I figured that 'good' that it may sound,
somebody might punch a hole t through it.
So I opened this topic .
IMO, no kill blow yet.

[Halinn]

Under the same argument, it explicitly includes a steel cap, so it would logically use both the torso slot and the head slot.

[The_Laughing_Man]

So +1 breastplate and helmet could not
be used with hat of disguise?

Even though it is also explicitly stated
that a suit of armor occupies the body slot.
And that a suit consists of greaves, plate
and helmet?

Hmmm.. +1 full plate and gauntlets of
Ogre power. Could you use them together?

[Agita]

Under your argument, you would be correct, which is one reason it doesn't make sense. A chain shirt with all its components is armor, and therefore occupies the body slot defined as being for armor, so it doesn't conflict with any magic gauntlets or helmets.

[Eagle of Fire]

I see two really big problem with this suggestion.

First, I'd never allow one of my PCs to wear two heavy suits of armor at the same time. A chain shirt is supposed to be really heavy, so is a breastplate. It would make no sense for a character to wear two of those at the same time.

Second, it is explicitly mentioned in the DM book that magic items of the same kind doesn't stack. You cannot pick a +5 breastplate with a +4 chain shirt and say you got a +9 mod to armor. Only the highest number would apply in this case.

As a DM, the very best I'd allow in such a situation would be if both armors have different kind of enchantments (like one is + whatever and the other have whatever enchantement the first one doesn't have and doesn't apply to mobility, e.g. it is not a bonus to stealth, reduced check penalty or whatever) then both would apply, except that I'd give the PC really heavy disadvantages of wearing two types of armor at the same time. Probably a huge hit on movement, combat rolls, etc,  plus both armor would apply their check penalty further reducing your skills.

Good luck trying to swim with those.

[The_Laughing_Man]

mithral, half-weight, nimbleness, fey-crafted

There are ways to reduce acp and weight so that is not really an issue. And that is my understanding as well about the rules as well that the armor bonus from two different set of armors would not stack.

ACPs would stack, ASFs would be rolled separately and max dex bonus would use the worse one, imo. But I can understand a DM adjudicates differently.

My reasoning was that Chain shirt goes to torso slot and Breastplate goes to body slot. So they'd actually be two different kind of items (a shirt and a suit of armor).

Rai most definitely not, raw..? Well no clear counter yet. Silly? yes.

One thing still puzzles me is that if you have an enhanced armor, e.g. +1 full plate, can you use it with magical gauntlets of ogre power?

- fact: full plate includes gauntlets, visored helmet, heavy leather boots
- fact: full plate (a suit of armor) occupies the body slot
- assumption i: +1 enhancement is done for the whole suit including it's parts (gauntlets, visored helmet and boots)
- assumption ii: you must use the whole suit to gain the benefit of the +1 enhancement
-- i.e. if you are missing one gauntlet or the helmet then you don't gain the benefit of the +1 enhancement
- assumption iii: full plate occupies the body, head, hands and the feet slot in order to be effective
- assumption iv: you can throw away the visored helmet, the gauntlets and the boots, and still gain the benefit of the +1 enhancement.
- fact: a pair of gauntlets occupy the hands slot
- assumption v: you can wear two sets of gauntlets over each other 
- assumption vi: this is all very difficult. Body slot is separate from the head and the hands slot, and they have no interaction with each other. 

Which assumption holds water?

[whitetyger009]

the biggest fact that you are over looking is that armor that is given a +5 as an enhancement bonus to ac.  it becomes part of the normal ac of the armor.  so only the highest would apply at any time.  you won't get the affect of both enhancements. 

a chain shirt is ac+4, if you give it a +5 enhancement bonus it becomes +9. that +9 is all armor bonus.

a breast plate is +5, if you give it a +5 enhancement bonus it becomes +10.  that +10 is all armor bonus.

those pluses don't apply anywhere but on the armor bonus.  so your just wearing that chain shirt for nothing more than giving yourself all the penalties of wearing it with no bonus. 

now say one of the armors was enchanged to give a +2 deflection bonus to ac.  that would stack because it is a different type of bonus.  however deflection bonuses do not stack with eachother so you only get to use the highest.

in the end laughing_man your idea of wearing 2 armors doesn't work at all according to the way the rules are written.  as for wearing other stuff with your armor, nothing in the rules say you have to use the gauntlets, helmet, boots, or belt that came with the armor you are wearing and only magical items occupy slots.  so i can wear a dozen necklaces but only one of them can be magical and i can wear 10 rings but only 2 can be magical and i could wear a hat under my armor helmet.

[Eagle of Fire]

First, I'd never allow one of my PCs to wear two heavy suits of armor at the same time. A chain shirt is supposed to be really heavy, so is a breastplate. It would make no sense for a character to wear two of those at the same time.

mithral, half-weight, nimbleness, fey-crafted... There are ways to reduce acp and weight so that is not really an issue.

I didn't explain myself well. If you look in the armor table you'll notice that chain shirt is not a heavy armor but a medium armor, even though I referenced them as heavy. What I really meant was more the encumbrance factor more than the weight.

I'm a LARP player. I actually, in real life, wore chair shirts and chain armors to do real fight. They. Are. Freaking. Hard. To. Move. With. It's like moving someone... Those heavy but small objects are fine because you can handle them rather well and keep the weight near you, but try moving a big bookcase alone. That bookcase is not really heavy, probably in total even lighter than that other small heavy item... But you won't be able to carry it because you can't handle it well. You'll need a second person to help you.

The same thing apply to armor. Even if it is masterwork, even if it is well crafted, even if the brunt of the weight is repartitioned on your shoulders... It is still quite hard to move around with them. It is not a coincidence that you need training in medium and heavy armor before being able to use them, you know. As for encumbrance in the system, that's what armor check penalties and max dex are for. Because we all know it would be the heck of a lot harder to try to jump around or do acrobatics with a full plate of armor than it would with a leather armor.

So anyways, to get back to D&D... Just like I tell my players that unless specifically mentioned by them their characters don't keep their weapons unsheathed while moving long distance because otherwise their arm(s) would tire very fast... I would not allow one of my PCs to wear two armors at the same time unless there is a very specific reason.

[phaedrusxy]

I didn't explain myself well. If you look in the armor table you'll notice that chain shirt is not a heavy armor but a medium armor,

If you look in the armor table, you'd see that it is actually a light armor. 

[Eagle of Fire]

Sorry, I didn't bother to check in my book. There is two kind of chain armor, it must be the chainmail which is medium.

Still, it doesn't change anything in what I said. Light, medium or heavy classed, it doesn't matter.

[dipolartech]

I'd like to point out that while LARPing is awesome its not D&D and the thought you just expressed specifically leads to "melee" can't have nice things. Now some people on the various 'net communities might want to use the word "mundane" as in "mundanes can't have nice things" but there's not really anything all that "mundane" about a person fully capable of lifting a fullsized blacksmith anvil above their head and strap it to their back and travel for 8 hours.

The first thing to remember about these "armors" is that they are imagined to have a certain amount of difficult for a "normal" person (i.e. somebody that suited up and went a bashing in modern times to try it out) but there really isn't enough simulationist granularity to deal with "I am waterborn half-orc with the ability to lift this camel above my head of course I can wear a chain shirt and a breast plate" vs "I am a super charismatic gnome bard that can lift this large bag of flour but there's no way I could move in two sets of armor" (*of course thats ignoring all of the issues of armor size differences and square/cube law interaction......)

If you have to rely on the argument you can't do "whatever" in real life, well, D&D (3.5) is not designed well-enough to make that argument feasible.

EDIT: Forgot to actually make my point....
It is generally assumed that you cannot wear two sets of "armor" in D&D 3.5 because rules for "armor" say you can't wear two pieces of "armor" in the same place, various posts bring to the light the fact that the writers are brain dead because they mixed "armor" and "body slots" into a great heaping pile of craptastic confusion if you take straight RAW interaction that they could have avoided by double checking their descriptions and added some rules about other "slotted" items.


Things like "how hard it is to move in armor" do have some representation in the rules and given the simulationist vibe that should always be in D&D there should be. But rules on how things are equipped where are pretty much designed to keep a player from just stacking bonuses till the penalties don't matter, (hmm that sounds like flaws). For the perfect example, you can have 2 rings.... just 2.. unless you want to cut off somebody else's hand and hang it around your neck..... despite having 10 fingers and many people wearing multiple rings on one finger....

[Halinn]

Rai most definitely not, raw..? Well no clear counter yet. Silly? yes.

Let's try a simple reductio ad absurdum:

As clearly stated in the description on magic item slots, all suits of armor are worn on the body slot.
A chain shirt is worn on the torso slot.
Therefor a chain shirt is not a suit of armor.

The first is incontrovertible. The second is the assumption made. Since a chain shirt is a suit of armor (by definition of being on table 7-6 [and the text supporting the table, on page 122], providing an armor bonus and not being a shield), the assumption leads to an absurd result.

[Agita]

Rai most definitely not, raw..? Well no clear counter yet. Silly? yes.

Let's try a simple reductio ad absurdum:

As clearly stated in the description on magic item slots, all suits of armor are worn on the body slot.
A chain shirt is worn on the torso slot.
Therefor a chain shirt is not a suit of armor.

The first is incontrovertible. The second is the assumption made. Since a chain shirt is a suit of armor (by definition of being on table 7-6 [and the text supporting the table, on page 122], providing an armor bonus and not being a shield), the assumption leads to an absurd result.

My approach was a simple Modus Ponens (Armor occupies the Body slot; a chain shirt is armor, therefore it occupies the body slot), but yours illustrates the absurdity of the proposal better (as one might expect of reduction to absurdity).

[Maat Mons]

Supposing a chain shirt is a shirt, and thus occupies the torso slot, how would this prevent it from being armor, thus occupying the body slot?  An item occupying two body slots simultaneously doesn't violate any rule. 

[Eagle of Fire]

If you have to rely on the argument you can't do "whatever" in real life, well, D&D (3.5) is not designed well-enough to make that argument feasible.

Sorry, but I think D&D in general try very, very hard to be as close to reality than possible without cutting down on the fun factor and succeed very well at it. We're not discussing magic or any intangible force here, we're discussing being able to layer different kind of armors in the hope to add up on the defense factor.

I remember reading some very good papers about realism in D&D. I remember one in particular which suggested that the max level someone in the real world could be in comparison to D&D around level 5. So take about any best of the best person or worker or whatever in the real life, in D&D they would be about level 5. Great stuff to read and it really help to imagine realism in relation to real world in this game.

Comparing what people can do in real life version D&D is counting on skills though. Stats are another different thing altogether. I have PCs with a strength score of 18 in my games and I would not say that even them would be able to lift a real anvil above their head and throw it efficiently. Not a human or a dwarf anyways. A monstrous entity maybe...

That or we don't have the same definition of an anvil, I guess. Maybe you have very, very small anvils in your world.

I'd like to point out that while LARPing is awesome its not D&D and the thought you just expressed specifically leads to "melee" can't have nice things.

Thank you for the LARP compliment but that really wasn't the point I was trying to make. Also, I really don't understand how preventing melee chars to layer armor simply to stack bonuses lead to melee can't have nice things.

Let's not forget that the main point of this thread is "I think I found out an interesting way to get armor enhancements +10 more cheaply than before", which in itself is not a way to get "nice things" but rather some try to break and abuse the system in place. There is rules and this suggestion is clearly trying to circumvent them. I am not surprised to see people stepping and answering just plain no...