Armour Rules and Facts

Armor provides a barrier between you and your foes—or, put more bluntly, between you and death. Every class provides access to one or more armor proficiencies, and it’s in your best interest to wear the finest armor you can. This section includes information on shields, which improve your defensive capabilities.

Armor Types:
Armor is grouped into categories. These categories can help you decide what armor is best for you. Your class tells you what kinds of armor you’re proficient with. You can take feats to learn the proper use of other kinds of armor. If you wear armor you’re not proficient with, it makes you clumsy and uncoordinated: You take a –2 penalty to attack rolls and to your Reflex defense.

Putting on a suit of armor always takes at least 5 minutes, which means that it’s an activity you can undertake only outside combat (likely while you’re taking a short rest).

Armor is defined as either light or heavy. Light armor is easy to move in if you’re proficient with it.
Cloth armor, leather armor, and hide armor are light armor. When you wear light armor, you add either your Intelligence or your Dexterity modifier to your Armor Class, whichever is higher. Heavy armor is more restrictive, so your natural agility matters less. When you wear heavy armor, you don’t add an ability score modifier to your AC. Chainmail, scale armor, and plate armor are heavy armor.

Certain kinds of armor are made according to arcane and esoteric methods that involve weaving magic into the substance of the armor. These masterwork armors never appear except as magic armor, and even then only at the highest levels (16th and above). The various kinds of masterwork armor fall into the same categories as mundane armor and have similar statistics, but they have a higher armor bonus than their mundane counterparts. The cost of masterwork armor is included in the cost of magic armor.

Cloth Armor: Jackets, mantles, woven robes, and padded vests don’t, by themselves, provide any significant protection. However, you can imbue them with protective magic. Cloth armor doesn’t slow you down or hinder your movement at all. All characters are proficient with cloth armor. Feyweave armor is woven with techniques perfected by the eladrin. Starweave
armor is fashioned after patterns created in the divine dominions of the Astral Sea.

Leather Armor: Leather armor is sturdier than cloth armor. It protects vital areas with multiple layers of boiled-leather plates, while covering the limbs with supple leather that provides a small amount of protection. Feyleather armor is cured by an elven method that leaves the armor supple but tougher than normal leather. Starleather armor is infused with the raw spiritual matter of the Astral Sea, making it light and strong.

Hide Armor: Thicker and heavier than leather, hide armor is composed of skin from any creature that has a tough hide, such as a bear, a griffon, or a dragon. Hide armor can bind and slightly hinder your precision, but it’s light enough that it doesn’t affect your speed. Darkhide armor is a superior tiefling armor cured in fire and infused with shadow. Elderhide armor involves scouring with elemental forces.

Chainmail: Metal rings woven together into a shirt, leggings, and a hood make up a suit of chainmail. Chainmail grants good protection, but it’s cumbersome, so it reduces your mobility and agility. Forgemail armor is made with superior metallurgy and a chainmaking technique mastered by dwarves. Spiritmail armor is made with techniques from the divine dominions of the Astral Sea.

Scale Armor: Overlapping pieces of highly durable material, such as steel or even dragon scales, make up scale armor. Despite its heaviness, scale is surprisingly easy to wear; its straps and buckles make it adjustable and able to fit snugly on the body, allowing flexibility and agility. Mundane scale armor uses metal plates. Wyrmscale is made using ancient techniques the dragon born invented to mimic the strength of overlapping dragon scales, and elderscale is a similar armor scoured with elemental forces.

Plate Armor: The heaviest type of armor, made up of shaped plates of metal or similarly resilient material, plate provides the most armor protection. The cost for its superior fortification is mobility and agility. Legend holds that Moradin made the first godplate armor, and ancient dwarf smiths copied his patterns imperfectly to make warplate armor.

Reading the Armor Table:
An armor or a shield entry on the Armor table contains the following information.

Armor Bonus: Armor provides this bonus to AC.

Shield Bonus: Shields provide this bonus to AC and Reflex defense.

Minimum Enhancement Bonus: Masterwork armor requires a minimum enhancement bonus, as shown in this entry.

Check: You take this penalty to all Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution based skill checks when you wear the armor. You don’t take the penalty to ability checks (such as a Strength check to break down a door or a Dexterity check to determine initiative in combat).

Speed: You take this penalty to your speed (in squares) when wearing the armor.

Price: The item’s cost in gold pieces. See individual magic items for their base market price and appropriate levels. The cost of masterwork armor is included in the cost of magic armor of 16th level or higher.

Weight: The armor’s weight.