D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] DMG - Armor Special Abilities

Murrdox · Jul 20, 2003

Okay, question. I can't find ANY information about this in the new books.

A lot of the Armor Special Abilities do not have enhancement bonuses listed. This is GREAT for determining price. It's wonderful for new armor pricing, and I love it.

HOWEVER... Armor is still maxed at a +10 Enhancment. How do you figure out how many of these Special Abilities can be put on a suit of armor? All of them? Only one? Does this mean that now, if you have enough money, you can have a +5 Full Plate with all the special abilities on it, and it will never break the +10 barrier?

The DMG still says that Special Abilities count as enhancement bonuses for the max of +10!

ThirdWizard · Jul 20, 2003

I think it means the +# enchancements count toward it, although I havn't read that part of the DMG extensively. As far as I know you can put as many abilities as you want on armor, gold cost nonwithstanding.

hong · Jul 21, 2003

What I'd do is say that a +10 enhancement bonus corresponds to a 100,000 gp price, so that's the limit.

Celtavian · Jul 21, 2003

re

I think they are trying to build epic playability into the core rulebooks. I think the intent was that there wasn't going to be a limit on how many enhancements can go on armor or weapons, at least that is what I remember reading on one of these forums.

I could be wrong, but I remember reading about them doing away with the special ability enhancement bonus system.

Murrdox · Jul 21, 2003

If they're doing away with the +10 bonus cap, it seems silly that they still MENTION it on the same page as the table, along with the line that "Special abilites add to the enhancement bonus". What is the rationale for having some abilities add to the enhancment bonus, but others not?

This just seems like an excuse to be able to build a suit of armor with 20 to all energy resistances, Shadow, Glamored, and whatever else when creating a character of high level with a lot of gold to toss around.

I think I like hong's idea of drawing the cap at 100,000 for non-epic armor.

Fortunately, we really don't play high level campaigns... so this really won't be an issue for me personally... but it is still irksome.

Corinth · Jul 21, 2003

A special ability that doesn't list a Base Price Modifier doesn't count towards the +10 limit.

Dthamilaye · Jul 22, 2003

What Corinth said.

Also, keep in mind that as far as I remember, you can have only up to 200k costing items before epic play.

So in effect, you can have +10 armour with 'other' special abilities up to 100k. Together they cost 200k.

I think this was done so that players/DMs could make near-epic armours too. Weapons already go to 200k, so no need for cost-special abilities to them. But armours only went up to 100k, so there is another 100k that could be filled with something else.