Minimum Enhancement Bonus

[Chadwick]

Hi,

I'm not really sure if I'm completely missing something or overlooking text somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find any description of what the "minimum enhancement bonus" on armor actually does. The only thing in the books I see says

Masterwork armor requires a minimum enhancement bonus, as shown in this entry.

I know I saw something somewhere saying it's a bonus to rolls, but what specific rolls? Attack rolls, hit rolls, checks?

Me and my friends just started playing a few days ago so if someone could clarify that would be fantastic. Sorry if it's an obvious answer, but it's baffling me.

 

[abyssaldeath]

The minimum enhancement bonus is the minimum magical AC bonus the armor can have. You can not create a masterwork armor with a AC bonus less then the minimum enhancement bonus.

 

[Chadwick]

Ah alright, thank you very much.

Looking now at that and the masterwork armors entry it should have been more obvious. >,<

 

[Stalker0]

No its definitely a little confusing.

Basically once you get to +4 armor, you get an extra bump in the AC from the masterwork properties.

 

[gizmo33]

Now I'm not sure I get it. Why would they enforce a minimum enhancement bonus? If fey leather armor is made out of some great material, how is that different than a suit of plate armor? Why can one be +1 and the other one isn't? Are they suggesting that before the enchantment process that something like fey leather is really some other kind of armor? Normal leather? Is it some upside-down way of capping the enhancement bonus for these armors? What's the problem with +1 god-plate that caused them to do this?

 

[Stalker0]

Now I'm not sure I get it. Why would they enforce a minimum enhancement bonus? If fey leather armor is made out of some great material, how is that different than a suit of plate armor? Why can one be +1 and the other one isn't? Are they suggesting that before the enchantment process that something like fey leather is really some other kind of armor? Normal leather? Is it some upside-down way of capping the enhancement bonus for these armors? What's the problem with +1 god-plate that caused them to do this?

Basically they have switch masterwork and magical armors in 4e.

In 3e, masterwork was some nice material that you slapped magic on. In 4e, masterwork is a combination of awesome mundane materials and extremely powerful magics that bind it together. You cannot have a +1 godplate, because it takes a lot more magical mojo to forge it.

 

[abyssaldeath]

You also don't pay for masterwork. The price is built into the magical bonus cost.

 

[gizmo33]

You cannot have a +1 godplate, because it takes a lot more magical mojo to forge it.

Magical mojo used to be represented by the enhancment bonus AFAIK. That makes it somewhat odd to me - if there's something inherently magically enhanced about godplate, then why isn't the AC bonus just part of the enhancement bonus? Just say "godplate is platearmor +10 to +12" (or whatever). They seemed to go out of their way to make this more complicated but I can't figure out why they did it.

The masterwork armors AFAICT seem to be nothing much more than a jumble of statistics with no more flavor text other than the usual noun-noun naming scheme. "More magical mojo" reasoning suggests that they're trying to stat-up some sort of pre-existing flavor/story element.

 

[Stalker0]

Magical mojo used to be represented by the enhancment bonus AFAIK. That makes it somewhat odd to me - if there's something inherently magically enhanced about godplate, then why isn't the AC bonus just part of the enhancement bonus? Just say "godplate is platearmor +10 to +12" (or whatever). They seemed to go out of their way to make this more complicated but I can't figure out why they did it.

The masterwork armors AFAICT seem to be nothing much more than a jumble of statistics with no more flavor text other than the usual noun-noun naming scheme. "More magical mojo" reasoning suggests that they're trying to stat-up some sort of pre-existing flavor/story element.

Agree completely, I'm not fond of the mechanic myself. But that's how it works.

 

[Larrin]

Godplate +6 and plate +12 would have been more or less the same thing as far as AC is concerned. The reason they did it this way was so that armor stayed on a 1-6 rating (and so there wouldn't be different light to heavy bonuses (+8 vs +12) ) If you can't have swords +12, you shouldn't have armor +12. Plus lots of enchantments give you a "bonus equal to the enhancement" thus +12 is rather hefty. best to stick with +6.

But AC needed a boost from somewhere at higher levels, so they mixed it in with mastercrafting. Once you understand it, its not an issue, but the learning process could be smoother. They could have just spelled it out for us. (ie saying all +4-+5 plate is warplate, and +3 or lower never is)

(don't have the information here, so numbers could be off, but you get the jist)