Mythic Mage Armor Feat Question

[T.W. Hamill]

i was reading another thread and it was intimated that this will apply even if you apply said Mage Armor from a potion or scroll.

is this true? Because i'd skipped over taking it on my Knife Master/Vivisectionist because i had no way to cast it.

If this is true... since ill be taking the "potions act at your caster level" for Vivisectionist (and will have 15 levels of Viv), its all of a sudden much more attractive since i can buy Mage Armor pots by the bajillion.

[Something completely different]

Początkowo opublikowane przez JustSmile:

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

... uh, yeah, anyone not wearing heavy armor, at the very least (since it does not stack with Armor unlike in 3.0/3.5 (and even earlier version of 1.0 Pathfinder, IIRC, where it granted +4 enhancement to Armor and would stack on top of Armor as long as your armor wasn't better than +3 already)

Mage armour certainly does not stack with armour in 3.5 or 3.0. It provides an armour bonus which is non-stackable from any sources.

It partially does. Mage armour provides a +1 to four types of armour if I recall correctly. One of those (dodge) does stack, the other three do not.

[Sima Marlin]

Początkowo opublikowane przez The Silver Santana:

You can absolutely get it off scrolls and pots.

It is also better than armor if your DEX bonus is +1 or higher. Technically full plate +5 with a +1 feat bonus equals it if your DEX is 14 or lower, but your vivisectionist will have a massively higher DEX than that.

If you have the CHA or WIS monk also lets you add those to your unarmored AC, which is pretty much the highest you can get your AC right now period. You'll have ~10 more AC than a full-plate character that way, and dodge+crane style pushes that into the ~15 range. My MC is tanking with that, and it's obscene. Vivisectionist "only" gets to add insanely high alchemy fueled dex bonuses and a stupid natural armor bonus with tons of arcane self-target buffs to that instead. I.E. Your AC will be as obscene, maybe more so at certain levels.

I plan to add arcane enforcer slayer later so I can self-cast mage armor without losing BAB, which you might consider as well. There is an exploit (the ability name, not a bug) that lets you self-cast mage armor with that class.

Out of curiosity, what difficulty ? I am still on the act just after Dressen on core and most big mobs hit my tank ( 37 ac) on roll of 2-3

( am getting more out of displacement than ac :( )

[Sima Marlin]

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lord_WC:

As someone that can fight with a greatsword - I will kill you way faster if you are in a full plate than if you are a naked and quick guy. Sure a full plate is relatively light, but 20kg extra weight still slows you down. And it's infinitely better to not get hit.

No. Just.. no.

Ill lead with:

I have a BS in history - specializing in medieval history.

I re-enact, both in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) and through HEMA (Historical Eurpoean Martial Arts). Though i will say of the two, HEMA is a lot more accurate as far as the combat is concerned (though the SCA is great for learning how to do historically correct crafting and such, their combat is not period-accurate because it doesnt follow the training and techniques of the time - if you want HEMA + big battles like the SCA, you want HMB (Historical Medieval Battle).

I own three sets of period armor. I fight in them. (Modern recreations, i dont have any actual antique armor, 'cause that shizz is EXPENSIVE, but i do have a decent collection of actual antique weapons)

Ive been hit by real weapons. Not blunted ones, real, honest to god weapons (some of them have even been anitques), during demos for the public. Everything from greatswords, polearms, spears, swords, you name it - only things we dont use are headed weapons like some polearms, warhammers, and some maces where the flanges or spike CAN actually maybe penetrate the armor. (It still likely wont, but we're not taking chances).

Full plate armor (as it is in Pathfinder at least, which is a lot more like late-era plate armors, as opposed to early armors which didn't have nearly as much articulation and didn't have full coverage because they left lots of the back of the leg, underarms, etc, uncovered by plates) made you basically invincible. You can get hit with swords all day long and just stand there and laugh at the person. It will not EVER hurt you if you're wearing the armor correctly (Gambeson/Arming Coat, mail in lightly protected spots, etc). Same with any low-mass axe, any spear or non-mass oriented polearm, greatsword, you name it. The guy with the greatsword or polearm might be able to bear you over if your stance is bad, but thats about it. There are some weapons designed specifically designed to fight plate armor (well talk about that below) but by and large, the infantry you were fighting? They couldnt hurt you. You were the medieval equivalent of a Main Battle Tank.

Most guys in plate armor died to one of two things:

Being born over and then held and killed through weak spots - usually this involved quite a number of the infantry trying to do so dying before the could wrestle him to the ground to do so.

Heat exhaustion. The VAST majority of battlefield casualties among plate-armored men were to exhaustion, heat stroke, heart attacks brought on by heat exhaustion, etc.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lord_WC:

Not really, but in reality greatswords are spears for dumb people. Armor is not really effective when the other side has reach.

Nope. He can swing away with that spear (or stab away) or polearm all he wants. Ill just take the hit and close on him and end his life. Unless he's another plate armored fellow, who is likely not hitting me with those weapons - hes using a mace, warhammer, or, quite a bit more likely since guys with plate armor largely DIDNT carry shields anymore (again, we're talking about later plate, not the early stuff without full coverage) because they were useless to them - the other plate wearer is probably carrying a short polearm. Not an infantrymans polearm - which were often 7+ feet long, but a horsemans polearm - usualyl no larger than the wielder. Lucern Hammers, Pollaxes (Poll - pronounced "Pall-axe)/Lochaber Axe (scottish name for a nearly identical weapo), two-handed battle axes (which are NOT massively headed things - just a regular axe head with maybe a six to eight inch blade edge on a long handle and back-spike or hammer-head on the reverse side).

Because those weapons had enough mass and highly forged pointy bits to actually crush, deform, and occasionally pierce plate armor.

But thats really about it. Otherwise? Nothing on the battlefield was going to hurt you 95% of the time. Even arrows were largely ineffective - the Battle of Crecy, where the English Longbowmen carried the day against the "flower of the french nobility" - was successful not because the Knights themselves were killed by the archers.. but because their charge was broken when the archers shot their mounts out from underneath them.

Even fired directly on at 50 yards, arrows dont penetrate plate armor sufficiently to hurt the man wearing except on freak hits. If you look up Todd's Workshop on YouTube, hes dont extensive testing with period weapons (hes a smith/weaponcrafter that does things with period techniques) and even with modern Crossbows he couldnt get reliable penetrate against period-made plate armor. Because the armor is sloped and angled, even the heavy melee weapons which COULD crush or pierce often didnt.

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lord_WC:

If you actually ever wore a platemail you'd know you see or hear jack sh*t from it.

I do wear plate armor, frequently ("platemail" would never be historically correct, as the only plate armor that was worn over a full hauberken wouldnt be considered real plate armor - it was proto plate armor like a coat of plates or a Brigandine).

Like, twice a week.

I have a 12th century light harness (a "Cherbourg" style 7 piece breastplate, floating elbows and knees (tied to an arming garment), splinting on the upper arms and legs, floating (forward-facing only) greaves, vambraces, and spaulders instead of full pauldrons with a chain hauberk underneath, a chain coif and a normal style nasal helm with a (non-period) attachable visor (for when im using it for the SCA, gotta have a visor).

I have a full late 14th century kit, and a Burgundian Gothic kit, both made by the fine folks over at IceFalcon Armory (many, many years ago). Both kits use a salet as their helmet. 14th century kit has a removable full-face barred visor, and the gothic kit has a more traditional bevor-and-upper-slit-visor.

You can hear just fine if you wear a helmet that allows it, like a Salet. You can see just fine too. If im not expecting to have to deal with a lot of arrows, i can just take the visor off my Salet, its held on by two cotter pins. Not everyone (in fact most people werent) wore Sugarloaf greathelms - those were for when you were heavy cavalry with a lance and riding down infantry and coming up against other heavy cavalry. If you were going to be fighting on foot or even just serving as not-heavy-cavalry, you wore a more normal helm suited to that task.

And the reason reach is important is because you can be tripped easily or get hit by the pommel with a reverse grip.

Which will do basically nothing. Tripping, maybe, but.. its not that easy to trip a guy without a massive mass advantage. Its not enough to just hit his legs, you have to be able to MOVE them. And unless hes standing there not expecting to get hit, you're not going to trip him because his feet are going to be quite a bit apart and hes going to be advancing at the half step. That pommel stroke thing is a hillarious myth. Mind, it was just as effective as anything else - itll definitely ring your bell if the guy lands the shot on your helm, but ... maybe dont let him do that.

Real life is not your imagination where the hero with plate mail waltzes around imprevious to everything while the dirty sword peasants uselessly hit the center of his breastplate.

Its uhh.. almost exactly like that. And most guys werent armed with swords. Swords were the sidearms of people with money - I.E. professional armies, mercenaries, and knights/nobility, which made up only a tiny portion of the armies on most medieval battlefields well into the 1500s. Even then, most infantry was primarily armed with polearms or spears - because they are far cheaper to produce en masse (they dont need to be hammer forged for one thing, they can just be literally made from a mold, and they use way less metal even if you put langettes on them).

But a guy in plate armor in the 1300s-1500s was almost exactly like walking around murdering the peasant conscripts. They were armed with spears or light pole weapons (glaives, pikes, maybe a long hammer type) and their sidearms were typically something like a Basilard - about 20" long and used not only as a sidearm but as their primary campaign knife/dagger. Maybe a club or one handed axe or hammer if they were a veteran and had carried one home from a previous campaign or had one at home passed down from a parent or relative. That is the great thing about most medieval weapons - they dont just go away.

That is how after hundreds of years of conscript armies, kings could finaly afford to outfit entire armies of professionals. It wasnt because they suddenly had a way to mass produce armor and weapons, it was that they had finaly accrued enough of it to do so.

Though basic mass production (commonly called "Munitions Grade" armor that wasnt custom fit and was "good enough" for most (one size fits most) started to appear in the 1500s and especially 1600s.

The main reason people in plate armor were safe in battlefields is because they cost a lot. Anyone in a full plate was guaranteed a major noble with castles and lots of land - capturing them meant that the ransom set you, your kids and your grandkids straight.

Only really, really early. But the mid 1300s most kings had a core (though small by todays standards) of professional soldiers that were armed in plate that werent automatically knights or nobles - just professional soldiers.

Most men in plate armor were killed as i described above. As time went on, more deaths happened because of battlefield artillery (not just gunpowder, but onagers and ballistae, that kind of thing), the higher prevalence of other heavily armored men on the battlefield who DID have weapons that could hurt them, and because the role of men in plate armor shifted to heavy cavalry, which was quite dangerous as you were going up against other heavy cavalry ALSO armed with lances and unlike a joust, that thing had a pointy, case-hardened tip and would cave your armor in and kill you dead.

But the poor damn infantry were not the ones killing most guys in armor.

There were, as i hinted at above, some weapons designed to defeat plate armor that worked to varying degrees of effectiveness but none that were so good they reached widespread use because of how good they were.

I mean, for all this talk of plate, we're ignoring that relatively simple chain maille (it was just called "maille" back in the day) made you relatively invincible to everything except a few weapons purposefully made to defeat it like an Estoc, or the back-spikes on certain axes or pole weapons.

You can get hit with a sword if you're wearing maille over a gambezon and youll be fine. Some bruises maybe. A battle axe... different story as while it is unlikely split links, it might break bones (lots of concentrated force on that leading edge). Same with a warhammer, though warhammers didnt come into use until early plate armor started to show up.

If you want to see what armor can really do, id suggest checking out some of or all of the following on YouTube:

Scholagladiatora
Skallagrim
Metatron
Shadiversity
Tod's Workshop (one T is correct) - hes got other channels too
LindyBeige

Theyre all very knowledgeable and in the case of some of them, extremely skilled at HEMA or other reneactment/HMB and the like. (Matt Easton, who runs Scholagadiatora, is one of the founders of the modern HEMA revival). In the case of Tod, hes also quite skilled at recreating medieval weapons using period techniques.

========

Giant wall of text aside, im well aware that a game cant make Armor as effective as it was in real life or there'd be very little danger in a lot of cases.

It just still irks the crap out of me when you look at a game book (TTRPG) or computer game and theyre like "lol plate weighs 100lbs, and turns you into a turtle who cant move"....

And im like...

My gothic harness weighs 38 pounds. (Its not the heaviest of the three - the 12th century kit is a lot heavier because it has a full 14ga maille hauberk under it). It might have weighed 45 in history (steel wasnt as good, so it had to be marginally thicker; i dont use stainless, prefer mild for a more accurate look and weight) at most. Another 10lbs for the reest of the kit to wear it (arming doublet and chauces, the mail patches that are sewn and riveted down to the arming doublet to cover the few spots the palte doesnt cover).

Before i got older and fat, i could do jumping jacks in my armor and running was not a serious issue. Yeah, you're going to be faster than me if you aren't armored, but not enough to make a difference over short (100-200ft) distances.

My centerpointed (meaning, it is not strapped to your arm, you hold it by a handle in the center of the shield) kite shield weighs all of 7lbs. My centerpointed viking round shield weighs 4lbs. And that will cover most people from chin to kneecap.

Same gripe about big weapons. Greatswords do not weight 15lbs. (or even more in some games). They weighed about 5.5-6.5lbs. Any heavier and you would never have been able to wield the thing. I think Matt Easton (above) has one that was a little over 7lbs, and that was one is a replica of one of the biggest swords of the type known to exist in a german museum.

..

yeah, that turned out longer than i was expecting. There's your history lesson for the day.

Thank you that was a really good read.

What is your opinion about the statement that the fastest way to counter heavy infantry was to hit them with heavy cavalry but even this caused massive losses to both sides.

Lot of novelist that write historical fiction use that logic ( exaggerated like , 1000 heavy infantry can be defeated with 10000 light infantry or 1000 heavy cavalry but you lose half your cavalry), you know, fluffed out of the arse numbers, but got me thinking: Wouldn't impact of cav charge cause massive damage to heavy infantry ? specially front row, ie broken bones so on.

[T.W. Hamill]

Początkowo opublikowane przez phadin:

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Paizo's own history of changes disagrees with you, as does the extremely first edition Pathfinder book (all three copies he owns) sitting at my buddy's house.

But hey, im sure you know better. Steam's forums need an ignore feature.

I've been playign D&D and PF for decades. Mage Armor has always been an Armor Bonus, not an Enhancement Bonus. This was true in D&D 3.0, 3.5, and all through PF 1e. I have a copy of the PF 1e Beta Playtest book from 2008, and it was an armor bonus even then.

Its like you're talking past me and not even realizing youre making my point.

It was an armor BONUS.

Not an armor REPLACEMENT.

I.E. if you had Plate Amor +1, and you cast Mage Armor on that person, it would give you 3 AC (as it would overwrite the +1 BONUS on the armor).

Now, it is an Armor REPLACEMENT. As in, it will provide you with NOTHING if you already have ANYTHING that provides more than 4 AC. This was a change (and a deliberate one, as they felt that it basically allowing you to have +4 armor of any type even at level 1 was sorta busted. I dont know that i agree, given how quickly NPC hit bonuses inflate).

That is a change, straight up, and Paizo, and the people on the paizo forums, and the changelog on the SRD all concur on that.

[T.W. Hamill]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Sima Marlin:

Thank you that was a really good read.

What is your opinion about the statement that the fastest way to counter heavy infantry was to hit them with heavy cavalry but even this caused massive losses to both sides.

Well, there wasnt a ton of heavy infantry on medieval battlefields until the very late medieval period. They existed, just not in massive numbers. Until it became cheaper to produce (and 2 centuries of stockpiling existing armor helped) heavier armors for the "common folk" - Brigandines were especially popular because they didnt require the time intesivity of Maille - it simply wasnt feasible to field huge forces of heavy infantry.

Also, the Crusades helped a lot, because the Church foot the bill to equip a lot of the crusader armies and then all that armor came back home aftewards.

The best way to counter heavy infantry is, in fact, heavy cavalry. And depending on how the heavy infantry was armed, they didnt even stand a particularly good chance at stopping the cavalry charge. Heavy infantry doesn't carry pikes, for instance, because they already carrying around heavy armor (that isn't as well fitted as Plate. Brigandines are VERY protective - about as good as Plate - but they arent nearly as well distributed weight wise. THey tend to hang off your shoulders; Roman Lorica Segmentata was the same way, which is why most Roman Legions still used Hamata (maille) because it was lighter and nearly as protective, especially with the piece of additional maille that went over the shoulders (i forget what that was called at the moment) and a scutum protecting most of your lower extremities.).

A good example of how effectively a heavy cavalry charge was, even against heavy foot, is to watch the movie Braveheart.. While the movie itself is massively innacurate in a number of ways, the very first battle is pretty indicative of how effective Heavy Cavalry was at the time - the Scotts are basically already prepared to give up because they know theyre going to get crushed by the cavalry charge.

Wallace, who was educated on the Continent and had seen Swiss Pikemen in action, was the reason they werent. But that was just starting to be a thing.

However, as Heavy Cavalry became more commonplace, counters to it became available, like pike blocks, and it forced generals to be more circumspect in their use of Cavalry. Horse archers became a thing again for the first time in centuries in parts of Europe specifically to counter pike formations.

As much as its cliche, medieval battles really did tend to be rock-paper-scissors like.

Heavy Infantry was great at crushing light infantry and, if they could close the range on them, archers/crossbowmen. Like.. you could easily send in 500 heavy foot and expect to kill 5 times their number in light infantry (often armored with nothing more than a gambeson or maybe a light lamellar) without significant losses.

However, if you had even light cavalry to protect your footmen, the heavy foot would never be able to close effectively...

But those light cavalry were meat for a well prepared block of archers, because they couldnt be heavily armored if they wanted to remain super mobile, and even if the arrows didnt kill the horsement, theyd kill the horses.

Similarly, archers would annihilate light foot because they simply didnt have the armor to stop arrows. Shields do work, but they are only so effective, because arrows can and will penetrate them and break the arm holding the shield, etc, which leaves gaps which then get larger and larger depending on how long they have to weather the arrow storm. Shields that will actually stop arrows (usually with a metal cladding) are too heavy to be employed for long durations, so they were not often used.

But a good medium-foot unit will be able to run down and exterminate archers, as arrows have difficulty penetrating maille backed by a good gambeson deeply enough to really hurt the wearer, so they can reasonably expect to take their lumps and get into the archers (because they have the endurance that heavy foot does not over the long distances).

There are exceptions of course - attacking fortifications is a nightmare. There's a really great movie called Ironclad that shows how effective fortifications are. Its based on a largely true story (the individual characters are almost assuredly made up, but the actual siege/battle happened and the numbers of troops involved on each side are relatively accurate) - the castle held for months with about 20 defenders against hundreds of troops.

Even simple field fortifications can massively change the battle - the Saracens used to use "dog soldiers" - mounted medium infantry (lamellar, horse bows, swords or axes as side-arms, smaller round shields) who were also field engineers. It was their job to ride to a site, prepare the battlefield by digging simple ditch-and-dike fortifications (maybe topped by stakes if there were trees nearby) and hold the battlefield against the enemy until the infantry could show up and take over.

A few hundred dog soldiers could hold a field against five times their number. Because even though its not a wall.. a 3 foot ditch with a tightly sloped 3 foot dike on the inside is sitll a 6ft obstacle you have to climb over. Good luck with that when there's a guy at the top shooting you full of arrows.

But for the most part, medieval battles (keep in mind im talking about the medieval era, not the dark ages (earlier) or the early/late reniassance (later). Just the medieval period.) were chaotic and largely decided by who had the better mix of troops and/or who had more of them. Its worth noting though that battles rarely ended with like... 3/4 of an army dead unless they were defending something that they simply could NOT retreat from. Most generals/nobles, when presented with an attacking army that they could not hope to defeat, simply surrendered or retreated.

Things changed a lot when new weapons were included - like firearms, though not exclusively firearms - and the nature and wealth of the nations involved changed since equipping troops became much more feasible (especially with the advancement of crucible steel making munitions-grade, non-custom plate armor available for much more cheaply).

"Light foot" at the beginning of the medieval period would be conscripts with spears, armored with just a gambeson (which are still quite effective, mind, watch some of Tod's and Skallagrim's videos about that) and maybe a small round shield (about 18-24" across) and a club, hand-axe (and not even a battle axe with a "thin" blade, probably a tool repurposed), or something like a long dagger/bassilard as their sidearm.

"Light foot" by the late medieval period was probably armored in lamellar or maille. (What would have been "heavy foot" back in the day).

Specialist formations also dont fit squarely into definitions of light or heavy foot. Pike blocks, for instance, could be armored in anything from nothing at all/gambesons and side-arms being a fire hardened club, to well-disciplined Swiss mercs with maille, and shields and slung swords for sidearms.

Lot of novelist that write historical fiction use that logic ( exaggerated like , 1000 heavy infantry can be defeated with 10000 light infantry or 1000 heavy cavalry but you lose half your cavalry), you know, fluffed out of the arse numbers, but got me thinking: Wouldn't impact of cav charge cause massive damage to heavy infantry ? specially front row, ie broken bones so on.

A cavalry charge will usually destroy a similarly sized unit of infantry of any type you care to name. Only exception would be a specialist formation like a Pike Block - but then, if you know that a unit is armed that way you dont send your Cavalry to charge them. You pick a different target or send your own infantry in to kill the pikemen or use your light cavalry armed with bows to harass the pikemen off the field,etc.

But if a unit of foot gets hit by a heavy cavalry charge? Its over. Theyll suffer 20-30% casualties on the first pass from lance hits and then simply being run over by a horse that weights close to a ton, not to mention the rider in his saddle swinging down from the top of his charging horse with something like a Lochaber Axe, Lucern Hammer, or even a Longsword (a real historical "Longsword" was actually what games call a Bastard Sword - long enough to be used two handed, but light enough to be used in one - what games call a "long sword" - I.E. a one handed sword that isnt short... was just called... wait for it... "Sword". Might have a specific name if it was a very specific type (like a Schiavonna, Falchion, or whatever) that was made for slicing (so wide, broad blade with fullers).

And when the wheeled around and came back through, swinging the entire way... Unless it was a VERY disciplined mass of troops, even if you didnt tons more of them, youve effectively scattered the unit for the time being and removed them from the fight.

The cavalry will suffer casualties, of course, because Murphy's Law is a thing - horses will trip on the guy they are trampling, someone will get a lucky shot and knock a guy out of his saddle, a few shots will get in no matter what - but nothing like the carnage they wreak on the infantry they just ran over.

And if the enemy general was in a position to have his foot follow the cavalry charge closely, before your infantrymen can get their unit rallied and back together, there's guys in there breaking you up and finishing you off.

For the better part of two centuries, most battles on the field were decided by heavy cavalry one way or another.

[Mauman]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Something completely different:

Początkowo opublikowane przez JustSmile:

Mage armour certainly does not stack with armour in 3.5 or 3.0. It provides an armour bonus which is non-stackable from any sources.

It partially does. Mage armour provides a +1 to four types of armour if I recall correctly. One of those (dodge) does stack, the other three do not.

Nope, in 3.5 it was a straight up armor bonus. Not enhancement, not dodge, just armor.

A lot of confusion probably comes from the Neverwinter games where Mage armor, for reasons I have no idea why they chose this, counted as an ENHANCEMENT bonus. This meant you could wear armor and have mage armor stack as long as your armor was +3 or less (and it only stacked the difference in pluses).

Normal 3.5? Nope, would not stack in any way whatsoever. The System Reference Document is very clear on this.

[RocketMan]

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Początkowo opublikowane przez phadin:

I've been playign D&D and PF for decades. Mage Armor has always been an Armor Bonus, not an Enhancement Bonus. This was true in D&D 3.0, 3.5, and all through PF 1e. I have a copy of the PF 1e Beta Playtest book from 2008, and it was an armor bonus even then.

Its like you're talking past me and not even realizing youre making my point.

It was an armor BONUS.

Not an armor REPLACEMENT.

I.E. if you had Plate Amor +1, and you cast Mage Armor on that person, it would give you 3 AC (as it would overwrite the +1 BONUS on the armor).

Now, it is an Armor REPLACEMENT. As in, it will provide you with NOTHING if you already have ANYTHING that provides more than 4 AC. This was a change (and a deliberate one, as they felt that it basically allowing you to have +4 armor of any type even at level 1 was sorta busted. I dont know that i agree, given how quickly NPC hit bonuses inflate).

That is a change, straight up, and Paizo, and the people on the paizo forums, and the changelog on the SRD all concur on that.

From what I understand, bonuses don't stack.

What armor provides is an armor bonus, therefore it wouldn't stack with mage armor. Based on my rudimentary understanding and how it works in teh game.

That said, it is sad that heavy armor is next to useless compared to being naked.

[Mauman]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mail me to the Moon:

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Its like you're talking past me and not even realizing youre making my point.

It was an armor BONUS.

Not an armor REPLACEMENT.

I.E. if you had Plate Amor +1, and you cast Mage Armor on that person, it would give you 3 AC (as it would overwrite the +1 BONUS on the armor).

Now, it is an Armor REPLACEMENT. As in, it will provide you with NOTHING if you already have ANYTHING that provides more than 4 AC. This was a change (and a deliberate one, as they felt that it basically allowing you to have +4 armor of any type even at level 1 was sorta busted. I dont know that i agree, given how quickly NPC hit bonuses inflate).

That is a change, straight up, and Paizo, and the people on the paizo forums, and the changelog on the SRD all concur on that.

From what I understand, bonuses don't stack.

What armor provides is an armor bonus, therefore it wouldn't stack with mage armor. Based on my rudimentary understanding and how it works in teh game.

That said, it is sad that heavy armor is next to useless compared to being naked.

Like I mentioned, the reason people think like this is likely due to Neverwinter nights one and two which did treat mage armor as described above.

But you're right, in original tabletop it's not an enhancement bonus, just straight up armor.

Also, Hamil is misunderstanding the difference between armor bonus and armor enhancement bonus. Easy enough to do if you're not paying attention.

[The Silver Santana]

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Początkowo opublikowane przez phadin:

I've been playign D&D and PF for decades. Mage Armor has always been an Armor Bonus, not an Enhancement Bonus. This was true in D&D 3.0, 3.5, and all through PF 1e. I have a copy of the PF 1e Beta Playtest book from 2008, and it was an armor bonus even then.

Its like you're talking past me and not even realizing youre making my point.

It was an armor BONUS.

Not an armor REPLACEMENT.

I.E. if you had Plate Amor +1, and you cast Mage Armor on that person, it would give you 3 AC (as it would overwrite the +1 BONUS on the armor).

Now, it is an Armor REPLACEMENT. As in, it will provide you with NOTHING if you already have ANYTHING that provides more than 4 AC. This was a change (and a deliberate one, as they felt that it basically allowing you to have +4 armor of any type even at level 1 was sorta busted. I dont know that i agree, given how quickly NPC hit bonuses inflate).

That is a change, straight up, and Paizo, and the people on the paizo forums, and the changelog on the SRD all concur on that.

Ah, this is the fundemental misunderstanding then.

If someone provides a named type of "bonus" to AC, it's just describing what type of AC modifier it's providing.

So, for instance, a deflection bonus is provided by rings of protection and by spells like shield of faith. But it's not a bonus on top of an existing deflection AC-it's always a replacement, you take the highest.

Mage armor provides an armor bonus to AC. So does regular armor. You can only use the highest. Mage armor does not, and never has, stacked in pathfinder, 3.5, or any other system to my knowledge. I have not played 3.0 in enough depth to know if it did in beta documents, but 3.5 SRD makes it clear that it's a replacement.

The only thing that works like you think is the barkskin spell. Barkskin applies an enhancement bonus to a creatures natural armor (as do amulets of natural armor). Hence a creature with a natural armor bonus to AC gets to add Barkskin on top of their already present natural armor bonus to AC. In this case, it's a meta thing-barkskin does not provide a natural armor bonus, it improves an already existing natural armor bonus. If you started with +0 it's the same thing, but you don't always start at +0.

In contrast, mage armor has always provided a "armor bonus to AC", never an "enhancement bonus to your existing armor bonus". Hence it never stacked with wearing armor.

In other words-almost every single spell which buffed AC was a replacement, as you term it. You picked the best modifier, you never stacked them.

[T.W. Hamill]

Początkowo opublikowane przez The Silver Santana:

Mage armor provides an armor bonus to AC. So does regular armor.

Yes, it does NOW.

It did not PREVIOUSLY.

Regular armor did not provide a "bonus" to armor. (And it still doesnt actually read that way, it does NOT say (using chain shirt here as an example because its literally open on my PC screen right now) "+4 AC", it says "4 Armor Class".

Regular Armor raised your baseline AC from 10 to 10 + whatever AC the armor provided. It wasnt a bonus, it was your base. It was changed (about ~2 years in, according to the devs on their forums) precisely because they didnt like the AC numbers you could reach because it made having anything lower than +5 armor pointless because the mage could just give you mage armor. A point with which i both agree and disagree - because Dispels are a thing - and because of how insanely high and how fast NPC statlines inflate. It wouldnt even be busted if it gave you the full +4 and stacked on top of literally everything, ESPECIALLY in the Tabletop game, where apart from GMs inventing weirdly powerful items, that wouldnt even get you into the 50s reliably against monsters that have +40 AB.

You can only use the highest. Mage armor does not, and never has, stacked in pathfinder,

Look, you're wrong. Utterly. Wrong.

In early printings of Pathfinder, it did. Period. The SRD changelog even reflects that. You can literally go on their forum, right now, and the developers themselves (since Paizo's devs are quite active on their forums) will tell you that.

Keep in mind that Pathfinder 1.0 had literally DOZENS of revisions, that were never documented as version changes. They just.. updated the SRD, updated the PDF versions of the books, and books printed after that date were printed from the new PDF.

AFAIK there are about 15 different printings of the Pathfinder core book (that dont look any different, same cover and everything) that have slightly differing rules. Because Paizo's answer was always "just check the SRD or the PDF version" - because you got the PDF version for free if you wanted to register and send in your receipt for the physical book.

Even though there were sometimes some quite significant changes between "versions" they never gave them version numbers or even a way to reference them. (In this way, its kind of like the ever-changing rules for Magic: THe Gathering. You cant trust what is printed on the card and have to check their equivalent of the SRD for every card so you know how it actually works now).

3.5, or any other system to my knowledge. I have not played 3.0 in enough depth to know if it did in beta documents, but 3.5 SRD makes it clear that it's a replacement.

The only thing that works like you think is the barkskin spell. Barkskin applies an enhancement bonus to a creatures natural armor (as do amulets of natural armor). Hence a creature with a natural armor bonus to AC gets to add Barkskin on top of their already present natural armor bonus to AC. In this case, it's a meta thing-barkskin does not provide a natural armor bonus, it improves an already existing natural armor bonus. If you started with +0 it's the same thing, but you don't always start at +0.

In contrast, mage armor has always provided a "armor bonus to AC", never an "enhancement bonus to your existing armor bonus". Hence it never stacked with wearing armor.

It did, because armor didnt provide an "Armor Bonus to AC" it just raised your base AC.

In other words-almost every single spell which buffed AC was a replacement, as you term it. You picked the best modifier, you never stacked them.

Right.

Except physical armor didnt provide an armor bonus. It just provided a higher base AC.

I'm all done arguing with you.

Ive provided you with where you can go to determine you're wrong, but you're the kind of person that cant be wrong and cant be reached and cant be taught.

If there were an ignore feature on the Steam forums i'd have already blocked you.

[The Silver Santana]

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Sima Marlin:

Thank you that was a really good read.

What is your opinion about the statement that the fastest way to counter heavy infantry was to hit them with heavy cavalry but even this caused massive losses to both sides.

(snip for readability)

It's worth noting that if a unit of heavily trained infantry held their ground they could almost always repel a cav charge, during basically any time period. You do not, in fact, run people over with your horse when you charge infantry. You attempt to ride past them, hopefully because they broke ranks. If they do break ranks, as almost all armies do, you've won.

Even heavily armored knights did not crash into infantry formations with their horses if they could help it. It's too expensive and suicidal for the knights. You suffer the same effects the poor guy you ran down did, and your horse is certain to be lamed by the collision.

It's just that, unless your infantry is disciplined, they will break when a wall of horses, lance tips, and steel comes at them. Then they all die.

Don't get me wrong-it occasionally happened that cavalry just barreled into an infantry formation and tried to push through. But it was very, very rare and very, very costly.

That's also why knights had be extremely well trained. It was a game of chicken. Against a disciplined infantry line you knew that you could only afford to hit one rank and kill one guy before you were bogged in bodies and killed. The infantry man on the ground knew it too. He also knew that he was still going to die if he stood his ground so the buddy behind him could step up to your stunned horse and dehorse and kill you. You know that he knows this, ad nauseum, and it's a game of seeing if you will flinch, he will break, or if it's going to be a bad day for both of you, multiplied down the entire line.

If the infantry are poorly motivated, as happened with levied conscript armies, it's not even a question. They broke, 9/10 times. More, really. And heavy cav dominates the day.

If the infantry are well motivated, as happened with some mercs and standing armies with espirit de corps, like the swiss, scots, and eventually all successful armies, the infantry held and the cav got repulsed with high casualties time and time again until they left the field, leaving behind a tremendous wealth in dead horses and soldiers as well as captives.

Also, if the terrain sucked the infantry could turn the cav into their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The English did it a couple times-people say the longbow killed knights, it really killed horses. Then the English hit the french while they were disorganized from their failed charges, and killed them and took them captive. It wasn't weapons tech, just good leadership and effective use of formations and field fortifications.

The real killer of infantry was combining skirmishers with Calvary, particularly effective when you mount the skirmishers. The Cav suppresses the enemies skirmishers when possible, threatens a charge, and your skirmishers disrupt formations by infuriating troops and killing them. Plus, light cav can massacre foot archers in a sudden charge if the enemy isn't paying attention. This is why the mongols were so effective-best or second best shock cav around paired with excellent archers. We see similar innovations in Asia Minor on all sides-Cataphracts were often great archers as well, and carried both spear and bow. Shoot the enemy until they panic, then charge them.

The counter move was to use a combined arms approach-combine infantry and archers into joint formations that were disciplined, maneuverable, and intelligent enough to support each other. Enemy cav archers going for some skirmishing? You bring up 50 score crossbowmen and let loose a volley. Enemy lancers moving in? The infantry covers the archers and take the charge. You need great discipline though, but pikemen are more effective pound for pound than heavy cav in a charge and foot archers are more effective pound for pound than horse archers. It's just that pikemen are helpless against horse archers and foot archers are helpless against heavy cav, and the enemy has the initiative. Cav armies generally ruled the day, until...

The dawn of discipline, and firearms. As it turns out, we know precisely what a winning pseudo-medieval infantry force looks like that can stop Cav. It's the spanish Tercio of the 15-1600's. Mix in firearms and pikemen, and you can shoot skirmishing cav and repel cav charges. Cue the death of cavalry as the main arm of the battlefield. Cav adapted by picking up pistols in addition to lances and swords, and acting as wheeling skirmish formations that tried to get the infantry battles (they called their formations "battles") to break ranks so they could charge them. Battles weren't very maneuverable, but they could hold the line and repel any charge as long as they had courage. Cav was reduced to trying to flank infantry and hope they made a mistake, and cav charges against set formations were suicide. Technically, all the parts of this were possible with conventional missile weapons and pike, it's just that it's so much easier to train soldiers to use a gun and pike effectively and focus on drill instead of weapon proficiency. And Drill and Discipline were the heart and soul of the Tercio.

The next innovation was field cannons, which helped disrupt infantry formations enough for cav charges to break them. Then infantry adapted the bayonet, and suddenly every footsoldier was both a pikeman and shooter. Cav became even more relegated to skirmish duties with only occasional shock charges exploiting disordered enemy formations. By the American civil war, cav went to combat and dismounted, rather than fighting from horseback, 9/10 times, and were basically a mobile skirmish detachment for the main force.

Still, cav occasionally managed to charge infantry to some success. Technically, it can still happen. Polish cav charged German infantry successfully (they gained the field for their own men to retreat) in ww2, on occasion. It's just super rare.

[The Silver Santana]

Początkowo opublikowane przez T.W. Hamill:

Początkowo opublikowane przez The Silver Santana:

Mage armor provides an armor bonus to AC. So does regular armor.

Yes, it does NOW.

It did not PREVIOUSLY.

Regular armor did not provide a "bonus" to armor. (And it still doesnt actually read that way, it does NOT say (using chain shirt here as an example because its literally open on my PC screen right now) "+4 AC", it says "4 Armor Class".

Regular Armor raised your baseline AC from 10 to 10 + whatever AC the armor provided. It wasnt a bonus, it was your base. It was changed (about ~2 years in, according to the devs on their forums) precisely because they didnt like the AC numbers you could reach because it made having anything lower than +5 armor pointless because the mage could just give you mage armor. A point with which i both agree and disagree - because Dispels are a thing - and because of how insanely high and how fast NPC statlines inflate. It wouldnt even be busted if it gave you the full +4 and stacked on top of literally everything, ESPECIALLY in the Tabletop game, where apart from GMs inventing weirdly powerful items, that wouldnt even get you into the 50s reliably against monsters that have +40 AB.

You can only use the highest. Mage armor does not, and never has, stacked in pathfinder,

Look, you're wrong. Utterly. Wrong.

In early printings of Pathfinder, it did. Period. The SRD changelog even reflects that. You can literally go on their forum, right now, and the developers themselves (since Paizo's devs are quite active on their forums) will tell you that.

Keep in mind that Pathfinder 1.0 had literally DOZENS of revisions, that were never documented as version changes. They just.. updated the SRD, updated the PDF versions of the books, and books printed after that date were printed from the new PDF.

AFAIK there are about 15 different printings of the Pathfinder core book (that dont look any different, same cover and everything) that have slightly differing rules. Because Paizo's answer was always "just check the SRD or the PDF version" - because you got the PDF version for free if you wanted to register and send in your receipt for the physical book.

Even though there were sometimes some quite significant changes between "versions" they never gave them version numbers or even a way to reference them. (In this way, its kind of like the ever-changing rules for Magic: THe Gathering. You cant trust what is printed on the card and have to check their equivalent of the SRD for every card so you know how it actually works now).

3.5, or any other system to my knowledge. I have not played 3.0 in enough depth to know if it did in beta documents, but 3.5 SRD makes it clear that it's a replacement.

The only thing that works like you think is the barkskin spell. Barkskin applies an enhancement bonus to a creatures natural armor (as do amulets of natural armor). Hence a creature with a natural armor bonus to AC gets to add Barkskin on top of their already present natural armor bonus to AC. In this case, it's a meta thing-barkskin does not provide a natural armor bonus, it improves an already existing natural armor bonus. If you started with +0 it's the same thing, but you don't always start at +0.

In contrast, mage armor has always provided a "armor bonus to AC", never an "enhancement bonus to your existing armor bonus". Hence it never stacked with wearing armor.

It did, because armor didnt provide an "Armor Bonus to AC" it just raised your base AC.

In other words-almost every single spell which buffed AC was a replacement, as you term it. You picked the best modifier, you never stacked them.

Right.

Except physical armor didnt provide an armor bonus. It just provided a higher base AC.

I'm all done arguing with you.

Ive provided you with where you can go to determine you're wrong, but you're the kind of person that cant be wrong and cant be reached and cant be taught.

If there were an ignore feature on the Steam forums i'd have already blocked you.

Er....No.

The 3.5 SRD has not changed in the duration of it's life-cycle. Pathfinder is after that.

And the 3.5 SRD is clear. Mage armor provides and armor bonus to AC.

Armor bonuses are defined as-and this is a direct quote-

"An armor bonus applies to Armor Class and is granted by armor or by a spell or magical effect that mimics armor. Armor bonuses stack with all other bonuses to Armor Class (even with natural armor bonuses) except other armor bonuses. An armor bonus doesn't apply against touch attacks, except for armor bonuses granted by force effects (such as the mage armor spell) which apply against incorporeal touch attacks, such as that of a shadow."

Hence, since at least 2008, which is the earliest I can find a discussion on this, it's always been true that mage armor never stacked with armor.

As far as I can tell, this has been true since 3.0. They added that bonuses don't stack, and from that point forward mage armor does not stack with normal armor and never has, because they both provide and armor bonus. Hell, I can find the original table. I might be looking at an inaccurate reference, but I'm currently reading the SRD, at least as I can find it.

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#armorBonus

The only real curveball with 3.0 is that armor and shields both granted armor bonuses, that stacked with each other, just not with other armor/shield bonuses. That part is confusing. The rest is very straightfoward. I'm less sure of this citation, but it's accurate as far as I can tell. For instance, it has the original haste spell.

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3e_SRD:Armor_Class

So unless you have a source to counteract me, I think this is pretty clear.

Also, I feel absolutely no hostility towards you, and don't mean to be insulting. This is just a clear-cut rules thing. If you have something that contradicts me, cite it.