The Gaming Den

Just trying something that seems more appropriate for my Tome WLD character

Sand Armour [Light]
Armour Bonus: +4, Max Dex: 6, ACP: -2, ASP: -2
This armour is actually an enchanted mass of sand designed to form a bond with you, taking direction from your mental command. It can be stored as a shaped mass when not in use.
Concentration Ranks Benefit
4: A mass of sand begins to swirl around you when you enter combat, joining and hardening when a blow comes near, absorbing the impact. You receive DR 5/Piercing
8: The magic of the armour, and the blood of your enemies that it has absorbed attracts/holds/causes a demon that merges with you. This demonic fusion grants a claw attack.
13: At your mental command, the sand can form a solid barrier between you and another creature about the size of a large, round tower shield. This barrier gives you cover against area and burst attacks. Alternatively, the sand can take a wide dispersal pattern around you and grant concealment. Only one of these forms can be active at a time, and it takes one round to switch. Your mental command is a free action.
18: You gain complete control over the sand, and can shape it at will, allowing you to use it to mimic the form of other items. When it mimics another suit of armour, it take on the numbers of the mimicked armour, but retains the special benefits of Sand Armour. Weapons formed have the return ability, and you retain the armour. If the armour is magical, then any item formed from it's sand is as well. It is a free action to form a weapon, and a full round action to form armour. Items small or smaller take a free action to form, medium a move action, large a standard, Huge, or complicated a standard, and gargantuan and larger items take a full round to form.

too powerful?

EDIT: changed DR to being overcome by piercing.

The 18 ranks ability is just way too complicated. It's also not clear whether, when you turn the armor into stuff that isn't armor, you still have armor.

Is it light, medium, heavy, or non-armor? What are the stats? Would it make more sense as a shield? There's already stone armor in the game, which is what earth benders actually use. Why not use that?

This looks much more like a feat or class ability than an armor anyway. How do you craft sand armor? How is it that any Joe Schmo can pick up this pile of sand and wear it as armor?

Ok, tried to make the 18 ranks ability less complicated, and specified that you keep the benefits of sand armour even if it's mimicking plate mail, or something, and when it's forming non-armour stuff.

Specified category, gave stats, stone armour is... well, I'll be honest, it's heavy armour, which I'm not proficient in, and tapping a bit of Gaara makes just as much for my character.

Sand armour is kind of like magic clothes, or demon armour, or rime hauberk. It's armour that's inherently crafted by magic. Any Joe Schmoe can use it the same way that any Joe Schmoe with enough Intimidate can crawl into a hollowed out demon and use it as armour.

ewwww.... averages....

can't it just be the mimicked armor's stats? That'd be so much nicer.

I suppose it could be, it's weaker than the other item because it's sand, not the actual material.

The writing is a little confusing -- less flavor, more mechanics.

Prak_Anima wrote:I suppose it could be, it's weaker than the other item because it's sand, not the actual material.

You're level 15 and it's magic sand. It should DEFINITELY be whatever you want.

Ok, bolded the actual mechanics, better now Surgo (I also retyped the AoO thing)

Valor, I changed that when Mask said standard numbers of the mimicked armour was fine.

Yeah, I saw that bit.

Y'know, I kind of like this armor. I might award it to one of my PCs at our next session.

This would be one of the best, if not the best, light armor in the game. It is furthermore geared towards use by spell casters.

That said, it's pretty damn' cool. Given that everyone's first response to extending the Tomes seems to be power creep, it'll probably fit right in with any other "community material" on armors.

well, casters, especially spherecasters, could use more armours tailored for them. Granted, a lot of spherecasters will have fairly liberal armour proficiencies, Warlocks don't, they just get light armour, and there wasn't anything particularly flavour-appropriate for my earth-lock.

More over, warlocks won't necessarily be able to run around with Mage Armour or stuff like that.

Veteran of the War is one of the base backgrounds and gives an armor proficiency. If you really wanted heavier armor as a Warlock you could have it.

The 8 power - you don't specify whether the sand attack is a melee or ranged attack roll, or even put a limit on the range or type of attack. As written, if somebody hit you with a Fireball from hundreds of feet away they would still provoke the AoO. That seems unreasonable.

Other than that, it's quite good.

Ok, specified that attacking the "wearer" in melee or close (<25') range provokes the AoO, and that the armour's attack has a 10' range increment and can be used as a melee or ranged weapon. Basically it's more or less identical to a dagger, except you get to specify damage type.

Veteran of the war didn't really grab me, I was originally looking at Raised by (X), but liked Prince of a Fallen Lineage better

Two things.

1. I wouldn't say 'close range,' primarily because close range already means something (25' + 5'/two caster levels, as referring to spell descriptions). Obvious close is just referring to proximity, but I'd avoid it. A minor nitpick.

2. The ability to take AoOs with the armor isn't that big of a deal in the sense of the damage it offers from taking the AoO. When combined with something like Stormguard Warrior (Channel the Storm), however, as a replacement for Robilar's Gambit, well, I'm not sure I'd call it unbalanced, because it still requires a somewhat suboptimal investment to acquire, but if it was worded 'you gain +8/12/16 to attack and damage against anything that attacks you' (which is what it can very easily be), I think it would merit a more serious judgment of the opportunity cost required to get said damage.

Yes, Ironheart Aura isn't great, but Stormguard Warrior is useful and the single level of warblade isn't a huge loss for most of the Races of War base class series, unless they plan on more extensive multiclassing.

At the very least, no two Combat feats provide an equivalent movement on the random number generator, so I'm going to go back on what I said earlier and say this is a real issue.

Jota wrote:Two things.

1. I wouldn't say 'close range,' primarily because close range already means something (25' + 5'/two caster levels, as referring to spell descriptions). Obvious close is just referring to proximity, but I'd avoid it. A minor nitpick.

This is a good point, and I'll either change it to the actual keyword, or change word use. I don't think changing to the keyword would really be a huge deal though, at upper levels' it's still less than the range of a bow.

2. The ability to take AoOs with the armor isn't that big of a deal in the sense of the damage it offers from taking the AoO. When combined with something like Stormguard Warrior (Channel the Storm), however, as a replacement for Robilar's Gambit, well, I'm not sure I'd call it unbalanced, because it still requires a somewhat suboptimal investment to acquire, but if it was worded 'you gain +8/12/16 to attack and damage against anything that attacks you' (which is what it can very easily be), I think it would merit a more serious judgment of the opportunity cost required to get said damage.

Yes, Ironheart Aura isn't great, but Stormguard Warrior is useful and the single level of warblade isn't a huge loss for most of the Races of War base class series, unless they plan on more extensive multiclassing.

At the very least, no two Combat feats provide an equivalent movement on the random number generator, so I'm going to go back on what I said earlier and say this is a real issue.

er... so what's the point of this point? Seems like it kind of turned into a ramble. What if I changed the damage to 1d4/ChLv or something? (1d6/2ChLv, maybe?)

Prak_Anima wrote:

Jota wrote:Two things.

1. I wouldn't say 'close range,' primarily because close range already means something (25' + 5'/two caster levels, as referring to spell descriptions). Obvious close is just referring to proximity, but I'd avoid it. A minor nitpick.

This is a good point, and I'll either change it to the actual keyword, or change word use. I don't think changing to the keyword would really be a huge deal though, at upper levels' it's still less than the range of a bow.

2. The ability to take AoOs with the armor isn't that big of a deal in the sense of the damage it offers from taking the AoO. When combined with something like Stormguard Warrior (Channel the Storm), however, as a replacement for Robilar's Gambit, well, I'm not sure I'd call it unbalanced, because it still requires a somewhat suboptimal investment to acquire, but if it was worded 'you gain +8/12/16 to attack and damage against anything that attacks you' (which is what it can very easily be), I think it would merit a more serious judgment of the opportunity cost required to get said damage.

Yes, Ironheart Aura isn't great, but Stormguard Warrior is useful and the single level of warblade isn't a huge loss for most of the Races of War base class series, unless they plan on more extensive multiclassing.

At the very least, no two Combat feats provide an equivalent movement on the random number generator, so I'm going to go back on what I said earlier and say this is a real issue.

er... so what's the point of this point? Seems like it kind of turned into a ramble. What if I changed the damage to 1d4/ChLv or something? (1d6/2ChLv, maybe?)

The damage itself is not the issue. The synergy with Stormguard Warrior and the ability to simply have +8/12/16 to all your attack and damage rolls is an issue. I don't know if there's a simple fix beyond simply saying the armor doesn't work in conjunction with Stormguard Warrior, but the point is that it's not really well-balanced at any level of the game.

Edit: Only allowing one AoO per attacker per round also probably balances it, rather than getting a series of AoOs on someone who full attacks you.

Better idea: Scrap AoO abilities on an armor entirely. Armor is defensive, not a fucking weapon. Replace with something like "Immediate action gain cover against a single attack"

If you want to be Gaara, make a god damn class for that. Simply wearing a suit of armor should not make you Gaara. Gaara has levels in Sand Master and that class gives him class features. At no point are his abilities dependent upon artifact sand armor.

Edit: To be clear, D&D is a game about fantasy. You shouldn't be laughing at the guy that chooses to walk around in stoneplate or whatever.

ubernoob wrote:Better idea: Scrap AoO abilities on an armor entirely. Armor is defensive, not a fucking weapon. Replace with something like "Immediate action gain cover against a single attack"

If you want to be Gaara, make a god damn class for that. Simply wearing a suit of armor should not make you Gaara. Gaara has levels in Sand Master and that class gives him class features. At no point are his abilities dependent upon artifact sand armor.

Edit: To be clear, D&D is a game about fantasy. You shouldn't be laughing at the guy that chooses to walk around in stoneplate or whatever.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one thinking that.

Well, it's the middle of the week, so my neckbeard is growing back in. I figure I'm allowed to quibble.

Gaara is a Sand Master (Sure, let's roll with that class name). But his personal sand does appear to be different from other sand. It's attuned to him, and it takes less energy for him to use, which is why he keeps it with him all the time. So it -could- be a magic item in D&D terms.

But I would say Sand Master gets bonuses for their Sand Armor while not being they're not reliant on it. It's like a Paladin and Holy Avenger.

actually I could have sworn that, in addition to sand jutsu, Gaara carried around a bunch of magic sand.

Anyway, really the point of this was "I need armour for my earthbender. I don't want her running around in stone plate, it doesn't fit my vision, and she's not made right to really take full advantage of it. Well... Earthbender and Gaara are pretty close, conceptually, so... Sand Armour, sure."

Also... Studded Armour (deals extra damage in a grapple), Animal Spirit Armour (gain a natural weapon), Lobster Mail (Gain a Pincer Attack), Rime Hauberk (damaging Pall of Frost), Coral Armour (poisonous armour spikes), and something like half the shields (throw like Captain America).
There's plenty of precedent for armour giving you an attack in Tome, Uber.

Gaara's sand is 100% normal. Seriously. He just carries a gourd to carry it.

Edit: Natural weapons are a lot more sane than AoO abilities. Like, a lot. TOME doesn't give a shit about how many natural attacks you have. Getting free AoOs stacks on top of everything and is bullshit. If you want to give a spike or natural attack to use in your full attack routine, that's fucking whatever and fine. AoOs have the 4e magic missile problem: low base damage doesn't mean shit when you add everything else to it.

ubernoob wrote:Gaara's sand is 100% normal. Seriously. He just carries a gourd to carry it.

actually, no, he doesn't.

Edit: Natural weapons are a lot more sane than AoO abilities. Like, a lot. TOME doesn't give a shit about how many natural attacks you have. Getting free AoOs stacks on top of everything and is bullshit. If you want to give a spike or natural attack to use in your full attack routine, that's fucking whatever and fine. AoOs have the 4e magic missile problem: low base damage doesn't mean shit when you add everything else to it.

If I accidentally said it gives you an AoO, then I made a mistake, I meant for it to be usable to make an AoO, ie, counting against your normal limit.

Prak_Anima wrote: actually, no, he doesn't.

No, I'm pretty sure he just uses whatever the hell sand is on hand. That's supported by the fact that he can use sand that isn't from his gourd at any time. And neither of those links actually have a reference that says "Gaara uses this sand only". The wikipedia link only says "Gaara uses sand...".

He can use any sand, but his gourd and its contents are made of prepared sand that he can use faster. And by prepared, I mean part of the demon is bound to it (they said his mother too in the beginning), which fuels its speed in protecting him even when not wholly aware of the attack himself (hence him never getting so much as scratched until the Chuunin exam against Sasuke).

virgil wrote:He can use any sand, but his gourd and its contents are made of prepared sand that he can use faster. And by prepared, I mean part of the demon is bound to it (they said his mother too in the beginning), which fuels its speed in protecting him even when not wholly aware of the attack himself (hence him never getting so much as scratched until the Chuunin exam against Lee).

Fixed that.

But, yeah, it's been said by the show's creator somewhere that Gaara's sand is easier for him to use. If he -has- to, he can make more sand, but it takes chakra to do that, and then more chakra to use.