Armor Feats
Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting edition of Extraordinary Feats, where we bring you the best in new feats to make your characters into something really special. This week it’s all about last year, as we continue our look back on the past with 2012 Week.
Those of you who’ve been following us since the beginning know that Extraordinary Feats has often focused on bringing you feats that differentiate one type of equipment from another, and that not only make fighting with a fencing foil feel different from fighting with a battleaxe, but also make using your weapon more fun and exciting in general. One thing we didn’t talk a lot about, but which falls into the same school of thought, is armor. So this week we’re going to look at just a few ways in which a suit of full plate and a suit of leather armor might play differently at the table.
Advanced Heavy Armor Training (Combat)
Years of training have made you adept at moving in heavy armor, making you better able to use your natural talents for mobility and defense.
Prerequisites: Heavy Armor Proficiency, base attack bonus +4.
Benefits: While wearing heavy armor, you treat that armor as though it had a maximum dexterity bonus of 1 higher than it actually does. Additionally, your movement speed is reduced by 5 feet less than it would normally be as a result of wearing heavy armor.
Advanced Light Armor Training (Combat)
Years of training have made you adept at moving in light armor, allowing you to position your armor more effectively to stop incoming attacks.
Prerequisites: Light Armor Proficiency, base attack bonus +4.
Benefits: Whenever you fight defensively or take the total defense action while wearing light armor, you gain an additional +2 dodge bonus to AC.
Advanced Medium Armor Training (Combat)
Years of training have made you adept at moving in medium armor, allowing you adjust your stance in order to better move or defend yourself.
Prerequisites: Medium Armor Proficiency, base attack bonus +4.
Benefits: While wearing medium armor, as a swift action, you may choose either to negate any penalty to movement due to your armor for 1 round, or to gain a +1 dodge bonus to AC for 1 round. You cannot use this ability more than once each round.
Medium Armor Conditioning
Constant living in medium armor has taught you how to make the most out of it.
Prerequisites: Medium Armor Proficiency, base attack bonus +1.
Benefits: You treat medium armor as light armor for the purposes of class features, feats and special abilities which only function while you are wearing light armor or no armor, such as the evasion class feature.
Quick Don
You can easily don light armor.
Prerequisites: Light Armor Proficiency, base attack bonus +1.
Benefits: You may don a suit of light armor as a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. You may don a suit of light armor hastily as a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Normal: Normally, it takes a full minute to don most suits of light armor, and 5 rounds to don most suits of light armor hastily.
Reinforced Armor
You have the skill and abilities required to shore up heavy armor to be more effective against the modern threat of firearms.
Prerequisites: Craft 1 rank, Heavy Armor Proficiency.
Benefits: You can render armor combat-ready against firearms. This costs half again the price of mundane armor of the same sort (100 gp for splint mail, 750 gp for full plate, etc.), and requires a successful Craft (armor) check (DC 10 + twice the armor bonus offered by the armor to be enhanced). This process otherwise functions as a normal Craft check made to create armor, including the amount of time required to complete the task. Only suits of armor that weigh at least 40 lbs., are made primarily of metal, and are of masterwork quality can be reinforced in this way.
Suits of armor that have been reinforced in this way are strong enough to deflect bullets. Any attack made with a firearm against a character wearing a suit of armor that has been reinforced in this way is resolved as a normal attack, rather than as a touch attack.