Pathfinder (2e): Basics of Armor (Featuring NoNat!)

hello and welcome to basics for gamers presents the basics of armor in pathfinder second edition but this time i'm not alone with me today is my friend and fellow pathfinder youtuber nonat howdy everyone nunet has a great channel dedicated to tabletop gaming and pathfinder and you can find his channel linked in the comments if you like my content then there's a good chance you're going to like us too so go check it out he and i decided to join forces to tackle the subjects of weapons and armor with me taking the lead on armor here and you'll be able to find the companion video to this one that's all about weapons over on his channel armor and pathfinder is pretty straightforward especially if you're familiar with other d20 rpgs all creatures have an armor class which is the dc that must be met or surpassed by an attack role in order to deal damage to them the base calculation for armor class is 10 plus the armor's ac bonus plus your proficiency bonus plus your dexterity modifier up to the armor's limit and we'll talk about that piece in just a second this total can be further modified by any other special circumstances or situations but for our purposes this is the calculation that we're going to use when discussing the base armor class so let's say your second level with a 14 dexterity and trained in medium armor if you wear chain mail your armor class will be 10 plus chainmail's ac bonus of four plus your proficiency bonus of four that's two for being trained plus two more for being second level and finally plus one more for your dexterity although a dexterity score 14 has a modifier of plus two we see here that chainmail has a dexcap of plus one meaning that's the highest bonus you can receive for dexterity so in this case it's a plus one instead of the plus two you usually get for a dexterity of fourteen so ten plus four plus four for proficiency and plus one for dexterity equals an armor class score of nineteen if you're not wearing armor then your ac is calculated the same way but with no ac bonus provided by armor and you use your unarmored defense proficiency on table 6-3 you can find explorer's clothing which doesn't grant a bonus to armor class but does impose a deck's cap of plus 5 so you may be wondering why you would want to wear explorer's clothing in the first place and the answer to that is because of runes explorer's clothing may be etched with magic runes just like armor can but technically is not armor which means a monk for example can wear explorer's clothing and receive full benefit of magic runes while still being technically unarmored while armor is worn for benefit it should be noted that most armor comes with penalties if certain requirements are not met while any character can wear any armor if they don't meet or exceed the strength score listed for the armor they're wearing they will take a penalty to all strength and dexterity skill checks except for those with the attack trait in the core rulebook the penalty is -1 for light armor -2 for medium armor and -3 for heavy armor the only exception to this is padded armor which incurs no check penalty even if the character has less than 10 strength on top of this the character will also take a penalty to their speed light armor incurs no speed penalty but medium armor will reduce the character's speed by 5 feet and heavy armor will reduce it by 10 feet so when you're shopping for armor always be sure to double check the strength requirement before you buy a new set there are a couple more rules to keep in mind when wearing armor first it takes time to get into and out of armor it takes one minute to put on light armor or five minutes to put on medium or heavy armor and it takes one minute to remove any kind of armor that's 10 rounds of combat to get into your leather or 50 rounds of combat to get into your skill mail which is an eternity if the enemy strikes while you're sleeping so your solution might be to just sleep in your full plate so you'll be ready in case of an attack but not so fast because sleeping while wearing armor imposes the fatigued condition this lowers your armor class and lowers all saves by one and prevents you from using any exploration activities such as those found on pages 480 and 481 of the core rules you cannot recover from fatigue until you get a full night's rest without wearing armor some armors also provide additional benefits or penalties noted in the traits column of table 6-4 the first of those is bulwark which applies to full plate when wearing this armor you can choose to add plus 3 to reflex saves instead of adding your dexterity modifier to those saves the second trait is comfort which applies to explorer's clothing and padded armor these suits are so comfortable that you do not suffer the fatigue condition after sleeping in them the third trait is flexible which applies to chain shirts and chain mail you do not suffer any check penalty to athletics or acrobatics checks while wearing chain and last is the noisy trait which also applies to chain armor when wearing noisy armor you suffer its check penalty to stealth even if you meet the required strength score in this video we discussed the basics of armor armor class is the difficulty class or dc that must be met by an attack role to score a hit and is calculated as 10 plus the armors ac bonus plus proficiency bonus plus dexterity modifier up to the armor's dexterity cap explorer's clothing is not technically armor and uses the unarmored defense proficiency but may be etched with runes in the same fashion that armor is most armors impose a check penalty to all strength and dexterity based skills except for those with the attack trait and medium and heavy armors also reduce the speed of those wearing them however armors also have a strength score displayed on the armor table if the wearer has a strength score equal to or greater than the armors listing they do not suffer any check penalties and the speed penalty is reduced by 5 feet it takes 1 minute to put on light armor and five minutes to dress in either medium or heavy armor and it takes one minute to remove any kind of armor sleeping in armor imposes the fatigue condition unless the armor has the comfort trait there are three other armor traits to be aware of bulwark allows the wearer to add plus three to reflex saves instead of their dexterity modifier flexible armor does not impose a check penalty to athletics or acrobatic skill checks and noisy armor imposes its check penalty to stealth even if the wearer meets the armor strength requirement i'd also like to take one last moment to thank nonat for partnering with these videos again you can find the companion video that's all about weapons over on his channel which is linked in the description and let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more partnerships like this in the future before we close i'd like to take a moment to thank all of our patrons these videos would not be possible without their continued generosity and support members of the basics gamers patreon community receive special benefits like getting to vote on the topics that we cover in the future and also they get to see these videos one week and ad free before everybody else visit the link shown on the left of the screen and in the description if you'd like to know more about becoming a patron if you would like to support this channel and help it grow the easiest way to do that is by subscribing and clicking the bell icon so you get notified when new videos release and we can always be reached through our twitter and facebook pages too thanks for watching take care and we will see you soon with more basics of pathfinder

Channel: How It's Played

Views: 17,838

Keywords: top 5, top 10, best, Pathfinder, 2nd Edition, PF2, 2e, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, DND, Paizo, Game, Role-playing, RPG, games, gaming, how to, guide, basic rules, rules summary, Pathfinder rules, Pathfinder rules summary, how to play Pathfinder, critical role, critical roll, pathfinder rpg, Armor, AC, armor class, DC, difficulty class, penalty, check penalty, speed, speed penalty, strength requirement, defense, basics4gamers

Id: x_4uvNpnRSo

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Basics4Gamers]

You can find the companion video about weapons over on his channel: youtu.be/7J9riwbrP3M

[u/YellowLugh]

You're awesome, keep up the good work! Your videos made Crafting so simple for one of my players and the rest use them from time to time.

Maybe you could talk with Paizo about featuring these videos on their site. I mean, I know they tend to only use their resources but you could try.

[u/martannn]

amazing as always guys,keep it up!