Is this Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield legit according to the rules?

Question

I often play as a Crafting Wizard and would like to know if there's a ruling against this. Whenever I'm working on creating survivability items, I've always made the same item.

Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield, 7000 gp
Continuous Mage Armor and Shield
CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Craft Wondrous Item, mage armor, shield, 3500 gp

According to the magic item pricing guide, this follows the rules.

• Continuous Mage Armor: Spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp = 2,000 gp
• Continuous Shield: Spell level x caster level x 2,000 gp = 2,000 gp
  • Spell Measured in Minutes: Multiply effect cost by 2 = 2,000 gp
• Multiple different abilities: Multiply lower item cost by 1.5 = 1,000 gp

Effectively, this item gives the wearer +4 Armor and +4 Shield to AC PLUS immunity Magic Missile. For 6,500 gp, that's a steal. Now, you can't enchant it, but you can buy a much less cumbersome armor piece and enchant that one instead to get your additional enhancement bonuses to AC, while suffering from no Max Dex or ACP woes.

This just seems too good to be true to me, now that I'm DMing pathfinder games. If such a crafting wizard outfitted a level 5 party rogue with this equipment, for roughly 10,000 gp, the Rogue could have +4 Armor, +4 Shield, +4 Dex Bonus, +2 Dodge Bonus, +3 Armor Enhancement Bonus, and +2 Shield Enhancement Bonus to AC.

That's a total of 27 AC at level 5. This is not counting the possibility of money pooling from other members. This is considering the Rogue spending a sum of gold that should be well within their reach by level 5 as per the Pathfinder Average Wealth table.

Equipment list used to come up with that number:

• Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield, 7000 gp (Crafted at Half Cost)
• +3 Padded Armor (or any crappy armor), 9000 gp (Crafted at Half Cost)
• +2 Plank Shield (or any crappy shield), 4000 gp (Crafted at Half Cost)

Though, this is purely hypothetical, such spending could be done by every party member and reduce the chances of ever taking physical attacks again to near 5% (Nat 20s will still always hit). CR 5 monsters will likely miss for entire encounters without even grazing a player. Encounters would be forced to be magical otherwise there would be no challenge for the players.

Is there anything wrong with the doing this by the rules? Or will a DM be forced to utilize sneaky tricks to keep physical encounters fun and challenging were something like this to be made?

Answer 1

You're misusing the guidelines.

First, let's take a look at what the Pathfinder Magic Item Gold Piece Values section has to say on this issue. Turns out, it is specifically addressed.

The correct way to price an item is by comparing its abilities to similar items (see Magic Item Gold Piece Values), and only if there are no similar items should you use the pricing formulas to determine an approximate price for the item. If you discover a loophole that allows an item to have an ability for a much lower price than is given for a comparable item, the GM should require using the price of the item, as that is the standard cost for such an effect. Most of these loopholes stem from trying to get unlimited uses per day of a spell effect from the "command word" or "use-activated or continuous" lines of Table: Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values.

Emphasis mine. It then goes on to take Mage Armor as an example of this:

Patrick's wizard wants to create bracers with a continuous mage armor ability, granting the wearer a +4 armor bonus to AC. The formula indicates this would cost 2,000 gp (spell level 1, caster level 1). Jessica reminds him that bracers of armor +4 are priced at 16,000 gp and Patrick's bracers should have that price as well. Patrick agrees, and because he only has 2,000 gp to spend, he decides to spend 1,000 gp of that to craft bracers of armor +1 using the standard bracer prices.

So yes, your Amulet of Mage Armor and Shield is a textbook example of the guidelines gone bad.

This is understandable. The guidelines are famously weak, often breaking with casual use, as you have encountered. This precise case, however, was anticipated and addressed.

Answer 2

Ernir is entirely right about the guidelines in place to prevent just this thing from happening, but I wanted to address the larger picture from a GM's perspective. Even if the GM were to allow this item, there's several other ways to handle the apparent imbalance.

Apply stacking rules

Enhancement bonuses to armor / shield ACs only apply to that item's bonus. Effectively, it enhances the item's default AC, not the character's AC. Thus an enhancement bonus on armor is automatically included in the character's armor bonus, and an enhancement bonus on a shield is automatically included in the character's shield bonus. Otherwise, magical enhancement to armor and a shield wouldn't stack, because they're both explicitly enhancement bonuses.

As written, your rogue would have a +4 armor bonus from the amulet, a +4 shield bonus from the amulet, a +1+3=+4 armor bonus from the padded armor, and a +1+2=+3 shield bonus from the buckler^*.

You're only allowed to have one source for each bonus to AC (except dodge bonuses). So the rogue would get the better of +4 or +4 armor bonus and the better of +4 or +3 shield bonus. This would not stack to provide +15 AC - instead, the rogue would only have +8.

^{* I don't know what a plank shield is (which is, itself a problem), so I use a buckler for the example.}

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What's good for the goose is good for the gander

The PCs (in general) are nothing special in the world. Even at high level, there's always someone who is more powerful - otherwise there wouldn't be anyone to challenge. Thus anything the PCs can craft, some NPC somewhere in the world can craft too.

I certainly wouldn't recommend starting down this path, but if your players want to start crafting really specialized magic items (like this, odd-bonus stat items, etc.), then the NPCs should occasionally have some too. "Sorry, it's a headband of Int +1. It gave him extra spells, but it's worthless to you."

Just be careful with this - on the one hand, this lets you buff up your villains while still keeping their loot value the same. On the other, if the items turn out to be useful to the PCs (rather than sold as junk), you're inflating the party's power level (but by no more than if they crafted them themselves).

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Does it really matter?

Finally, there's the question of whether having one person in the party with a huge AC actually matters. Any reasonably smart creature/NPC will go "You're too hard to hit. I'm going to go attack your wizard buddy instead." Even with the same resources, not everyone will have the high ACs - wizards can't even use padded armor (or shields) without a problem (which is why they have the spells in the first plaec), not everyone will have a high Dex or sources of dodge bonus. There are plenty of non-spellcasting creatures with touch attacks, attacks that require saves, and so on. Groups of creatures can Aid Another and flank to boost their attacks. Combat maneuvers are often easier to pull off, and things like grappling or tripping can help make an otherwise hard-to-hit target vulnerable.

Answer 3

Yes...

By the core magic item pricing rules: Yes, you can.

Different bonus types mean they stack, and your reading of the table appears correct.

...But...

Your Enhancement bonuses listed count as armour bonuses after they have been applied to the armour, and the shield bonuses likewise, as far as I am aware. Meaning your AC wouldn't be quite that high.

...And.

The magic item prices are supposed to estimate the worth of an item, hence the name of the table. They are design to operate with GM oversight, meaning it would be their responsibility to allow or disallow it.

There are reasons they would: If, for example, the wizard's low AC was seriously impacting a game filled with far-more-armoured characters and impacting everyone's enjoyment. Especially if they were making shield amulets for the rest of the party. Still, in general, I wouldn't expect a GM to allow it.

Answer 4

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/spell-lists-and-domains/spell-lists---sorcerer-and-wizard

I've linked the magic rules (which covers stacking rules) and the list of spells for wizards (which includes the two spells, which are level 1 spells.

The core stacking rule suggests that two bonuses of the same type do NOT stack. Both Mage armour and Shield apply a flat bonus of +4 to AC, however one is an armour bonus, the other is a shield bonus. The Different Bonus types clarification suggests that if bonuses are of different types then they will stack.

A bit painful, but solid against anything that is non-boss.

Looking at the Magic Item Creation rules, based on the maths/tables provided, taking a purely technical look, RAW it is a legitimate item creation (based on a first time read through with my reading back and forth to double check and clarify my understanding).

According to the extra text, and the additional answers provided by other users, it is against the spirit of the game (or can be considered as such), and the guidelines explained by Emir state that comparison against existing magic items suggests this item would have a massively increased cost to account for the significant bonuses provided.

As a GM, you can rule that components cost more/supplied have dwindled to be lower than demand/the crafter is getting interrupted more than is regular, etc etc etc. This could increase item cost drastically, and/or make it more difficult/challenging.

Perhaps in your gameworld, an item of this type might require additional resources, possibly even requiring a suitably sized quest to acquire them.

Ultimately, whether this is legitimate or not is up to you as DM/GM of your game. Based on your own history of gaming as you've provided, you could decide this is acceptable, but throw extra challenges at your players to offset the strengths this item provides. Or you could go against your previous gaming decisions with this item, and ban or place additional blocks against its creation - perhaps in your universe/game a magical item can only have one spell bonus applied at a time?

The core focus should be "is it fun?". If yes, and you can provide suitable and enjoyable challenges to offset the difference, then go for it. If no, then ban the item in the interests of game enjoyment for your players.

After all, if people aren't having fun, then why are you playing the game?