Arcane Armor Proficiency

[thaelis]

Its been a while since I bitched about these feats, but I've noticed they are now mandatory for all Eldritch Knights....that means meeeeeeeee

Suggestion: instead of -10% with the silly arm waggling and torturous waiting times, just make them a simple -5% each?

Or maybe -5, -10, -20 (so by burning ALL your feats you can at least wear a chain shirt)

That way they are useful to everyone and anyone. Ok, that's my part.

[BedlamX]

In my opinion, the main thing that makes this set of feats interesting is the fact that you can get -30% spell failure if you take them all. This allows some fun builds. My Eldritch Knight is running around in full plate and a tower shield most of the time. If he drops the shield for a few minutes, he can cast any spell he knows with only a 5% chance of spell failure. Add to that the fact you have to have Still Spell as another prereq, and it begs for a heavily armored caster. If the changes you suggest are made, at least my character's build will become quite useless as I have set him up specifically around those feats that are required for EK.

As it is, it takes numerous feats to qualify for EK. This alone knocks some of the wind out of a normal caster or fighter. Losing 2 caster levels hurts the caster part and losing the AB for taking 5 levels of caster hurts the fighter part. This seems to balance out quite well in making a very good character...as long as you take advantage of the heavy armors at lower levels (mine is still level 8 or 9, so only a few EK levels). If I had been forced to add in more DEX to make light armor useful, his INT or STR would have suffered (being human, anyway). The extra casting time is annoying, but at higher levels, there are Still spell slots to get around that.

My only thing would be to ask for a "super heavy" AAP so you could have no chance of spell failure in full plate :P. That might be worth taking the extra feat...maybe. 5% is really quite small, you know.

[Doubtful]

One extra round to prepare a spell, 30% less spell failure. That's hardly overkill - it's quite handy for some builds, especially as it's much harder to do the unequip armour - buff - equip armour - win munchgasm that pretty much defined EK builds in the past.

I do agree it might be nice to have an additional AAP to cover heavy armour though, apart from that the AAP system does work quite nicely.

[thaelis]

Ok, guess I'll give it a shot. Although I tried it last time and it drove me nuts.

But, good to know that it can work for some builds aka Sir BedlamX, even if heavy armor isnt really my cup of tea (I'm a frolicking Elf pansy of indeterminate gender, as I believe Kaizen would put it)