Hi all. My first homebrew post, apologies if this has been asked and answered somewhere else (and if so, a link would be much appreciated). This may be a request for help, or a request for additional functionality - at this point I'm not sure (I'm hoping the former, and that a solution already exists).
I've created a homebrew version of Spiked Armor, that uses CON instead of DEX (Modifiers below if useful to anyone), but the part I am struggling with is maintaining the +2 maximum that would normally apply to the Dex bonus on medium armor (the character using this armor has a +3 from CON, and I don't want to "hard code" a fudge to make this effectively +2).
The modifiers I am currently using (any field not mentioned is left blank) - Modifier "Set - Minimum Base Armor", Primary Stat "CON", Fixed Value "14" Modifier "Set - AC Max Dex Modifier", Fixed Value "0"
I guess what I really need (and I understand why this doesn't currently exist) is a modifier "Set - AC Max Con Modifier". If we could set whichever stat we wanted to use as an AC modifier, and THEN use any stat we want as X in a "Set - AC Max X Modifier" modifier, that would give me my full solution. But in the mean time, if anyone knows how I could enforce the max 2 part of "14 + Con modifier (max 2)", it would be much appreciated.
None of what you did is correct, nor is it possible for armor to restrict a Con bonus to AC. Spiked Armor is already AC 14, so you can completely skip that first modifier as it is not doing anything at all to help you. (In fact, it’s probably being completely ignored by the system to prevent it from crashing your character sheet.)
Make armor using the spiked armor as the base, and add the following:
Modifier: Set->Subtype: Max Dex Armored Modifier->Fixed Value: 0
Modifier: Bonus->Subtype: Armored Armor Clas->Ability Score: Con->Restriction: Max 2
That won’t actually set a limiter on the Con bonus, that’s currently impossible with no plans to add anything like that because WotC hasn’t written anything that works the way you want. (The only official thing that uses Con for AC is the Barbarians’ Unarmored Defense.) The player will have to be responsible for manually adjusting their AC on their sheet if their Con bonus is ever higher than +2, they would simply tap/click the AC on their sheet to accomplish that.
Hi IamSposta. I hate to disagree with you, and I appreciate your comment, but there are a few things you said that aren't quite correct.
First off, I have to disagree with your suggestion that none of what I did is correct. What I did is working perfectly, with only the exception of the limit on CON bonus that my query was focused on. The modifier I applied is not being ignored by the system, nor is it crashing the character sheet - it is resulting in armor that adds the character's CON bonus to a base AC of 14. That is working fine, I have it applied to a character right now and I get exactly the results I would expect when I equip/unequip it. Additionally the other modifier to remove the DEX bonus to AC (that you also included in your own suggestion) is also working perfectly. If I didn't care about limiting the CON bonus to max 2, my Homebrew armor would be working just fine.
I'm a little confused about your later point, that the options you suggest won't actually result in a limiter on the Con bonus. If it isn't possible to limit the Con bonus, what is the purpose of applying "Modifier: Bonus->Subtype: Armored Armor Clas->Ability Score: Con->Restriction: Max 2" at all? I'm also not seeing a "Restriction" option at all, so were you just speaking figuratively?
A final point. I realise that what I'm asking for may currently not exist as an option, but it isn't quite right to say that WotC haven't made anything that works the way I want. Normal Medium Armor of course applies the +2 limit, it just applies it only to Dex. And as for non-Dex attributes applying to AC, there are actually loads of examples of that beyond just the Barbarian's Unarmored Defense. There is the Loxodon's natural armor, a Monk uses both Dex and Wis bonuses, a Bladesinger can apply their Intelligence to their AC, there are even magic items that let a character apply their Charisma bonus to their AC. So me flipping armour to use something other than Dex is hardly way off the beaten track (and in fact as described above, I have armor that uses the Con bonus and in that regard it is working perfectly well).
So although there is nothing currently that uses the CON bonus AND maintains the +2 limit to AC, there is no shortage of items and races that do one of those two things. So I'd hope Fandom would recognise that simply adding a "Max limit" field to ANY Homebrew modifier that applies an attribute bonus to anything, is a perfectly reasonable thing to request.
Anyway, I appreciate the time you took to reply to me. Happy adventuring.
Okay, my apologies. I took another look and I can now tell you with 100% certainty that it is in fact not “working perfectly,” it only looks like it is working perfectly. Here’s what it actually doing.
The armor itself is is adding its own inherent Modifier to Set your PC’s Armored AC to 14. You cannot see it, but it’s there. And everything always automatically adds Dex to all AC unless something limits or restricts it. In this case the Armor also automatically restricts it to +2.
Now your modifier is also telling the sheet to Set the "Minimum Base Armor” to (14+Con mod) unless something else would come along and make it higher. So that’s adding extraneous modifiers that are both affecting the AC in similar ways.
Then you added a second mod that restricts the Dex mod to both armored and Unarmored AC. But that’s affecting two different AC calculations at the same time when the sheet can only actually use one of them anyway while the PC is wearing Armor. So your homebrew is affecting way more stuff then it needs to in order to give the illusion that it’s working correctly.
The resin that’s bad is because the more extraneous stuff they all gets confuzzled in Homebrew, the more likely you are to crash a character sheet as it cannot figure out what it’s supposed to do. If you can instead affect exactly what you want and nothing else, the less likely you are to be get have a problem after you have piled Homebrew on top of Homebrew on top of Homebrew. (Trust me, one of my hobbies is stress testing the character sheet with Homebrew.)
The Modifiers I listed do exactly what you want except for the thing you cannot do anyway. However, they do it without doing all the extra stuff it doesn’t need to for no reason. The first Modifier sets the Dex bonus to “0” like yours, but only the one that it needs to without the additional unnecessary interactions. The second one adds the PC’s Con mod to the AC14 inherent to the armor, nothing more and nothing less.
I said there was “nothing like that” in regards to the fact that WotC has not published anything official whatsoever that restricts a PC’s Constitution bonus to AC the same way Heavy Armor restricts their Dexterity bonus. That is 100% factual.
And then I sad that the only thing that uses Constitution for AC is the Barbarian, and only through that one named feature. That is also 100% factual. And since none of your examples apply Constitution to AC, they are irrelevant.
As to the rest:
Why should DDB spend all that time, money, and effort to add the ability to restrict any ability score’s contribution to AC? They only need to restrict Dexterity and they already have a system in place to do that. If WotC ever published anything that says “AC # + Con modifier (max 2),” then DDB will spend to program that. If WotC doesn’t publish anything like that, DDB won’t do it. They have stated that publicly several times.
But you feel free to disagree with me all you like, plenty of other people do it all the time. (It’s still a free country so far.)
Apology appreciated, as is the extra information. And I concede I got carried away with my use of the word "perfectly". It does what I want it to do, but perhaps not by the best route :)
I didn't set out here to disagree with anyone, I came to learn more about Homebrew (this is only my second creation), but also disagreement is not bad so long as we're civil (and you have been, and it is appreciated).
With that said and in a spirit of sharing what I've found out, let me explain more about my experiments so far.
I made a change last night, which as you know takes a little while to filter through with Homebrew. The change was to change the value 14 in "Set - Minimum Base Armor", Primary Stat "CON", Fixed Value "14"" to 13, and I've confirmed it is having an effect, as the resultant character AC went down by 1. However, interestingly the armor description itself still says 14 (which I'm presuming is because it was based on Spiked Armor), so it looks like the AC value in the the description is fixed by the original type even if that actual AC is overridden by use of "Set Minimum Base Armor".
My first attempt a reply about your comment "restricts the Dex mod to both armored and Unarmored AC" was along the lines of "I still don't understand..." etc, but after reading it through again I think I DO get it now :) So my choice was unnecessarily applying more broadly than required. With it being armor (and therefore in an unarmored state, the whole Homebrew item wouldn't be applying anything), I think the end result would be the same. But my takeaway from your point is that using modifiers that have a greater reach than needed it is a bad habit to start forming. It took me a bit to get there, but I appreciate the lesson.
A final point (not a disagreement, just explaining my perspective on Homebrew in general). I listed all those other things that affect AC to give some background, that the SRD is not rigid in terms of only Dex affecting AC (and btw, the Loxodon's Natural Armor uses Con for AC, in a very similar way to the Barbarian class feature - OK, this one probably is a disagreement :) ). I accept that nothing in the stock rules works exactly as I'd like this armor to, but that is the point of Homebrew surely? If the tools available for Homebrew only allowed us to create things that already exist, there wouldn't be much point to it.
Now I understand that Homebrew could be considered as a way to adjust values but not build new functionality, and if that is Fandom's view then I can't complain (Homebrew is a bonus, and not the core reason I use DnDB). I'd just like a little more flexibility in this regard - honestly in this particular case the issue feels like an engineering oversight, as if Medium armor was built to limit the any-STAT bonus to +2 (instead of being hardwired to Dex, even though there are many examples in the SRD of non-Dex bonuses affecting AC), I honestly think that would be more elegant from an engineering perspective.
Aaaaaanyway, I'm just thinking out loud at this point. I've enjoyed the chat, and I'm going to benefit from your suggestion of using "Set->Subtype: Max Dex Armored Modifier->Fixed Value: 0" so I've still got something from this (even if the pesky +2 Max from Con still eludes me). Cheers :)
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Hi all. My first homebrew post, apologies if this has been asked and answered somewhere else (and if so, a link would be much appreciated). This may be a request for help, or a request for additional functionality - at this point I'm not sure (I'm hoping the former, and that a solution already exists).
I've created a homebrew version of Spiked Armor, that uses CON instead of DEX (Modifiers below if useful to anyone), but the part I am struggling with is maintaining the +2 maximum that would normally apply to the Dex bonus on medium armor (the character using this armor has a +3 from CON, and I don't want to "hard code" a fudge to make this effectively +2).
The modifiers I am currently using (any field not mentioned is left blank) -
Modifier "Set - Minimum Base Armor", Primary Stat "CON", Fixed Value "14"
Modifier "Set - AC Max Dex Modifier", Fixed Value "0"
I guess what I really need (and I understand why this doesn't currently exist) is a modifier "Set - AC Max Con Modifier". If we could set whichever stat we wanted to use as an AC modifier, and THEN use any stat we want as X in a "Set - AC Max X Modifier" modifier, that would give me my full solution. But in the mean time, if anyone knows how I could enforce the max 2 part of "14 + Con modifier (max 2)", it would be much appreciated.
None of what you did is correct, nor is it possible for armor to restrict a Con bonus to AC. Spiked Armor is already AC 14, so you can completely skip that first modifier as it is not doing anything at all to help you. (In fact, it’s probably being completely ignored by the system to prevent it from crashing your character sheet.)
Make armor using the spiked armor as the base, and add the following:
That won’t actually set a limiter on the Con bonus, that’s currently impossible with no plans to add anything like that because WotC hasn’t written anything that works the way you want. (The only official thing that uses Con for AC is the Barbarians’ Unarmored Defense.) The player will have to be responsible for manually adjusting their AC on their sheet if their Con bonus is ever higher than +2, they would simply tap/click the AC on their sheet to accomplish that.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Hi IamSposta. I hate to disagree with you, and I appreciate your comment, but there are a few things you said that aren't quite correct.
First off, I have to disagree with your suggestion that none of what I did is correct. What I did is working perfectly, with only the exception of the limit on CON bonus that my query was focused on. The modifier I applied is not being ignored by the system, nor is it crashing the character sheet - it is resulting in armor that adds the character's CON bonus to a base AC of 14. That is working fine, I have it applied to a character right now and I get exactly the results I would expect when I equip/unequip it. Additionally the other modifier to remove the DEX bonus to AC (that you also included in your own suggestion) is also working perfectly. If I didn't care about limiting the CON bonus to max 2, my Homebrew armor would be working just fine.
I'm a little confused about your later point, that the options you suggest won't actually result in a limiter on the Con bonus. If it isn't possible to limit the Con bonus, what is the purpose of applying "Modifier: Bonus->Subtype: Armored Armor Clas->Ability Score: Con->Restriction: Max 2" at all? I'm also not seeing a "Restriction" option at all, so were you just speaking figuratively?
A final point. I realise that what I'm asking for may currently not exist as an option, but it isn't quite right to say that WotC haven't made anything that works the way I want. Normal Medium Armor of course applies the +2 limit, it just applies it only to Dex. And as for non-Dex attributes applying to AC, there are actually loads of examples of that beyond just the Barbarian's Unarmored Defense. There is the Loxodon's natural armor, a Monk uses both Dex and Wis bonuses, a Bladesinger can apply their Intelligence to their AC, there are even magic items that let a character apply their Charisma bonus to their AC. So me flipping armour to use something other than Dex is hardly way off the beaten track (and in fact as described above, I have armor that uses the Con bonus and in that regard it is working perfectly well).
So although there is nothing currently that uses the CON bonus AND maintains the +2 limit to AC, there is no shortage of items and races that do one of those two things. So I'd hope Fandom would recognise that simply adding a "Max limit" field to ANY Homebrew modifier that applies an attribute bonus to anything, is a perfectly reasonable thing to request.
Anyway, I appreciate the time you took to reply to me. Happy adventuring.
Okay, my apologies. I took another look and I can now tell you with 100% certainty that it is in fact not “working perfectly,” it only looks like it is working perfectly. Here’s what it actually doing.
The armor itself is is adding its own inherent Modifier to Set your PC’s Armored AC to 14. You cannot see it, but it’s there. And everything always automatically adds Dex to all AC unless something limits or restricts it. In this case the Armor also automatically restricts it to +2.
Now your modifier is also telling the sheet to Set the "Minimum Base Armor” to (14+Con mod) unless something else would come along and make it higher. So that’s adding extraneous modifiers that are both affecting the AC in similar ways.
Then you added a second mod that restricts the Dex mod to both armored and Unarmored AC. But that’s affecting two different AC calculations at the same time when the sheet can only actually use one of them anyway while the PC is wearing Armor. So your homebrew is affecting way more stuff then it needs to in order to give the illusion that it’s working correctly.
The resin that’s bad is because the more extraneous stuff they all gets confuzzled in Homebrew, the more likely you are to crash a character sheet as it cannot figure out what it’s supposed to do. If you can instead affect exactly what you want and nothing else, the less likely you are to be get have a problem after you have piled Homebrew on top of Homebrew on top of Homebrew. (Trust me, one of my hobbies is stress testing the character sheet with Homebrew.)
The Modifiers I listed do exactly what you want except for the thing you cannot do anyway. However, they do it without doing all the extra stuff it doesn’t need to for no reason. The first Modifier sets the Dex bonus to “0” like yours, but only the one that it needs to without the additional unnecessary interactions. The second one adds the PC’s Con mod to the AC14 inherent to the armor, nothing more and nothing less.
I said there was “nothing like that” in regards to the fact that WotC has not published anything official whatsoever that restricts a PC’s Constitution bonus to AC the same way Heavy Armor restricts their Dexterity bonus. That is 100% factual.
And then I sad that the only thing that uses Constitution for AC is the Barbarian, and only through that one named feature. That is also 100% factual. And since none of your examples apply Constitution to AC, they are irrelevant.
As to the rest:
Why should DDB spend all that time, money, and effort to add the ability to restrict any ability score’s contribution to AC? They only need to restrict Dexterity and they already have a system in place to do that. If WotC ever published anything that says “AC # + Con modifier (max 2),” then DDB will spend to program that. If WotC doesn’t publish anything like that, DDB won’t do it. They have stated that publicly several times.
But you feel free to disagree with me all you like, plenty of other people do it all the time. (It’s still a free country so far.)
Good luck in yer struggles chummer.
PS-
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Apology appreciated, as is the extra information. And I concede I got carried away with my use of the word "perfectly". It does what I want it to do, but perhaps not by the best route :)
I didn't set out here to disagree with anyone, I came to learn more about Homebrew (this is only my second creation), but also disagreement is not bad so long as we're civil (and you have been, and it is appreciated).
With that said and in a spirit of sharing what I've found out, let me explain more about my experiments so far.
I made a change last night, which as you know takes a little while to filter through with Homebrew. The change was to change the value 14 in "Set - Minimum Base Armor", Primary Stat "CON", Fixed Value "14"" to 13, and I've confirmed it is having an effect, as the resultant character AC went down by 1. However, interestingly the armor description itself still says 14 (which I'm presuming is because it was based on Spiked Armor), so it looks like the AC value in the the description is fixed by the original type even if that actual AC is overridden by use of "Set Minimum Base Armor".
My first attempt a reply about your comment "restricts the Dex mod to both armored and Unarmored AC" was along the lines of "I still don't understand..." etc, but after reading it through again I think I DO get it now :) So my choice was unnecessarily applying more broadly than required. With it being armor (and therefore in an unarmored state, the whole Homebrew item wouldn't be applying anything), I think the end result would be the same. But my takeaway from your point is that using modifiers that have a greater reach than needed it is a bad habit to start forming. It took me a bit to get there, but I appreciate the lesson.
A final point (not a disagreement, just explaining my perspective on Homebrew in general). I listed all those other things that affect AC to give some background, that the SRD is not rigid in terms of only Dex affecting AC (and btw, the Loxodon's Natural Armor uses Con for AC, in a very similar way to the Barbarian class feature - OK, this one probably is a disagreement :) ). I accept that nothing in the stock rules works exactly as I'd like this armor to, but that is the point of Homebrew surely? If the tools available for Homebrew only allowed us to create things that already exist, there wouldn't be much point to it.
Now I understand that Homebrew could be considered as a way to adjust values but not build new functionality, and if that is Fandom's view then I can't complain (Homebrew is a bonus, and not the core reason I use DnDB). I'd just like a little more flexibility in this regard - honestly in this particular case the issue feels like an engineering oversight, as if Medium armor was built to limit the any-STAT bonus to +2 (instead of being hardwired to Dex, even though there are many examples in the SRD of non-Dex bonuses affecting AC), I honestly think that would be more elegant from an engineering perspective.
Aaaaaanyway, I'm just thinking out loud at this point. I've enjoyed the chat, and I'm going to benefit from your suggestion of using "Set->Subtype: Max Dex Armored Modifier->Fixed Value: 0" so I've still got something from this (even if the pesky +2 Max from Con still eludes me). Cheers :)