Wearing two armors at once?


Rules Questions


So, my DM has made up some house ruled "bullet proof" armor and he decided to go with the "+X to touch AC vs bullets" essentially. That said, it won't work against melee. Thus my question is, are there any rules about wearing two armors at once? in this case a chain shirt and a bullet proof vest?


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Their AC bonuses do not stack, you take the higher of the two, similarly you take the worst of the armor check penalties, and finally you have to deal with the weight of both.
EDIT: If that is fine with you, there's nothing stopping you from doing so. It's actually a fairly common thing to wear an extra set of light armor so that when you doff your heavy armor for sleeping you aren't caught with your pants down (literally and figuratively) if you're ambushed.

It can also have benefits if you run into an enemy that likes sundering armors.


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Ashiel wrote:
It can also have benefits if you run into an enemy that likes sundering armors.

Friendly reminder to always put trigger warnings before mentions of gear destruction.


Interesting. So in this case, I wouldn't get the AC bonus against bullets if shot with bullets, if my other armor had a higher AC bonus? And since guns target touch AC, it'd then bypass both armors?

Or, since a gun is targeting touch, and the bullet proof vest is made to help against that, it'd switch over to the vests AC since in this case it'd be higher? Hm..

Scarab Sages

Ashiel is quoting the rules for an armored coat, but that might not be the best example. As the vest only gives you a situational bonus, the example of mage armor might work better, as it does not stack with your normal armor, but comes into effect when a specific situation negates your normal armor (specifically incorporeal touch attacks). Thats how id rule the vest. but really, its the domain of your gm.


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DualJay wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
It can also have benefits if you run into an enemy that likes sundering armors.
Friendly reminder to always put trigger warnings before mentions of gear destruction.

Trigger warnings can die in a fire.


burkoJames wrote:
Ashiel is quoting the rules for an armored coat, but that might not be the best example. As the vest only gives you a situational bonus, the example of mage armor might work better, as it does not stack with your normal armor, but comes into effect when a specific situation negates your normal armor (specifically incorporeal touch attacks). Thats how id rule the vest. but really, its the domain of your gm.

I see. I had intended to ask my DM anyways, but I wanted to help by giving him an idea on how other things work. That said, I think I got a good amount of that here.

Thanks everyone.


burkoJames wrote:
Ashiel is quoting the rules for an armored coat, but that might not be the best example. As the vest only gives you a situational bonus, the example of mage armor might work better, as it does not stack with your normal armor, but comes into effect when a specific situation negates your normal armor (specifically incorporeal touch attacks). Thats how id rule the vest. but really, its the domain of your gm.

But mage armor isn't actually armor, it is an abjuration effect that grants an armor bonus.

Wearing two sets of armor is a completely different thing, not to mention you only have one armor "slot" as a character which means once you get to the point of magical armor only one or the others effects would be active, the most recently put on.

There isn't an "official" ruling saying you can't that I know of, but there also isn't a blanket one saying you can. Just some specific armors mentioning what happens when they are worn in such a way. Which would lean to the general rule being "no, unless a specific item says it can be" as it is an exception based rule set.


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There's nothing preventing you from doing so, but there hasn't ever needed to be because barring an extremely niche addition like this, there's virtually no benefit for doing so. I wasn't quoting the rules for an armored coat (seriously, I hadn't even looked at it), I was quoting the core rules in the way stacking works.

In other words, sure, you can put on more and more armor, but it's only going to hurt you most of the time. Armor is one of the heaviest things that you can wear. Even a chain shirt is 20 lbs. Since armor bonuses do not stack but instead overlap, and you take the worst of the penalties for the same reason, and take the worst of the speed reductions for the same reason, but still have to track the weight of both of them, you're just ruining your encumbrance.

The only upside I can think of for this sort of thing would be to get a sort of sunder-resistance going on. However, that's not even a great idea either since armor tends to become really sunder resistant anyways (+5 mithral full plate has a hardness of 25 and 95 Hp) and enhancing multiple suits of armor is costly.

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