Abjurant Champion - Complete Mage

D&D 3E

8th-Jan-2007 12:29 am

I just picked up CM after flipping through it in the store, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. I had expected it to suck horribly,but it's a decent book overall (IMO).

In any case, in reading through the PrC's offered, I came upon a dillema: The PrC Abjurant Champion gets the ability to add his class level to any armor or shield bonus granted him by an abjuration spell.

The ability, as quoted from the book:

"Abjurant Armor (Su): Any time you cast an abjuration spell that grants you an armor bonus or shield bonus to AC, you can increase the value of the bonus by your abjurant champion class level. Abjurant champions rely on mage armor ,shield, and similar spells instead of actual armor.

Call me an idiot, but Mage Armor is a Conjuration spell, and therefore not an abjuration spell. While I'd love to believe that it would work, I think they conveniently forgot this fact.

Obviously it'd be up to the DM to rule as to whether or not the ability applies but rules as written are pretty clear to me.

What do you think, oh community mine?

Comments

8th-Jan-2007 08:37 am (UTC)

shironiku

Perhaps the author was thinking of previous editions when some spells had more than one school. IIRC, Mage Armor and Shield were Abjuration/Conjuration; abjuration because they involved protection of some sort, and conjuration because they created something out of nothing.

I don't have CM, though, and I'm not familiar with the PrC in question, so this is purely speculation. *shrugs*

8th-Jan-2007 07:47 pm (UTC)

ryukiri

Perhaps...o_O but it seems a little silly that development teams should forget the changes made to bring us to the 3.5 edition, especially with such a simple and iconic spell as Mage Armor.

8th-Jan-2007 09:06 am (UTC)

nviiibrown

Maybe the comment that they rely on these spells for armor is not entirely related to the above ability. Cleary Shield would work, and Mage Armor sure wouldn't hurt.

8th-Jan-2007 07:42 pm (UTC)

ryukiri

Sorry, I should have included the stats for the sample NPC they gave. It lists him as a Fighter/Sorc/AbCh (can't remember the level split, but AbCh was at 5) and his Sorc spells known include Mage Armor (and funnily enough, not Shield).

They note that Mage Armor has already been cast, and list his AC as having a +9 armor bonus. =]

8th-Jan-2007 09:57 pm (UTC)

nviiibrown

Sure there's no special "treat Mage Armor as abjuration" special ability, or feat?

9th-Jan-2007 12:19 am (UTC)

flamingophoenix

I was thinking about this recently, and I'm pretty sure that Mage Armor and Shield are of different schools so that specialist wizards can drop different schools without taking the hit in AC. If both spells were Abjuration, then nobody would take Abjuration as a banned school; as it is, there's a little more flexibility.

9th-Jan-2007 01:26 am (UTC)

ryukiri

Didn't see one, nope.

8th-Jan-2007 02:58 pm (UTC)

marphod

Its a mistake. Abjurant ARmor, according to the author, doesn't work with Mage Armor.

ALternateively, some people make it work with any spell that adds a shield or armor bonus.

Regardless, the thread on the wizards.com board is fairly convincing that there are issues with the class -- there are some powerful builds that make arcane casters even more powerful.

8th-Jan-2007 07:29 pm (UTC)

mouseferatu

Just to clarify, it was someone on the development team who stated the ability doesn't work with mage armor, not the author--IOW, me.

When I wrote that prestige class, it didn't have the Abjurant Armor ability at all, but could simply wear light armor like some other casters. I actually like the fact that development replaced it with something more unique, but I do wish they'd figured out a way to include mage armor in the available spells, even though it's not abjuration.

8th-Jan-2007 07:41 pm (UTC)

ryukiri

Would have made a little more sense that way.

I like the Abjurant Armor idea, but they worded it wrong.

9th-Jan-2007 12:20 am (UTC)

flamingophoenix

I think the "any spell that adds a shield or armor bonus to the target's AC" would be a fine way of solving that. But hey, that's what they invented errata for, right? ;-)

9th-Jan-2007 12:50 am (UTC)

the_elephant

Actually, it's more like "That's what they invented Sage Advice for", based on the screwed-up way they seem to do things at WOTC

9th-Jan-2007 11:49 pm (UTC)

flamingophoenix

Or perhaps "writing one's own version into one's Complete books," which I intend to do with Master Thrower/Invisible Blade when I get around to it. What were they thinking? Far Shot for IB? Craziness.

10th-Jan-2007 12:58 am (UTC)

the_elephant

uh...sure.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but sure.

10th-Jan-2007 02:15 am (UTC)

ryukiri

I think the gripe is with the Invisible Blade PrC from Complete Warrior requiring Far Shot for entry.

I've never seen a problem with it, though; anyways I think the point was to show wonky WoTC mistakes.

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