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I am planning on building a suit of armor and animating it via craft construct and I was looking for ways to make it tougher as I plan on wearing it via the Construct Armor modification.

I ran across a post that mentioned Fortifying stones and reading their wording I realized it suggests that you can equip more than one of these at a time (See quote below), is there any limit to this? It seems rather cheap and I could put like 5 of these on the suit of armor and have 100 extra HP and a hardness of 25.

While I don't want to go that far I'm curious if there is any rule against this or at least a limit somewhere as I could not find anything on it.

...Any effect that breaks or destroys the protected object also destroys any attached fortifying stones.

SevenSidedDie
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Aaron
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  • I want to say no, the benefits wouldn't stack because of same source rules and that's just poor wording, but I'm going to try to find a reference; specifically (an)other item(s) that also refers to itself in the plural when only one is actually viable. Would you consider that sufficient proof? – Ifusaso Aug 09 '17 at 14:32
  • @Ifusaso Everything I've found suggests everyone uses multiple on the same item but I couldn't find anything official. – Aaron Aug 09 '17 at 14:33
  • @Ifusaso As long as there is some evidence sure. – Aaron Aug 09 '17 at 14:34
  • Note that you do not get 100 extra hp, the armor does. – KRyan Aug 09 '17 at 14:35
  • One defensible (if perhaps mildly silly) position RAW would be that you can attach as many stones as you like, they provide no benefit beyond the first (because stacking rules), and they all shatter when that 20 HP is expended. – Ben Barden Aug 09 '17 at 14:38
  • @KRyan True but when wearing the armor via the construct armor all damage is done to the armor first. It's like iron man :D – Aaron Aug 09 '17 at 14:38
  • @BenBarden That's certainly an option. The way I'm trying to do it with my GM, mainly cause I have no desire to break the game, is having up to 3 stones and only the HP stacks. – Aaron Aug 09 '17 at 14:40
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    Ah, but construct armor is not, technically, armor, it’s a construct. It’s not clear to me that a fortifying stone would even apply to one. After all, hardness is an object property, not a creature property. – KRyan Aug 09 '17 at 14:41
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    @KRyan Constructs have a hardness so it would apply. You can see proof of this by looking at Animate Object Metal ability which specifically increases the hardness of the object. Perhaps other constructs use DR but Animated object constructs at least use hardness. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/animated-object/#gargantuan – Aaron Aug 09 '17 at 14:44
  • The "up to 3" thing only makes sense in one of two ways. In the first, you assert that the construct armor+stones thing is utterly broken RAW in high-level play because it allows nearly arbitrary effective HP, and you're accepting a nerf. In the second, you're asking for special permission from your DM to stack something that shouldn't stack. The second seems a fair bit more likely. – Ben Barden Aug 09 '17 at 14:50
  • OK, ignore the bit about hardness as it’s irrelevant: construct armor can be worn like armor, and it provides bonuses similar to a breastplate, but nothing says it is an armor—and fortifying stones only apply to armor, not to creatures even if they can have hardness. – KRyan Aug 09 '17 at 14:54

2 Answers2

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You cannot apply fortifying stones to a creature.

While it is true that there are creatures with hardness (see animated objects), those are no longer objects but construct creatures. The effect of the fortifying stone clearly applies to objects, not creatures.

So, while your suit of armor could possibly have more than one stone, the benefits would only apply while the suit of armor is an object. This benefit should disappear once it becomes a creature.

For instance, while a suit of plate mail should have at least 10 hardness due to the metal's inherent hardness, a medium-sized animated object only has hardness 5. While you could use the construction points to add the Metal property and increase it's hardness to 10, it has little effect on the creature's hit points. Armor has AC * 5 hit points, the creature is fixed at 36 hit points.

Considering how detailed the rules for creating animated objects are, I would expect at least a mention of using the fortifying stones to build constructs. Like happens to the Irespan Basalt shown on Magnimar, City of Monuments, which has the following properties when used to create constructs:

Physical Properties: Irespan basalt is as hard as iron, while retaining its other stony features for carving and building. It has hardness 10 and typically fetches a price of about 5 sp per pound. However, since few buyers are interested in stones of less than 1,ooo pounds, the Irespan bas alt trade is relatively limited to specialists capable of harvesting and transporting such heavy blocks.

Building Constructs: When a construct's materials consist entirely of Irespan stone, its Craft DC increases by +5, but the required Caster Level decreases by 1. In addition, stone constructs crafted from Irespan stone gain a +2 bonus to Strength and gain twice as many bonus hit points as normal from the construct type.

We might see more on this subject on the upcoming Construct Builder's Guidebook.

As for stacking fortifying stones, you could possibly add several stones to a single object, and a lot community members seem to allow the effects to stack. The only thing that puts me off is the text about working like temporary hit points, as we know that temporary hit points from the same source do not stack (like multiple castings of Aid). But, considering the cost of each stone (1,000 gp), I personally would allow them to stack on the same object.

Community
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ShadowKras
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Core page 208: "Bonuses without a type always stack, unless they are from the same source." Here is an obvious example of untyped bonuses from the same source. Thus, they will not stack.

Additionally, there is no particular reason to believe that the Fortifying Stones effect would apply directly to construct stats. They could be used to improve the stats of the base material used prior to conversion, but unless there is some RAW way for the one to affect the other, that won't matter much.

Ben Barden
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