Talk:Blue Mail (5e Equipment)

"plus resistance to a single damage type is a rare item, so making this armor legendary"

The effect nearly emulates 5e SRD:Stoneskin, which is only a 4th-level spell compared to the 5e SRD:Protection from Energy 3rd-level spell.
The point was that your AC had to be 2 lower than is optimal without magic items (compare chain and chain shirt to plate or half-plate). Consider that 5e seems to think +2 AC armor is worth a very rare magic item in of itself.
If it stays unchanged as legendary, this item will almost always just be a worse version of the plate that lets you become practically invincible for at least one fight a day. - Guy 09:19, 9 January 2022 (MST)

I don't know why spells were brought into this when a permanent effect of spells has such varying levels of power. Anyway, armor with the same properties but different base armors are considered to be the same rarity in 5e and the same can be said with weapons. A magic item's rarity is judged off of its enchantment not what type of weapon/armor/etc. used. The only differentiation seems to be how common that armor/item is with lower AC base magic items being more common in the DMG's Random Magic Item Tables.

Resistance to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing damage is at the power level of a legendary item. You also gain resistance to all damage dealt by these three damage types, not just non-magical damage, so this armor's effect should be comparable to the armor of invulnerability. --Blobby383b (talk) 12:04, 9 January 2022 (MST)

Spells were brought into this because of page 285 of the DMG. It's the actual, official guidance on creating magic items and determining their rarity.

According to you the actual benefit provided by the item itself doesn't matter. You're saying +2 chain mail that provides 18 AC should always be two rarity levels higher than common plate which provides 18 AC with no other effect. That's frankly some rules lawyer bs if I've ever seen it.

That penultimate sentence is a big ol' ^{[citation needed]} but it would seem I'm expected to accept your statement as law at face-value over my own informed opinion; to value your unsubstantiated change to my work above my original spirit and intent.

Thanks for re-affirming my doubts about this site, admin. I really needed that. - Guy 13:19, 9 January 2022 (MST)

While I don't like how you started attacking admins and the site in general, I do agree with you. Relative to the Armor of Invulnerability, this armor is incredibly weak. I personally believe it should be very rare instead of legendary. Armor of Resistance gives you resistance to one damage type- some of which are very uncommon damage types like psychic and force, which generally are considered more powerful to get resistance to- and is classified as rare. Armor of Invulnerability gives you resistance to all nonmagical damage. To be fair, late-game most monsters have some form of magical attack, so that discounts that feature a little, but getting immunity to all damage for 10 minutes makes most boss battles incredibly easy. Resistance to 3 common damage types seems to be the in-between, and therefore should be very rare.

However, I can see both sides of this. The Armor of Invulnerability is an outlier among magic items, as it is very, very strong relative to other magic items. Even compared to the Vorpal Sword, one of if not the most powerful non-artifact magic item in D&D 5e, it is very, very strong. In addition, as per page 285 of the DMG, "A rare, very rare or legendary item might allow its possessor to cast a lower-level spell more frequently." A permanent stoneskin spell could easily be seen as legendary by those rules. I could see why it would be classified as legendary, and I wouldn't change it if I saw another item like this labeled as legendary.

But, as I said before, I think it should be very rare. WoTC has repeatedly disobeyed their own recommendations for making things as outlined in the DMG (by the logic of page 284 of the DMG, fireball and lightning bolt should be 5th-level spells). As I said before, it's better than Armor of Resistance and worse than Armor of Invulnerability, so it should be in between. It would be powerful for a very rare item, yes, but it doesn't feel like it should be legendary. --MarshDASavage (talk) 13:57, 9 January 2022 (MST)

As MarshDASavage explained, the DMG does contain info guidance for how to go about adding spells to magic items, but it isn't clear cut what this armor's rarity should be using said rules. Besides that, my statement on what rarity this armor should be is a what if and you shouldn't trust it at face value. We each have our own opinions and arguments for said armor's rarity, hence why we are discussing it. I believe that the armor should be legendary based off of the fact that giving resistance to a singular damage type on a piece of armor is rare, and this armor is much more powerful as it gives resistance to the all the damage of three common damage types. I don't disagree that the armor of invulnerability is probably more useful but based on this armor's effect, I believe this armor would be a legendary item that has its own uses compared to the armor of invulnerability. With that said, if this was a very rare item it would still be very strong, hence perhaps nerfing the armor to just have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks would work? --Blobby383b (talk) 14:19, 9 January 2022 (MST)

Having a discussion? Respecting consensus? Someone who at least partially agrees with me? Who'd have thought.

Returning the item to very rare and limiting it to nonmagical BPS is a reasonable compromise to me. - Guy 14:29, 9 January 2022 (MST)

In my opinion, the original version(very rare with BPS resistance) is more fitting for something like chainmail. If it was plate armor? Absolutely, yeah, this would be legendary. However, this would need a shield to even reach nonmagical plate's AC. I think it justifies the lower rarity. --SwankyPants (talk) 14:38, 9 January 2022 (MST)

That makes more sense, but isn't how WotC make magic items. Honestly the magic item system as a whole probably needs a rework to account for that and other general issues with magic items. The deeper you dive into the edition and the longer it exists, the more flaws and cracks appear. --Blobby383b (talk) 14:53, 9 January 2022 (MST)

If Wizards saw how we made anything here, I wager we'd give their design teams heart attacks. Races, classes, magic items, any edition. As for exploits, that's probably why they're making 6e. There isn't any issues with a system if nobody knows what the issues are yet. --SwankyPants (talk) 14:55, 9 January 2022 (MST)