In 5th Edition, Armor Class (AC) is a crucial aspect of any character, as it determines how easily they can be hit. AC is determined by the armor worn and any modifiers, and is compared to any Attack roll against you. In Dungeons and Dragons, AC is more than just a number; it’s your character’s first line of defense against the claws, swords, and spells of those who would do so.
Class features or specific spells may sometimes change how your Armor Class is calculated, but in most cases, these increases to AC do not stack. Armor might protect you from spells, but it is not just a number; it’s your character’s first line of defense against the claws, swords, and spells of those who would do so. There are spells that can enhance a player’s AC, such as Mage Armor, which alters the calculation for the target’s unarmored AC to 13 plus their Dexterity Modifier.
Clerics can craft certain types of armor, and if you lack proficiency with a particular type of armor, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or spellcasting. In 5e, armor only prevents spellcasting if you are not proficient, so multiclass spells won’t be a problem.
The AC of a character is determined at the total of the roll plus modifiers equals or exceeds the target’s AC, and spells don’t target AC. Instead, they target other defenses like your ability scores. Armor counts, but the spell caster has to touch exposed flesh. It is a joyful thing indeed to hold intimate converse with a man after one’s own.
📹 D&D Spellcasting Explained | Part 1
This is spellcasting explained for D&D 5e! Here in part 1, we’ll go over go over spell levels, casting at higher levels, spell slots, …
Can you cast spells while wearing Armour?
In the fifth edition, any character is permitted to cast spells while wearing armor, provided that they are proficient with that armor. This differs from the rules governing wizards, who are not permitted to cast spells while wearing armor, regardless of their proficiency with it.
Does armour class affect spells?
A character wearing untrained armor may face disadvantages in ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws involving strength and dexterity. They are also unable to cast spells. Wearing untrained armor increases armor class and makes it harder to hit, but also makes it harder to hit back. This can make a character a heavily armored sitting duck, as seen in Ethel’s quest to find the last copy of the fable “The Adventurer’s Pack”.
Which class gets the most spells?
Wizards are privy to the most efficacious spells, with the exception of those pertaining to resurrection. They are capable of acquiring and subsequently alternating spells from their respective lists on a daily basis. While they are permitted to switch spells on a daily basis, the potential for WotC favoritism may impact their ability to do so. Please be advised that JavaScript may be disabled or blocked by an extension, and that your browser does not support cookies.
Do spells have disadvantage underwater?
While there are no specific rules governing spellcasting in an aquatic environment, it is generally assumed that the presence of water would not significantly impact the efficacy of most spells and cantrips. Nevertheless, there is a divergence of opinion regarding verbal spells. Some Dungeon Masters (DMs) exclude them on the grounds of practicality, whereas others permit them but impose a penalty on players in the form of minutes deducted from their breath.
What is the 5 foot rule in D&D?
The Player’s Handbook presents a straightforward methodology for calculating movement and measuring range on a grid. It stipulates that each square should be considered to have a length of five feet.
How does armor work in 5e?
In 5e, Armor Class has been simplified for easier calculation without complicated tables and conditions. Players or enemies’ rolls to hit are compared to the target’s Armor Class (AC), and if the dice roll and modifiers match or exceed it, the attack hits. However, calculating AC is not straightforward and a player’s AC is not set in stone at character creation. Most characters start with an AC equal to 10 plus their Dexterity modifier, except for the Barbarian and Monk classes.
Some races have their own formulae for calculating their Armor Class, while Tortles have special rules for their Armor Class. Most characters can increase their base AC by wearing armor, which is divided into three categories: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Light Armor provides a small boost to the character’s base AC without penalties for movement or stealth, and allows players to add their full DEX modifier to their AC.
What should I roll for armor class?
Armor class (AC) is a measure of a character’s defenses, including their protective gear strength and ability to avoid attacks. It is determined by adding 10 to their Dexterity modifier and increasing based on their armor strength. In D and D 5e, AC is determined by factors such as a character’s protective gear, natural defenses, and ability to move fast or avoid attacks. A higher AC indicates better defenses, making them harder to hit in battle.
For instance, a paladin might have a high AC due to their sturdy armor, while a slippery rogue might have a lower AC due to their speed and ability to avoid attacks. Most player characters in D and D 5e have an AC between 10 and 20, with higher numbers being the best and any AC over 20 considered superb.
Can you use mage armor while wearing armor?
The answer is in the negative. In the event that the target is already equipped with armor, there is no advantage to be gained from the application of mage armor.
What goes into armor class?
The term “armor class” is used to describe a numerical representation of a character’s defensive capabilities. In general, higher numbers indicate superior defenses, which can effectively reduce the likelihood of enemy attacks. The term “AC” can be used to refer to the armor worn by a character, such as the plate mail worn by a paladin.
What class is best for spells?
The Wizard class is the most iconic in Dungeons and Dragons, offering a wide range of useful spells and being considered the best casting class. However, they struggle with being spongey and having limited spell slots daily. Proper preparation allows them to access supporting, controlling, and damage-dealing spells regularly. With more out-of-combat abilities than other classes, they are the all-around best caster for any campaign setting. The Wizard class is easy to learn and master, yet still has powerful spells that fit for one of the most iconic D and D classes.
Do spells have disadvantage within 5 feet?
In the event that a ranged attack is made with a weapon or spell, the attacker is at a disadvantage on the Attack roll if they are within 5 feet of a hostile creature who can see them.
📹 Magic Armor is too strong in Dnd 5e! Here’s why.
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Magic armor giving a greater benefit to characters that already have a high AC seems more like a feature than a bug, honestly. High base AC typically implies heavier armor and shields, which is going to be most common with pure martials and half-casters. The game seems to be designed around the assumption that, on average, those characters are going to have higher passive AC, since the AC-boosting abilities heavy armor classes get tend to be more modest than the emergency AC buttons granted to classes that tend to wear lighter armor. Compare the +2 longer-duration Shield of Faith given to Clerics and Paladins versus the +5 panic button of Shield for Wizards and Sorcerers. Biasing magical armor rewards towards characters with lower base AC seems like it would be kind of a stealth nerf to martials on average by decreasing the passive armor disparity that usually develops between front line martials and casters. My view: bias the magical armor rewards towards whatever types of armor the non-caster or half-caster players are wearing.
When I DM, I give out magical armor because I want my monsters to miss more often than they hit. A player who has invested in defensive features should be rewarded with more attacks missing them. This is especially true of any frontline class who takes the attacks so his backline allies don’t have to. Any player who acts as the party’s defender should be attacked repeatedly and rewarded appropriately. When I play the defender, having all those attacks miss, the feeling of invincibility, is what I play for.
For a standard table, it’s probably fine to hand out magic armour. It will most likely go to a melee frontliner and let them feel cool by shrugging off all sorts of attacks. The exponential increase in survivability is true, but only insofar as the only attacks are vs. AC. As long as there are other ways to threaten the party, you’re fine. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if one person shrugs off hits all day, if they can’t protect their party the survivability is meaningless, so they’re still under threat even if you can’t hurt them. 5e also creeps into auto-hit territory with some high-level monsters (bounded accuracy massively favours the attacker) which can leave a sour taste in people’s mouths if they wanted to be an armour tank. Magic armour can help ensure armour tank builds don’t completely fall apart at high levels when it’s too late to rework a build. Better than telling someone “tough luck buddy, should’ve gone Resistance/HP/Spell-tank instead, this is on you for not reading the monster manual, better luck next time eh?”. In high-optimisation games where everyone’s using the full defensive onion, yeah, probably best to avoid magic armour.
Playing path of exile for an exorbitant amount of time has taught me that the difference between 80% and 81% elemental resistance is massive That 20% of hits that blow past your defenses is 100% of the damage you take. So the 1% of resistance is worth 5% of all elemental damage you take. It only becomes more valuable the closer you get to 100% resistance. From 98 to 99 resist would mean a 50% damage reduction. Because the 2% damage that gets through is 100% of the damage you take. Always imagined armor in dnd to work the same way, only with a base soft cap of 5% (crit chance on a d20) because all the damage rolls that get past your AC is 100% of the damage you take.
This may sound broken But it doesn’t matter as much once you hit CR 11 and enemies start having +10 or higher chances to hit regularly, at that point it reaches the scale where magic armor starts to be needed just to make it so multiattacks don’t risk dropping you every round in one creature’s action. It only gets more rugged as CR increases further, so yes at low levels magic armor is a lot, but from level 10 onward it becomes pretty needed (especially if you are one of those poor martials)
I remember seeing a build back on the 3.5 character optimization boards that built around as low an AC as possible. The reasoning was that below a certain threshold, an extra point of AC doesn’t mean much (the difference between AC 10 and 11 when enemies all have +12 to hit for example), so if you’re below that threshold, you might as well sacrifice what AC you have for something actually beneficial. I doubt I’d ever play such a build, but it was an interesting idea keying off of the same concept. I recently had a divine soul sorcerer whose main survival tactic was the sanctuary spell for that reason. I wasn’t going to be able to get his AC up to a reasonable level, and I wanted to focus on support and healing anyway, and if I want to deal damage, I usually resort to polymorph, maybe after a quickened fireball to soften the enemy up.
I kinda disagree with this. If a player feels powerful because of having high AC and being neigh-indestructible, let them. They min-maxed to play the heavily protected mage or the heavily armored tank. Let them play it. Who cares if some encounters are trivialized because the monsters are missing like 80% of the hits? Make them feel powerful this time and then the next encounter, hit them with Save-or-Suck effects. I feel like unkillable/Overpowered PCs are only a problem if the internal power balance between PCs are wack. If one guy can do it all, that’s a problem but if you have the unkillables in the front and the devastating squishy casters in the back and the “Succeed at Everything” Skill monkies shining in skill checks and everyone is doing their niche very well, then I don’t see a problem here. There is almost always a way to challenge one min-maxed build. Just spring it on them from time to time.
I’ve never had issues providing the party magical armor to pump their AC that’s because by the time that it would trivialize challenges, I’m not targeting AC anymore. Continuously targeting AC as a DM tactic is not only boring but repetitive. I target saves instead or use abilities/spells with no saves. this makes other defenses such as saves or high hp/resistances valuable. it makes the party think of other forms of defenses such as obscurement, conditions, blink/mirror images, cover, illusions, etc. or they might change tactics to the best defense is a superior offense (control, killing the enemy via alpha striker). There’s no jealousy either as i give set clear expectations of what magic items they can expect to get, who’s supposed to get it (via wishlisting) and we have a homebrew rule that limits the amount of magic items a character can have (both consumable and non-consumable). So everyone’s on an even playing field and it’s a matter of player choice with the same amount of resources as the other person.
I always found that doing an expected value calculation was the best way of explaining this principle to people. Ignoring crits for a moment +1 AC when they enemy has a 20% chance to hit is basically a 25% reduction in expected damage received, where a +1 AC when they have a 50% chance to hit is only a 10% reduction in expected damage received.
Monsters eventually get in the to hit bonuses where +11 is considered quite low and as complexity increases so too does the likelihood of advantage. In my level 15 game it’s not uncommon to see +15s to +17s with frequent advantage, where the bonus to hit is larger than some of our ACs and a player investing primarily into AC is still looking at 90% chances to get hit. Having ACs of 17 or 18 use to be very tanky, but they actually translate into 80% hit chances or higher. Trying to tank at these higher levels often requires investing into defensive options that aren’t AC, either damage resistance or temp HP which can suck when you’re 10 levels in trying to have as high an AC as possible with shields shield spells and defensive fighting style but the investments you made along the way don’t matter anymore +1 armor is rare rarity, as opposed to the +1 weapons uncommon, because it helps bandaid a problem you don’t see until higher levels
I think it’s a very interesting topic you bring up here and I never really thought about how the seemingly-linear increase in AC actually ends up being an exponential increase in survivability. That said, I don’t think I see this as a bad thing. I think it’s okay for the characters who invest in being hard to hit to become increasingly harder to hit as they progress in their adventure than the characters that are less focused on it. I think it also gives great opportunities for these differences in character builds/concepts to be reflected in combat, with the heavily-magically-augmented-plate-armor-wielding-wall-of-rage/righteousness being far more capable of taking hits from exceedingly dangerous foes without feeling them than the squishy people who typically are trying not to get attacked in the first place.
Since this article is about Armor and AC, The highest permanent AC you can have at Level 1 with only starting equipment is 21, achievable by a Lizardfolk Fighter or Forge Cleric Lizardfolk’s Scaly skin gives an AC of 13 + Dex, and has the unique trait that it can be used to determine AC even if you’re wearing armor. With this, get lucky on stat rolls to have an 18 in one stat, give your racial/background +2 to Dex, wield a shield, and apply either defensive fighting style or Blessing of the forge The weird thing is, both of these abilities specify that you must be wearing armor to gain the benefit, but neither say you must be using the Armor’s AC calculation, so this technically works Of Course, if your DM lets you buy Starting equipment, you could get an AC of 22 by playing a mountain dwarf Barbarian with a +5 in Dex and Con and wielding a shield, but then the character is more of an expiriment than an actual character
When you note that even a +3 shield is a LEGENDARY ITEM, the sort of thing that you might find one or two of in a 15 level campaign, that tells you that +5 is ARTIFACT territory. 5th edition is not there to give you massively high powered armor. Most valuable item my bard6/warlock4 had was a +1 shield. In 10 levels, that’s the highest. He also had +0 half plate with 5% lightning resist. Magical yes, but only very slightly better then regular half plate.
Another way to look at it is to try and look at what it does to how many faces on the dice are a succesful hit. An extreme case being if you need an 17 or above to hit a character, and that character increase their AC by 1, instead of 4 faces of the dice being a hit, only 3 faces of dice, which means a full quarter (25%) less hits for you. While if you only need a 2 or more to hit, and the target increase their AC by 1, you go from 19 possible hits to 18. Which is almost 95% of what it already was.
Something we did in our campaign is that we got to commission armor for everyone in the group. It didn’t bump up the AC that type of amor already gave, but instead a resistance of choice when we selected it. It also gave our martials a small buff that after taking the elemental damage we were resistant to, it would give us a d6 of that element on our next melee weapon attack. The casters got jewelry like a necklace or armband that gave this same effect without the AC buff. Our options were Thunderboar — lightning Fireboar— Fire Hydra— acid Cryovain (dragon)— ice
I certainly agree with the sentiment here. Buffing AC, and AB or DC for that matter, will give a massive boost to a player’s survival and attack powers. My recommendation is to buff HP and Dmg first. Your player wants better armor, give them some that gives +10 HP. While it may seem like a lot to them, they still have the same AC, which is either easy or not to hit. Player want’s a +X weapon, give them a weapon that tacks on +1d4/6 damage instead. They may hit a bit harder but won’t change how often they hit. Of course, these types of buffs should be alternated, in my opinion, as the players level and adventure.
The problem isn’t magic armor. It’s the entire AC system. Dexterity should be your ability to AVOID being hit and armor should be used to REDUCE damage when you do get hit. A high Dex character would have a good chance to avoid damage (because they’re agile). A character wearing armor would have all damage taken reduced when the hit lands. So, +X would simply be an extra reduction of the damage you take. All characters would have a base “AC” (a.k.a. avoidance class) of 10. Their Dex mod would increase it, but not reduce it. A light armor would allow the player to use the full value of their Dex mod. Medium armor would divide the Dex modifier by half, rounded down (i.e. their AC would max out at 12 or 13, if you take medium armor master, rounding up the mod). Heavy armor would negate the Dex modifier (because they’re slowed by heavy armor, duh!). The armor would reduce the damage taken by the listed AC minus 10. Leather would reduce damage by 1. Plate armor would reduce damage by 8. A +X would increase the reduction. A leather armor of +3 would reduce all damage taken by 4. A +3 Plate armor would reduce all damage taken by 11. Heavy armor master would negate another 3 bludgeon, piercing, and slashing damage, so it would be reduced by 14, which makes HAM actually useful. This would open a space for a “Light armor master” feat where light armor can provide a +1 or +2 bonus to avoid being hit.
What annoys me with ac is that it does not really grow on higher levels. I played the dungeon of the mad mage and got half plate at level 6 and my ac was 18 until level 13 when we wiped, i was the frontliner as a hexblade and it sucked ever more since enemie hit kept rising but my ac stayed the same.
Uh… sounds like you’re trying to compete with your players, which is rather toxic. And you’re punishing them for wanting to be better able to protect themselves and others from attacks that require a roll. Thus you’re discouraging armor-based tanking. You also don’t seem to be accounting for high level combat, enemies with a combination of magical and nonmagical attacks, or hazards that can pose a danger to player regardless of their AC. Like boulders, pit falls, or glyphs or warding with fireball inside them. Finally: The numbers you show, and the jealousy argument, are rather weak, and come from sources that back up your own bias. Since even though you can calculate dice rolls, you can’t actually predict what will be rolled. They’re still entirely random, regardless of calculations. And players are not guaranteed to have any emotional problems with such items. But if they do, talking it out is a better way to resolve these issue rather than by limiting access to magic armor. Which only punishes the players who chose to be able to wield strong armor, and nullifies some of their motivations for choosing classes that can use such armor. You can’t ensure equal AC amongst all players, and that’s ok. It’s part of the challenge to fight strategically and not rely solely on dice rolls and AC to stay alive. It also makes taking up the role of a tank, which is a support role, have value. And teamwork and coordination around the strengths and weaknesses of each team member even more essential.
Feels wierd to me to say martial classes are bad and being so gungho about giving martials magic weapons but not wanting to give them magic armors Of course some classes benefit from things better than other classes you cant give a monk a double scimitar and expect them to do well with it classes shouldnt be compared one to one you give the mage mage stuff and the fighter fighter stuff
At a certain point, numbers are meaningless. Balance stops existing in a palatably manner after about level 5, which makes anything other than Adventurer’s League “unbalanced” by the standards of what 5e tries to do. The normal campaign that most will have played in at least once is, by the logic of 5e and Bounded Accuracy, unbalanced. Which is good. Because it’s 5e. It kinda sucks without heavy modification.
Not to mention a curtain artificer class can just give themselves a flat 30 ac with access to the shield spell, and if you run it a curtain way magic armor/shields of +3 can enhance it further (without making an armor of +1 bucklers that you just wear). Oh, artificers also craft magic items VERY easily… Oh, AND… that specific subclass can be a good blaster class semi comparable to eldritch blast spam warlocks.
Really cool article ! But I’m mostly commenting about the sponsorship : first it’s one of the first sponsorships on any website I usually watch that really got me interested, and second, Blades in the Dark is a banger of a game, I hope you’ll find it to your liking, it’s really far from what D&D has to offer, and the optimization part is kinda lame but it’s a wonderfully design masterpiece system wise as well as thematically !
My simple solution is just to do away with +X Shields, which also adjusts the little damage penalty for sword and broad vs 2hand No such thing, you might get a Shield of cold resistance, but no +1 I also offer Tower Shields, which are 3AC bonus rather than 2 but also are Str15+, make you lose 10ft movement and are decently heavy (tower shields are basically the Roman square shields with legion symbols)
There is a second reason why it can be very bad: attunement. The basic +x items don’t required attunement but ac isn’t typed in 5th so they all stack i.e. ring of protection+1, cloak of protection +1, full plate +1 and shield +1. This could get really bad if the ac gets really high as it gets significantly harder to hit as ac goes above 20. Another way to explain the high AC problem is to say that a 10% chance to hit is double a 5% but in game terms that is rolling a 19/20 to hit and rolling a 20 to hit respectively.
Weird idea, what if there was a form of magic armour/shield that instead increases the effectiveness of the DEX bonus (e.g. a 1.5 DEX mod leather armour would turn a character with leather armour and 18 DEX from 15 to a 18.) or an armour/shield enchantment that adds STR to AC? That way, more physically-oriented characters could make up for their squishiness by gaining more from their dominant ability scores than spellcasters. This won’t do much in the AC/to hit arms race, but it at least will act as a speed bump for spellcasters as they have CON and their spellcasting ability score to worry about.
MY issue with this claim is first off, the folks that will have high AC will typically be the frontliners, who most of the time will be able to use heavy armor. So that puts their initial target on getting full plate asap, in my experience. but once you get full plate and a shield, the only way for them to still feel relevant in taking the hits for the party and “holding the bad guys back” is if you have a way to scale their AC with the enemy’s hit bonus. I’ve got a cleric in my Tyranny of Dragons game that took the armor from the ch 3 boss (iirc it’s splint? the one just under full plate) and uses a shield, and then casts shield of faith. so he’s got a 21 AC. But he’s also usually in the front, so while it may typically take more attacks to actually damage him (though my dice luck says otherwise lol) he’s also attracting more attacks, so I think in that situation they need that survivability or else they just floor tank every serious combat.
How do you look at the + hit scaling? 20 ac for plate is amazing at lvl 5 but does not scale beyond that without magic. To me it seems like AC is the only place where bounded accuracy falls apart. Most campaigns dont go late, but for those that do you need alot of plus items to keep hit chances the same as they were at level 5
There’s an interesting problem with the idea that AC increases mean more for high AC characters, and it’s the existence of a to-hit floor. Even if I manage to get a 32 AC on a character that ogre with +9 to hit will still have a 5% chance to roll a 20 and automatically hit even though the ‘math’ says that it should need an impossible 23 out of a possible 20. Meaning that characters that reach the ‘only a crit will hit’ threshold gain 0 from increasingly expensive and rare increases to their AC while a lower AC character will gain more survivability from vastly cheaper and more readily available sources.
Gator cam you include the formulas that was presented in Table top article. Because it’s kinda hard to follow up. Which kinda makes me feel like you would be perfect to just make a Math base YouTube website were you teach us about all the math equation to explain certain probabilities in DND. Which would be cool.
The higher the CR rating is for creatures, the higher their plus to attack is. Handing magic armor out early in the game is not the best. But a higher levels of play it will be needed or anyone even in full plate and a shield will be getting hit more than 50% of the time. And don’t forget that high AC doesn’t help against saving throws.
Alternatively, be me, and have a party with no character below 28 AC by handing out tons of gold and magic item crafting blueprints and materials, as well as the downtime and manpower required to craft +3 plate armor, +3 shields, rings of protection and cloaks of protection for everyone. Then, AoE them with 10 wizards simultaneously casting save-for-half-damage spells.
The bigger issue is Ring/Clock of Protection. Save increases are vital, save DCs grow with CR, but a lot of player saves NEVER increase. Yet, combining the easy +2 ac with +1 full plate, a +1 Shield and Defensive Fighting Style yields an AC of 26. This is very attainable with decent treasure rolls or a bit of crafting, a reasonable goal for say, a lvl 8 character. Yet most CR 5-8 monsters have an attack bonus of 6-9. So, hit chance of 5%-20%. What if you’re a GM with big AC gap between players? Consider enemies that are heavily Saving Throw based. And if you can’t find enough, make some. I make Firearms a Dex save for 0 damage rather than an attack roll in my games (Critting on a save result of 1 is definitely an option). I use a similar system for a small number of Armor negating enemies (Giants wielding Military Picks, for example). You don’t want to flood your game with them, but having a few can both help with the issue, and spice things up.
Might be a pain in the ass but what about giving a reduced flat bonus to hit (+3 or something relevant to to CR÷2) plus a scaling bonus to hit (+ target’s AC/5). So against a party of level 4s, targeting someone with 20 AC the enemy gets +6 to hit. But targeting someone with 12 AC the enemy gets +4 to hit. Or just make attacks that require saving throws
Extremely useless to DMs. If we are being honest, dms hide behind a DM screen. PCs are unaware of a dms rolls. They don’t have to establish the + to hit a creature or character has. They don’t care what your AC is 80% of the time they just say they are going to hit you, followed by they hit you x amount of times or they miss. They know your AC is high, they miss some of the time. But they hit an ungodly amount of times vs miss. And often crit. No coincidence they can hit high AC all the time.
This “attacks per hit” metric smells very strongly of the gambler’s fallacy. The concept that if you have a 50% chance to hit, your “attacks per hit” is 2 is just not true. There’s no inherent value in saying “here’s the number of times I need to add these percentages together to get 100%”; each roll needs to be treated as a separate instance like the 50% it is.
Back in the olden days before God made the universe and I was a GM, in the early 90s, I tended to just buff the tank with the best armor possible. The others usually only got scraps. My favorite hobby was then to create the most extreme battles that could one hit the tank if I rolled a nat, so the rest of the party had to hurry and kill the thing. The best times was when I rolled nats on the first turn, perusal those poor glasscannons run around, screaming. Ah, such fun. It sounds like they have ironed out the tank concept, I guess the cleric can tank as well now. 🙁
My level 19 dwarf fighter ‘only’ has a +2 set of plate and a +1 shield. But the plate is adamantine and has a permanent Death Ward on it. The shield is sentient and can of it’s own volition cast forcecage. In addition it confers both bless and protection against good and evil to it’s wearer. I wear both a ring and cloak of protection. Last game, my character found the Axe of Dwarvish Lords. We are going epic.
Interesting. The math goes WAY beyond me… but I think I grasp the concept. Oddly, I’ve naturally avoided this entirely by creating armour that uses the basic D&D armour stats, but giving it effects/skill bonuses instead. So, I created Lloths armour, which is leather armour but blackened. Same stats as regular leather armour, looks cooler, and gives advantage to poison attacks/damage.
Lets not add health into the equation because it get even more complex. Because a characters durability isn’t just ac but also hp. Assuming the average enemy has X attack bonus Ac is Y & Hp is Z & W is the average damage per hit so that give us: (Z*20/(Y-X))/W= durability vs 1 enemy which is fun. This is why enemys should vary between high damage and low hit change and high hit chance & low damage cus it balances out for most clases due to HP disparity. Squishy always get hosed but minmaxrs (for ac) always go down to the high hit low damage monsters when they play primary castets. Think smarter then just dont do something.
This reminds be of a study of bomber missions in WW2, how a 95% survival rate meant after 13 missions there was a 50% chance you’d survive but only a 5% lower survival rate of 90% meant after the same number of missions your survival rate had plummeted in half from 50% to 25%. This was taught to officers how even tiny increases in survival rate at the top end paid off massively in the long run. So many you should allow higher AC but increase the costs of failure, this makes combat extremely swingy but that’s okay, going to 0HP is not the end of the world as healing from 0HP is so powerful.
It’s easier to notices and understand in the extremes If have had 100% chance to be hit and you get a reduction of 5% (1AC), you would go to 95%, that is just 5% less than it was before but if had 10% chance be hit, and get a reduction of 5%, you would get to just 5% to be hit, that is half (50% less) than the previous amount (10%) you are twice as hard to be hit reductions in percent are very powerfull, the more it get closer to 0%, the more valuable they get maybe is easyer to explain with examples outside D&D, if had a game with cast time, if reduce 100% by 50%, to 50% (100% – 50%) you’d get 2 cast in the time of one, that is a increase of 1 cast, if reduce by futher 25%, to a total of 25% (50% – 25%) you’d get 4 casts in the time of one, that is increase of 2 casts, with just 25% against 1 extra cast with first 50%
I love making “little tiamats” of tank characters Paladins 16 AC at start warforged +1 AC, defensive fighting style +1, 18 AC shield 20 AC, bless 22 AC at fairly low levels without even getting fullplate yet you are aproaching Tiamats AC of 23… But you will eventually get hit by the +11 monsters anyway
Yeah thats something that hides right under your noses. A flat +1% of something happening is worth far less early on than later. Like, if you have a 50% chance of something happening, double the chance would be 75% (1 in 2 to 1 in 4). But if you have a 90% chance of something happening, double of that would be 95% (1 in 10 to 1 in 20). It makes a lot of sense once you realise it but before that it seems really weird. Actually the way I worded it is not entirely correct, the chance in the brackets is the counterprobability not the actual probability, but I think the concept is still clear.
None of my players have heavy armour, So they had someone upgrade their leather armour to studded leather. Recently I had a character offer to enchant some of their equipment, So naturally the magic armour came up, And they though it was an interesting choice, Because sure +1 studded leather was an upgrade, But was it worth the money that’d otherwise go to buying better base armour. Edit: I also don’t allow +x Shields because I think that’s stupid. If you find a magical shield in my world it’ll be a -1 shield that allows you to cast shield with X charges. Or a shield that deals lightning damage if metal hits it.
A much simpler example of the problem with stacking armour is +0 to hit vs 19 AC. You need a 19 or 20 to hit, so a 10% hit rate. If you get 1 more AC, now that +0 attack only hits on a 20, which is a 5% hit rate. Just 1 more AC cut the number of hits in half, but if you gave that +1 to a player with 10 AC it would have a much smaller effect. Each point of AC gets stronger the more AC you already have.
You can: 1 – Whining because your players have too high AC, and your enemies don’t pose enough of a threat, or… 2 – Take the chance and make a mix of opponents that recognize the high AC (like someone with INT 10 and up) and use other tactics to gain advantage, attack those with lower AC, use maneuvers or damage your characters in ways other than right attack; and dumb opponents that will attack the guy with high AC, so that your player feels awesome and that the investment was worth it.
I look at this situation like pieces of a pie. If you have 10 AC, and an attack without a bonus attacks you, then their are 10 numbers that could be rolled on the die to hit you. In this situation, by increasing your AC to 11, you’ve reduced the number of possible rolls to 9. Now if we take a character with 18 AC, there are only 2 numbers that could hit. Then if we increase the AC to 19, there is only 1! That decreases the chance of being hit by 50%.
Right, the munchkining wizard cleric dip might be a problem, but for your pure combat classes, this issue is mitigated by the number of attacks thrown at said combatant. Assuming a low INT monster it is going to attack the most persistent creature attacking–namely the one, your fighters paladins or barbarians, with more AC because it can afford the higher risk. If you’re dishing out +x armor like candy then yeah you have a problem
I came originally to argue with you on this until I watched it. I thought you were gonna say no one should ever get magical armor and as the only player in our party that has +1 armor, I have the worst AC in our group. But its Studded leather and I’m a Bard like your example. For the “cool factor” I’d like to have glamoured studded leather, the AC would be the same, but what Bard doesn’t want that? I think our 2nd highest might be our devine soul sorcerer but its like mage armor and 2 minor magic items that boost it. But I could be wrong, its not my char. after all
The problem with this way of thinking is that some people want to feel very durable. And not giving them any magical armor means they will quickly get hit by almost every attack as enemies to hit scales upwards. Being very durable with 18 ac at lv 1 is great, but 18 ac is basically nothing when enemies have +10 to hit, not to mention ac does nothing against aoe spells. A character who is trying to be durable and reliable in combat should feel like they avoid damage much more than a character with 12 ac. To compound this, ac is a binary system. It either works or it does not work. Which is why I prefer damage reduction on armors. My preference is 1 damage reduction per AC over 10, not including dex bonuses. So a character with 18 ac has 8 damage reduction.
I have had unhitable PCs before, it isn’t that big of a problem, as long as you let the monters realize they are unhitable fairly quickly, and start targeting the others. It becomes a tactical game of how can he body block, how can he get more opportunity attacks, etc. It also encourages monsters to grapple. I had demon grapple a high level paladin and hold her into a lava fall once. The paladin had +3 armor and +3 shield, and the shield spell. I think this works for me because I use big set piece battles, so the monsters have time to realize, and change tactics.
AC is only a small part of one’s defenses. Saving Throws, esp at higher levels, is very important, and I have no issue with someone who wants to spec into a High AC character build….It doesnt make the game worst, it makes to better…the pt is for your character to survive the insanity of being an adventurer, not taking choices that self nerfs….at least in my opinion…I will never understand the idea that “flaws” are inherently a positive thing or being less optimal is less fun…to some it could be…to me its boring.
I disagree with using attack rolls per hit. the proper way to determine survivability is calculating average damager per attack–the traditional DPS. But if you use that articles premise, its an argument against the existence of the shield spell, and that casters have better overall defenses than martials while being able to contribute. (But it also acknowledges how broken an optimized caster with armor + shield can be). This has made me think of altering the shield spell–in that it cant be cast by anyone wearing armor.
To some extent, the effectiveness of magic items which boost AC are intended to make a character who is already hard to hit even harder to hit. Magic users and ranged combatants usually don’t boast as high of an AC because they should be avoiding melee combat or taking cover when targeted by a ranged attacker. Melee combatants benefitting most from increases to AC is sensible because it makes them able to take more attacks or heavier-hitting attacks coming their way. Aside from increasing their HP, most melee classes also don’t have anything increasing their survivability on the front line, so bumping up their AC with better armor is the primary way of boosting their efficacy as a damage sponge. This fits their typical role well, too, because while spellcasters can focus on dealing damage or using support abilities, the martial classes focus on defense and endurance. In short, I don’t think magic armor is too strong. If anything, I’d rather we retire magic items which boost AC without requiring armor proficiency and see more +4 shields and +5 chainmail in the game.
An easy way to think of this is to consider the edge case where someone would get hit by a monster on a roll of 19-20, which is a 10% chance of getting hit. Giving them another one point of armor will make that a hit on just a 20, which is a 5% chance of getting hit. You’ve halved the amount they will get hit, and halved the amount of damage they will take in (that) combat, by adding just one point of armor. Compare this to someone who was going to get hit 100% of the time, going down to getting hit 95% of the time. They are still taking practically just as much damage, even though they also got that same extra point of armor.
So what you’re saying is you shouldn’t give people an AC bonus after level 5? Because that’s around the point a PC is expected to have the best mundane armor they could get their hands on. Just give everyone the same opportunities to get a bonus to AC. A good number of characters with high AC have it so they can get in between the enemy and a squishier party member anyway.
My wizard has magic armor, but I have never once cast it. I guess I’m too stingy with the spellslots and want to use them for things that are more interesting than just a + to AC. I wish magic armor was a ritual, even if at the cost of a perishable component, such as a dragon scale worth 50 gold pieces.
5e players will never know the absolute JOY to seek and get different types of bonuses to AC to stack (3.5 chads know what i’m talking about) it’s almost as if bonded accuracy was a bad idea from the start. there’s also the fact that statistics are a scam and the monster will crit 5 times in a row if the Dice Gods will it.
So I don’t play DnD 5e, but pathfinder 1e, where having magical gear is not an option, it is the rule. This article did not help in that aspect (of course it wouldn’t), but it did give me inside in the attack change math and gave me the idea to make a spreadsheet where I can calculate if casting a spell that gives +5 AC is worth the action economy. Apparently, only if I expect to get targeted 1.71 rounds, it is worth the casting. So, am I early in the initiative, it is not worth it because I attack before the enemy. Am I late in the initiative, it is also not worth, because my martial allies will be in engaged already so the change of being targeted drops 1/x. If I am in the middle of the initiative, than it has its value. Weird. but interesting. So thanks!
You mean martial classes increase in survivability as the game progresses? Blasphemy! As everyone knows all marshall classes should plateau at a low level and never rise beyond that how dare those peons! On a serious note there are AOE abilities/spells or save abilities/spells numerical advantages and harder monsters you can throw at your at your party I really don’t think a a bump in survivability make something broken. To be a good DM you have to use all of the tools not limit yourself
i will give you a small advice for “one more multiverse” when u are doing the tutorial if u get stuck at the end (it might happen) it’s okey just go out and restart don’t be such a stupid like me and use the Eraser to try and delete the walls so u can move freely…. (well if u know where this is going) yes u can delete accidentally the KEY that gives you full access to the stuff… (if u do well you just got soft locked)
The reason why magical armor is so OP in 5e is because it is SO easy to wear heavy armor, even if you are a wizard. Also by end game, Casters have higher AC than Tanks. This is because most Casters will get all they need from a 1 to 2 level dip into Martial class whereas a Martial class needs to advance multiple levels in a Caster class to have the benefits scale. The problem with giving out good magical armor to a party is very little is going stop the warlock, sorcerer, or wizard from potentially donning it. These casters also generally have more magical defenses then Martial classes as well.
The trick to giving magical armour is knowing/controling who gets it. Instead of giving +1 Studded Leather, give them “The Shadow-Cloud Cloak,” a weighty cloak that grants minor invisibility powers to the wearer and gives them +1 AC, but can only be used by rogues; that way, the rogue is guarenteed to use it, instead of the Gator Wizard.
Personally I always saw magical armour as part of the bounded accuracy curve as you get to higher levels. Most creatures get crazy to hit bonus at around the CR 11 mark, anywhere from +10 to +14. Plate armour and a shield just isn’t going to cut it at those levels, your “tanky” frontlining paladin or fighter is going to feel just as squishy as their warlock or bard counterparts when creatures hit them 75% of the time. AC just doesn’t increase past level 1 without the aid of magical armour for most characters That being said, I always felt like +X shields were a terrible idea. Your greatsword weilder fighter is going to wonder why they bothered when they’re giving up a +4 bonus to AC that a +2 magical shield can give. But that’s part of a bigger issue with how weapons are designed.
Can there be magical armor that reduces the damage rather than reduces the AC? Such as magical armor reducing damage by 1D4? Yes I get somebody with a few hit points this is going to be a great deal but when they have a lot of hit points this is going to be practically nothing, but that means that the armor itself is not scaling but it’s the same and probably could be sold for gold, and then maybe in the long run a scaling armor is possible to. I mean, is it possible to be this creative with the magic items?
I think this only applies tier 1 and 2 campaigns, right? Currently playing in a tier 3 campaign and progress to tier 4, the monsters we are currently fighting unless they roll less than a 5 would hit us all the time and those are lowly minions. The big bosses almost never miss us even with disadvantage.
So your complaint is that the party tank that is supposed to be on the front line is harder to kill than the party bard who shouldn’t, and the only acceptable dispensation of better armor is in a manner that makes the bard more like the tank and punishes the tank for daring to do his job. You know what this strategy gets you? Nobody wanting to be the tank because you, the DM, are paranoid that characters who rely on being harder to kill to do their job might actually be harder to kill than the squishy characters who thrive by not being where they’d get hit in the first place. You’re so biased that you even called the tank a minmaxer for picking his gear better than the bard.
Mage armor, shield and fire ball are examples how many spells in dnd just break the system. An unoptimized caster is stronger and more flexible then an optimized martials. And don’t forget that many spells just makes you ignore parts of the game(they solve the problem and don’t halp solving there is a difference) like creat food and water,Liam tiny hut,disc spell (forgot the name) and past whit out a trace. I Think a big reason why murder hoboing is so common in 5e (not the only reason but a big one) it’s that’s all system are pointed to combat. Combat is the only way you can interact whit the system in a fun meaningful way. Other “pillars” like social and especially exploration/survivle are just solved by low level abilitys and spells. That’s let’s you ignore them and focus on combat. What’s makes you see everything as combat. What’s makes you to choose the violent option.
Kobold: Melee is bad because it’s too dangerous and you are very squishy. Also Kobold: Magic armor is bad because it makes you too tanky. Kidding, Kidding. I really do think that there’s a niche in D&D 5e for caster-unfriendly magic items though. A +2 shield is extremely good, but would it b equally as good if you had to use your concentration to get the bonus? For a non-caster there’s no difference, so it’s great for them, but for a mage you’re probably going to want to have your concentration free. We want our melee martials to be tanky because we want all our players to be having fun even if they’re not playing optimally, after all.
My DM very foolishly gave me +1 armor and a +2 shield, and now my AC is 21 and I’ve got 7 levels in echo knight and 5 in wizard, so in a single combat I get 4 shots of 3 attacks, AND I can make my AC 26 for a few rounds. He got realized his errors so now he’s making me solo an adult dragon. Thankfully I won a dragonslayer longsword in a deck of many things and I know Spirit Shroud, which is great for fighting the adult in its lair, but I’m still a bit worried he’s gonna pull some jankie stuff. …fun stuff lol.
There is a simpler way to look at it, if you have a cookie and I ask for lets say 1lb of it. When you have a 20lb cookie you’ll still have most of it. When you have 2lb cookie you’ll have half the cookie. These numbers are your chance to be hit by the enemy. 20 -> 19 2 -> 1 Linear scaling is terrifying and can break everything.
im a bit insane so I did a small graph to show the data talked about in this article, i used +8 to hit since thats a more average bonus for most enemies. Theres a noticeable creep from 16+ ac… AC % to hit with a +8 to hit amount of attacks to hit 10 55 90% 1.1 11 50 85% 1.17 12 45 80% 1.25 13 40 75% 1.33 14 35 70% 1.42 15 30 65% 1.53 16 25 60% 1.66 17 20 55% 1.81 18 15 50% 2 19 10 45% 2.22 20 5 40% 2.5 so from this data with number of attacks to hit theres a creep in it starting off with an increase of 0.06 it goes as follows (descending from lower ac, assume its a 0.00 number from start and ends with 0.28) 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 13, 15,19, 22, 28 Tl;dr vanilla dnd 5.e is filled with so many flaws and powercreeps that need to be mitigated to prevent people abusing these things whether intentional or otherwise.
The maths is good. The reasoning is bad. Specifically, as the CR of monsters increases, so does their typical hit chance. Initially, that can be matched by simply increasing mundane armour, or certain spells. However, overtime that reaches a cap – and reaches it very early for classes unable to use heavy armour. By not handing out magical armour, you are simply condemning your players to be hit more frequently overtime as they level (and hence face higher CR monsters).
So from a DM perspective this is a non issue. You usually give characters things like that to make them feel stronger but you have so many methods to get around ac that it can be functionally worthless if you want it to be. Whether it be saving throws or cheese like heat metal if a DM wants you to take damage you are taking damage. The main reason you give the fighter or whatever +3 magical armor is so that they feel invincible while you pretend to be frustrated that none of you enemies can hit them to make sure they are having fun until you want to crank up the difficulty. Also I don’t know about you but most of the time parties tend to distribute their loot based on who can best use it, well with the exception of a pair of loot hogs I had to deal with.
My way around this is not to give magic armor, but temporary armor bonuses. “Magical Hardening Agent” is a magical oil that is spread upon a surface to strengthen an object for a time. The agent only works on non-living material. Once applied, the item gains a magical +x (dependent on prices or DM sympathy) to armor class, and doubles hardness. The effect lasts for 10 strikes that target armor class, otherwise it is lasts indefinitely. The effect also preserves the material from decay while it is active. After those 10 strikes, the effect ends. Another dose of the agent can be applied before the effect ends, and the previous effect ends. Dispel magic has no effect on removing the effect as the physical compound of the agent still exists on the material. Discovering the agent used on a surface requires the identify spell, or a DC25 alchemy Wisdom check. I worded it this way so even leather armors and regular clothes can receive the effect, and for necromancers that pay attention to the language. This way the players can still find that effect for armor, feel nearly invincible, but might play differently in an effort to preserve the effect. No one wants the goblin minion to chew the effect away with meager club or sling attacks. Armor found buried in tombs could be found with this, look like new magic armor, but may not have the full strike count. This is also a consumable. So it can be easier to obtain, still expensive, and doesn’t take away from true magic armors with everlasting effects.
This is such a weak argument, it’s simply looking for complications in the game. If someone wants to feel like a brick wall, then let them, you are failing to account for tons of other variables by looking at AC in a vacuum and giving bad advice. The fighter with a ton of AC will have lower saves. Yes you can have a dirty power gamer but they can’t cover all of the Resistances, as a DM you need to play to those and let people have fun. More importantly if someone has a ton of AC then focus the other players, it will force thar high AC player to put themselves in jeopardy to help their team or be picked off last due to action economy. Weak DM advice for sure from this article.
This is not entirely accurate. Its value is relative both to enemy to-hit and to your own defenses and to any reductions to the penalty or being hit that you can impose (resistance, rogue dodge, etc). AC increases do not affect a single roll; they affect all rolls, meaning the decreases likelihood of each hit and thus becomes more valuable the more attacks you are susceptible to. If and when this can make attacks unable to hit you outside of very high natural die rolls, let alone only on a 20 auto-hit, you have effectively nullified all damage outside of sources that bypass this defense (eg saving throws), at which point the function of bounded accuracy has broken down. However, this also plateaus; once enemies can only hit you on a 20, you receive no further benefit from additional AC increases aside from enemy to-hit scaling. It is akin to the mathematics for advantage versus to-hit; the lower your to-hit, the more preferable bonuses to hit over advantage are and the higher your to-hit is, the more preferable advantage is over further increases in to-hit. Damage similarly affects the utilitarian value, as increases in the effects make each additional hit more valuable.
As a tip for dm’s, if you want to give out armor to those with low AC but afriad your group might give it to others for the further min-maxing. Then you can try locking it behind the target players class or race and flavoring it as such. So that instead of breaking the meta narritive, it is instead just seen as ‘how it is’. Also you can just tag +X bonuses to already prexisting magic items if you want you players to have more attunement slots open for cooler magic items
Ok, my only question here is what the fuck are we talking about with “holding a shield without doning it”. Like walking around the battlefield with it like a fucking plate? Why would you do this? Basically ever? It’s still taking up your hand so you can’t be casting spells or whatever, and I would rule is actually more restrictive on those limitations, even preventing you from doing so with war caster. I definitely wouldn’t rule a shield in your backpack or strapped to your back is “being held” so this seems like the biggest fucking desperation move I can imagine.
Imagine, for a moment, a paladin 6 sword bard 5, whatever else X. Twenty charisma, no less than a +5 to every save. +3 plate, +3 shield, defensive fighting style, five flourishes every combat. Averages at 31.5 AC. Pit fiend has to roll a 17 or higher to hit. Never again will you drop concentration because your DM will subconsciously avoid wasting their time attacking you.
“This is ACTUALLY a 10% increase in survivability!” No it’s not. If you’d be hit in 1.82 attacks, 2 attacks would be made to hit you on average. There is effectively a 0% increase in survivability by that metric when looking at average attacks-per-hit made; only whole integers offer an increaase by that statistic as you cannot make a .82 of an attack. What is actually changing is the likelihood of losing the odds and being hit on the FIRST attack. Which is a 5% change. Because there is a DICE ROLL involved, the only odds that matter are the roll-range needed to hit you. At 19 AC, a +9 hit has a roll-range of 10-20 to hit you. At 20, it’s a roll-range of 11-20. You went from 10 chances in 20, to 9 chances in 20. A 5% increase in survivability. And this is only when looking at your cherry-picked example. VS an enemy with 0 to hit, going from 20 to 2000000000000 armor makes no change; they only hit on 20’s. VS an enemy with +15 to hit going from 1 AC to 16 AC doesn’t matter, they only miss on a 1. Bounded accuracy, the thing in the monster manual which makes higher CR monsters more threatening, is calculated with the ASSUMPTION that fighters will be in +3 plate w/ a +3 shield eventually for that sweet sweet 26 AC. “OH NO 26 AC, MY CR 1/4THS STILL HIT ON A 20!” “OH NO, 26 AC! MY CR 6’S STILL HIT ON A 17-20!” “OH NO, 26 AC! MY CR 30 TARRASQUE STILL HITS ON A FUCKING 7 UP!” Yeah, the biggest, baddest monsters? The ones who are supposed to threaten high level parties with high amounts of magic gear?
sometime i belive you have never played nor read a dungeon mster manual, moster of high cr have been made teking into account the fact that a teir 2 ( lvc 5 or above) or higher party has at least one magical item each that’s why there are teirs the rewards are more easly magic item the higher you go, this article is just stupid and useless
God that Sage Advice ruling makes my brain hurt… what a mismanaged game. Anyways… There’s another problem altogether that the math doesn’t show: boredom. Ultra high AC on an enemy drags the fight out too long or makes martial feel even more impotent… and enemies almost never hitting the player undercuts the tension. If you are DM and anything or anyone has 95% or 5% chance to hit, something needs adjusting. Those aren’t fun numbers. Keep it within 25% and 75% as a rule of thumb. P.S. Yes even trash minions should have 10% or more accuracy on an average AC or you shouldn’t waste time giving them a stat block or initiative. Stat blocks are for earners! lol