Shield of Faith and/or Mage Armor Bugged

[Thedarknight_55]

Lae'zel cast Shield of Faith on Gale using the Sword of Justice and then Gale cast Mage Armor on himself. These spells do no counteract each other but initially Gale had an AC of 14 (+2 Dex + Shield of Faith) and when he cast Mage Armor on himself his AC became 15 (+2 Dex + Mage Armor). Mage Armor should not remove Shield of Faith. His AC should be 17 (+2 Dex + Shield of Faith + Mage Armor).

[Diablerie]

armor effects do not stack, the system will take the higher ac effect and cancel the other out. This is as it should be.

Let me clarify, I should say spell ac effects do not stack. If the character was wearing say regular armor, they would gain the benefit of shield of faith.

[bf1tz.psu]

Originally posted by Diablerie:

armor effects do not stack, the system will take the higher ac effect and cancel the other out. This is as it should be.

meh... one is "armor" the other is a "shield".... since when do shields not work with armors... just saying.... mage armor requires you be unarmored so dunno.

[Diablerie]

Originally posted by bf1tz.psu:

Originally posted by Diablerie:

armor effects do not stack, the system will take the higher ac effect and cancel the other out. This is as it should be.

meh... one is "armor" the other is a "shield".... since when do shields not work with armors... just saying.... mage armor requires you be unarmored so dunno.

I mean in the context of this game, in a normal pnp setting shield of faith can stack with mage armor. The thing is that this game takes a lot of liberties in it's implementation of the 5e rules.

[TripSin]

Originally posted by bf1tz.psu:

Originally posted by Diablerie:

armor effects do not stack, the system will take the higher ac effect and cancel the other out. This is as it should be.

meh... one is "armor" the other is a "shield".... since when do shields not work with armors... just saying.... mage armor requires you be unarmored so dunno.

Even though in name one is called a shield and the other armor, they are both actually the same thing - a protective magical force.

By 5e rules from what I read, anything can stack with anything else except for the same spell stacking on itself (e.g. Shield of Faith stacking on another Shield of Faith) but maybe Larian doesn't want it to work that way in this game. Probably makes sense to not let you just stack so much AC and trivialize the game.

[Thedarknight_55]

Per 5e rules, what I did is completely possible and allowed by the rules. Per Baldur's Gate 3's spell descriptions it should work too. Mage armor: Surround a creature in a protective magical force. Its Armour Class increases by 3. Prerequisite: not wearing armour. Shield of Faith: Surround a creature with a shimmering field of magic that increases its AC by 2.

Nothing in the game's description says these spells can't work together. Just like how the game thinks Abjuration Wizard's Arcane Ward count as temporary hitpoints instead of a separate pool of buffer hitpoints, the game's logic must think that they are the same spells or the same source of AC, cancelling the other out. This needs to be fixed now or at least before full release. The combo should be allowed to happen or if Larian doesn't want them to combo because of game balance (Which they shouldn't because it's not broken, anyway) then the spell's descriptions SHOULD say so. This is just one of countless bugs I've come across, not to mention all the lag and crashes.

[Nordil(Hun)]

In 3.0 and 3.5 and i am guessing in 5.0 as well:
The same type of AC bonuses do not stack only the highest is taken into consideration. Beside Dodge AC bonus, which stack.

Mage armour used to give deflection bonus as well, and shield of faith is purely deflection bonus.
Shield of Faith on level 4 gives +2 AC (or used to in 3.5) whereas Mage armour gave deflecetion bonus of +1 and another source +1.
In this case the highest bonus counts so you get from mage armour the other sources +1 and SOF's +2 making it alltogether +3, instead of the +1+1+2.

[bullse]

There is no bug, Gale cannot have mage armor and shield of faith at same time. You want more AC on Gale, you use mage armor and mirror images.

[Thedarknight_55]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

In 3.0 and 3.5 and i am guessing in 5.0 as well:
The same type of AC bonuses do not stack only the highest is taken into consideration. Beside Dodge AC bonus, which stack.

Mage armour used to give deflection bonus as well, and shield of faith is purely deflection bonus.
Shield of Faith on level 4 gives +2 AC (or used to in 3.5) whereas Mage armour gave deflecetion bonus of +1 and another source +1.
In this case the highest bonus counts so you get from mage armour the other sources +1 and SOF's +2 making it alltogether +3, instead of the +1+1+2.

There is no such thing as "deflection bonus" or "dodge AC bonus" in 5E D&D, which is the rule set that Baldur's Gate 3 uses. In 5e you can not benefit from the same spell multiple times. If two people both cast Shield of Faith on one person, the person would only receive the benefits of one of them, not both (+2AC, not +2+2=+4AC). The difference here, is that two different spells are being cast, not the same one twice. Nothing in the spell description says they can not work together and no rules in D&D 5e would prohibit the combination of these spells on the same person.

[Thedarknight_55]

Originally posted by bullse:

There is no bug, Gale cannot have mage armor and shield of faith at same time. You want more AC on Gale, you use mage armor and mirror images.

This is just flat out wrong. The spells can work perfectly together. It is the game's coded logic that is either wrong or bugged which is not allowing them to work together. Mage Armor give you +3 to your armor class if you are not wearing armor. Shield of Faith is not armor. It is a spell that increases your armor class by +2.
5E D&D has very precise and specific wording. If it doesn't say something in a description, then that "something" does not exist. In this case, in the wording of both spells there is no language that would prohibit them working together. See my above comment for the specifics of how you can and can't combine spells.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Thedarknight_55:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

In 3.0 and 3.5 and i am guessing in 5.0 as well:
The same type of AC bonuses do not stack only the highest is taken into consideration. Beside Dodge AC bonus, which stack.

Mage armour used to give deflection bonus as well, and shield of faith is purely deflection bonus.
Shield of Faith on level 4 gives +2 AC (or used to in 3.5) whereas Mage armour gave deflecetion bonus of +1 and another source +1.
In this case the highest bonus counts so you get from mage armour the other sources +1 and SOF's +2 making it alltogether +3, instead of the +1+1+2.

There is no such thing as "deflection bonus" or "dodge AC bonus" in 5E D&D, which is the rule set that Baldur's Gate 3 uses. In 5e you can not benefit from the same spell multiple times. If two people both cast Shield of Faith on one person, the person would only receive the benefits of one of them, not both (+2AC, not +2+2=+4AC). The difference here, is that two different spells are being cast, not the same one twice. Nothing in the spell description says they can not work together and no rules in D&D 5e would prohibit the combination of these spells on the same person.

As i said i am guessing:) I only know a little of 5.0

Also as per your reply to bullse, it seems that mage armour is more akin here to the bracers of armour. As in they grant purely armour bonus, if you do not have any armour equipped.
(Seems a bit like in ed 2.0)
And yes in this case they should be stacking. Since SOF does not have ANY requirement to grant bonus, but being cast. So this seems to be not working correctly.

So in this case it should give the full bonus of each spells. Though not sure if the concentration requirement makes it worth. But that is just my thought.

[Geeves]

The way the Mage Armor spell is implemented in BG3 is not the same as tabletop 5e. The key is right there in the description:
"Surround a creature in a protective magical force. Its Armour Class increases by 3."
That is +3 to AC. The game is treating it as a spell which gives +3 to AC. Any bonus to AC does not stack with other AC bonuses. It is not bugged, just not implemented correctly according to 5e rules.

Now I will absolutely agree that the way it is written in table top is completely different, and those two spells should stack. From table-top:
"The target's base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier."
As you can see in tabletop this is not an AC bonus. Rather it is literally changing your base AC from 10 to 13. It could be argued that that should stack with the +AC bonus.

TLDR, 5e tabletop changes base AC to 13, while the description in BG3 is quite clear that they want it to be an AC bonus of +3. Not bugged, just not the same as tabletop.

Also, despite having the word "shield" in the name of the spell, in both 5e and BG3 shield of faith clearly stated to give an AC bonus. From what I understand, and I am not at all that familiar with 5e, they did away with all of the different spell AC bonuses like Natural Armor and Shield. Looks like everything either modifies base AC (stacks with +AC) or it gives a flat +AC bonus which does not stack with other +AC.

Edit: Nevermind, looks like all AC bonuses (+AC) in tabletop are basically treated as untyped, and stack with each other (except from the same spell multiple times)? So in tabletop all +AC spells stack with each other. However, BG3 clearly is using modified rules that do not allow AC stacking in this way.

Either way, in tabletop Mage armor and shield of faith would stack whether or not you wanted to allow +AC stacking.

[bullse]

Originally posted by Thedarknight_55:

Originally posted by bullse:

There is no bug, Gale cannot have mage armor and shield of faith at same time. You want more AC on Gale, you use mage armor and mirror images.

This is just flat out wrong.

5E D&D has very precise and specific wording.

Umm no, and there is where your problem lies, you are assuming this Larian early access BG3 game is using and sticking to the precisely and specifically worded 5E D&D rules..........