Mage Armour on Monk

[Loquacious Lasagna]

Casting Mage Armour on a monk seems to do nothing to boost their AC. Is this a bug? I'm not sure why it wouldn't be working, as I am unarmoured.

[Sima Marlin]

Originally posted by Loquacious Lasagna:

Casting Mage Armour on a monk seems to do nothing to boost their AC. Is this a bug? I'm not sure why it wouldn't be working, as I am unarmoured.

It's a bit of a complex bit of fifth edition ruling, I'll try to make it simple

Mage armor sets your base armor class to 13 + your dexterity modifier.

Monk Unarmored defense sets your base armor class to 10 + wisdom + your dex.
( same for barbarian armor class which is 10 + Con + dex).

You can only have One instance of base armor class. It's either an ability ( in case of monk), actual armor ( like full plate), or spell ( like mage armor).

They do not stack each other, highest one replaced the others.

So if your monk ac without mage armor is more than 13, it means mage armor can't boost it, as your monks " set armor class" is already higher than mage armor.

But things like ring of protection or bracers of defense CAN boost your monk armor class as they do not "set" the value to something, they just add a number top of it.

I hope that helped?

[fulf]

not a bug

[Loquacious Lasagna]

Originally posted by Sima Marlin:

Originally posted by Loquacious Lasagna:

Casting Mage Armour on a monk seems to do nothing to boost their AC. Is this a bug? I'm not sure why it wouldn't be working, as I am unarmoured.

It's a bit of a complex bit of fifth edition ruling, I'll try to make it simple

Mage armor sets your base armor class to 13 + your dexterity modifier.

Monk Unarmored defense sets your base armor class to 10 + wisdom + your dex.
( same for barbarian armor class which is 10 + Con + dex).

You can only have One instance of base armor class. It's either an ability ( in case of monk), actual armor ( like full plate), or spell ( like mage armor).

They do not stack each other, highest one replaced the others.

So if your monk ac without mage armor is more than 13, it means mage armor can't boost it, as your monks " set armor class" is already higher than mage armor.

But things like ring of protection or bracers of defense CAN boost your monk armor class as they do not "set" the value to something, they just add a number top of it.

I hope that helped?

It does, yeah. Thanks. I guess the wording in-game is a bit unusual as mage armour says it sets your AC to a new value, whereas the monk one in-game is worded as a bonus. I'm used to the AC stacking shenanigans of Pathfinder 1e so I was surprised this didn't work lol