Unarmored Defense and Wildshape

[Gingermonkey]

Unarmored Defense gives a malus as well as bonus to AC while in wildshape nearly cancelling eachother out. Looking at the bears AC with 17 wisdom:

12 AC Base
-2 Unarmored Defense
+3 Wisdom (unarmored defense)

Is this by design? Or a bug?

Without a level dip in monk or barbarian, it just gives the flat 12 AC

[Styxs_NL]

Just seen this too, hope we can get an answer/fix soon

[Bosch PSB 18 LI-2 triple bag]

i think unarmored defense works as follows:
-it sets your base AC to 10 (which is what the -2 does)
-then it adds your dex and wis modifiers. in a bear's case that's a 0 for dex, so your wild shape AC should be 10+3, which is correct. if you were a barbarian you'd have a 13 too, since bears have a con score of 16..

[Styxs_NL]

Originally posted by Bosch PSB 18 LI-2 triple bag:

i think unarmored defense works as follows:
-it sets your base AC to 10 (which is what the -2 does)
-then it adds your dex and wis modifiers. in a bear's case that's a 0 for dex, so your wild shape AC should be 10+3, which is correct. if you were a barbarian you'd have a 13 too, since bears have a con score of 16..

a base AC is 10 for every class, for druids wildshapes AC is 12 without a level of monk, If you get a monk level wildshape base AC goes down to 10.

So why would unarmored defence first lower the ac by 2 and then up it by your wis bonus?!?
That doesnt make any sense

Think AC for wildshape is a bit broken, a bear has less AC then a wolf ?!?

[Realized]

Pretty sure Unarmored Defense is busted for (probably all) cross-class interactions.
All we can do is post it to Larian and hope they see and fix it. :/

[Mawai]

Originally posted by Bosch PSB 18 LI-2 triple bag:

i think unarmored defense works as follows:
-it sets your base AC to 10 (which is what the -2 does)
-then it adds your dex and wis modifiers. in a bear's case that's a 0 for dex, so your wild shape AC should be 10+3, which is correct. if you were a barbarian you'd have a 13 too, since bears have a con score of 16..

This answer is EXACTLY correct. Unarmored Defense gives a NEW way to calculate AC that replaces the natural AC of the wildshape.
In your example for the bear. It's natural AC is 12.

The AC calculated by Unarmored defence is 10+DEX mod + WIS mod. A bear has 10 dex or +0, a wildshaped character with 16 or 17 wisdom retains their wisdom while wildshaped so the unarmored defence AC is 10+0+3 = 13.

So where does the -2 come from? I'd say it is implementation. Larian is calculating the AC as 12 -2 (to get to 10 base) + 0 (dex) +3 (wis) ... which gets shortened to 12 -2 +3 = 13 which is correct for those stats. Try wildshaping into another form like a Dire Wolf and see what AC you get. A dire wolf has a natural AC of 14 so I would expect that the formula used would be 14 -4 (to get to 10) +2 (dex) +3 (wis) = 15 ... so an increase of 1.

[Gingermonkey]

Originally posted by Mawai:

Originally posted by Bosch PSB 18 LI-2 triple bag:

i think unarmored defense works as follows:
-it sets your base AC to 10 (which is what the -2 does)
-then it adds your dex and wis modifiers. in a bear's case that's a 0 for dex, so your wild shape AC should be 10+3, which is correct. if you were a barbarian you'd have a 13 too, since bears have a con score of 16..

This answer is EXACTLY correct. Unarmored Defense gives a NEW way to calculate AC that replaces the natural AC of the wildshape.
In your example for the bear. It's natural AC is 12.

The AC calculated by Unarmored defence is 10+DEX mod + WIS mod. A bear has 10 dex or +0, a wildshaped character with 16 or 17 wisdom retains their wisdom while wildshaped so the unarmored defence AC is 10+0+3 = 13.

So where does the -2 come from? I'd say it is implementation. Larian is calculating the AC as 12 -2 (to get to 10 base) + 0 (dex) +3 (wis) ... which gets shortened to 12 -2 +3 = 13 which is correct for those stats. Try wildshaping into another form like a Dire Wolf and see what AC you get. A dire wolf has a natural AC of 14 so I would expect that the formula used would be 14 -4 (to get to 10) +2 (dex) +3 (wis) = 15 ... so an increase of 1.

The -2 applies to all forms, regardless of their dex

Unarmored Defense also only applies if your wisdom is +3 or higher. If you have a +1 or +2, you dont get the -2, and you dont get any bonuses.

[Styxs_NL]

so in other words, unarmored defence is useless if it give -2 all the time

[Za'Muro]

yeah, i noticed the low AC too on top of the broken item bonuses/buffs disappearing when going in and out of wildshape. it seems moon druid is just worthless