[redacted]

[Zormac]

The Empress Garb is clothing, not armor - monks should receive the Unarmored Defense bonus when wearing it. It currently does not do that.

On a second look at the description of the item, it is working as intended.

[DiceWrangler]

Does it have the same issue with a Barbarian's Unarmored Defense (10+DEX + CON)?

[Zormac]

Originally posted by DiceWrangler:

Does it have the same issue with a Barbarian's Unarmored Defense (10+DEX + CON)?

Yes it does. Tested in the same game with our Barbarian.
The clothing is replacing unarmored defense bonuses for Monks and Bards with its innate +4 AC, and it shouldn't work like that.

[Ereghor the Enigmatic]

A vaguely adjacent rule-related question: should Mage Armor and Barkskin work with the Monk/Barbarian unarmored AC bonuses, or does the fact that they set the base AC to a specific value make them count as "armor"? Most of my D&D background is with 3/3.5e where Mage Armor on a monk was pretty much a go-to, and Barkskin would contribute to a specifc type of AC that stacked with other things.

[Zormac]

Originally posted by Ereghor the Enigmatic:

A vaguely adjacent rule-related question: should Mage Armor and Barkskin work with the Monk/Barbarian unarmored AC bonuses, or does the fact that they set the base AC to a specific value make them count as "armor"? Most of my D&D background is with 3/3.5e where Mage Armor on a monk was pretty much a go-to, and Barkskin would contribute to a specifc type of AC that stacked with other things.

In the 5th Edition, Unarmored Defense, Mage Armor, and Barkskin all set your base AC to specific values, so only the highest applies. Only additive bonuses would stack with them, such as the +1 AC bonus from Ring of Protection, but not sources of base AC. From a D&D design architect: "Don’t confuse a bonus to AC (such as +2) with an AC calculation (AC = 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Constitution modifier). AC calculations don’t stack with each other. Bonuses do." (https://dnd.wizards.com/sage-advice/errata-october-2016). Barkskin, Mage Armor, and Unarmored defense are "AC calculations".

This is different from 3.5e when Mage Armor provided +4 armor bonus to AC. In 3.5 we had the different AC sources (armor, deflection, dodge, natural) and bonuses from the same source would not stack, so if a person wearing armor would not benefit from mage armor if their armor bonus to AC was already higher than that.
In 5e, however, all AC bonuses stack, and the difference happens when items set BASE AC values, which is what the Empress Garb is doing in Solasta (setting base AC to 14 + dex), when it should add +4 AC bonus since it is not technically armor. If it were armor, monks would not even be able to wear it, and it would deactivate Martial Arts.