D&D 5E Barkskin *Might* Be the Worst Spell Description I've Ever Read

Stalker0 said:

So this thread can be boiled down to:

1) The spell is clear in what it does.
2) The spell creates an issue with dispersion of disbelief for many players. Leading people to want the spell to work differently.

Ultimately I don't think its a great spell myself. The AC bonus isn't that great when your not wildshaped, and when you are its then very vulnerable to concentration issues.

So the issue is not that the spell is unclear. Its simply that the spell is bad.

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I don't think it quite gets into the bad territory.

I think it is a step above in the 'not great' realm.

All concentration spells have this drawback. At least this one comes with a lower chance to being hit. It competes well with healing 2d8 hp and it's fun so it's fine.

Charlaquin said:

I don’t feel like I have to. The spell’s mechanical function is perfectly clear, and in my assessment, internally consistent with the way creature and object AC works in the game. But, since some people seem to be struggling to understand how the mechanics translate to the fiction, I explained it in detail for their benefit.

If there’s anything here complicating the explanation, it’s not the spell, but the way D&D abstracts accuracy and the strength of a hit. It’s super unintuitive for both your likelihood of hitting a creature and your likelihood of hitting an object hard enough to damage it to be represented by the same value. I’ve seen the exact same reaction every single time I’ve had to tell a player that they need to make an attack roll against an inanimate object. They say some variation of “how hard can it be to hit something that isn’t moving?” and I explain that, in this instance, it’s not about whether or not they hit it, but whether or not the hit is solid enough to damage the object. I’ve also had quite a few new players surprised that a heavily armored character is harder to “hit” than one who is lightly armored but extremely nimble, to which I explain that hitting someone wearing heavy armor doesn’t generally do meaningful damage, you have to go for a vulnerable spot like a gap in the armor. So while the heavily armored character may be easier to touch, they are harder to hit in a spot where it will do damage.

Nobody expects to “miss” a tree, and everybody expects armor to reduce damage. But us D&D veterans are good at looking past the many, many unintuitive quirks of D&D’s mechanics. Until we encounter a mechanic that works differently than the particular ones we’ve gotten used to. Barkskin is such a mechanic. The way it works is in fact consistent with the way D&D handles creature AC vs. object AC, but the way D&D handles creature AC vs. object AC is super unintuitive. We’re just used to handling each in isolation. This particular case where both need to be used to resolve an attack forces us to confront that, and many people assume it’s the spell’s fault for being unintuitive rather than the system’s.

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I agree with you, to a point. In this instance, however, I think the mechanics as suggested by Jeremy Crawford go a bit farther than "unintuitive." In the case of hitting a tree, it is all well and good to abstract AC as resistance to meaningful damage, but then Crawford asserts that the "tree" (which in this case is a medium sized humanoid with no impairment to its ability to move, take the dodge action, etc) cannot benefit from cover. So you, an attacker trying to hit the tree, suffer no detriment whatsoever from me getting in your way or trying to block your attack. Similarly, a movable barrier between you and the tree used to make the tree more difficult to hit can be ignored.

You've managed to rationalize all of this, and that's fine. For many of us, though, it does not appear that Jeremy's suggested interpretation of the spell will ever make sense, no matter how much we chew it over. Clearly a fair number of ENWorld posters do feel the need to try and fit the barkskin spell into a logical framework they can work with, whether that involves following Crawford's guidance or dismissing it as pedantic nonsense.

epithet said:

I agree with you, to a point. In this instance, however, I think the mechanics as suggested by Jeremy Crawford go a bit farther than "unintuitive." In the case of hitting a tree, it is all well and good to abstract AC as resistance to meaningful damage, but then Crawford asserts that the "tree" (which in this case is a medium sized humanoid with no impairment to its ability to move, take the dodge action, etc) cannot benefit from cover. So you, an attacker trying to hit the tree, suffer no detriment whatsoever from me getting in your way or trying to block your attack. Similarly, a movable barrier between you and the tree used to make the tree more difficult to hit can be ignored.

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Trees can’t benefit from partial cover because they can’t move. You’re going to hit a tree that is not behind total cover, the attack roll is just to see if you hit it hard enough. A creature affected by Barkskin can benefit from cover, however. It adds 2 to the threshold that needs to be met or exceeded on an attack roll to hit its body. The value that is calculated as 10 + Dexterity Mod by default, or by a different formula depending on what armor the creature is wearing. Since the creature’s body is also treated like an object, however, simply hitting its body may or may not be enough to damage it. To determine whether or not it is, you compare the result of the attack roll to a target number, in this case 16. If the first value is already higher than 16, you can skip this step, because any attack that is accurate enough to hit the body of a creature with 14+ Dex, wearing hide armor, holding a shield, and behind cover, is also solid enough to do damage to a tree. On the other hand, if the first value is lower than the second, you can skip the first step, because any attack that is solid enough to do damage to a tree is also accurate enough to hit the creature’s body. So, rather than giving the creature two separate AC values and ignoring the lower, Barkskin simplifies the process by merely setting a floor for the first value equal to the second value.

The weird thing that’s going on here here is that AC represents two different things depending on whether the target is a creature or an object. Barkskin merely exposes this oddity by making the subject function as both at once.

epithet said:

You've managed to rationalize all of this, and that's fine. For many of us, though, it does not appear that Jeremy's suggested interpretation of the spell will ever make sense, no matter how much we chew it over. Clearly a fair number of ENWorld posters do feel the need to try and fit the barkskin spell into a logical framework they can work with, whether that involves following Crawford's guidance or dismissing it as pedantic nonsense.

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And that’s totally fair! I don’t begrudge anyone for deciding that the RAI of Barkskin just does not work for them, and ruling that it works differently in their games. I’ve seen a few suggestions of how people prefer to rule Barkskin in this thread, and they’re all quite reasonable. My argument is simply that the RAI is consistent with the RAW, and pointing out the fiction that I believe the RAI is meant to model.

EDIT: You know, come to think of it, I think the wording could be improved to make both the intended function and what it represents in the fiction clearer:

”The creature’s skin becomes as hard as bark. For the duration, any attack that hits the creature does no damage unless the result of the attack roll was 16 or higher.”

Charlaquin said:

...
”The creature’s skin becomes as hard as bark. For the duration, any attack that hits the creature does no damage unless the result of the attack roll was 16 or higher.”

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That's logical, reasonable, and it would be totally persuasive but for the fact that no other implementation of bark-hard skin (or similar) is handled that way. Golems and other constructs, treants and awakened trees, even warforged in the new Eberron guide--they all handle natural armor in a way that can accomodate stacking AC benefits from cover, or haste.

Charlaquin said:

How so? In what way is skin of bark harder to make contact with than skin of... skin? It may be more difficult to penetrate, but it is not more difficult to hit.

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All true. However, in the game one's AC determines whether you're going to take damage or not, so it's that threshold we need to look at.

Except Druids are creatures, and a creature’s AC represents the difficulty of hitting it, not the difficulty of damaging it.

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Here I disagree. To put it in 3e terms, you're conflating touch AC with full AC. Sure, Barkskin doesn't make the Druid any harder to touch but it does make the Druid harder to damage...which in most cases, if you're the Druid, is what really matters.

That 13 + 2 + 2 = 17 represents the difficulty of getting around that shield, to a gap in that armor, while the Druid is trying to dodge. The druid’s skin being hard as bark doesn’t enter into that calculation, because it doesn’t make the Druid more difficult to hit, it makes them more difficult to damage, which in the case of objects like oak trees, is modeled with an AC value. So, if an attack hits the Druid (by beating their 17 AC), it is then compared to the difficulty of damaging them (represented by their 16 AC). For simplicity’s sake, we can just say the Druid’s AC can’t be less than 16, rather than saying he has two different AC values.

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First off, everything has at least two AC values*, based on what the attacker is trying to accomplish. The one used most often is the AC vs. damage, but AC vs. touch or contact is also relevant even if the game system doesn't explicitly say so.

* - which can be the same but are usually different.

The oak tree's AC isn't determining whether you can hit it or not, it's determining whether you'll damage it when you do. 5e doesn't have AC values less than 10 I don't think, but if it did an oak tree's touch AC would certainly be there: it's pretty easy to walk up to an oak tree and hit it with something. But it's not as easy to hit it hard enough to cause it any damage, hence the 17 AC or whatever it has.

So if an oak tree's AC represents the does-it-take-damage threshold rather than the can-you-hit-it (or "touch") threshold, why would you define the Druid's (full) AC any differently?

Personally I think it’s dumb that creatures and objects use the same mechanic to represent different things, but since that’s how D&D does it, this effect seems perfectly reasonable within the rules of D&D.

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I'm not sure it's being used to reflect different things at all. The root question, whether you're swinging an axe at a tree or a pillow or someone's head, is this: did you hit it hard enough or well enough to hurt it? The only difference is that an oak tree or a pillow only get their AC from one source, that being the simple hardness of whatever they're made of; where most (but not all) creatures can accumulate AC from two or more sources e.g. skin, armour, shield, dexterity, cover, magic, etc.

Now the whole structural damage vs. hit point damage question of what is achieved on a successful hit is something else again, but that's damage; and we're looking at the to-hit side, before it gets that far.

Lan-"my bigger issue with Druids is this: changing shape should break concentration, but it doesn't"-efan

Charlaquin said:

This is silly criteria. You can over-explain literally anything if you want to.

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Of course. But better that than under-explaining it, which is what we have here.

Double post

epithet said:

That's logical, reasonable, and it would be totally persuasive but for the fact that no other implementation of bark-hard skin (or similar) is handled that way. Golems and other constructs, treants and awakened trees, even warforged in the new Eberron guide--they all handle natural armor in a way that can accomodate stacking AC benefits from cover, or haste.

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I would argue that natural armor works differently because, like any armor, it is modeling the difficulty of hitting the creature with it in a vulnerable spot, not the difficulty of hitting it hard enough to break through. The surface area you can hit and do meaningful harm to the creature is less than that on a similarly nimble creature without the same natural armor.

However, I would agree that the root of the issue here is that Barkskin works differently than any other AC modifying effect.

Charlaquin said:

However, I would agree that the root of the issue here is that Barkskin works differently than any other AC modifying effect.

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Except barkskin is not an AC *modifying* effect; that has been the crux of the issue since the beginning of this thread. It's an AC *replacement* effect.

I otherwise agree with you; I would prefer if it was the "heavy armor" equivalent to mage armor, with similar duration (8 hours, no concentration), but that's not how the spell is worded.

Lanefan said:

All true. However, in the game one's AC determines whether you're going to take damage or not, so it's that threshold we need to look at.

Here I disagree. To put it in 3e terms, you're conflating touch AC with full AC. Sure, Barkskin doesn't make the Druid any harder to touch but it does make the Druid harder to damage...which in most cases, if you're the Druid, is what really matters.

First off, everything has at least two AC values*, based on what the attacker is trying to accomplish. The one used most often is the AC vs. damage, but AC vs. touch or contact is also relevant even if the game system doesn't explicitly say so.

* - which can be the same but are usually different.

The oak tree's AC isn't determining whether you can hit it or not, it's determining whether you'll damage it when you do. 5e doesn't have AC values less than 10 I don't think, but if it did an oak tree's touch AC would certainly be there: it's pretty easy to walk up to an oak tree and hit it with something. But it's not as easy to hit it hard enough to cause it any damage, hence the 17 AC or whatever it has.

So if an oak tree's AC represents the does-it-take-damage threshold rather than the can-you-hit-it (or "touch") threshold, why would you define the Druid's (full) AC any differently?

I'm not sure it's being used to reflect different things at all. The root question, whether you're swinging an axe at a tree or a pillow or someone's head, is this: did you hit it hard enough or well enough to hurt it? The only difference is that an oak tree or a pillow only get their AC from one source, that being the simple hardness of whatever they're made of; where most (but not all) creatures can accumulate AC from two or more sources e.g. skin, armour, shield, dexterity, cover, magic, etc.

Now the whole structural damage vs. hit point damage question of what is achieved on a successful hit is something else again, but that's damage; and we're looking at the to-hit side, before it gets that far.

Lan-"my bigger issue with Druids is this: changing shape should break concentration, but it doesn't"-efan

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In 5e "touch AC" is treated as Dex saves- avoid getting hit.

At least thsts ehst I recall for a designer commfnts.