So, if I decide...

[Quixoticelixir]

... that my character isn't the kind of guy to wear armor, his AC would be equal to his Dexterity modifier, right? In previous editions, wearing no armor was somewhat safe to do, since you automatically got to add 10 to your AC. In the play test of D&D Next, it doesn't quite work that way (it seems that the AC bonus provided by armors incorperate this 'old' bonus of 10 in their usual armor bonus). This would mean that almost every creature would be able to hit my character, provided they rolled 2-3 or higher on their d20. Is this correct?

Hopefully, I'm missing something. Otherwise, it would be catastrophic to be attacked when you're not wearing armor - whenever you sleep, for instance.

 

[jadrax]

It's not a situation the rules seem to cover at this point, because all the pre-gens have armour.

edit:: Well apart from the wizard, who has robes and AC 11. (with a dex bonus of +1). So clothing is base AC 10.

 

[Uller]

The wizard is wearing robes, has a 13 Dex (+1) and an 11 AC...so it seems base AC is 10+Dec mod. It is not unreasonable to assume that there will be classes that have some bonus to AC in no armor...monks and assassins for instance. But the playtest explicitly asks us to set aside PC balance issues for now. So it is probably a tad early to be thinking about potential PC classes/themes and how they fit.

 

[slobster]

It appears very likely that those armor values incorporate the base 10 AC which every character gets, for simplicity's sake. So it does work like previous editions; your dex 15 character has an AC of 12 in his skivies.

 

[Sunseeker]

I actually rather like this. It makes armor more meaningful. Being able to run a character that could run around naked and have a higher dex than heavy armor. I think this makes more sense, though armor values could be tweaked.

 

[Stalker0]

Clothes give you an AC of 10, but god help you if you are naked

 

[Quixoticelixir]

Alright. Yeah, I figured that the usual 10 was somehow incorperated. I find it weird, though, that they haven't made a note of it anywhere in the play test.

 

[Mika]

Clothes give you an AC of 10, but god help you if you are naked

The character or the player? If the character is naked, I think I would stick with 10 + dexterity modifier. If the player is naked, I would rate his or her appearance on a scale from 1 to 10 and set their AC to double that value -- so my players should probably keep their clothes on.