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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6838729" data-attributes="member: 7006">My personal theory was that they purposely wanted to create a different mechanical effect for Barkskin over Mage Armor (because otherwise, if the mechanics were the same why not just give druids Mage Armor?) and that at some point the idea of "Natural Armor" was perhaps still in play.Barkskin is described in the fluff as though it was giving you something akin to natural armor-- "the target’s skin has a rough, bark-like appearance".  So the question then came down to how they wanted to mechanically represent natural armor such that it was different than the mechanics of Mage Armor or Unarmored Defense.  What they came up with is the idea that you have an always-on AC of 16 that couldn't go lower regardless of the armor you were wearing.  The natural armor wouldn't stack with real armor, but at the same time it wouldn't get replaced if you wore armor of a lower AC.The only downside though is that the resulting mechanics makes absolutely no sense in the "world" of the game.  Because now... things like shields and getting behind cover can provide absolutely no benefit.  If you are naked and have Barkskin on, your AC is 16.  Then you pick up a shield... your AC is still 16.  You then get behind cover, your AC remains at 16.  Which means either you are the only class for whom shields and cover provide no benefit in this situation... or your Barkskin spell is purposefully getting 2 points worse each time you add a shield or get behind cover for some god-awful ridiculous reason.  It just happens.  The Barkskin morphs away from you by two points when you add the two AC points from the shield, or the two points from the cover. Thus... while the fluff and story of the spell implies your skin is hardening like tree bark to provide a thick armor-like material to deflect injury, it's actually some other weird magic force that morphs around you, sometimes on, and sometimes off.  Meanwhile... the wizard next to you that has Mage Armor on gets behind the same cover you do, and his AC goes up by 2.  Because his magical armor is real and actually stacks with cover bonuses.  But your fake armor-morphing magical barrier thing does not.It's stupid, it makes no sense, and thus I ignore the Sage Advice.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As I tell people... the 1st level druid is given proficiency in Medium Armor.  So ordinarily he could have started the game having bought a set of scale mail... which, at its best state (that of a druid with at least a +2 DEX)... means that your best-case scenario 1st level druid character would have a 16 for AC (pre-shield).  However, due to flavor and story reasons, the druid is not allowed to be wearing metal armor and thus is stuck buying and wearing Hide, giving him at best an AC of 14 at 1st level.Now how do you balance the druid against say the cleric (who also starts with the cash and the medium armor proficiency) who can start the game with an AC of 16 while the druid can't?  You give the druid a spell that gives him that AC of 16 instead.  From there... I would say you'd treat the druid and the cleric the exact same way after that.  They both can add on shield for a bonus +2 to the AC... and they both can get behind cover for either another bonus +2 or +5 to AC.Thus, Barkskin becomes essentially what its fluff says it should be-- a natural armor equivalent to scale mail and DEX (to +2), or chain mail and no DEX bonus.  And I personally treat it as such.</blockquote>

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