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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7510290" data-attributes="member: 6779196">How’s this for an unpopular opinion: I don’t think its intended function is particularly  incongruous with the fiction.Look, the way I see it, a creature’s AC generally represents how difficult that creature is to hit. Being more nimble, holding a plank of wood in front of you, ducking behind a chest-high wall, being surrounded by a magical field of repulsive force, wearing a nigh-invulnerable steel exoskeleton with only small gaps between plates through which a blade might slip... all of these things make your body more difficult to hit with a weapon, ergo they increase your AC.An object’s AC represents how hard you have to hit that object to leave noticeable damage to it. Nobody is missing the giant spider webs their friend is wrapped up in, they’re just failing to cut through any of the strands. Nobody is missing the inanimate door they’re trying to hack down with an axe, their axe is just bouncing off without splintering the wood.Barkskin does not make your body more difficult to hit, ergo, it does not add to or change the way you calculate the value that represents how difficult you are to hit. You still calculate that value as you normally would (you have to, to know if it’s greater or less than 16). What it does is make your body like an object - like an oak tree, to be specific. if an Attack hits you (by meeting or exceeding your AC), it still has to be a solid enough hit to meaningfully damage an oak tree in order to deal damage to you. And it happens, the way you determine if a hit against an object is solid enough to damage it is by comparing the result of your roll to the object’s AC. So, if your AC is higher than an oak tree’s due to being exceedingly difficult to hit, then any attack that hits you is also strong enough to damage an oak tree. However, if your AC is lower than 16, an attack that hits your body might or might not not be strong enough to damage an oak tree. So you’ve still got to compare the result to an AC of 16.If there’s a problem here, it’s that the difficulty of hitting a creature and the difficulty of damaging an object are represented by the same mechanic. In my opinion, you shouldn’t have to roll to hit objects at all, they should just have damage thresholds, and Barkskin should give you a damage threshold as if you were an oak tree. But, the rules for attacking objects being what they are, the mechanics of Barkskin are exactly what the mechanics of trying to hit a creature with a body that is as difficult to damage as an oak tree should work.</blockquote>

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