D&D 5E Mage Armor Criticisms

[Jack99]

I think he means to use actual units of time, rather than the metagame terms. As in "an hour" rather than "lasts two encounters".

Yep!

 

[Lanefan]

Measure time in time units (seconds, minutes, hours, days) then define a combat round as x number of [pick a time unit]s and a segment as 1/y of a round.

Measure distance in distance units (inches, feet, yards, miles - metres etc. if you must but even though I'm in a supposedly metric country I detest metric distance measurement as I just can't visualize what any of it represents) and stop there.

It's simple. Really.

Lan-"or you could just say it's all wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff and move on"-efan

 

[WhatGravitas]

Mage Armor I would have preferred being an at-will spell that required concentration to uphold, so that if you wish to cast another spell it drops at that point. You can always bring it back up again next round, but it's like lowering your deflector shields to fire a torpedo.

Alternatively, since it's a spell that every wizard who has it at-will will take, why not just make it into a class feature? It's clearly there to compensate for the fact that the wizard has very low AC due to the non-proficiency with armour.

Make it something like "Your AC is 12 + Dex as long as you have at least one spell of 1st level or higher prepared." - gives a simple straightforward effect, has flavourful ties to your spells and gives spell preparation some extra weight.

What I'd rather have Shield be was a reaction that negates all damage against any attack spell that would otherwise cause you to drop. Sort of like a built-in contingency spell, hardcoded to that trigger as it were (you losing consciousness or life). 4e had a much better implementation..

Ditto, shield right now is just... dull to take, dull to use. I mean I can understand that they want to keep it for tradition's sake, but at least give us an alternative, perhaps called "deflect" - a wizard blocking an attack with sudden magic shield is a strong image that appears all over fantasy. Whereas shield right now is more like summoning a tower shield or something.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Measure distance in distance units (inches, feet, yards, miles - metres etc. if you must but even though I'm in a supposedly metric country I detest metric distance measurement as I just can't visualize what any of it represents) and stop there.

I keep hoping they do change distances over from feet to either yards or meters. Because that way, yards/meters and "squares" are the exact same number (depending on whether you choose to use a grid.)

1 yard/meter = 1 square is much much easier and faster to calculate than 5 feet = 1 square.