D&D 5E Mage Armor

[Klaus]

I don't understand this push to have Wizards add their Intelligence to their AC. I am content that the Wizard should be a glass cannon. If Wizards can easily achieve an Armor Classes comparable to that of a melee class, then that makes wearing heavy armour less special; it would represent the Wizard coming too near treading on the Fighter's territory.

Mage Armor is perfectly fine as it presently is.

Making Mage Armor an "Int to AC" ability allows for two things:

1 - It makes Mage Armor scalable. A balanced Wizard with Int 16 will get a +3 bonus to AC. A high-level, optimized Wizard with Int 20 will get a +5 bonus.
2 - It removes a spell or feat tax on Wizards. Other classes can simply spend gp and buy better armor, even without factoring in magic items (which are now purely a DM's province). A Wizard, at the moment, needs to prepare and cast Mage Armor (taking up a spell slot), or spend a feat (we don't know how proficiencies will work, though) and get light armor.

 

[Tuft]

Making Mage Armor an "Int to AC" ability allows for two things:

1 - It makes Mage Armor scalable. A balanced Wizard with Int 16 will get a +3 bonus to AC. A high-level, optimized Wizard with Int 20 will get a +5 bonus.
2 - It removes a spell or feat tax on Wizards. Other classes can simply spend gp and buy better armor, even without factoring in magic items (which are now purely a DM's province). A Wizard, at the moment, needs to prepare and cast Mage Armor (taking up a spell slot), or spend a feat (we don't know how proficiencies will work, though) and get light armor.

How about sorcerers then?

 

[Mezzer]

I don't understand this push to have Wizards add their Intelligence to their AC. I am content that the Wizard should be a glass cannon. If Wizards can easily achieve an Armor Classes comparable to that of a melee class, then that makes wearing heavy armour less special; it would represent the Wizard coming too near treading on the Fighter's territory.

Mage Armor is perfectly fine as it presently is.

Wizard's aren't really glass cannons anymore; their damage isn't particularly high, nor can they keep dishing it out round after round. They retain good AoE and utility spells though, so their toolbox is far better rounded for now.

However I don't want to see mage armor doing anything with Int, simply because of the fact that 5e is finally moving away from massively overloaded primary stats, and this is something I very much like.

 

[Klaus]

How about sorcerers then?

We have to see the class before making a judgement.

 

[Tuft]

We have to see the class before making a judgement.

In editions 1-2-3 sorcerers have been just as dependent on mage armor as wizards, so it's kind of contraproductive to shut them out from it prematurely...

 

[Klaus]

In editions 1-2-3 sorcerers have been just as dependent on mage armor as wizards, so it's kind of contraproductive to shut them out from it prematurely...

Since there were no sorcerers in editions 1 and 2, I'll skip on commenting those.

In 3e, yes, they were dependent on the flat bonus of Mage Armor.

In 4e, Storm and Chaos sorcerers had Dex as the base stat for their rider effects, so they it was usually their second-best ability score. Dragon and Cosmic sorcerers had the ability to use Str (their secondary stat) in place of Dex to determine AC.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Just let wizards have magic armor as a class feature, and/or give them a shield cantrip that eats their reaction and absorbs some damage, with ability to boost it by burning a spell slot.