Natural armor question

[doktorstick]

Ugh (a chill just shot through me). There goes the whole rationale for bonus types in the first place.

No kidding.

 

[Centaur]

Well, it's like an enhancement bonus to armor. It does make a certian amount of sense... though now we have the debate of enhancing something that's not there again. Does new natural armor enhancement bonus work when you don't have natural armor to enhance in the first place? Though the old rules kind of allowed this (magic vestment + non-armor shirt) though that was always argueable...

Just think of creatures with no natural armor as having natural armor +0, just like magic vestment + non-armor shirt. makes perfect sense to me.

So much sense in fact that I allow people to use armor enchantments on normal clothing IMC. This means that a wizard or similar character can still get the benefit of some of the cool armor enhancements without actualy wereing real armor.

Just think, a wizard who enchantes a simple vest to where under his robe that grants Invulnerability and Fortification benefits. Adds to the survivability factor when the Orc Warlord gets past the fighers with his great axe and deals a critical hit to the wizard. Instead of taking [1D12+14]x3 he only takes the 1D12+14 and if the axe isn't magical then he takes 5 points less. can you think of a wizard that can afford to take an average of 63 points of damage in a single blow.

I think both of these convensions make sense. Humans and elves and such already have a NA bonus of +0, just like a vest has an Armor bonus of +0.

I however am not sure at this point if I like the idea of enhancing the natural NA bonus of creatures though. I guess it kind fits in with the other buff spells so in a way it makes sense. My only complaint is that they closed one can of worms by changeing shields from an 'armor' bonus to a 'sheild' bonus to get away from the armor bonuses stacking thing, and now they seem to have opened a new can or worms with this change.

Fence sitting for the moment. I guess if they call it an 'Enhancement' bonus that works for NA rather than calling it a NA bonus that acts as a enhancement bonus under specific circumstances I won't have that big of a problem with it.

 

[drnuncheon]

I think that the idea was to make the spell actually effective for druids - most animal companions have natural armor, so casting barkskin on them would be useless. Most wildshapes have natural armor - and most druids that get into melee are going to wildshape - so the druid casting barkskin on himself was next to useless.

So who got the barkskin? The fighters. Meanwhile, the druid is going to the sorcerer and saying 'hey, could you spare a mage armor for my pet wolf?' Kind of lame.

With this change, the druid is a lot more likely to use his druidy goodness to buff himself and his animal companion, which makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than "O spirits of nature! You won't let me wear platemail, but please protect this armor-clad sword-weilding city-bred lummox!" "Sure!"

J