D&D 5E What armor can druids wear? Is there a way to get a decent AC?

[DEFCON 1]

I don’t follow. Combining multiple sources of deflective protection reduces and eventually overcomes the disparity. Why can’t that be the case?

So what are shields and cover worth then? There has to be a number, right? If a barkskinned druid doesn't see any AC boost from a shield by itself (implying its bonus is less than +1, because that's the only way a barkskinned druid can wield a shield but gain not extra AC from it), nor any from cover (also implying its less than +1 while barkskin is active)... what are they worth?

They HAVE to be worth something in AC value, right? Because you are telling us that when you combine the two together they at some point boost the effect of the barkskin. The barkskin gives an AC 16... shield and cover together produce an AC of 17. Which means that either barkskin shuts itself off when you pick the shield and go behind cover (and the entire +7 AC bonus come from those two sources)... or the barkskin stays in effect to give the AC of 16 to start with, and the druid then gains the extra +1 bonus from the shield and the cover.

So what are they worth? +0.5 AC each? Or are we doing in proportions? The shield is worth +2/7ths a point of AC and the cover +5/7ths of an AC point?

Oh, but wait...

This other naked druid over here has a 16 Dexterity, normally a +3 bonus to AC. But with the barkskin on, obviously they're too slow to gain any bonus from the Dex, just like someone in chainmail is. The druid's AC is 16 from the spell. That makes perfect sense. And when they pick up a shield for what should be an extra +2, that doesn't help! A shield doesn't speed them up, why would it? So of course their AC is still 16 from the spell.

But hold on... this druid now goes behind the wall with the arrow slit... and their AC JUMPS to AC 20?!? Wait, what? How?!? Where did the druid get these +4 extra points of AC from over from what they get from the barkskin? I mean... their Dexterity obviously didn't suddenly start to actually now work... that would be ridiculous! Did the shield suddenly start learning how to block attacks and two of those points now come from the shield? That seems unlikely! Where did we get the +4 bonus AC points from? What happened within the game world to accomplish this?

Wait... did the 3/4ths cover of the arrow-slitted wall decide on its own to arbitrarily drop its AC bonus from a +5 down to a +4 in order to reach that AC 20? Can it do that? Does the wall get to decide that? How does it know what bonus to give these druids?

That's why what I said above was... "There's no other situation in the game where AC bonuses don't grant their bonuses normally and instead you just make up some number that they do give. " The game has made up this scenario where 3/4ths cover grants a +4 instead of a +5. And guess what? If by some chance that druid's Dexterity modifier was only a +2, that means going behind the wall would only give the druid an AC value of 19. And that means when you take the AC of 16 from barkskin into account... the cover is now only granting 3 points of bonus AC. 3/4ths cover is arbitrarily granting +5, +4 or +3 bonus points of AC to druids, apparently on a whim, depending on the druid's DEX modifier.

And this is why the fluff of the spell and the way it works in the game world make absolutely no sense. And attempts at trying to justify its mechanics are fruitless and a fool's errand. Because after all, you had to eventually say this:

The difficulty of hitting the Druid is represented by their normal AC value. The difficulty of penetrating the bark is represented by the 16 from barkskin. If the difficulty of hitting the Druid is less than the difficulty of penetrating the barkskin, then you use the 16, because any attack forceful enough to break through is also accurate enough to hit. If the difficulty of hitting the Druid is greater than the difficulty of penetrating the barkskin, then you ignore the barkskin, because any attack accurate enough to hit is also forceful enough to break through.

You are trying to narrate the type of hit that happened after the hit occurs... based entirely on what the druid's AC was at the time. "Well, the druid might have had a +2 DEX bonus and a shield, but because they had barkskin on... the hit obviously wasn't dodged or blocked, it just penetrate the druid's skin!" Versus "The druid might have had barkskin on, but that didn't matter because their DEX was +3, they had a shield for +2, and they were behind half-cover for +2, so obviously the hit was just so accurate nothing could stop it, not even the barky skin!"

Really? The shot was so accurate that the skin protection didn't matter? And what was the attack roll total? A 17! Hmm. And what was the AC to hit? 17! Really? THAT was the "super-accurate" attack? The one that just barely hit? I see. Yes. Yes, that is completely understandable. Makes perfect sense. How could I possibly have thought the narrative of barkskin didn't align to the mechanics?

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

A contrary opinion: If you want better AC, play a fighter or a paladin.

Every class has limitations and tradeoffs and balancers. Asking "how can I play this class without the limitations?" just seems, I dunno, greedy to me.

Druids have low AC. This balances their incredible amount of Hit Points (a level 2 moon druid could have 80+ HP in a day, as well as slots to cast healing spells).

 

[PsyzhranV2]

A contrary opinion: If you want better AC, play a fighter or a paladin.

Every class has limitations and tradeoffs and balancers. Asking "how can I play this class without the limitations?" just seems, I dunno, greedy to me.

Druids have low AC. This balances their incredible amount of Hit Points (a level 2 moon druid could have 80+ HP in a day, as well as slots to cast healing spells).

Then don't do this whole metal armour song and dance. Either they have Medium Armour proficiency or they don't.

 

[tetrasodium]

A contrary opinion: If you want better AC, play a fighter or a paladin.

Every class has limitations and tradeoffs and balancers. Asking "how can I play this class without the limitations?" just seems, I dunno, greedy to me.

Druids have low AC. This balances their incredible amount of Hit Points (a level 2 moon druid could have 80+ HP in a day, as well as slots to cast healing spells).

No actually. They have medium armor proficiency & can obtain heavy just like any other class via feat or MC. There is also the fact that absolutely nothing unique to a 5e druid that does not apply to any other 5e class if a 5e druid wears a type of armor not approved by Mielikki for druids. I've highlighted the relevant portion for you unless you can find some mechanical effect that applies to proficient druids wearing one of the highlighted types of armor from a 5e source. If you can please cite book title & page with a relevant quote

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I've highlighted the relevant portion for you

I'm confused. Some of those items you've highlighted are armour suits that a druid won't wear. It is pointless for a druid to gain heavy armour proficiency because they won't wear any of those heavy armour suits.

 

[tetrasodium]

No actually. They have medium armor proficiency & can obtain heavy just like any other class via feat or MC. There is also the fact that absolutely nothing unique to a 5e druid that does not apply to any other 5e class if a 5e druid wears a type of armor not approved by Mielikki for druids. I've highlighted the relevant portion for you unless you can find some mechanical effect that applies to proficient druids wearing one of the highlighted types of armor from a 5e source. If you can please cite book title & page with a relevant quote

I'm confused. Some of those items you've highlighted are armour suits that a druid won't wear. It is pointless for a druid to gain heavy armour proficiency because they won't wear any of those heavy armour suits.

Fixed your partial quote, the omission changes the meaning of what was said pretty badly. You wanna try again & cite what happens when a druid with free will who does not worship the FR specific god of nature known as Mielikki & instead chooses o follow one of the many other druidic sects already brought up in this thread? If you can please cite book title & page with a relevant quote for what happens.

 

[Weiley31]

Could do Bucket Armor.

 

[Immoralkickass]

I'm confused. Some of those items you've highlighted are armour suits that a druid won't wear. It is pointless for a druid to gain heavy armour proficiency because they won't wear any of those heavy armour suits.

Whose druid? Your druid or my druid?

 

[Iry]

A nice dwarven druid with heavy armor proficiency and blacksmithing tools.
"Metal is the bones of the world, a gift from the earth!"

 

[Harzel]

You are trying to narrate the type of hit that happened after the hit occurs...

The narration occurring after the mechanical outcome is determined and being dependent on it is what always happens in D&D, isn't it?

based entirely on what the druid's AC was at the time. "Well, the druid might have had a +2 DEX bonus and a shield, but because they had barkskin on... the hit obviously wasn't dodged or blocked, it just penetrate the druid's skin!" Versus "The druid might have had barkskin on, but that didn't matter because their DEX was +3, they had a shield for +2, and they were behind half-cover for +2, so obviously the hit was just so accurate nothing could stop it, not even the barky skin!"

While I am definitely not a fan of either the way the spell is written or Crawford's (most recent) interpretation, I think what @Charlaquin is suggesting can be boiled down to the notion of a layered defense. As long as one is willing to accept the somewhat abstracted notion that an attack either penetrates a defense unimpeded, or does not penetrate at all, and that there is no synergy between the layers, then keeping them separate up to the point of combining them with max( ) is an appropriate computation.

Now as you have observed, if you insist on a narration that takes into account what we know IRL about how physical defenses - shields, armor, cover, DEX, etc. - protect people, then you can make a case for that abstraction still being unsatisfying. However, a lot of (most?) DMs don't spend a lot of time on narrating exactly how a hit hits or how a miss misses. And, even if you want that kind of detail, I think you can almost get there. (And again, I think this is essentially what @Charlaquin was suggesting, restated a bit.) If you narrate Barkskin as defending against the force of an attack (which seems pretty reasonable), and all the things that make up your "non Barkskin" AC as being about avoidance, then you have more or less the situation that I described above - if an attack misses due to your avoidance defenses, then Barkskin doesn't matter, and if an attack gets by your avoidance defenses, then it's up to Barkskin to stop it (or not).

The additional assumption needed is that the force of a blow and its accuracy are perfectly correlated. And that seems to be what you are objecting to here.

Really? The shot was so accurate that the skin protection didn't matter? And what was the attack roll total? A 17! Hmm. And what was the AC to hit? 17! Really? THAT was the "super-accurate" attack? The one that just barely hit? I see. Yes. Yes, that is completely understandable. Makes perfect sense. How could I possibly have thought the narrative of barkskin didn't align to the mechanics?

The attack barely got by your avoidance defenses, but a 17 is a pretty forceful blow, and so it was able to penetrate your Barkskin. It's subjective, but the correlation doesn't seem to me to be that big a thing to handwave. Most people seem ok with abstracting the role of armor in defense in a way that seems more like avoidance than damage mitigation, so the (accuracy vs. avoidance) vs. (force vs. toughness) situation is already muddied quite a bit.