Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7920516" data-attributes="member: 6857506">I'll just note here upon reading further in the &quot;Rules Answers&quot; that I linked, it seems that Crawford himself provided a different (and incompatible) interpretation of Barkskin sometime previous to authoring that Rules Answers.&nbsp; I can't find the tweet with the previous interpretation, but from what he says it seems likely that it said that shields, at least, would stack with Barkskin.&nbsp; Furthermore, in the Rules Answers he characterizes his new ruling as &quot;also supported by the text&quot;, implying that he views his previous ruling as being &quot;supported by the text&quot;.&nbsp; FWIW.&quot;Logic&quot; can sometimes be overrated.&nbsp; Even if one's logic is impeccable, it is really one's assumptions that are the main determinant of one's conclusions.&nbsp; And it now occurs to me that a critical difference between your view of Barkskin and mine is that you seem to be assuming (correct me if I am mistaken) that &quot;AC&quot; or &quot;Armor Class&quot;, when unqualified can be taken to mean, unambiguously, the armor class value with all bonuses and penalties included.&nbsp; Now on one hand it is true, AFAIK, that 5e does not give us any nomenclature for this value other than &quot;AC&quot;.&nbsp; (Any of &quot;effective&quot;, &quot;total&quot;, or &quot;final&quot; might have done nicely as qualifiers in this regard; oh, well.)&nbsp; However, it is also true that there are numerous places in the rules where &quot;AC&quot; is used and they mean &quot;base AC&quot;.&nbsp; So I think it is reasonable to assert that &quot;AC&quot; is ambiguous, and that it is a plausible assumption that &quot;AC&quot; might mean &quot;base AC&quot;.&nbsp; And it seems to me that is a matter of judgement, not of logic.At least for the way I go about things, this seems backwards.&nbsp; I don't come to a new spell description with a &quot;my view of the fiction&quot; already set.&nbsp; (Does anyone do this?&nbsp; What would such a view of the fiction be based on?)&nbsp; I look at the fluff and the mechanics and if I can figure out a fiction that fits, I'm generally fine with that.I guess there is a vague consistency requirement among the individual fictions for various spells and other rules.&nbsp; I suppose that imposes some sort of not very well-defined constraints.&nbsp; Maybe that's what you were getting at?&nbsp; The fiction for RAI Barkskin might not be strictly inconsistent with the fiction for everything else, but it is... novel.In my view, both of those are going on, and that contributes to the discussion being challenging.Yes, sort of.&nbsp; I wasn't really conscious of the fact that &quot;base AC&quot; is used several places in the rules, so thanks for pointing that out.&nbsp; Unfortunately, not only do they not use &quot;base AC&quot; everywhere they mean it, they actually never define the concept.&nbsp; The section on Armor tells you one way to calculate it, although they only use the term once, and then just use Armor Class or AC everywhere else in the section.&nbsp; And just to increase the degree of difficulty for anyone reading closely, we start out with this:And then this:Soooo, which of these is my &quot;base Armor Class&quot; again?And, as you point out, Mage Armor gives us this:And that could make you wonder whether shields stack with Mage Armor, since in the section on Armor, shields seem to be part of &quot;base AC&quot;, but Mage Armor doesn't mention them as part of &quot;base AC&quot;.&nbsp; My point?&nbsp; The whole discussion of AC in the PH is a hot mess.Fortunately, you can sort of bumble through all this and get the right answer with a bit of guesswork and use of context, and in that same Rules Answers Crawford clarifies base AC calculations fairly well.&nbsp; Even there, though, he just cannot seem to get himself to use the phrase &quot;base AC&quot; consistently.But like I said, it's all sort of, kind of fine until they got to the place - Barkskin - where they really needed to make a clear distinction and where there was no context that could help, and they just didn't have the vocabulary to make their intent clear.&nbsp; Although, I suspect that another thing that probably was going on was an instance of the way language usage not only expresses the way people think, but also shapes it.&nbsp; Had they made the small extra effort to define &quot;base AC&quot; and whatever distinctive and unambiguous name you want to pick for the other thing - total AC, effective AC, whatever - and then used those terms consistently, when they got to writing Barkskin it would have been very natural to pause and think, &quot;Say, what is it that I really mean here?&quot;&nbsp; They would have had to choose between the terms, and, therefore, between the concepts.&nbsp; As it was, I think quite possibly they didn't really know what their intent was when they wrote it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Harzel, post: 7920516, member: 6857506"] I'll just note here upon reading further in the "Rules Answers" that I linked, it seems that Crawford himself provided a different (and incompatible) interpretation of [I]Barkskin [/I]sometime previous to authoring that Rules Answers. I can't find the tweet with the previous interpretation, but from what he says it seems likely that it said that shields, at least, would stack with [I]Barkskin.[/I] Furthermore, in the Rules Answers he characterizes his new ruling as "also supported by the text", implying that he views his previous ruling as being "supported by the text". FWIW. "Logic" can sometimes be overrated. Even if one's logic is impeccable, it is really one's assumptions that are the main determinant of one's conclusions. And it now occurs to me that a critical difference between your view of [I]Barkskin [/I]and mine is that you seem to be assuming (correct me if I am mistaken) that "AC" or "Armor Class", when unqualified can be taken to mean, unambiguously, the armor class value with all bonuses and penalties included. Now on one hand it is true, AFAIK, that 5e does not give us any nomenclature for this value other than "AC". (Any of "effective", "total", or "final" might have done nicely as qualifiers in this regard; oh, well.) However, it is also true that there are numerous places in the rules where "AC" is used and they mean "base AC". So I think it is reasonable to assert that "AC" is ambiguous, and that it is a plausible assumption that "AC" might mean "base AC". And it seems to me that is a matter of judgement, not of logic. At least for the way I go about things, this seems backwards. I don't come to a new spell description with a "my view of the fiction" already set. (Does anyone do this? What would such a view of the fiction be based on?) I look at the fluff and the mechanics and if I can figure out a fiction that fits, I'm generally fine with that. I guess there is a vague consistency requirement among the individual fictions for various spells and other rules. I suppose that imposes some sort of not very well-defined constraints. Maybe that's what you were getting at? The fiction for RAI Barkskin might not be strictly inconsistent with the fiction for everything else, but it is... novel. In my view, both of those are going on, and that contributes to the discussion being challenging. Yes, sort of. I wasn't really conscious of the fact that "base AC" is used several places in the rules, so thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, not only do they not use "base AC" everywhere they mean it, they actually never define the concept. The section on Armor tells you one way to calculate it, although they only use the term once, and then just use Armor Class or AC everywhere else in the section. And just to increase the degree of difficulty for anyone reading closely, we start out with this: And then this: Soooo, which of these is my "base Armor Class" again? And, as you point out, [I]Mage Armor [/I]gives us this: And that [I]could[/I] make you wonder whether shields stack with [I]Mage Armor, [/I]since in the section on Armor, shields seem to be part of "base AC", but [I]Mage Armor [/I]doesn't mention them as part of "base AC". My point? The whole discussion of AC in the PH is a hot mess. Fortunately, you can sort of bumble through all this and get the right answer with a bit of guesswork and use of context, and in that same Rules Answers Crawford clarifies base AC calculations fairly well. Even there, though, he just cannot seem to get himself to use the phrase "base AC" consistently. But like I said, it's all sort of, kind of fine [I]until [/I]they got to the place - [I]Barkskin [/I]- where they really needed to make a clear distinction and where there was no context that could help, and they just didn't have the vocabulary to make their intent clear. Although, I suspect that another thing that probably was going on was an instance of the way language usage not only expresses the way people think, but also shapes it. Had they made the small extra effort to define "base AC" and whatever distinctive and unambiguous name you want to pick for the other thing - total AC, effective AC, whatever - and then used those terms consistently, when they got to writing [I]Barkskin [/I]it would have been very natural to pause and think, "Say, what is it that I really mean here?" They would have had to choose between the terms, and, therefore, between the concepts. As it was, I think quite possibly they didn't really know what their intent was when they wrote it. [/QUOTE]

Verification