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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Persus13]

Yeah, it's more of a game design decision than a realistic one. Hence why I said if your DM is okay with it you're fine.

[Grim Portent]

Yeah the way AC works in 5e makes the various sources of higher AC unstackable by making them different calculations, not bonuses. Part of the bounded accuracy concept they used to avoid massive numbers bloat and keep basic enemies able to hit the big boys.

Lizardfolk Natural Armour calculates AC as 13 + Dex.

Monks Unarmoured Defense calculates it as 10 + Dex + Wis.

So your AC should be 16 from the Monk's UD feature.


The alternative is players being able to stack multiple sources of UD and NA, like say a Loxodon Barbarian which would wind up with 12 + Con + Con + Dex, which could work out with an AC close to or exceeding the goddess Tiamat at level 1.

[NullForceOmega]

Actually 3 and 3.5 at least had a clear statement that like bonuses did not stack, so you could have only one of those two Con in the equation.  I can clearly see why they would change that further, as it still leads to obscene total values.

[Persus13]

Yeah, that one just doesn't make sense. Natural shouldn't stack with armor of course, but I'm not wearing armor to begin with.

Yeah, it's more of a game design decision than a realistic one. Hence why I said if your DM is okay with it you're fine.

Yeah the way AC works in 5e makes the various sources of higher AC unstackable by making them different calculations, not bonuses.

Yeah, I need a different way to start my posts.

[Rolan7]

I find myself doing that a lot too, yeah.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah, yeah.

[NullForceOmega]

There is a new addendum to the OP, it isn't a new rule or anything, I just want to let people who care know that I really am open to discussion of my curation methods in PM.  If you have concerns, questions or just feel the need to tell me that you don't agree with me I will do everything I can to listen and adapt.

[Grim Portent]

Actually 3 and 3.5 at least had a clear statement that like bonuses did not stack, so you could have only one of those two Con in the equation.  I can clearly see why they would change that further, as it still leads to obscene total values.

As I recall you could stack your stats to AC, for example some options let you add Charisma as a Deflection Bonus to your AC, another as an Untyped Bonus, another as an Enhancement Bonus, and so on. You just couldn't add it as a Deflection Bonus twice because you can only have one Deflection Bonus, and one NA bonus and so on.

[NullForceOmega]

Yes, that was my meaning, I guess my explanation was a bit sloppy tho'.

[Grim Portent]

I think there was a Paladin-esque build that had Cha to AC four times from multiple sources? Something insane like that anyway.

Wasn't a very good build mind you, AC was fairly unimportant by the level all the sources came online.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I believe I saw a fully book compliant build that got 25 AC at level 1, forget exactly what the combination was. Apparently that one is the limit for starting AC.

[Criptfeind]

Yeah, that one just doesn't make sense. Natural shouldn't stack with armor of course, but I'm not wearing armor to begin with.

I dunno, I don't think it makes any more or less sense then natural armor not stacking with normal armor. After all, what armor actually is and trying to represent is pretty fluid, if it's the ability to directly stop a blow, stacking makes sense, if it's to dodge or turn away a blow, less so, but since everything goes into this one stat I think that all we can say is that it's all of the various ways you can imagine armor rolled into one gamey stat. And, with that in mind, I think it makes a lot of sense that they aren't allowed to stack. At the least because of the need to avoid AC 27 Tortles running around.

[Kagus]

Yeah, there was actually a tweet specifically about natural armor vs. class armor in 5e. Official ruling from Crawford is "you can't stack them, you pick either one and go with that".

I believe I saw a fully book compliant build that got 25 AC at level 1, forget exactly what the combination was. Apparently that one is the limit for starting AC.

Damn dude. That's without a Shield spell, right?

[Telgin]

This discussion of AC makes me wonder how things might have been different if D&D 5e scrapped the idea of armor making you harder to hit and made it about being harder to hurt you.  That could have also helped solve the bounded accuracy problem and remove some strangeness related to stacking AC and what AC means.

I know there are optional rules for converting AC to DR, but I'd really like to see that be more official.  Kind of like the wound point + vitality point system they used for the Star Wars D20 game, which helped explain how people got better at not dying by leveling up and also made critical hits really dangerous.  Then again, it would be a pretty fundamental change to D&D's mechanics and I imagine people would balk at the idea of armor only being helpful against wound points, which in turn makes tanks a very unappealing archetype suddenly.

[Criptfeind]

I think probably the biggest change would be you'd have to find a way to balance many small attacks vs few big attacks, which would of course be disproportional be effected by the change.

It's probably doable to balance, but it's a bit awkward and imo the reason why most of these conversions aren't (in my mind) as good as the simpler current system.