And now you should understand why a Tortle doesn't benefit from Unarmored Defense if it is choosing to use the Natural Armor AC calculation. 👍
I mean, combining calculations obviously isn't RAW, but it does make logical sense, at least. As long as the DM lets everybody else get cool stuff, it should be fine.
The AC at level 20 comes out to 24 (17+7, or 17+7+2 for 26 if you have a shield, but why would you want to?) and you get to focus on Stremgth and Constitution and dump Dexterity, but it would work for a high powered game.
Yeah. when I said I would let the ACs stack, I meant as long as they stayed within the restrictions of the rules for the racial AC. If a Tortle can't get a DEX bonus to AC normally, then it wouldn't get one from stacking with a Barbarian or Monk Unarmored Defense.So, a level 1 Tortle Barb with +3 to CON would have a starting AC of 20 or 22 if (s)he has a shield. A Heavy Plating Warforged Forge Cleric using Blessing of the Forge on its shield has a starting AC of 21 at level 1, so these rules as clarified aren't that bad at all. Also, a Warforged using its Heavy Plating setting counts as wearing armor according to it's racial rules, so it wouldn't benefit form Unarmored Defense anyway, let alone any of the abilities granted from Barbarian Rage, due to it being classified as Heavy Armor(hence the lack of a DEX bonus and needing to have proficiency in Heavy Armor in order to even use the setting). Now, if it was using it's Darkwood Core setting, it counts as not wearing armor. the calculation there is 11+Dex+ proficiency if you can use Light Armor (which Barbarians can). Even if you add that proficiency bonus, you still count as being unarmored, however. An unarmored Warforged barbarian using the rules as I would run them Would have an AC of 11+ DEX + CON+ Proficiency. Assuming a Dex mod of +3 and a Con mod of +3, this would put a level 1 Unarmored Warforged Barbarian at an AC of 19, or 21 if they have a Shield.
And now you should understand why a Tortle doesn't benefit from Unarmored Defense if it is choosing to use the Natural Armor AC calculation. 👍
Comparing a Tortle's shell to A Warforged's Heavy Plating setting (which I'm certain you are trying to do by putting those two parts of my quote in bold print) doesn't match up. Warforged can turn off the Heavy Plates and switch to a different mode, kind of like taking off a suit of armor and putting on a different one. A Tortle can't turn off its shell. Period. That is literally a Tortle's natural state, like how the Darkwood Core is a Warforged's natural state.
The tortle race on it's own with it's AC calculation has learned to use it's shell to protect itself. Whether that is turning to the side to let the blow bounce off the shell. Retracting a limb inside of the shell at a crucial moment to avoid the blow. Or perhaps using the balance of it's body to pull it in an odd direction out of the way.
The Barbarian on the other hand being the primitive and somewhat reckless pile of muscle that it is fight almost completely counter to this. The barbarian learns instead to brace and flex muscles to receive the incoming blow. Using it's mass behind it's weapon to turn a blow aside without the reverberation turning his hands numb, and to retain a focused level of strength longer than the attacker can try to push their weapon into a damaging position when blocking. Or just plain stepping out of the way of the blow to begin with.
Depending on the style of fighting your doing. You can only decide to do one or the other. Not both. Trying to do both is just going to get you hit. Because they are going to require you to position yourself differently. To react in different ways and to take different followups to protect yourself from additional blows.
Hm. I know I'm late to the party here, but I'm going to add on to the pile and state that the fact that a barbarian doesn't simply add their constitution modifier to AC seems like an oversight to me. I'd be much more likely to say that "Unarmored Defense" doesn't stack with "Unarmored Defense" for my games, so no Barb/Monk Hybrids break my game. (27 AC at level 20, but there's other reasons to discourage this -- notably the combination of immunity/resistances,)
RAW, these things do not stack, however I would more than allow it in my games, as I believe that the maximum AC this gives a Barbarian, 27 (with 26 CON and Shield) is not that much more efficient than the RAW barbarian 25 (with 20 DEX and 26 CON and Shield), Additionally, you lose all ranged capabilities if you choose to dump DEX to get this idea working, severely hampering your barbarian in the long run as getting into melee isn't always the easiest thing, especially with flying enemies. I do see that this frees you up to focus strength even harder, and this can lead to you being EXTRA good in melee, but I don't see that as being more useful than say.. specifically choosing a race to maximize a specific stat so you don't have to build higher into it. You also lose your DEX Save when doing this, which can be DEBILITATING when faced with area spells that you have no real means to avoid, as Barbarians don't get Evasion in 5e, I believe. Hiding in the shell basically doesn't count as a fighting armor class, as you can't fight in the shell, more survival, which I think is fine as well, even though it bumps you up to 31 at max.
The biggest issue I see with this is that early on this Tortle would be VERY hard to crack, starting with +3 in CON and a shield would give them a 22 AC, which can be difficult for low level threats to break. For reference, a 1st level human barbarian with a +3 in CON and DEX and a shield is at 18 AC.
As a DM, there are several easy responses to this. Off the top of my head; More magic users, more Save based abilities, more status conditions in fights, more damaging enemies, more diseases, more ability damage, anything that does less "Hit 'em directly on the AC'. Give the player their moments, of course. Let them be the big damn hero they clearly want to be if they're a Tortle Barbarian with a shield (if they don't take a shield, don't even worry, they're not THAT much better than a normal barbarian that specs DEX/CON)
Going off math for just rolling hits in 5e, Wolves at level 1 get a +4 to hit, meaning that this Tortle/Human just tanking main hits still has a 10%/30% chance to be hit. By level 4, AC Rises to 23/19, attacks average +6 to hit, meaning a 15%/35% chance to be hit on any given attack for our defensive Tortle/Human Barbarian. By level 8, which is where the Tortle build caps its AC at a glorious 24 (until level 20, And the human increases to 20), enemies are now hitting with +8 to hit, giving them a 20%/40% chance to be hit. This goes steadily up for the tortle (though the Human gets closer) by the level until Level 19, where the average to be hit is +14, which is a 50%/60% chance to hit. At level 20, this is +15 on average to hit vs an AC of 27/25, giving our Tortle/Human Barb a 40%/50% chance to be hit.
Just doing the math, this becomes less of a problem as the game goes on and isn't even really THAT big of a problem before if you make enemies that are smart. If worse comes to worst, you can always nerf the combo slightly with a 15 + CON and literally drag it in line with a normal barbarian.
The big differences between this Tortle and the Human are that the Human can tank AoE effects a whole hell of a lot better than the Tortle can, because he will make DEX saves and the Tortle probably will not, where the Tortle is likely to have higher strength and therefore be slightly more accurate and damaging. Given the prevalence of AoE effects in high level play, I think the Human holds their own against (if not slightly edges out) the Tortle, in sheer survival, where the Tortle (ironically) edges out the human in Damage.
This also assumes that dexterity enhancing magical items are off the table for the Human barbarian, as those could easily match or exceed the Tortle's shell bonus, and assumes the human barbarian cannot acquire armor that doesn't hinder unarmored defense magically (which I'm sure some DMs have created to get barbarians to use their proficiency.)
Tl;Dr: The math says that Tortles getting the CON portion of Unarmored Defense isn't too bad, so long as you pay attention as a GM, threaten the whole party, use spells that require saves slightly more frequently and generally make magic slightly more prevalent early in the game.
As for a lore reason why this would work -- I've always seen the Unarmored Defense of the Barbarian as sheer physical toughness through training or struggle. The toughening of their hide from abuse and sheer determination causing them to be more difficult to land a telling blow on, this could easily work on the fleshy bits of the tortle AND the shell, assuming you flavor it right.
This was done a long time ago but I still just had a quickie of a question.
In the Tortle racial traits it states that it's dexterity modifier isn't added to the bonus of 17. With that in mind, wouldn't that remove the additional Dexterity bonus gained from the unarmored defense from the Barbarian class?
This was done a long time ago but I still just had a quickie of a question.
In the Tortle racial traits it states that it's dexterity modifier isn't added to the bonus of 17. With that in mind, wouldn't that remove the additional Dexterity bonus gained from the unarmored defense from the Barbarian class?
No - because they are two wholly separate AC calculations. They would only impact one-another if one or the other specifically said so - and they don't.
This was done a long time ago but I still just had a quickie of a question.
In the Tortle racial traits it states that it's dexterity modifier isn't added to the bonus of 17. With that in mind, wouldn't that remove the additional Dexterity bonus gained from the unarmored defense from the Barbarian class?
No - because they are two wholly separate AC calculations. They would only impact one-another if one or the other specifically said so - and they don't.
This. In essence. Think of Alternate Armor calculations as different pieces of armor. Even though Tortle's armor calculation and unarmored Defense are not physical items. The choice is still the same. Your choosing between what is effectively one suit of the armor and the next. Much in the same way that you might choose between Light armor and medium armor and how you figure out your armor rating between them is different between those two classifications. So you can only "wear" one at a time no matter how many they have and they do not affect any other one you can "wear" when your not wearing them.
With one player that I had that was having trouble with this. She and I sat down. We made entries on her sheet for the alternate AC calculations she had as if they were pieces of armor. And then she "equipped them" and unequppied another armor when she wanted to use them. Just like she would do with any other equipment. This helped her understand how they applied compared to each other.
If I am reading the wording correctly, the tortles natural armor sets the BASE AC to 17, unaffected by dexterity, whereas a class feature such as barbarian or monk places the BASE AC to 10 + Dex + wis/con, so this would fall under the same situation as when you are playing a lizardfolk with a Base of 13+dex, or when casting mage armor on yourself. You can only benefit from one of those at a time as it's the base and not a bonus, and they cannot stack.
If I am reading the wording correctly, the tortles natural armor sets the BASE AC to 17, unaffected by dexterity, whereas a class feature such as barbarian or monk places the BASE AC to 10 + Dex + wis/con, so this would fall under the same situation as when you are playing a lizardfolk with a Base of 13+dex, or when casting mage armor on yourself. You can only benefit from one of those at a time as it's the base and not a bonus, and they cannot stack.
Basically a unarmored character has a AC of 10 + DEX mod. Any racial trait or class ability/spell and in some cases equipment that can replace unarmored AC would replace it with whatever is listed. You cannot stack features that replace unarmored AC so you have to pick one to use if you have access to more than one feature that replaces unarmored AC.
It depends on the build your going for, 17 is great at low levels, but it also makes it so you can't improve your armor as it specifies Tortles gain no benefits from wearing armor. That means if you want that +3 plate mail for the 21 armor bonus in the late game, you're out of luck. For early game, it's a major boon for casters without armor proficiency, less so for classes and subclasses that get access to heavy armor.
It depends on the build your going for, 17 is great at low levels, but it also makes it so you can't improve your armor as it specifies Tortles gain no benefits from wearing armor. That means if you want that +3 plate mail for the 21 armor bonus in the late game, you're out of luck. For early game, it's a major boon for casters without armor proficiency, less so for classes and subclasses that get access to heavy armor.
A Barbarian would never be wearing Plate Mail anyway. So I'm not sure why you felt this was a fitting example.
And it's still a boon for classes that get access to heavy armor for the most part because it effectively is heavy armor. The ones that it is not really a boon for are the ones that have ways to buff armor for themselves.
Sorry, lost track of the original question there. For Barbarians, the 17 is great for a high AC that is not reliant on maxing your dex and con, letting you focus on your strength for a bit with the option to improve those stats later or simply improve it with shields or defense magic items.
Further question to this: if you were using the barbarian's AC calculation (if it came to more than 17) and then retracted into your shell using Shell Defence, would you be getting an AC of 10+dex+con+4, or of 17+4?
if a player rolled well for dex & con, you could have +4 in both, so would you have 21 or 22 as AC if retracted? RAW it looks like it's your choice, though logic would say just shell!
Further question to this: if you were using the barbarian's AC calculation (if it came to more than 17) and then retracted into your shell using Shell Defence, would you be getting an AC of 10+dex+con+4, or of 17+4?
The Shell Defense ability is an AC bonus - like shields - which means it would work with any AC calculation that you're currently using.
Personally, I see "10" in Unarmored Defense as the natural AC of every creature you can play. But given that the Tortle has 17, I would calculate it as "17 + Dex + Wis". It stupid, but its fun to see as a DM. Makes it a challenge for me.
Personally, I see "10" in Unarmored Defense as the natural AC of every creature you can play. But given that the Tortle has 17, I would calculate it as "17 + Dex + Wis". It stupid, but its fun to see as a DM. Makes it a challenge for me.
Why? This isn't even remotely correct, and it just means you'll have a player that can almost never be hit by anything.
A Tortle's natural armour is AC 17 and that's it; if 10 + DEX/CON or 10 + DEX/WIS exceed it, then you use those instead. It already gives Tortles a big boost on AC with classes that don't normally have a great AC score without extra work, it doesn't need to be made more powerful IMO.
I mean, combining calculations obviously isn't RAW, but it does make logical sense, at least. As long as the DM lets everybody else get cool stuff, it should be fine.
The AC at level 20 comes out to 24 (17+7, or 17+7+2 for 26 if you have a shield, but why would you want to?) and you get to focus on Stremgth and Constitution and dump Dexterity, but it would work for a high powered game.
Comparing a Tortle's shell to A Warforged's Heavy Plating setting (which I'm certain you are trying to do by putting those two parts of my quote in bold print) doesn't match up. Warforged can turn off the Heavy Plates and switch to a different mode, kind of like taking off a suit of armor and putting on a different one. A Tortle can't turn off its shell. Period. That is literally a Tortle's natural state, like how the Darkwood Core is a Warforged's natural state.
They can't. Warforged plating is not a suit of armor, it's their body. It is not a valid target.
Let me help with the realism.
The tortle race on it's own with it's AC calculation has learned to use it's shell to protect itself. Whether that is turning to the side to let the blow bounce off the shell. Retracting a limb inside of the shell at a crucial moment to avoid the blow. Or perhaps using the balance of it's body to pull it in an odd direction out of the way.
The Barbarian on the other hand being the primitive and somewhat reckless pile of muscle that it is fight almost completely counter to this. The barbarian learns instead to brace and flex muscles to receive the incoming blow. Using it's mass behind it's weapon to turn a blow aside without the reverberation turning his hands numb, and to retain a focused level of strength longer than the attacker can try to push their weapon into a damaging position when blocking. Or just plain stepping out of the way of the blow to begin with.
Depending on the style of fighting your doing. You can only decide to do one or the other. Not both. Trying to do both is just going to get you hit. Because they are going to require you to position yourself differently. To react in different ways and to take different followups to protect yourself from additional blows.
I think Fateless's explanation makes the most sense to explain the difference and why there's a logical reason that you couldn't just combine the two.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Hm. I know I'm late to the party here, but I'm going to add on to the pile and state that the fact that a barbarian doesn't simply add their constitution modifier to AC seems like an oversight to me. I'd be much more likely to say that "Unarmored Defense" doesn't stack with "Unarmored Defense" for my games, so no Barb/Monk Hybrids break my game. (27 AC at level 20, but there's other reasons to discourage this -- notably the combination of immunity/resistances,)
RAW, these things do not stack, however I would more than allow it in my games, as I believe that the maximum AC this gives a Barbarian, 27 (with 26 CON and Shield) is not that much more efficient than the RAW barbarian 25 (with 20 DEX and 26 CON and Shield), Additionally, you lose all ranged capabilities if you choose to dump DEX to get this idea working, severely hampering your barbarian in the long run as getting into melee isn't always the easiest thing, especially with flying enemies. I do see that this frees you up to focus strength even harder, and this can lead to you being EXTRA good in melee, but I don't see that as being more useful than say.. specifically choosing a race to maximize a specific stat so you don't have to build higher into it. You also lose your DEX Save when doing this, which can be DEBILITATING when faced with area spells that you have no real means to avoid, as Barbarians don't get Evasion in 5e, I believe. Hiding in the shell basically doesn't count as a fighting armor class, as you can't fight in the shell, more survival, which I think is fine as well, even though it bumps you up to 31 at max.
The biggest issue I see with this is that early on this Tortle would be VERY hard to crack, starting with +3 in CON and a shield would give them a 22 AC, which can be difficult for low level threats to break. For reference, a 1st level human barbarian with a +3 in CON and DEX and a shield is at 18 AC.
As a DM, there are several easy responses to this. Off the top of my head; More magic users, more Save based abilities, more status conditions in fights, more damaging enemies, more diseases, more ability damage, anything that does less "Hit 'em directly on the AC'. Give the player their moments, of course. Let them be the big damn hero they clearly want to be if they're a Tortle Barbarian with a shield (if they don't take a shield, don't even worry, they're not THAT much better than a normal barbarian that specs DEX/CON)
Going off math for just rolling hits in 5e, Wolves at level 1 get a +4 to hit, meaning that this Tortle/Human just tanking main hits still has a 10%/30% chance to be hit. By level 4, AC Rises to 23/19, attacks average +6 to hit, meaning a 15%/35% chance to be hit on any given attack for our defensive Tortle/Human Barbarian. By level 8, which is where the Tortle build caps its AC at a glorious 24 (until level 20, And the human increases to 20), enemies are now hitting with +8 to hit, giving them a 20%/40% chance to be hit. This goes steadily up for the tortle (though the Human gets closer) by the level until Level 19, where the average to be hit is +14, which is a 50%/60% chance to hit. At level 20, this is +15 on average to hit vs an AC of 27/25, giving our Tortle/Human Barb a 40%/50% chance to be hit.
Just doing the math, this becomes less of a problem as the game goes on and isn't even really THAT big of a problem before if you make enemies that are smart. If worse comes to worst, you can always nerf the combo slightly with a 15 + CON and literally drag it in line with a normal barbarian.
The big differences between this Tortle and the Human are that the Human can tank AoE effects a whole hell of a lot better than the Tortle can, because he will make DEX saves and the Tortle probably will not, where the Tortle is likely to have higher strength and therefore be slightly more accurate and damaging. Given the prevalence of AoE effects in high level play, I think the Human holds their own against (if not slightly edges out) the Tortle, in sheer survival, where the Tortle (ironically) edges out the human in Damage.
This also assumes that dexterity enhancing magical items are off the table for the Human barbarian, as those could easily match or exceed the Tortle's shell bonus, and assumes the human barbarian cannot acquire armor that doesn't hinder unarmored defense magically (which I'm sure some DMs have created to get barbarians to use their proficiency.)
Tl;Dr: The math says that Tortles getting the CON portion of Unarmored Defense isn't too bad, so long as you pay attention as a GM, threaten the whole party, use spells that require saves slightly more frequently and generally make magic slightly more prevalent early in the game.
As for a lore reason why this would work -- I've always seen the Unarmored Defense of the Barbarian as sheer physical toughness through training or struggle. The toughening of their hide from abuse and sheer determination causing them to be more difficult to land a telling blow on, this could easily work on the fleshy bits of the tortle AND the shell, assuming you flavor it right.
This was done a long time ago but I still just had a quickie of a question.
In the Tortle racial traits it states that it's dexterity modifier isn't added to the bonus of 17. With that in mind, wouldn't that remove the additional Dexterity bonus gained from the unarmored defense from the Barbarian class?
No - because they are two wholly separate AC calculations. They would only impact one-another if one or the other specifically said so - and they don't.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
This. In essence. Think of Alternate Armor calculations as different pieces of armor. Even though Tortle's armor calculation and unarmored Defense are not physical items. The choice is still the same. Your choosing between what is effectively one suit of the armor and the next. Much in the same way that you might choose between Light armor and medium armor and how you figure out your armor rating between them is different between those two classifications. So you can only "wear" one at a time no matter how many they have and they do not affect any other one you can "wear" when your not wearing them.
With one player that I had that was having trouble with this. She and I sat down. We made entries on her sheet for the alternate AC calculations she had as if they were pieces of armor. And then she "equipped them" and unequppied another armor when she wanted to use them. Just like she would do with any other equipment. This helped her understand how they applied compared to each other.
If I am reading the wording correctly, the tortles natural armor sets the BASE AC to 17, unaffected by dexterity, whereas a class feature such as barbarian or monk places the BASE AC to 10 + Dex + wis/con, so this would fall under the same situation as when you are playing a lizardfolk with a Base of 13+dex, or when casting mage armor on yourself. You can only benefit from one of those at a time as it's the base and not a bonus, and they cannot stack.
Basically a unarmored character has a AC of 10 + DEX mod. Any racial trait or class ability/spell and in some cases equipment that can replace unarmored AC would replace it with whatever is listed. You cannot stack features that replace unarmored AC so you have to pick one to use if you have access to more than one feature that replaces unarmored AC.
And now i have a goal too aim for .. i so want try this
It depends on the build your going for, 17 is great at low levels, but it also makes it so you can't improve your armor as it specifies Tortles gain no benefits from wearing armor. That means if you want that +3 plate mail for the 21 armor bonus in the late game, you're out of luck. For early game, it's a major boon for casters without armor proficiency, less so for classes and subclasses that get access to heavy armor.
A Barbarian would never be wearing Plate Mail anyway. So I'm not sure why you felt this was a fitting example.
And it's still a boon for classes that get access to heavy armor for the most part because it effectively is heavy armor. The ones that it is not really a boon for are the ones that have ways to buff armor for themselves.
Sorry, lost track of the original question there. For Barbarians, the 17 is great for a high AC that is not reliant on maxing your dex and con, letting you focus on your strength for a bit with the option to improve those stats later or simply improve it with shields or defense magic items.
Further question to this: if you were using the barbarian's AC calculation (if it came to more than 17) and then retracted into your shell using Shell Defence, would you be getting an AC of 10+dex+con+4, or of 17+4?
if a player rolled well for dex & con, you could have +4 in both, so would you have 21 or 22 as AC if retracted? RAW it looks like it's your choice, though logic would say just shell!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread - latest release; the Harvest Sprite, a playable Jack-o-Lantern Race!
Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: The College of Fisticuffs Bard!
I also dabble in art on here (my art thread)
The Shell Defense ability is an AC bonus - like shields - which means it would work with any AC calculation that you're currently using.
Mega Yahtzee Thread:
Highest 41: brocker2001 (#11,285).
Yahtzee of 2's: Emmber (#36,161).
Lowest 9: JoeltheWalrus (#312), Emmber (#12,505) and Dertinus (#20,953).
Personally, I see "10" in Unarmored Defense as the natural AC of every creature you can play. But given that the Tortle has 17, I would calculate it as "17 + Dex + Wis". It stupid, but its fun to see as a DM. Makes it a challenge for me.
Why? This isn't even remotely correct, and it just means you'll have a player that can almost never be hit by anything.
A Tortle's natural armour is AC 17 and that's it; if 10 + DEX/CON or 10 + DEX/WIS exceed it, then you use those instead. It already gives Tortles a big boost on AC with classes that don't normally have a great AC score without extra work, it doesn't need to be made more powerful IMO.
Characters: Bullette, Chortle, Dracarys Noir, Edward Merryspell, Habard Ashery, Legion, Peregrine
My Homebrew: Feats | Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Races
Guides: Creating Sub-Races Using Trait Options
WIP (feedback needed): Blood Mage, Chromatic Sorcerers, Summoner, Trickster Domain, Unlucky, Way of the Daoist (Drunken Master), Weapon Smith
Please don't reply to my posts unless you've read what they actually say.
Sucks that you can't use both!