Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Help Tips & Tricks is wearing clothes count as armor?

So Astarion is wearing the Graceful Cloth. Multiclass him to Barbarian and he should have Unarmored Defense.

"While you are not wearing any armor, your armor class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Constitution modifier. You can use a shield and still gain this benefit."

Astarion AC remains the same. Is this a bug or intended?

AC10 is what you have naked. Try removing the clothes from Astarion and you will see that his AC remains at 10. Remove the armour from, e.g. Lae'zel and you will see her AC drop to 10 (assuming she is not wearing anything else which bumps AC).

The quote you posted tells you this:
"While you are not wearing any armor, your armor class equals 10 . . ."

Theres a lot of super nice AC10 clothes in the game, not just for spellcasters but for melee as well. These count as unarmoured, and if you want to use them theres a very easy way to overcome the AC loss with level 1 mage armour spell.

Alternatively if you make a draconic sorc, you have base AC13 unarmoured, so thats another nice thing for unarmoured casters, otherwise use the mage armour spell.

Bracers of defense also work, but by act 2 you are going to be swimming in a massive collection of better bracers to use, so again mage armour to use any of the nice AC10 clothes.

Wearing the AC10 clothes in the armour slot should not count as armour and your character should still get Unarmoured Defence if they have that feat. Though I have no idea of how that works or doesn't with a multiclass barbarian, and I've only got Karlach as a single class barbarian in my own playthrough.

EDIT: As I was about to level up Astarion in my own playthrough, I can confirm that Unarmoured Defence works in my game when he's muliclassed into a barbarian and wearning a robe. One thing, though, are you sure he's not wearing a helm, gloves or boots that are classed as armour? Those would also interfere with Unarmoured Defence.

His AC should still be above 10, even without the unarmoured trait, because the normal calculation should be 10 + Dex mod, wearing armour only modifies this calculation. As far as I know, the graceful cloth is literally clothing, so it shouldn't be interacting with that calculation in any way other than the extra Dex it's giving you (which should give you +1 to your AC normally).

I thought Astarion's Con was 14, which should be a +2 mod, meaning if you multiclassed into Barb and got unarmoured defence, his AC would go up by 2, assuming you're still only wearing clothing, but no actual armour. If that didn't happen, something isn't calculating correctly.

EDIT: mentioned it to a friend and they said to check your boots and gloves, because some of them technically count as armour, and will stop unarmoured defense from applying.

mage gear is not armour ... gloves, boots and helms can also count as armour

guys please enlighten me?

unarmored defense

he's naked there.. and you can see unarmored defense and base AC is 10.

so i just did a test.. if you cast mage armor then the game treat it as though he is wearing armor. this is wrong and not intended?

It is working as intended. You can only get base AC from one source. And mage armor counts as wearing armor.

Armor, Mage Armor, Barkskin, Unarmored Defense = none of them stack. The game will choose the highest value to set as your AC.

Make sure he's not wearing any gloves, boots, or helmet that count as armor. Clothing should allow for the Unarmored Defense boost.

Mage Armor does not stack with Unarmored Defense.

I'm not sure if Mage Armor counts as wearing armor.

"You touch a willing creature who isn’t wearing armor, and a protective magical force surrounds it until the spell ends. The target’s base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier. The spell ends if the target dons armor or if you dismiss the spell as an action."

Protective magical force surrounds it until spell ends. That doesn't sounds like it's wearing armor. The target's BASE AC BECOMES 13 + DEX modifier. Anyway i take it in TTRPG it still doesn't stack?

Also, is there a way to dismiss the spell as an action? It seems i could find it in the UI.

No, you can only use 1 AC calculation at a time, so unarmoured defence won't stack with mage armour, or the draconic Sorcerer's scales, or the Monk's version of unarmoured defence (just in case you want to try multi-classing Monk and Barb).

Pretty much the only stacking AC effects in 5e now come from putting on a shield, and then putting on a magical item like the aforementioned bracers of defence.

unfortunately you can't dismiss mage armour, you're going to have to long rest to make it expire, or try using dispel magic.