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#760061 26/02/21 05:59 PM
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In bear form I am able to get 17 AC.

12 AC from natural armor
3 AC from mage armor (cast by Gale *before* I transformed, but remains when I switch to bear form)
2 AC from shield of faith.

Its not entirely clear to me whether these are bugs or intended (although in this case the shield of faith is definitely a bug, because Shadowheart was removed from group after she cast it, and is sitting in camp where she cannot fail a concentration roll, definitely broken IMO).

I do suspect that 17 AC in bear form will be unbalanced at very low level, at least. I *think* that the mage armor should set AC to 13 + Dex bonus, which implies to me at least that it should not stack with the bears natural armor. I would be happy to receive informed correction on this point though.

dwig #760332 27/02/21 02:23 AM
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Mage Armour: "The target’s base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier" meaning the spell is a distinct AC calculation from natural armour, kind of like how barbarians can't simultaneously use Unarmoured Defence AND get a bonus from medium armour.
Shield of Faith: "A shimmering field appears and surrounds a creature of your choice within range, granting it a +2 bonus to AC for the duration" so that should work with any sort of AC calculation because it's just a bonus. This much definitely checks out

So if bears have a +2 dex bonus, and I don't think they do, 17 would be correct. Otherwise the game isn't properly differentiating between natural armour & mage armour as separate armour class calculations.

Last edited by Koshchei; 27/02/21 02:23 AM.
dwig #760342 27/02/21 03:12 AM
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Bear has no dex bonus. I was getting 12 AC (bear natural armor) + 3 AC from mage armor +2 AC from Shield of Faith.

dwig #760344 27/02/21 03:18 AM
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That may be part of why barbarian & monk haven't been implemented yet, as they also rely on separate AC calculations, something the devs don't quite seem to have a handle on just yet.

dwig #760349 27/02/21 03:33 AM
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Someone else (Braven) just posted a bug/exploit in another thread that I expect will be resolved soon. They stated that if you equip a druid with medium armor and a shield, cast shield of faith on them, then wildshape them and cast mage armor on them, and then release the wildshape... the mage armor effect will stay... bumping their AC up to about 24.
Link to discussion where posted is here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=760340#Post760340

Last edited by The_BlauerDragon; 27/02/21 03:35 AM. Reason: edited for clarity
dwig #760518 27/02/21 12:51 PM
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Yep, I am not sure if mage armor is intended to work on animal forms and stack with “natural armor”, but it certainly is not supposed to stack with actual armor after wild forming back.

It is also sometimes graphically glitchy when you do that. My character would appear naked and semi-transparent sometimes after changing back when I had medium armor on as well as mage armor active on the druid.

Also, the mage armor bonus would go away if you change equipment (equip/unequip weapon/armor) and also after leveling up (Guess bonuses are recalculated then). However, if you don’t do those things, mage armor seems to stick around until long rest.


Even without the 24 AC bug, Spider form is an absolute beast with 19 AC. Web everyone, poison bite, and then, if feeling particularly sadistic, roll a flaming boulder onto the web, catching it and everyone on top of it on fire and then attack with the flaming boulder for even more damage; all with one character’s actions that can be repeated every round without consuming resources. More damage output than I remember doing with any other class and only uses up one spell slot per combat since the boulder sticks around providing action-free damage and havoc every round and cannot be destroyed by enemies.

Even if the enemies manage to get a streak of lucky attack rolls and make it past your armor, you have two more Spider forms you can call up. This is because you can spider form, then short rest to refill your wild form uses back to two, effectively giving you 3 spider form uses for a single combat. That is 60 bonus hp (or 90 bonus hp if you use bear instead) in addition to your 39 or so base HP as a dwarf. Good luck enemies chewing through 129 HP + healing against a druid with extremely high AC. (I have only reached level 3 so far; not sure if the wild forms get stronger at level 4; if so, it would be even more insane).

I suspect you could easily solo the whole game as druid. Were druids this crazy in 5th edition table top?

Last edited by Braven; 27/02/21 01:27 PM.
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Originally Posted by Braven
Even without the 24 AC bug, Spider form is an absolute beast with 19 AC. Web everyone, poison bite, and then, if feeling particularly sadistic, roll a flaming boulder onto the web, catching it and everyone on top of it on fire and then attack with the flaming boulder for even more damage; all with one character’s actions. More damage output than I remember doing with any other class and only uses up one spell slot per combat since the boulder sticks around providing action-free damage and havoc every round.
Sounds almost broken. Is that base 14 AC and + 3 Mage Armor + 2 Shield of Faith, or 19 AC base (24 AC total)? The latter would be totally OP, but at least consistent with Ranger's spider animal companion being OP compared to the alternatives. You can get up to +5 AC by adding level 1 Barbarian or Monk multiclass too, this should be stackable with Shield of Faith (for +7), but not with Mage Armor.

Last edited by Seraphael; 27/02/21 01:45 PM.
dwig #760565 27/02/21 03:54 PM
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Yes, 19 AC is from shield of faith and mage armor, along with the 11 natural armor and +3 from DEX. Mage and cleric friends can just stay at the local inn and you never have to worry about losing those buffs; I was having no problem soloing with the Druid alone.

19 AC itself is not broken... pretty typical for a fighter class... until you consider you have access to over 100 HP per combat, and that is not even counting all of your spell slots which could be used for healing. Enemies just don’t hit hard enough to chew through all that health. Spider can also do a super jump and can get to advantageous terrain easily.

Both poison bite and the web can cause disadvantage on your enemies attacks making it much harder for them to punch through your AC.

I agree, if all 5e features were added, like multi-classing, things could get even more broken.

I haven’t tried out the level 4 animal forms... maybe AC and survivability could be even higher with them.

Last edited by Braven; 27/02/21 03:58 PM.

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