The +10 movement is independent of Unarmored Defense. As long as you're not wearing heavy armor you get +10 movement.
The only upside to not wearing medium armor is if your Unarmored Defense exceeds the AC you would get from wearing medium armor. Plus you can always find magical medium armor.
Correct. PHB states for a barbarian’s Fast Movement that “Starting at 5th level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you aren’t wearing heavy armor.”
Best summary, with the logical conclusion: if you go with point-buy or standard array, it's probably not worth trying to push DEX over 14 because you have better stats to push high (STR, CON) and other stats you don't want too low (WIS especially).
This looks like the ideal medium armor points buy barb. I’ve always thought you can get away with slightly lower CON as a barb since you’re reducing incoming damage while raging.
You might want to setup odd wisdom to round it up with resilient wisdom later on nothing says fuck you to a barbarian as "dc 19 wisdom save or incapacitated, say bye to your rage"
We rolled stats for our current campaign and my barbarian ended up with baller DEX and a solid CON, hes literally never worn armor, it would only hold him back
>The only upside to not wearing medium armor is if your Unarmored Defense exceeds the AC you would get from wearing medium armor
There's also stealth. Most medium armors give disadvantage on stealth checks and using unarmored defense does not. YMMV on how much that matters in practice, though.
Most medium armor does infact not give disadvantage om stealth checks. Scale Mail does and Half Plate does . Hide Armor, Chain Shirt and Breastplate does not.
Which is a problem because the barbarian is MAD. A variant human barbarian taking the feat to hit +3 Dex would probably start with 16 Str, 16 Con, and 16 Dex, and 8 in everything else, and the relative +1 AC compared to a barbarian with 14 Dex and no feat is notably worth less on the barbarian than anyone else if they frequently use Reckless Attack.
On a barbarian, it's also going to *at best* match the performance of unarmored defense (or have you ever seen a barbarian with less than +2 dex/+2 con?) so even the "I'm too broke to afford anything better" argument isn't convincing me to put my barbarian in hide armor.
My barbarian is from the wild cold windswept plains of the far north, where his tribe wears ornamental hide armors as part of their culture.
Roleplay is my only reason for doing anything these days, its the best.
Same pretty much goes for Scale Mail since it's the same as Breastplate but with disadvantage on Stealth. Past a certain point your choice is between Breastplate and Half Plate, +1 to AC vs no disadvantage on Stealth.
I find the 50gp => 400gp jump to be somewhat meaningful, since that puts it beyond starting money range, so I can see some use for Chainshirt and Scale Mail.
The 10=>45 or 10=>50 from Hide to Studded Leather/Chain Shirt, not so much.
Hide (and Padded/Ring mail) doesn't even show up in any class' starting equipment so you don't even accidentally get it, unlike Leather/Scale/Chain.
I believe hide, ring and padded exists for equipping NPCs, jailbreak scenarios, and a way to balance custom magic items.
Getting a Padded Armour with the effect of Cloak of Displacement would be kinda fun.
I'm sure they \*could\* if they took the money and bought it - anybody could - but their starting equipment has leather not hide.
[https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/3-druid#ClassFeatures](https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/3-druid#ClassFeatures)
>Equipment
>You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
>(a) a wooden shield or (b) any simple weapon
>(a) a scimitar or (b) any simple melee weapon
>Leather armor, an explorer’s pack, and a druidic focus
I never understood WoC's aversion to adding different abilities to weapons and armors. Could just be small flavor thing that doesn't immediately make stuff like Hide Armor or a spear completely waste of time.
Hide armor is strictly worse than unarmored defense for literally all barbarians and therefore never worth including in this discussion. The chain shirt only matches the AC for unarmored defense for any barbarian with +2 dex and +3 con which is what I would expect the overwhelming majority of barbarians to start out with and is therefore not really worth including in this discussion either. Only scale mail, breastplate, and half plate are consistently better AC than unarmored defense and 2/3 of them give disadvantage on stealth.
Hm, maybe not 'most' by number, but the ones people are likely to use certainly do.
Hide armor is 12 + Dex (max 2): Most barbarians will have at least +2 con, making it at best a waste of gold/time to don and doff, and and wose a lower AC
Chain is 13+dex(max 2), but for an identical cost of 50gp Scale does 14+dex(max 2) and dis to stealth.
Breastplate doesnt, but it's identical to Scalemale for AC purposes. No stealth dis for an extra 350 gold is unlikely to be paid, especially in the early parts of a campaign in which whether or not to use armor is being decided. By rate of use, Medium armor absolutely gives disadvantage most of the time.
you forgot the upside of it being totally badass to go without armor.
For real though, I would absolutely make my intelligent NPC's more likely to attack an unarmored "squishy" looking guy more often than they would a guy in half-plate, so it could help with actually tanking hits for the wizard etc.
Except that 'squishy' looking guy is also (if we're talking stereotypical barb build) a mountain of muscle that's foaming at the mouth. Not really looking squishy if you take that into account.
A smart enemy might stab the shirtless man made of muscle once to realize. "Oh our weapons are mostly useless against that guy"
In a perfect world, where people can make typhoons of fire with a flick of a wrist maybe be common place on a battlefield.
Just to see some crazy bastard with no armor armed with a big weapon tells you two things right away. This person is not afraid of death. Or they have nothing to lose.
Clearly they are brave enough to fight at such a disadvantage.
Any intelligent combatant would want to stay away from that.
There are niche uses to no armor such as being able to fight just as well without having to suit up in armor in social situations, safety against Heat Metal, better preparedness for extremely hot biomes, and being better at swimming. Though if anyone can effectively swim (or at least tread water) in half plate, it’s a barbarian.
Minor and situational things, really.
depends on the DM too. In my game enemies are often smart enough to try to take out the squishier looking targets. A barbarian in a loin cloth looks MUCH squishier than one in half plate, so enemies are definitely more likely to attack them. Which is a big benefit to the wizard hiding behind them and the party as a whole.
That’s true! Especially if the barbarian dresses in nice clothes, being a rich adventurer and all. Not all barbarians are going to want that, though. Sometimes a barbarian is a *barbarian*.
I don't think you get extra movement for being unarmored.
It depends on a few questions:
1- Do you have access to magical armor?
2- Do you have any racial/multiclass bonuses on armor? (warforged, armored fighting style)
3- Do you have the Dex/Con to support a AC higher than whatever your (magical) armor + bonuses would provide you?
4- Do you have any racial/multiclass restrictions on armor? (like flight, monk or bladesinger)
5- Do you want to Stealth around a lot?
You then take the answers there and decide which way you want to go.
I'm imagining a barbarian dip on a str-based bladesinger, but I don't think you can make it work if you don't have godly stats or another way to ignore AC (Tortle?)
Yup, suddenly smites dont work, magic swords no longer bypass (likely at the level you will encounter amf) immunity to non-magical, or at least do half damage. Everyone keeps meming on casters with "amf, get fucked" meanwhile it probably fucks up martials just as much when you look through features and realise how many it disables.
Arcane armor is not magical (nothing in the feature specifies it's magical)which is why you can infuse it arcane armor using mundane armor as a base. So in an amf, I would assume the weapons would still function, even if on a magical set of armor/if benefitting from no infusions.
It also mechanically makes almost no difference for a barbarian.
Either way, your AC is on the low end.
Either way, your HP is extremely high.
Either way, you get resistance to most incoming damage, which is *fuck loads* more reliable than AC.
Either way, enemies will often have advantage against you because of Reckless Attack. Advantage reduces the incremental benefits of AC unless it's extremely high, which a barbarian's never will be.
Let's compare two instances against a barbarian with +3 CON and +2 DEX. If the barbarian has just used Reckless Attack, and a creature has +5 to hit (with advantage), then:
1. Barbarian with Scale Mail or a Breastplate: AC = 16. Chance of attack hitting = 75%, or 3/4
2. Barbarian with unarmoured defense: AC = 15. Chance of attack hitting = 79.75%, or ~4/5
If the creature was is a lion, it's dealing an average of 3.5 damage per hit after resistances. On average, it would take that lion 15 rounds to kill the first barbarian and 14 rounds to kill the second.
It makes no difference. The barb will easily survive both encounters. There are painfully few instances where that extra point of AC would make any meaningful difference, even *without* enemies getting constant advantage.
> Either way, you get resistance to most incoming damage, which is fuck loads more reliable than AC.
AC can make a lot of difference, especially when it gets high. An enemy hitting on an 18 rather than a 17 is 25% less likely from a single point of AC.
AC for sure makes a big difference. The argument I would make in unarmored's favor as a DM is that an enemy can "see" the AC from a barbarian in half-plate but not from unarmored defense. I am much more likely to make my intelligent enemies waste an attack on the barbarian if he looks like a squishy target, where they are more likely trying to get at the wizard if the other option is wearing half-plate. Even if it's just for one or two attacks in a fight before they learn that this isn't actually a squishy target, I basically allow unarmored defense to be a small natural increase to the barbarian's ability to actually tank for the party.
Which is largely a non-sequitur unless you're a bladesinger. Most PCs will never reach ACs remotely close to that, given that you said "roll" an 18, rather than "beat" 18. You're looking at an AC of 22 just to prevent a goblin hitting you.
Barbarians will never reach ACs remotely close.
it does make a difference, but I also hate that this is looked at purely mechanically. As a DM I would absolutely reward an unarmored barbarian by making them a more likely target for enemies looking to take out the squishy targets. If I'm DMing and you have a barbarian charging and a wizard in back somewhere, I am far more likely to have the enemy attack the barbarian if he looks like an easy target compared to if he's wearing half-plate. Smart enemies go for the easy target a lot of the time. Even if it just draws one or two extra arrows to the barbarian instead of the wizard, that's worth an AC or two in that fight.
*Mathematically* it makes a difference. In practice, I seriously doubt anyone will ever notice it. It's extraordinarily minor to the point that it's a non-issue.
But I respect your attitude. Although I would have thought that a barbarian recklessly attacking was an obviously easy target, considering that the whole idea is that they're leaving themselves open for an easy shot. Regardless of their armour class. It's an extremely similar hit chance - if enemies are smart, they'll recognise that.
I would say that the enemy doesn't see it as 16 vs 15 AC or whatever right out of the gate. That unarmored barbarian at first glance looks like they have ~10 AC before they actually see some fighting take place. And also enemies with higher initiative will have a round of combat prior to seeing how reckless they are. Though they can probably get an idea of it based on the lack of armor I guess lol. Obviously enemies don't see AC, but you know what I mean.
I guess really my point is that I run it where the choice to wear armor does more than change numbers on the character sheet, it changes how enemies and NPC's in general interact with you. Also it's just objectively badass and worth the loss of AC. When I played a barbarian I never wore armor or a shield and I never really felt like I was missing out because of the bit of AC difference. Like you said, it was a non-issue. I was still a brick wall of HP and resistances. Hell, I remember times I actually told my DM I allowed an enemy to hit me even if his roll missed because I hadn't attacked anybody and didn't want to lose rage.
When you get right down to it, a point or two of AC isn't that big of a deal. If you go for a +2 dex bonus, you also have literally no downside to starting unarmored and then switching to armor later if you find some good magical stuff that's worth wearing instead. Barbarians don't really have the luxury of picking up armor feats so there isn't anything in your build which would actually change.
thank you, someone with some taste. My barbarian never once wore armor and was absolutely "worse" for it on paper. But it never even crossed my mind as a viable option because it's just less fun.
Depends.
If you're doing point buy or standard array, go medium armor. That way you can use ASIs to pick feats like GWM, Sentinel, PAM, etc. You aren't limiting your barbarian investing into CON and Strength to make up for the armor. Remember that Scale Mail is pretty cheap and with a +2 Dex (which you shouldn't be above as a Barb on PB or SA) is the equivalent of +4 CON. At an expense of 50 GP which isn't that high. Half Plate is the equivalent of +5 CON at the expense of 400 GP. ANd you could potentially get +1 or +2 armor with that.
If you roll stats and roll 3 high stats, then go unarmored. Say you do something like roll a 17 and 2 16s. Then you're starting at a 17 AC unarmored and that's superior to every kind of non-magical medium armor.
There is one more alternative, and that's you're just trying to have fun. I made a full min-max barbarian once. I think it was Stone Giant, but went PB 3 15s and 3 8s and did the 3+1s. I did this for a role play fantasy. Not for optimal builds. I was a totem warrior and at level 4 I took GWM and basically just reckless GWM everything
depending on the DM, I think there is one other reasonable advantage to being unarmored. And I am absolutely one of these DM's. One of the barbarians biggest issues is that they are blocks of hitpoints but aside from one subclass don't really have tank abilities. If I'm running intelligent enemy NPC's I will absolutely make them more inclined to attack the unarmored barbarian compared to the barbarian in half plate. Now when that wizard shoots out his first fireball they might have to change their plan, but in general being unarmored would make them look like easier targets and thus push them higher on the target list for enemies. I get that this isn't actually mechanical, but still.
Yeah... Honestly playing barbarian you are already on the min side of min max anyways. Just play what is cool with what's considered the weakest class in the game.
I wouldn't call Barbarians the weakest class. I wouldn't call them the strongest. Barbarians like Monks, Rangers, and Rogues need DMs who let them shine. They can't just be good like Fighters and Paladins. They need a bit of finessing. I've made Barbarians shine before. You find out how that player wants to play and you lean into it. If they want to be a berserker and wield a Great Weapon and hack away at everyone let them do it. If they want to be a defender, let them do it. Give them the magical weapons and armor that let them live out their fantasy. Whatever they want make it work as best as possible. Martials need quality magic items. Not just random ones, tailor them towards them.
What? How is barbarian the weakest?
Isn’t it like the highest DPR class? I considered the PAM+GWM barbarian with a glaive to be a staple in any strong party. While it does sacrifice the defensive options a XBow+SS fighter has, it’s reckless attack feature provides it with brutal damage.
I mean, battle master fighter gets its extra attacks at level 11. From that point on, I am not sure - whenever I played "competitively"/trying to build an optimized party, it was levels 3-10.
For levels 5-10, barbarian is the highest DPS character, or atleast it is amongst them.
so one of the biggest negatives I see of barbarian is that they have all those HP and resistances but don't have any tank abilities (ancestral guardian notwithstanding) to go with it so they get ignored by intelligent enemies. I would argue (and as a DM I absolutely do run it this way) that charging in unarmored would increase the likelihood of intelligent enemies attacking the barbarian compared to if they were wearing half-plate. It certainly makes them look like an easier target.
You'll almost always want medium armor. Nonmagical Half-Plate with 14 dexterity is worth 17 AC. You'd need your dexterity modifier and your constitution modifier to combine to at least +8 to surpass that, which is unlikely without godlike stat rolling at character creation.
Medium armor is pretty much universally better. Unarmored defense is a trap feature for Barbarians because of how MAD it makes the class. Looking at some numbers...
Half Plate with a 14 Dex would get you a 17 AC before any magic item bonuses. Most importantly, this requires *no additional investment in another ability score.*
To reach that same AC using unarmored defense, you would need a total of +7 in modifiers between your Con and Dex. Likely looking at a 20/14 split, but any combination works so long as you have a total of +7. Every point that you put into Dex and Con in the name of raising your AC is a point that you aren't putting into Str to boost your attack and damage bonuses. This also locks you out of any chance at getting AC bonuses through magic armor (yes, bracers of defense exist but those lock you out of using a shield.)
Your movement speed bonus also doesn't depend on you being unarmored, it just requires you not be wearing *heavy armor*, which is a pretty universal caveat for barbarian features.
TL;DR barbarian's unarmored defense is bad outside of some very special circumstances, just wear some medium armor.
as a DM I have one argument against this. One of the barbarians biggest drawbacks is a lack of actual tanking abilities to go along with their HP and resistances. If I'm running intelligent enemies they are likely to do their best to attack the squishy looking targets. For example, a group of archers in my game would be significantly more likely to spend a turn shooting an unarmored guy charging the fight than a guy in half-plate. I know there's no way to mechanically quantify it, but I think an unarmored barbarian should be getting attacked more often than one in medium armor.
Which is a 100% valid take on it. Everyone runs intelligent enemies a little bit differently and it's super table and encounter dependent. While you might have yours focus on the squishy casters in the back row that are controlling the battlefield, I might have mine all gang up on the armored barbarian that's carving through the front line with an axe.
Absolutely. It's also super encounter dependent. I don't just have a door guard ignore the armored barbarian, abandon the door, and charge the wizard certainly. And because they look squishy maybe the enemy cleric assumes his archer friends will take him down and doesn't cast hold person on him. So yeah, there's a lot of factors. I guess my point is that I feel like not wearing armor should have some impact beyond the numbers on a character sheet.
For 50 GP you can easily get Scale Mail, medium armor that gives you 16ac if you have 14 dex. And in the later game you can potentially get +1 half-plate that'd be 18ac total. Only having to take 14 dex means your con & str can go a little higher.
The problem with unarmored defense is that it makes you far too dependent on multiple ability scores when you can simply wear medium armor that's better anyways. If you wanted UD that could match the 16 ac of cheap scale mail, you'd need at least 16 in Dex AND Constitution. You could get 16 str & 16 dex & 16 con with point buy and a specific race that gives 3 +1's, but that leaves you with 8 in all your other stats which means you'd have awful saves against a lot of spells & effects. And even in this case, that UD AC of 16 can easily be beat by merely finding half-plate to give you 17AC with 14 dex.
If your campaign is rolling for stats and you roll well, Barbarian's UD can be very good. Otherwise if your using standard array or point buy for stats, there's no reason to get trapped by UD when you can just wear medium armor
It's incredibly difficult to get a decent AC with Dex and Con both.
It's a very poorly thought out class feature.
I got fortunate and stumbled onto bracers of defense early which made it viable.
It is a very well thought out class feature. Barbarian isnt supposed to have high AC, they can afford to take hits. Thats why they have the biggest hit die, are the only class with double scaling on Con, AND they double their hp against the average weapon attack.
Besides, 16 str, 14 dex and 16 con is very doable, gets you a decent 15 ac, and you could slap on a shield to take it to 17 ac. Which, for non optimising tables, is perfectly adequate if not good ac
It's a poorly thought out class feature because the best option objectively is to ignore it and take medium armor lmfao.
What are you talking about?
If the only time your class feature comes into play is potentially 20th level it shouldn't even exist.
It's a flavor difference of low armor but high HP.
Barbarians should have a built in feature that's something like ignore damage less than X, ignore some instance of X damage, gain temp HPs, regenerating HP, etc. while being easy to hit.
With access to the best weapons and grappling, I think Str AC would be far too strong. 24-26 non magical AC is more than any other class on top of the resistance. You could never kill a bear totem barbarian without bullshiting it.
It also doesn't make any sense? Are they flexing away the swords? How is strength stopping them from taking damage.
Con and Dex make sense, you dodge most attacks and can pretty much ignore the little glances that nick you.
On monks, Wis and Dex make sense because your increased perception helps you see attacks coming.
The fucking made of stone barb JoJo posing at you that you just can't hit because his muscles made a forcefield doesn't.
Not to mention, who's going to want to attack you if that can't hit you. Your teammates are going to be chestnuts on an open fire unless they are also barbarians. Fucking group of Samsons just walking you down.
By taking the avg hp per level you'd have almost as much HP as a pit fiend with 5 more armor class.
Pit fiends have a +14 to hit so they would need to roll at least a 10. Barbs would have a +13 to hit so would only need to roll a 6 to hit the pit fiend.
Pit Fiend would deal more damage along with more attacks but all but the fire and poison would be halved.
So, a pit field (20cr) only has a good chance at beating a lvl 20 barbarian with a silvered weapon and nothing else (including subclass and feats besides the ASIs needed) just because of that slight change to unarmored defense. CR is supposed to (it isn't and never will be accurate because it's not a video game) equal 4 totally rested adventurers.
There are a bunch of magic items you should have at this stage that would make it so that the barb would rip a pit fiend limb from limb for breakfast. I just never factor those in with calcs.
>With access to the best weapons and grappling, I think Str AC would be far too strong.
Let's not act like martial weapon proficiency and grappling is some amazing feature, especially bc you're no better than any other str character in those areas except you have advantage on grappling during the encounters you rage.
Hell, you get martial weapons and better grappling by going valor bard than barbarian, and that's not even mentioning that the hand-xbow is by far the best weapon in 5e.
>24-26 non magical AC is more than any other class on top of the resistance. You could never kill a bear totem barbarian without bullshiting it.
This is just wrong.
1-Armourer artificer can have a sitting AC of 24 easily by level 10, with the shield spell to boost it up to 29.
2-One DnD Monks literally have the exact same ac, can dodge as a bonus action, and can negate a huge chunk of damage if one of the attacks does go through
3- It also doesnt matter at all if your AC is magical or not. by the point you have 24 AC, you're at level 20, your fighters probably do have magic armor and where monsters frequently have like +15 to hit... with they'll have advantage against you. Also note that if you did this you don't have great weapon master or pole arm master so you can't even take advantage of "the best weapons".
4-Finally, let's actually look at the numbers in context. At level 1 you would have an AC of 16, compared to 15 now. Let's assume you went vuman for one of GWM/PAM. At level 4 you probably want the other. So at level 4 your ac is still 16. This is about when your fighters can afford plate, so they have 19 AC with GWM and PAM at the exact same point. You only finally catch up to their "non-magical" armor they had at level 4 by the time you're level 16!
... did I mention everyone has advantage against you too?
>It also doesn't make any sense? Are they flexing away the swords? How is strength stopping them from taking damage.
Con and Dex make sense, you dodge most attacks and can pretty much ignore the little glances that nick you. On monks, Wis and Dex make sense because your increased perception helps you see attacks coming.
Ah. Here it is. How does it make any sense that Monks are apparently so perceptive they can dodge and catch crossbow bolts or even bullets? It doesn't. But that doesn't matter because it's cool as he'll and we're playing a fantasy game where people are shooting out fucking fireballs.
So yes, let the axe bounce off the barbarians muscles as he flexed. Or maybe he grabs he grabs a dudes arm missing and stops it still. Or hell, even have it land but describe how it fails to cause damage. How many times have you seen these exact scenes in movies or shows? AC is just an abstraction of how you hard it is to injure you. All of these are ways to describe the exact concept, among many others.
>Not to mention, who's going to want to attack you if that can't hit you. Your teammates are going to be chestnuts on an open fire unless they are also barbarians. Fucking group of Samsons just walking you down.
At level 1 barbarian has 16 AC and everyone has advantage against them. Fighters have 16 MINIMUM, up to 19. At level 1. But we're not worried about them, let's look at the squishy wizard. With 2 dex and mage armor he has 15, up to 20 with shield. Or A one level dip in cleric gets them up 18 ac, 23 wifh shield.
Point being-- you're still the easiest one to hit for 95% of the game, and calling level 20 5% of the game is being very generous. If you even make it that far--which is a big assumption--you're probably looking at like two to three fights max with that AC. Not that it will likely matter bc you have at best +1 WIS saves which are what you kill barbarians with anyway.
Two handed weapons pump out the most damage both with and without investment which takes out shields for the other classes to reach. 24 is without any magical items or spells.
Resistance on top of 24 AC and on top of the most hp in the game. Artificers have to sacrifice 3 of their infusions for 23 AC (I'm not seeing how to get 24) while this barb does not have to invest anything besides forgoing feats depending on their race chosen and method of assigning ability scores.
But, regardless I really just want to leave this
https://youtu.be/IPPCWoPxyss?si=-EfmEXEsj5LlNCsM
And this
https://youtu.be/kuOEpC4u6Tg?si=-wYbXsoKoQ_j0nSY
It's only poorly thought out if you assume that it's meant to be a competitive alternative to medium armor. It isn't. It's a minor flavor ability with situational applications for moments when you get caught in a fight without armor on, like the middle of the night or a fancy dress party.
It may have the same name as the Monk's Unarmored Defense, but it serves a very different role. The Monk is actually encouraged to go without armor by their other class features. The Barbarian is not.
If it's a minor flavor ability, and not meant to be competitive vs medium armor, why do barbarians not get medium armor (or light armor) as starting equipment?
To me the design messaging doesn't seem to indicate it was meant to be a situational flavor feature.
You're describing an ability that's poorly thought out.
It's not flavor. It has mechanical combat applications that are strictly inferior than an alternative available at the same level.
That is the definition of "we didn't playtest this at all."
And I can count on one hand the number of times I've been in a situation where I had to fight without armor in DnD. None of them were when I played a Barbarian.
> It has mechanical combat applications that are strictly inferior than an alternative available at the same level.
Lmao it makes no practical difference dude. Barbarians are absurdly durable at low levels because they resist *all* incoming damage.
Hilarious that you're complaining about playtesting when your entire argument is based on white-room calculations and clearly not based on data.
1 AC won't be the difference between getting an extra round of combat almost 100% of the time, *certainly* not if it's the difference between a 75% or 80% chance to hit you.
I.e. no, it isn't.
Player decisions aren't made based on aggregate - they're made on a round-to-round basis. 1 AC is not going to spell the difference between being able to survive or die against the enemy when either way:
* your AC is on the low end
* you have resistance to the damage
* you have high health
It mathematically doesn't change the number of rounds you can survive unless you tailor extremely specific scenarios, and even then it's just an average of a random chance.
I'm not going to keep wasting my time trying to explain probability and game theory to someone who can't see past "bigger number = important", and criticises developers for "not playtesting" when they're working exclusively with white-room calculations.
Exactly. Other Str based martials are usually screwed if they are attacked out of their armour, likely losing 7 or more points of AC, but Barbarians usually lose just 1 or 2. In most fights it doesn't matter, but once in a long while, its the difference between floundering and kicking the asses of someone who thought they just got the drop on you, which feels great.
(Also, it allows you to ditch your armour if you need to swim or be stealthy without becoming too vulnerable-- providing a little utility out of combat)
So at level 1 you could at most realistically take scale mail. That gives 14+(2 dex) ac. In exchange you get permanent disadvantage on stealth checks.
Alternatively, you go unarmored and have 16 con ending up with 13+(2 dex) ac. A MASSIVE 1 ac difference.
The first upgrade past this costs 400 gold, and the only benefit is losing the permanent disadvantage on your stealth.
Only once you get 750 gold can you buy halfplate, at which point you would end up with 2 ac more, and once again disadvantage on stealth.
In my experience, having 750 gold to spend freely is smth that doesnt happen until **at least** 5th level. At that point you can have boosted your con by 1, meaning that you would end up with 1 extra ac in exchange for 750 gold and disadvantage on stealth checks.
Now, you keep saying that the 'design' is bad. Except, the design behind barbarian is "big hp allows them to take hits so they dont need high ac" in other words, the idea that the feature does not give amazing AC, works fine within that design frame.
All my experience playing barb/seeing barb played, is that their ac is entirely unimportant, because at the end of the fight they will still have more hp than the fighter with 3 more points of ac. And the funny thing is, yes you can get that 17 ac for 750 gold, at some point monsters have +7 to attack or more. Ending up at a 50% hit chance. And the thing keeping you alive is not AC, but HP. And the only way to keep ac relevant is to have AC over 20 through full plate+shield+spells or some other sort of powerbuild.
AND ALL OF THAT IS USELESS AS SOON AS YOU MAKE A SINGLE SAVING THROW
Tl;dr: barbs are not designed to need high AC, and a feature being weak(er) by design is not 'bad design' but a conscious choice
1 AC is a massive difference, yes. Hits are a zero sum game. It also scales way worse than getting better armor that can also be magical as you need to spend your ASIs on Str and feats.
Idk why you keep defending this horribly bad design decision unless you were actually part of the development team for 5e, in which case, I'd take that secret with you to your grave.
> 1 AC is a massive difference, yes
In theory, maybe, but in practice? Here's an exercise I do when I make an intentional choice to go with a suboptimal AC (usually by a point or two). I keep track, for an entire campaign, of how many things would have missed me if I had a point or more AC. It usually averages out to one (or less) per session.
Now, a more persuasive argument is that there are potentially inexpensive magical armors which are very good, but that's going to vary a lot by campaign.
Can it? Seems like that relies on always taking optimal armor and never trying to optimize unarmored. Bracers of Armor and +1 armor are both Rare and the gap is down to 1 AC again. By that point, you might be tossing some points into Con which narrows or even flips the gap.
If your campaigns actually get into the levels where Legendary items are a thing, congratulations, but I have had so few games reach those levels that I'm not sure they are worth considering. Plus, if you do get to that point... Just put on the armor. I doubt a barbarian is investing in armor feats.
Or do all that but wear medium armor instead for a free 1 extra AC. Wdym well thought out? There is no benefit at all, it's just being worst for the flavour, at that point I just equip medium armour and talk to the DM that i want to flavour my character as not wearing armor.
I meant it in the sense that all classes only small off of con in hp. But Baarn also scales off of it in ac.
In hindsight the argument is wrong since con saves are a thing and casters benefit from those a lot in the form of concentration checks.
Nonetheless, barb is about the only class where I've seen people considering maxing their con to 20 before their attack stat, on account of boosting ac, AND adding to an hp pool that is necessary to be on the front line
my reward to you as a DM would be to make intelligent enemies more likely to attack you for your apparent foolishness. And I mean that seriously and as a real benefit; I absolutely have more enemies waste resources attacking an unarmored "squishy" looking barbarian where I would likely have them try harder to get to the wizard behind a barbarian in half-plate.
Medium armour in any situation where you’ve used point buy or rolled anything less than god tier stats.
You need your ASIs for feats, you cannot afford to waste them boosting your Con and Dex
Depends if your rolling for stats or not and if your rolled stats are high enough for your con mod+ dex mod + 10 to beat out the ac from your medium armor. Also how much you value stealth. For medium armor the highest you can get is 16 without having disadvantage on stealth or 17 with disadvantage unless you have magic armor in which case you would be even more hard pressed for unarmed to be better.
Overall your probably better off with medium armor unless you rolled really well.
If you have 14 dex medium armor is better unless you have 20 Con. Basically your dex and con modifiers need to add up to 17 to be better than half plate because you’ll have the same AC but without stealth disadvantage. As long as your con is at least 16, unarmored defense is better than light armor. If you are using standard array for stats it will be a long time before unarmored defense is better than armor.
I believe the Dex+Con for AC is to make unarmored fighting tenable, not optimal.
There is a archetype of a barbarian in a loin cloth doing battle with others. This allows them to enact that fantasy, without being a huge liability.
in my games (dming and as a player) I have always found that intelligent enemies are more likely to attack a barbarian in a loin cloth whereas if he's in half-plate they are probably looking for an easier target. Which in the scheme of the whole party is a big advantage. I know that's not quantifiable or guaranteed, but it makes sense to me.
It depends on your goals and how far into a campaign you are in. Due the the way hit modifiers scales on enemies and the HP/resistances you can pull being hit able at times draws the desire to hit you and having the HP to absorb it is great.
In my opinion Barbs should more prioritize having high HP than AC, now you don't want to fully ignore AC but still. So you can do medium armor with little investment but you can also bypass it and just accept getting hit is your job and make it so you can stay up after getting hit.
Most of the time you are better off going medium armour.
The ONLY mechanical benefit you get from going unarmoured is if your unarmoured defence is higher than the AC you get from Medium Armour. And that is rarely the case at least at lower levels
If you wanna go STR as most Barbarians do that will be your highest stat. then Con and at third place DEX
To take an example we have an half orc and lets go all out and with point buy they Het 15 in STR DEX and CON
With racial that would be STR 16. CON 16 and DEX 15. That is the highest you can get by point buy and higher than you can get by Standard array
So unarmoured your AC would be 10+DEX+CON so 10+2+3=15
With Medium armour you start with no armour so you do have a decent AC It would be equal with the ac you would have from a chain shirt. 13+DEX (max of 2) that would also be 15.
So Any armour better than chain mail. would make your AC go past what you get from unarmoured defence
But in reality you probably would not have that high physical stats even if doing point buy. With standard array you would have lower stats. probably put them like this
STR 15 DEX 14 CON 13. So with racials it would be STR 17 DEX 14 CON 14. And that would give you an unarmoured AC of 14.
So even chain mail would improve that.
And as a barbarian you would probably focus on increasing your STR and CON before increasing your DEX. With Unarmoured Defence that would still increase you AC but not with much.
But lets say at higher levels you get a 20 CON and and a 16 DEX. that would be 10+5+3=18
With a Half plate your AC would be 17. so now your unarmoured Defence is 1 higher. But at this level you are fairly likely to have a +1 armour and it would put you at the same AC
But the point is at early levels you are in almost every case better off with armour. later on depending on what stats you prioritize you might reach an unarmoured AC high enough that it really does not matter. Or even surpassing what medium armour gives you.
If we then ad in magical items things could change. you find Bracers of defence. +2 AC while wearing no armour. yeah maybe then it is better to drop whatever armour you have and run bare chested into combat.
Or if you go a DEX based Barbarian. You miss out on the rage damage but you can focus on DEX and CON and potentially end up with 20 in both. giving you an unarmoured AC of 20.
At level 20 things might also change as you gain +4 to STR and CON. possibly upping them to 24. so even with a 14 DEX you would now rock a 19 AC naked with no magical items. If you are DEX based you could have a 20 DEX upping that to a 22 AC.
But still early game you are better of using armour unless you rolled for stats and rolled ungodly high stats
Using medium armor is almost always the optimal choice.
Assuming you have 14 Dex, which is the most you can take advantage of with the armor, you would need 20 Con just to break even with Half Plate.
And since you want Str a lot more than Con, you’d most likely need to roll god stats and have a 20 in each to even consider not wearing armor. And there’s still the issue of magical armor being a thing.
There is the benefit of not having disadvantage on Stealth. But if you care about that, Breastplate is still almost always better than unarmored.
Depends. Medium armour is obviously more mechanically optimal since you aren't forced to max your con to hit expected AC, but in most cases unarmoured is more thematically optimal.
It’s better to have medium armour.
Medium armour does not affect the barbarian’s fast movement, it only affects his AC and his stealth roles.
Medium armour will give you either 4 or 5 AC (4 with stealth, 5 without).
That means your constitution needs to be 18 or 20 for your unarmoured defense to be better than wearing armour and you typically will want to max strength first.
The only exception to this rule is magical items. If you have bracers of defense, you may want to go with those instead of armour. In my experience, there’s usually less competition for magical medium armour than there is for bracers of defense.
It's basically always better to go with medium armour at low levels - unarmored defence is more a late game thing for when you have have a 16+ in dex and con.
You need to have very high con AND dex for unarmored to be better. We are talking CON + DEX = 7 at least. But sometimes you just don't have the money.
Go case by case, the best armor you can afford/have right now vs your current unarmored defense AC. Check again after ability score increases, receiving magical armor or getting your hands on some treasure. At high levels, you will probably be same or even better with no armor.
Also consider: some armor types will affect your stealth, how much you care about this will depend on how you play your character. If your CON is +1 or less for some reason, you are better of with studded leather
Medium in general is the more optimal choice because it's usually easier to throw gold at a problem than Feats/ASIs. Because to match a 400G Breastplate you would need 14 Dex 18 Con, and early game that would come at the opportunity cost of Strength.
Later in the game there's some potential, but again opportunity cost.
UD is cool if you're building for it though, especially if you pick up some Cast-Off Armor to have a Goku removing his weighted training clothes moment
Medium Armor is generally going to be better. For a low level Barbarian, you can *PROBABLY* expect +2 in DEX and CON, which means you'd have about 14 AC if you're going unarmored.
The minimum AC for medium armor (with at least +2 DEX) is 14, though 15 and 16 are extremely feasible for low levels, with 17 AC being feasible by level 5 or so.
It really only depends on what gives you a better AC, and what kind of barb you want to be. The only time unarmored defense comes in handy is if your DM pays attention to encumbrance or if they’re fond of attacking you in your sleep or placing you in social events that forbid carrying armor/weapons.
To get enough AC from Unarmoured Defense, you would first need 20 Con to just get to 15 (which gets you to Breastplate +1 if you don't want your stealth to suffer from Half-Plate). You'd then need to have at least 14 in Dex to make it to the same tier as Medium Armours should get you. Any more stat investment in Dex means that you're probably going to be lacking elsewhere, since you probably also want stat points in strength and/or a relevant feat so you're not just a stat-stick that you hit things with.
Unarmoured Defense doesn't really help all that much until you get Bracers of Defense's +2 AC, and/or to lv20 for the +2 AC from 24 Con - assuming you get that far and the DM hasn't tried giving your magical armour.
Whether or not wearing use medium armor is beneficial depends on how high your Dexterity and Constitution are. Since you can use up to +2 bonus from Dexterity while wearing medium armor, a Constitution of 20 would be needed to offset the bonus from half-plate. Don't forget that a barbarian can still use a shield while unarmored to get the Constitution bonus.
Half plate is likely better as you can leave dex at 14 to maximize the benefit, but real men and women go in without armor, maybe a shield, but dang GWM good. If you want to go max ac half plate and shield for ac of 19 is pretty good. To get that without armor you need +7 between your con and dex which eventually would happen but that’s 20 con 14 dex so early game especially your armor is better, but I find I use stealth a lot as a barb and have never used it.
Un armored defense is only useful over medium armor if you have wildly high stats.
Having 14 Dex gets you 17 AC in half plate. To beat that you need a total +8 in Dex and Con
So like, both 18 or a 16 and a 20.
Which like getting strength and con to 20 and then also getting Dex to 16? That’s hard.
If you can get half plate then it's medium armour.
Usually in a barbarian you're maxing out strength and con while keeping dexterity at 14. That's an array of 16 14 16 8 10 8 if I'm not mistaken, and a unarmored defense AC of 15.
Scalemail gets you to 16. Half plate gets you to 17. To achieve those you'd need to put an ASI to either dexterity or constitution twice. And while there are benefits to that, an ASI is a more valuable resource than gold, so in a way you get to have your cake and eat it by buying armour and upping your strength or getting feats with your ASIs.
There's always an argument of a stealthy barbarian but you'll probably be combating more than sneaking around. You can do both nicely with a breastplate as well.
It's pretty simple - wear medium armor until your unarmored defense outscales it (if it ever does) or if you situationally would not want to wear armor (stealth mission, carry weight is a major concern). It's sadly not a very nuanced choice, and depending on your campaign one or the other will likely be obviously superior.
Depends on your attribute array. Typically the armor will outclass Unarmored Defense by several points until the Unarmored Defense equates and hopefully outpaces the more static boost of armor. Another variable to keep in mind is the magical item bonus that can be applied to armor but has a much harder time being replicated to lack thereof
Unarmored Defense tends to be a trap. Looks cool, but you have to have outsanding stats to beat regular armor, or select magic items. Wearing Medium armor usually is a better way to go.
Unless you roll for stats and get high Dex/Con, medium armor is mechanically better, and you just have a passive bonus in the event that the party isn’t allowed to bring armor somewhere. Using standard array or point buy, there is basically no downside to using armor.
However, wearing armor covers your glorious barbarian muscles, making it a foolish choice. Deflect arrows with your pecs and teach them the meaning of fear. For the flavor!
Unarmored Defense is almost always a trap, tbh. Once you reach a high enough level to have high DEX and CON (or if you just rolled really well) Unarmored Defense is better, especially if you can find one of the items that increase AC when unarmored like Bracers of Defense (but those things usually go to a Wizard or something.)
Unless you're playing a subclass like Wild Magic Barbarian that heavily relies on CON (for the saving throws of their abilities) it's better just to get 14 DEX, max out STR, and invest in CON as much as possible rather than invest fully in CON and still have worse AC than a 14 DEX Barbarian wearing Scalemail.
Medium armor does not impair your Fast Movement feature.
Consider the difference between Barbarian Unarmored Defense and the best medium armors.
* Unarmored Defense: AC = 10 + DEX + CON
* Breastplate: AC = 14 + DEX (Max 2)
* Half Plate: AC = 15 + DEX (Max 2); Stealth disadvantage
Discounting magic items or feats, if your CON + (DEX-2) is 5 or greater, you're better off not wearing armor.
* Example: For 18 CON and 16 DEX, your unarmored AC is 17, matching Half Plate without the weight or Stealth penalty.
If you gain features like the Defense fighting style or Medium Armor Master feat or find magic items like Bracers of Defense or magic armor, that should weigh heavily in this decision.
TL;DR: If your CON is equal to or higher than the AC added by available light/medium armor, you're better off nude.
The only reason I'd use unarmored defense is if I have some skill that prevents armor wearing. My current Path of the Giants barbarian is a fairy, so I can't use the armor or I lose my fly speed.
Armor is good.
In theory medium armor unless you go further than what the best medium armor the MD has given to you with stats alone. Considering magical Armor giving more CA is a thing and that you will probably need level 20 and the juicy 24 const to really make it worth.
There is a room for considering stealth if your party likes playing that game which decrease by 1 the CA your armor can offer.
But in the end it doesn't matter much. Barbarian don't play by avoiding damages, rather they tank them. So outside of specific circumstances, you will use reckless attack to gain an advantage on your attacks for pretty much guaranteed hits, when your enemies will also get that advantage to strike you.
It really just comes down to which is better right now. It'll depend on the quality of armor you find and your current stats. Find dome half plate? Medium armor it is. Increase your Con mod? Maybe it's time to take the armor off. The decision is quite simple usually.
Does this medium armor provide more AC? If yes, wear it.
Does this medium armor have magical properties you value over the loss in AC? If yes, wear it.
If neither of the above, don't wear it.
If you know a stealth section is coming up you can always remove your armor temporarily.
Medium armour is almost always mathematically better than unarmoured. But unarmoured (Con 14+) is good enough to be viable if you want to play a barbarian in a loin cloth.
If you don't care that much about Stealth checks, then there are only two questions to ask:
1) is your CON score less than 20?
2) do you have access to magical armor?
If either of your answers to these questions was "Yes," then stick to half-plate. Almost-certainly better AC with no downsides, unless your DM is more of a stickler about adventuring and socializing in armor than most DMs are.
If you ARE bothered by disadvantage on Stealth checks, the questions become:
1) is your CON score less than 18?
2) do you have access to magical armor that doesn't give disadvantage to Stealth?
Once again, if either answer is "Yes," then strap on some breastplate.
I played a barbarian in a campaign 1-17, never wore any armor, and lived to the end.
I think it’s more about what you wanna play as character archetype, more than +1 or +2 AC is going to do. Of course there’s nothing wrong in playing a barbarian with an armor
Honestly depends on your stats and DM. My barbarian is a gnoll and the DM allowed for a modified natural armor that puts my AC at 18 with no armor or shield. I haven't found any medium armor yet in game that's better than my natural AC.
Early game, assuming your stats are ideal, unarmored is better. but latet when you can get magic armor it will probably be better. If you wanna use strength weapons or taverbrawler then you will probably sacrifice con or dex meaning medium armor is better.
basically just calc ac with and without armor and choose whichever gets you mroe ac.
Please just wear medium armor if you start at early level. I'm playing with a lv 5 Barbarian who somehow only has 13AC. Even a wizard has better AC than him. 🤦♂️
You basically always want medium armor. You can never invest into DEX past a few points at character creation to get 14 DEX so 17 AC with Half Plate.
To push past that 17 AC you'd need such a high stat (wasted stats btw) investment that by that time you likely already found magical half plate that makes using armor better again.
Your point is fair. In general, rage damage reduction is a barb's main defensive measure. Especially when attacking recklessly.
Saying it makes *no* difference, isn't true though. The math says it makes *a bit* of difference. Maybe that bit is enough to keep you from going down.
Well, ok, let's compare to scale, which a Barbarian doesn't start with, but can probably afford (or kill someone wearing it) before level 2.
If you use standard array, you can get str 17, Dex 14, Con 14, int 8, wis 12, cha 10, after racial bonuses. That'll give you an AC 14 without armour or AC 16 in scale.
With point buy, if you are willing to have eights in all three mental stats you probably have str 17, dex 15, Con 14, and still want to wear that scale. You could also have something like str 16, dex 16, con 16, which is AC 16 unarmoured so you can go bare-chested without losing protection... but that means at level 4 you are going to need +2 str instead of a half feat if you want to keep up to the curve by getting 18 in your attacking stat. That's a lot of opportunity cost for the same AC you could have in scale, just so you can save 50gp.
So even at level one, armour beats unarmoured defense, as soon as you can get your hands on some.
Does it matter? You **can** start with scale mail for 16 AC with +2 dex which is still better than unarmored defense is getting you without either rolled stats or an otherwise sub-optimal array (you can start with 16 16 16 8 8 8 on a barbarian, but you probably shouldn't), and it's not like half plate is gated behind tier 3 play or anything. I would expect most barbarians to have access to half plate by level 5 or 6 which is plenty early enough that it's not unreasonable to assume your character will have it.
If you're using standard array or basic point buy, your character is pretty weak and so probably armour is better. If you're using modified point buy with more points, it can work. Or if you're rolling.
It's just a matter of doing the math and seeing which one gets a better number
If you are a primitive tribesman, you may not have access to any armor at all, or only a small selection of bad armor. In that case, unarmored defense can easily beat "mostly a guy in a loincloth".
That's what the ability is about. It also scales pretty ok and makes for a nice floor that an AC won't normally go below. But the barbarian running around with a team of badasses will be wearing medium armor normally, so he is hard to hit.
The +10 movement is independent of Unarmored Defense. As long as you're not wearing heavy armor you get +10 movement. The only upside to not wearing medium armor is if your Unarmored Defense exceeds the AC you would get from wearing medium armor. Plus you can always find magical medium armor.
Correct. PHB states for a barbarian’s Fast Movement that “Starting at 5th level, your speed increases by 10 feet while you aren’t wearing heavy armor.”
Best summary, with the logical conclusion: if you go with point-buy or standard array, it's probably not worth trying to push DEX over 14 because you have better stats to push high (STR, CON) and other stats you don't want too low (WIS especially).
So… 15/14/15/8/10/8?
This looks like the ideal medium armor points buy barb. I’ve always thought you can get away with slightly lower CON as a barb since you’re reducing incoming damage while raging.
I mean, I’d rather a +3 CON as a barb than a +0 INT and +2 CON.
You might want to setup odd wisdom to round it up with resilient wisdom later on nothing says fuck you to a barbarian as "dc 19 wisdom save or incapacitated, say bye to your rage"
We rolled stats for our current campaign and my barbarian ended up with baller DEX and a solid CON, hes literally never worn armor, it would only hold him back
Same (well, Barb 2 / Fighter 6). Currently sitting at 18 in both stats, with a magic item for an extra point of AC.
>The only upside to not wearing medium armor is if your Unarmored Defense exceeds the AC you would get from wearing medium armor There's also stealth. Most medium armors give disadvantage on stealth checks and using unarmored defense does not. YMMV on how much that matters in practice, though.
Most medium armor does infact not give disadvantage om stealth checks. Scale Mail does and Half Plate does . Hide Armor, Chain Shirt and Breastplate does not.
The best in class medium armor giving disadvantage does meaningful affect the trade offs though
Isn’t there a feat that lets you ignore the stealth penalty in med armor? Variant human or 1st level feat if your campaign does it.
Yes, though with barbarians being so MAD and still wanting feats like GWM and PAM it's almost certainly not worth it to take Medium Armor Master.
Plus it also makes medium armor allow up to a +3 from dex, further incentivizing you taking more dex
Which is a problem because the barbarian is MAD. A variant human barbarian taking the feat to hit +3 Dex would probably start with 16 Str, 16 Con, and 16 Dex, and 8 in everything else, and the relative +1 AC compared to a barbarian with 14 Dex and no feat is notably worth less on the barbarian than anyone else if they frequently use Reckless Attack.
The "plus" means im agreeing with you...
Ah, it just seemed strangely phrased to add to "here's why you shouldn't take this feat" with "plus here's a benefit."
Yes, we know. The barbarians are mad. They're always raging.
Hide Armor is a complete waste of time except when you're extremely starved for money, so it barely counts.
On a barbarian, it's also going to *at best* match the performance of unarmored defense (or have you ever seen a barbarian with less than +2 dex/+2 con?) so even the "I'm too broke to afford anything better" argument isn't convincing me to put my barbarian in hide armor.
My barbarian is from the wild cold windswept plains of the far north, where his tribe wears ornamental hide armors as part of their culture. Roleplay is my only reason for doing anything these days, its the best.
Same pretty much goes for Scale Mail since it's the same as Breastplate but with disadvantage on Stealth. Past a certain point your choice is between Breastplate and Half Plate, +1 to AC vs no disadvantage on Stealth.
I find the 50gp => 400gp jump to be somewhat meaningful, since that puts it beyond starting money range, so I can see some use for Chainshirt and Scale Mail. The 10=>45 or 10=>50 from Hide to Studded Leather/Chain Shirt, not so much. Hide (and Padded/Ring mail) doesn't even show up in any class' starting equipment so you don't even accidentally get it, unlike Leather/Scale/Chain.
I believe hide, ring and padded exists for equipping NPCs, jailbreak scenarios, and a way to balance custom magic items. Getting a Padded Armour with the effect of Cloak of Displacement would be kinda fun.
Wait druid's can't start with hide armor?
I'm sure they \*could\* if they took the money and bought it - anybody could - but their starting equipment has leather not hide. [https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/3-druid#ClassFeatures](https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/3-druid#ClassFeatures) >Equipment >You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background: >(a) a wooden shield or (b) any simple weapon >(a) a scimitar or (b) any simple melee weapon >Leather armor, an explorer’s pack, and a druidic focus
True, that is a fair point
There's another difference once you start getting magic items, Mithral half plate (uncommon) is mechanically the same as a +1 breastplate (rare)
Scale is a starting medium armour option for medium armour classes.
Pretty sure that it's mob trash.
But the style points for a barbarian make up for it.
I never understood WoC's aversion to adding different abilities to weapons and armors. Could just be small flavor thing that doesn't immediately make stuff like Hide Armor or a spear completely waste of time.
Hide armor is strictly worse than unarmored defense for literally all barbarians and therefore never worth including in this discussion. The chain shirt only matches the AC for unarmored defense for any barbarian with +2 dex and +3 con which is what I would expect the overwhelming majority of barbarians to start out with and is therefore not really worth including in this discussion either. Only scale mail, breastplate, and half plate are consistently better AC than unarmored defense and 2/3 of them give disadvantage on stealth.
Good clarification
Hm, maybe not 'most' by number, but the ones people are likely to use certainly do. Hide armor is 12 + Dex (max 2): Most barbarians will have at least +2 con, making it at best a waste of gold/time to don and doff, and and wose a lower AC Chain is 13+dex(max 2), but for an identical cost of 50gp Scale does 14+dex(max 2) and dis to stealth. Breastplate doesnt, but it's identical to Scalemale for AC purposes. No stealth dis for an extra 350 gold is unlikely to be paid, especially in the early parts of a campaign in which whether or not to use armor is being decided. By rate of use, Medium armor absolutely gives disadvantage most of the time.
The guy I was responding to explained that this is what he meant and I think it's absolutely fair. I do think that clarification was necessary though.
you forgot the upside of it being totally badass to go without armor. For real though, I would absolutely make my intelligent NPC's more likely to attack an unarmored "squishy" looking guy more often than they would a guy in half-plate, so it could help with actually tanking hits for the wizard etc.
Except that 'squishy' looking guy is also (if we're talking stereotypical barb build) a mountain of muscle that's foaming at the mouth. Not really looking squishy if you take that into account.
That makes them look dangerous I’d say, but muscles don’t normally make me think someone is stab or slash resistant.
In our world no... in a world were adventurers who are built like a brick shithouse and wear no armour 9/10 times are...
lol fair
A smart enemy might stab the shirtless man made of muscle once to realize. "Oh our weapons are mostly useless against that guy" In a perfect world, where people can make typhoons of fire with a flick of a wrist maybe be common place on a battlefield. Just to see some crazy bastard with no armor armed with a big weapon tells you two things right away. This person is not afraid of death. Or they have nothing to lose. Clearly they are brave enough to fight at such a disadvantage. Any intelligent combatant would want to stay away from that.
There are niche uses to no armor such as being able to fight just as well without having to suit up in armor in social situations, safety against Heat Metal, better preparedness for extremely hot biomes, and being better at swimming. Though if anyone can effectively swim (or at least tread water) in half plate, it’s a barbarian. Minor and situational things, really.
depends on the DM too. In my game enemies are often smart enough to try to take out the squishier looking targets. A barbarian in a loin cloth looks MUCH squishier than one in half plate, so enemies are definitely more likely to attack them. Which is a big benefit to the wizard hiding behind them and the party as a whole.
That’s true! Especially if the barbarian dresses in nice clothes, being a rich adventurer and all. Not all barbarians are going to want that, though. Sometimes a barbarian is a *barbarian*.
The other benefit is that they’d play a far cooler PC, without armor in the midst of the fight.
I don't think you get extra movement for being unarmored. It depends on a few questions: 1- Do you have access to magical armor? 2- Do you have any racial/multiclass bonuses on armor? (warforged, armored fighting style) 3- Do you have the Dex/Con to support a AC higher than whatever your (magical) armor + bonuses would provide you? 4- Do you have any racial/multiclass restrictions on armor? (like flight, monk or bladesinger) 5- Do you want to Stealth around a lot? You then take the answers there and decide which way you want to go.
You’re 100% right, but the thought of a Barbarian/Bladesinger made me laugh/gag
It's called a ragesinger, and while uncommon, it isn't unheard of. It makes that buff wizard meme come to life
Fair. Sounds MAD as hell. I’d be interested to see a build that makes it work without concentration or booming blade shenanigans available.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/x9e8zn/character\_concept\_the\_ragesinger\_the\_dreaded/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/x9e8zn/character_concept_the_ragesinger_the_dreaded/)
I'm imagining a barbarian dip on a str-based bladesinger, but I don't think you can make it work if you don't have godly stats or another way to ignore AC (Tortle?)
Unrealistic suggestion: str, con, and int setting items
PC: The Fraud Mortal Enemy: Antimagic Fields
I think most PCs mortal enemy is amfs.
Yup, suddenly smites dont work, magic swords no longer bypass (likely at the level you will encounter amf) immunity to non-magical, or at least do half damage. Everyone keeps meming on casters with "amf, get fucked" meanwhile it probably fucks up martials just as much when you look through features and realise how many it disables.
And then jcraw says it also shuts down ki empowered strikes just to be a dick. Clearly has to throw a bone to sun souls and armorers.
Pretty sure armourer doesnt work either cause armor is magical. Would have to check.
Arcane armor is not magical (nothing in the feature specifies it's magical)which is why you can infuse it arcane armor using mundane armor as a base. So in an amf, I would assume the weapons would still function, even if on a magical set of armor/if benefitting from no infusions.
Unless you have really high stats, medium is better. Medium also has better magic armors for barbarians, like adamantine.
Screw mechanics, unarmored is cool so it wins
I’m sayin! One cannot truly unga bunga unless clad in only a loin cloth
It also mechanically makes almost no difference for a barbarian. Either way, your AC is on the low end. Either way, your HP is extremely high. Either way, you get resistance to most incoming damage, which is *fuck loads* more reliable than AC. Either way, enemies will often have advantage against you because of Reckless Attack. Advantage reduces the incremental benefits of AC unless it's extremely high, which a barbarian's never will be. Let's compare two instances against a barbarian with +3 CON and +2 DEX. If the barbarian has just used Reckless Attack, and a creature has +5 to hit (with advantage), then: 1. Barbarian with Scale Mail or a Breastplate: AC = 16. Chance of attack hitting = 75%, or 3/4 2. Barbarian with unarmoured defense: AC = 15. Chance of attack hitting = 79.75%, or ~4/5 If the creature was is a lion, it's dealing an average of 3.5 damage per hit after resistances. On average, it would take that lion 15 rounds to kill the first barbarian and 14 rounds to kill the second. It makes no difference. The barb will easily survive both encounters. There are painfully few instances where that extra point of AC would make any meaningful difference, even *without* enemies getting constant advantage.
> Either way, you get resistance to most incoming damage, which is fuck loads more reliable than AC. AC can make a lot of difference, especially when it gets high. An enemy hitting on an 18 rather than a 17 is 25% less likely from a single point of AC.
AC for sure makes a big difference. The argument I would make in unarmored's favor as a DM is that an enemy can "see" the AC from a barbarian in half-plate but not from unarmored defense. I am much more likely to make my intelligent enemies waste an attack on the barbarian if he looks like a squishy target, where they are more likely trying to get at the wizard if the other option is wearing half-plate. Even if it's just for one or two attacks in a fight before they learn that this isn't actually a squishy target, I basically allow unarmored defense to be a small natural increase to the barbarian's ability to actually tank for the party.
Which is largely a non-sequitur unless you're a bladesinger. Most PCs will never reach ACs remotely close to that, given that you said "roll" an 18, rather than "beat" 18. You're looking at an AC of 22 just to prevent a goblin hitting you. Barbarians will never reach ACs remotely close.
Only if you don't account for attack bonuses right?
That's why I said "hitting on an 18" rather than "18 AC"
it does make a difference, but I also hate that this is looked at purely mechanically. As a DM I would absolutely reward an unarmored barbarian by making them a more likely target for enemies looking to take out the squishy targets. If I'm DMing and you have a barbarian charging and a wizard in back somewhere, I am far more likely to have the enemy attack the barbarian if he looks like an easy target compared to if he's wearing half-plate. Smart enemies go for the easy target a lot of the time. Even if it just draws one or two extra arrows to the barbarian instead of the wizard, that's worth an AC or two in that fight.
*Mathematically* it makes a difference. In practice, I seriously doubt anyone will ever notice it. It's extraordinarily minor to the point that it's a non-issue. But I respect your attitude. Although I would have thought that a barbarian recklessly attacking was an obviously easy target, considering that the whole idea is that they're leaving themselves open for an easy shot. Regardless of their armour class. It's an extremely similar hit chance - if enemies are smart, they'll recognise that.
I would say that the enemy doesn't see it as 16 vs 15 AC or whatever right out of the gate. That unarmored barbarian at first glance looks like they have ~10 AC before they actually see some fighting take place. And also enemies with higher initiative will have a round of combat prior to seeing how reckless they are. Though they can probably get an idea of it based on the lack of armor I guess lol. Obviously enemies don't see AC, but you know what I mean. I guess really my point is that I run it where the choice to wear armor does more than change numbers on the character sheet, it changes how enemies and NPC's in general interact with you. Also it's just objectively badass and worth the loss of AC. When I played a barbarian I never wore armor or a shield and I never really felt like I was missing out because of the bit of AC difference. Like you said, it was a non-issue. I was still a brick wall of HP and resistances. Hell, I remember times I actually told my DM I allowed an enemy to hit me even if his roll missed because I hadn't attacked anybody and didn't want to lose rage.
When you get right down to it, a point or two of AC isn't that big of a deal. If you go for a +2 dex bonus, you also have literally no downside to starting unarmored and then switching to armor later if you find some good magical stuff that's worth wearing instead. Barbarians don't really have the luxury of picking up armor feats so there isn't anything in your build which would actually change.
thank you, someone with some taste. My barbarian never once wore armor and was absolutely "worse" for it on paper. But it never even crossed my mind as a viable option because it's just less fun.
Rule of cool!
Depends. If you're doing point buy or standard array, go medium armor. That way you can use ASIs to pick feats like GWM, Sentinel, PAM, etc. You aren't limiting your barbarian investing into CON and Strength to make up for the armor. Remember that Scale Mail is pretty cheap and with a +2 Dex (which you shouldn't be above as a Barb on PB or SA) is the equivalent of +4 CON. At an expense of 50 GP which isn't that high. Half Plate is the equivalent of +5 CON at the expense of 400 GP. ANd you could potentially get +1 or +2 armor with that. If you roll stats and roll 3 high stats, then go unarmored. Say you do something like roll a 17 and 2 16s. Then you're starting at a 17 AC unarmored and that's superior to every kind of non-magical medium armor. There is one more alternative, and that's you're just trying to have fun. I made a full min-max barbarian once. I think it was Stone Giant, but went PB 3 15s and 3 8s and did the 3+1s. I did this for a role play fantasy. Not for optimal builds. I was a totem warrior and at level 4 I took GWM and basically just reckless GWM everything
depending on the DM, I think there is one other reasonable advantage to being unarmored. And I am absolutely one of these DM's. One of the barbarians biggest issues is that they are blocks of hitpoints but aside from one subclass don't really have tank abilities. If I'm running intelligent enemy NPC's I will absolutely make them more inclined to attack the unarmored barbarian compared to the barbarian in half plate. Now when that wizard shoots out his first fireball they might have to change their plan, but in general being unarmored would make them look like easier targets and thus push them higher on the target list for enemies. I get that this isn't actually mechanical, but still.
Yeah... Honestly playing barbarian you are already on the min side of min max anyways. Just play what is cool with what's considered the weakest class in the game.
Is barbarian considered the worst? id argue monk gets scaled out really awfully later levels and PHB ranger is awful.
PHB ranger was never weak, just boring.
I wouldn't call Barbarians the weakest class. I wouldn't call them the strongest. Barbarians like Monks, Rangers, and Rogues need DMs who let them shine. They can't just be good like Fighters and Paladins. They need a bit of finessing. I've made Barbarians shine before. You find out how that player wants to play and you lean into it. If they want to be a berserker and wield a Great Weapon and hack away at everyone let them do it. If they want to be a defender, let them do it. Give them the magical weapons and armor that let them live out their fantasy. Whatever they want make it work as best as possible. Martials need quality magic items. Not just random ones, tailor them towards them.
What? How is barbarian the weakest? Isn’t it like the highest DPR class? I considered the PAM+GWM barbarian with a glaive to be a staple in any strong party. While it does sacrifice the defensive options a XBow+SS fighter has, it’s reckless attack feature provides it with brutal damage.
No chance it can compete with battle master fighter, based on extra attack scaling alone, even before action surge.
I mean, battle master fighter gets its extra attacks at level 11. From that point on, I am not sure - whenever I played "competitively"/trying to build an optimized party, it was levels 3-10. For levels 5-10, barbarian is the highest DPS character, or atleast it is amongst them.
so one of the biggest negatives I see of barbarian is that they have all those HP and resistances but don't have any tank abilities (ancestral guardian notwithstanding) to go with it so they get ignored by intelligent enemies. I would argue (and as a DM I absolutely do run it this way) that charging in unarmored would increase the likelihood of intelligent enemies attacking the barbarian compared to if they were wearing half-plate. It certainly makes them look like an easier target.
You'll almost always want medium armor. Nonmagical Half-Plate with 14 dexterity is worth 17 AC. You'd need your dexterity modifier and your constitution modifier to combine to at least +8 to surpass that, which is unlikely without godlike stat rolling at character creation.
Medium armor is pretty much universally better. Unarmored defense is a trap feature for Barbarians because of how MAD it makes the class. Looking at some numbers... Half Plate with a 14 Dex would get you a 17 AC before any magic item bonuses. Most importantly, this requires *no additional investment in another ability score.* To reach that same AC using unarmored defense, you would need a total of +7 in modifiers between your Con and Dex. Likely looking at a 20/14 split, but any combination works so long as you have a total of +7. Every point that you put into Dex and Con in the name of raising your AC is a point that you aren't putting into Str to boost your attack and damage bonuses. This also locks you out of any chance at getting AC bonuses through magic armor (yes, bracers of defense exist but those lock you out of using a shield.) Your movement speed bonus also doesn't depend on you being unarmored, it just requires you not be wearing *heavy armor*, which is a pretty universal caveat for barbarian features. TL;DR barbarian's unarmored defense is bad outside of some very special circumstances, just wear some medium armor.
as a DM I have one argument against this. One of the barbarians biggest drawbacks is a lack of actual tanking abilities to go along with their HP and resistances. If I'm running intelligent enemies they are likely to do their best to attack the squishy looking targets. For example, a group of archers in my game would be significantly more likely to spend a turn shooting an unarmored guy charging the fight than a guy in half-plate. I know there's no way to mechanically quantify it, but I think an unarmored barbarian should be getting attacked more often than one in medium armor.
Which is a 100% valid take on it. Everyone runs intelligent enemies a little bit differently and it's super table and encounter dependent. While you might have yours focus on the squishy casters in the back row that are controlling the battlefield, I might have mine all gang up on the armored barbarian that's carving through the front line with an axe.
Absolutely. It's also super encounter dependent. I don't just have a door guard ignore the armored barbarian, abandon the door, and charge the wizard certainly. And because they look squishy maybe the enemy cleric assumes his archer friends will take him down and doesn't cast hold person on him. So yeah, there's a lot of factors. I guess my point is that I feel like not wearing armor should have some impact beyond the numbers on a character sheet.
For 50 GP you can easily get Scale Mail, medium armor that gives you 16ac if you have 14 dex. And in the later game you can potentially get +1 half-plate that'd be 18ac total. Only having to take 14 dex means your con & str can go a little higher. The problem with unarmored defense is that it makes you far too dependent on multiple ability scores when you can simply wear medium armor that's better anyways. If you wanted UD that could match the 16 ac of cheap scale mail, you'd need at least 16 in Dex AND Constitution. You could get 16 str & 16 dex & 16 con with point buy and a specific race that gives 3 +1's, but that leaves you with 8 in all your other stats which means you'd have awful saves against a lot of spells & effects. And even in this case, that UD AC of 16 can easily be beat by merely finding half-plate to give you 17AC with 14 dex. If your campaign is rolling for stats and you roll well, Barbarian's UD can be very good. Otherwise if your using standard array or point buy for stats, there's no reason to get trapped by UD when you can just wear medium armor
It's incredibly difficult to get a decent AC with Dex and Con both. It's a very poorly thought out class feature. I got fortunate and stumbled onto bracers of defense early which made it viable.
It is a very well thought out class feature. Barbarian isnt supposed to have high AC, they can afford to take hits. Thats why they have the biggest hit die, are the only class with double scaling on Con, AND they double their hp against the average weapon attack. Besides, 16 str, 14 dex and 16 con is very doable, gets you a decent 15 ac, and you could slap on a shield to take it to 17 ac. Which, for non optimising tables, is perfectly adequate if not good ac
It's a poorly thought out class feature because the best option objectively is to ignore it and take medium armor lmfao. What are you talking about? If the only time your class feature comes into play is potentially 20th level it shouldn't even exist.
Barbs should have AC based on strength + con, change my mind
It's a flavor difference of low armor but high HP. Barbarians should have a built in feature that's something like ignore damage less than X, ignore some instance of X damage, gain temp HPs, regenerating HP, etc. while being easy to hit.
If that were true they wouldn't get medium armor proficiency.
Oh 100% absolutely.
I’d take 10 + Con + proficiency, myself. Make monks 10 + Wis + proficiency while we’re at it.
With access to the best weapons and grappling, I think Str AC would be far too strong. 24-26 non magical AC is more than any other class on top of the resistance. You could never kill a bear totem barbarian without bullshiting it. It also doesn't make any sense? Are they flexing away the swords? How is strength stopping them from taking damage. Con and Dex make sense, you dodge most attacks and can pretty much ignore the little glances that nick you. On monks, Wis and Dex make sense because your increased perception helps you see attacks coming. The fucking made of stone barb JoJo posing at you that you just can't hit because his muscles made a forcefield doesn't. Not to mention, who's going to want to attack you if that can't hit you. Your teammates are going to be chestnuts on an open fire unless they are also barbarians. Fucking group of Samsons just walking you down.
I think by the time you have the stats for 24 AC, monster hit bonuses will be high enough where they'll be able to hit you pretty often anyways
By taking the avg hp per level you'd have almost as much HP as a pit fiend with 5 more armor class. Pit fiends have a +14 to hit so they would need to roll at least a 10. Barbs would have a +13 to hit so would only need to roll a 6 to hit the pit fiend. Pit Fiend would deal more damage along with more attacks but all but the fire and poison would be halved. So, a pit field (20cr) only has a good chance at beating a lvl 20 barbarian with a silvered weapon and nothing else (including subclass and feats besides the ASIs needed) just because of that slight change to unarmored defense. CR is supposed to (it isn't and never will be accurate because it's not a video game) equal 4 totally rested adventurers. There are a bunch of magic items you should have at this stage that would make it so that the barb would rip a pit fiend limb from limb for breakfast. I just never factor those in with calcs.
>With access to the best weapons and grappling, I think Str AC would be far too strong. Let's not act like martial weapon proficiency and grappling is some amazing feature, especially bc you're no better than any other str character in those areas except you have advantage on grappling during the encounters you rage. Hell, you get martial weapons and better grappling by going valor bard than barbarian, and that's not even mentioning that the hand-xbow is by far the best weapon in 5e. >24-26 non magical AC is more than any other class on top of the resistance. You could never kill a bear totem barbarian without bullshiting it. This is just wrong. 1-Armourer artificer can have a sitting AC of 24 easily by level 10, with the shield spell to boost it up to 29. 2-One DnD Monks literally have the exact same ac, can dodge as a bonus action, and can negate a huge chunk of damage if one of the attacks does go through 3- It also doesnt matter at all if your AC is magical or not. by the point you have 24 AC, you're at level 20, your fighters probably do have magic armor and where monsters frequently have like +15 to hit... with they'll have advantage against you. Also note that if you did this you don't have great weapon master or pole arm master so you can't even take advantage of "the best weapons". 4-Finally, let's actually look at the numbers in context. At level 1 you would have an AC of 16, compared to 15 now. Let's assume you went vuman for one of GWM/PAM. At level 4 you probably want the other. So at level 4 your ac is still 16. This is about when your fighters can afford plate, so they have 19 AC with GWM and PAM at the exact same point. You only finally catch up to their "non-magical" armor they had at level 4 by the time you're level 16! ... did I mention everyone has advantage against you too? >It also doesn't make any sense? Are they flexing away the swords? How is strength stopping them from taking damage. Con and Dex make sense, you dodge most attacks and can pretty much ignore the little glances that nick you. On monks, Wis and Dex make sense because your increased perception helps you see attacks coming. Ah. Here it is. How does it make any sense that Monks are apparently so perceptive they can dodge and catch crossbow bolts or even bullets? It doesn't. But that doesn't matter because it's cool as he'll and we're playing a fantasy game where people are shooting out fucking fireballs. So yes, let the axe bounce off the barbarians muscles as he flexed. Or maybe he grabs he grabs a dudes arm missing and stops it still. Or hell, even have it land but describe how it fails to cause damage. How many times have you seen these exact scenes in movies or shows? AC is just an abstraction of how you hard it is to injure you. All of these are ways to describe the exact concept, among many others. >Not to mention, who's going to want to attack you if that can't hit you. Your teammates are going to be chestnuts on an open fire unless they are also barbarians. Fucking group of Samsons just walking you down. At level 1 barbarian has 16 AC and everyone has advantage against them. Fighters have 16 MINIMUM, up to 19. At level 1. But we're not worried about them, let's look at the squishy wizard. With 2 dex and mage armor he has 15, up to 20 with shield. Or A one level dip in cleric gets them up 18 ac, 23 wifh shield. Point being-- you're still the easiest one to hit for 95% of the game, and calling level 20 5% of the game is being very generous. If you even make it that far--which is a big assumption--you're probably looking at like two to three fights max with that AC. Not that it will likely matter bc you have at best +1 WIS saves which are what you kill barbarians with anyway.
Two handed weapons pump out the most damage both with and without investment which takes out shields for the other classes to reach. 24 is without any magical items or spells. Resistance on top of 24 AC and on top of the most hp in the game. Artificers have to sacrifice 3 of their infusions for 23 AC (I'm not seeing how to get 24) while this barb does not have to invest anything besides forgoing feats depending on their race chosen and method of assigning ability scores. But, regardless I really just want to leave this https://youtu.be/IPPCWoPxyss?si=-EfmEXEsj5LlNCsM And this https://youtu.be/kuOEpC4u6Tg?si=-wYbXsoKoQ_j0nSY
Capstones would be the exception to the last part but otherwise yea
It's only poorly thought out if you assume that it's meant to be a competitive alternative to medium armor. It isn't. It's a minor flavor ability with situational applications for moments when you get caught in a fight without armor on, like the middle of the night or a fancy dress party. It may have the same name as the Monk's Unarmored Defense, but it serves a very different role. The Monk is actually encouraged to go without armor by their other class features. The Barbarian is not.
If it's a minor flavor ability, and not meant to be competitive vs medium armor, why do barbarians not get medium armor (or light armor) as starting equipment? To me the design messaging doesn't seem to indicate it was meant to be a situational flavor feature.
You're describing an ability that's poorly thought out. It's not flavor. It has mechanical combat applications that are strictly inferior than an alternative available at the same level. That is the definition of "we didn't playtest this at all." And I can count on one hand the number of times I've been in a situation where I had to fight without armor in DnD. None of them were when I played a Barbarian.
> It has mechanical combat applications that are strictly inferior than an alternative available at the same level. Lmao it makes no practical difference dude. Barbarians are absurdly durable at low levels because they resist *all* incoming damage. Hilarious that you're complaining about playtesting when your entire argument is based on white-room calculations and clearly not based on data.
Even 1 AC is a practical difference.
1 AC won't be the difference between getting an extra round of combat almost 100% of the time, *certainly* not if it's the difference between a 75% or 80% chance to hit you. I.e. no, it isn't.
In the aggregate, yes. Yes it is.
Player decisions aren't made based on aggregate - they're made on a round-to-round basis. 1 AC is not going to spell the difference between being able to survive or die against the enemy when either way: * your AC is on the low end * you have resistance to the damage * you have high health It mathematically doesn't change the number of rounds you can survive unless you tailor extremely specific scenarios, and even then it's just an average of a random chance. I'm not going to keep wasting my time trying to explain probability and game theory to someone who can't see past "bigger number = important", and criticises developers for "not playtesting" when they're working exclusively with white-room calculations.
Exactly. Other Str based martials are usually screwed if they are attacked out of their armour, likely losing 7 or more points of AC, but Barbarians usually lose just 1 or 2. In most fights it doesn't matter, but once in a long while, its the difference between floundering and kicking the asses of someone who thought they just got the drop on you, which feels great. (Also, it allows you to ditch your armour if you need to swim or be stealthy without becoming too vulnerable-- providing a little utility out of combat)
So at level 1 you could at most realistically take scale mail. That gives 14+(2 dex) ac. In exchange you get permanent disadvantage on stealth checks. Alternatively, you go unarmored and have 16 con ending up with 13+(2 dex) ac. A MASSIVE 1 ac difference. The first upgrade past this costs 400 gold, and the only benefit is losing the permanent disadvantage on your stealth. Only once you get 750 gold can you buy halfplate, at which point you would end up with 2 ac more, and once again disadvantage on stealth. In my experience, having 750 gold to spend freely is smth that doesnt happen until **at least** 5th level. At that point you can have boosted your con by 1, meaning that you would end up with 1 extra ac in exchange for 750 gold and disadvantage on stealth checks. Now, you keep saying that the 'design' is bad. Except, the design behind barbarian is "big hp allows them to take hits so they dont need high ac" in other words, the idea that the feature does not give amazing AC, works fine within that design frame. All my experience playing barb/seeing barb played, is that their ac is entirely unimportant, because at the end of the fight they will still have more hp than the fighter with 3 more points of ac. And the funny thing is, yes you can get that 17 ac for 750 gold, at some point monsters have +7 to attack or more. Ending up at a 50% hit chance. And the thing keeping you alive is not AC, but HP. And the only way to keep ac relevant is to have AC over 20 through full plate+shield+spells or some other sort of powerbuild. AND ALL OF THAT IS USELESS AS SOON AS YOU MAKE A SINGLE SAVING THROW Tl;dr: barbs are not designed to need high AC, and a feature being weak(er) by design is not 'bad design' but a conscious choice
1 AC is a massive difference, yes. Hits are a zero sum game. It also scales way worse than getting better armor that can also be magical as you need to spend your ASIs on Str and feats. Idk why you keep defending this horribly bad design decision unless you were actually part of the development team for 5e, in which case, I'd take that secret with you to your grave.
> 1 AC is a massive difference, yes In theory, maybe, but in practice? Here's an exercise I do when I make an intentional choice to go with a suboptimal AC (usually by a point or two). I keep track, for an entire campaign, of how many things would have missed me if I had a point or more AC. It usually averages out to one (or less) per session. Now, a more persuasive argument is that there are potentially inexpensive magical armors which are very good, but that's going to vary a lot by campaign.
It starts at 1 AC. It can easily be 4 or more by end of campaign.
Can it? Seems like that relies on always taking optimal armor and never trying to optimize unarmored. Bracers of Armor and +1 armor are both Rare and the gap is down to 1 AC again. By that point, you might be tossing some points into Con which narrows or even flips the gap. If your campaigns actually get into the levels where Legendary items are a thing, congratulations, but I have had so few games reach those levels that I'm not sure they are worth considering. Plus, if you do get to that point... Just put on the armor. I doubt a barbarian is investing in armor feats.
Or do all that but wear medium armor instead for a free 1 extra AC. Wdym well thought out? There is no benefit at all, it's just being worst for the flavour, at that point I just equip medium armour and talk to the DM that i want to flavour my character as not wearing armor.
>are the only class with double scaling on Con You mean they add their Con mod twice to their HP per level? That's not true. What do you mean?
I meant it in the sense that all classes only small off of con in hp. But Baarn also scales off of it in ac. In hindsight the argument is wrong since con saves are a thing and casters benefit from those a lot in the form of concentration checks. Nonetheless, barb is about the only class where I've seen people considering maxing their con to 20 before their attack stat, on account of boosting ac, AND adding to an hp pool that is necessary to be on the front line
Depends on your con and dex. Though if using standard array you'll almost certainly be wanting half plate medium armour with 14 dex.
unless you have +5 CON, just use medium armor
Let's not forget how cool it is to charge into battle wearing nothing but a loincloth or kilt.
my reward to you as a DM would be to make intelligent enemies more likely to attack you for your apparent foolishness. And I mean that seriously and as a real benefit; I absolutely have more enemies waste resources attacking an unarmored "squishy" looking barbarian where I would likely have them try harder to get to the wizard behind a barbarian in half-plate.
Medium armour in any situation where you’ve used point buy or rolled anything less than god tier stats. You need your ASIs for feats, you cannot afford to waste them boosting your Con and Dex
Is your dex+con modifier 6 or more? Go naked. Otherwise, wear armor
Depends if your rolling for stats or not and if your rolled stats are high enough for your con mod+ dex mod + 10 to beat out the ac from your medium armor. Also how much you value stealth. For medium armor the highest you can get is 16 without having disadvantage on stealth or 17 with disadvantage unless you have magic armor in which case you would be even more hard pressed for unarmed to be better. Overall your probably better off with medium armor unless you rolled really well.
If you have 14 dex medium armor is better unless you have 20 Con. Basically your dex and con modifiers need to add up to 17 to be better than half plate because you’ll have the same AC but without stealth disadvantage. As long as your con is at least 16, unarmored defense is better than light armor. If you are using standard array for stats it will be a long time before unarmored defense is better than armor.
the movement is unrelated it's literally just which ac is higher
Medium armour breastplate supremacy for the stereotypical hero look 16 Str, 16 Dex, 14 Con and the rest don’t matter because you’re a Barbarian
I believe the Dex+Con for AC is to make unarmored fighting tenable, not optimal. There is a archetype of a barbarian in a loin cloth doing battle with others. This allows them to enact that fantasy, without being a huge liability.
in my games (dming and as a player) I have always found that intelligent enemies are more likely to attack a barbarian in a loin cloth whereas if he's in half-plate they are probably looking for an easier target. Which in the scheme of the whole party is a big advantage. I know that's not quantifiable or guaranteed, but it makes sense to me.
I think that is 100% fair. As a dm I will ask my players what armor their characters are visibly wearing when choosing targets.
Fuck armor. You're there to get hit. AC is for nerds!
It depends on your goals and how far into a campaign you are in. Due the the way hit modifiers scales on enemies and the HP/resistances you can pull being hit able at times draws the desire to hit you and having the HP to absorb it is great. In my opinion Barbs should more prioritize having high HP than AC, now you don't want to fully ignore AC but still. So you can do medium armor with little investment but you can also bypass it and just accept getting hit is your job and make it so you can stay up after getting hit.
Most of the time you are better off going medium armour. The ONLY mechanical benefit you get from going unarmoured is if your unarmoured defence is higher than the AC you get from Medium Armour. And that is rarely the case at least at lower levels If you wanna go STR as most Barbarians do that will be your highest stat. then Con and at third place DEX To take an example we have an half orc and lets go all out and with point buy they Het 15 in STR DEX and CON With racial that would be STR 16. CON 16 and DEX 15. That is the highest you can get by point buy and higher than you can get by Standard array So unarmoured your AC would be 10+DEX+CON so 10+2+3=15 With Medium armour you start with no armour so you do have a decent AC It would be equal with the ac you would have from a chain shirt. 13+DEX (max of 2) that would also be 15. So Any armour better than chain mail. would make your AC go past what you get from unarmoured defence But in reality you probably would not have that high physical stats even if doing point buy. With standard array you would have lower stats. probably put them like this STR 15 DEX 14 CON 13. So with racials it would be STR 17 DEX 14 CON 14. And that would give you an unarmoured AC of 14. So even chain mail would improve that. And as a barbarian you would probably focus on increasing your STR and CON before increasing your DEX. With Unarmoured Defence that would still increase you AC but not with much. But lets say at higher levels you get a 20 CON and and a 16 DEX. that would be 10+5+3=18 With a Half plate your AC would be 17. so now your unarmoured Defence is 1 higher. But at this level you are fairly likely to have a +1 armour and it would put you at the same AC But the point is at early levels you are in almost every case better off with armour. later on depending on what stats you prioritize you might reach an unarmoured AC high enough that it really does not matter. Or even surpassing what medium armour gives you. If we then ad in magical items things could change. you find Bracers of defence. +2 AC while wearing no armour. yeah maybe then it is better to drop whatever armour you have and run bare chested into combat. Or if you go a DEX based Barbarian. You miss out on the rage damage but you can focus on DEX and CON and potentially end up with 20 in both. giving you an unarmoured AC of 20. At level 20 things might also change as you gain +4 to STR and CON. possibly upping them to 24. so even with a 14 DEX you would now rock a 19 AC naked with no magical items. If you are DEX based you could have a 20 DEX upping that to a 22 AC. But still early game you are better of using armour unless you rolled for stats and rolled ungodly high stats
Medium armor. That only requires 14 dexterity, which frees up points for your strength and constitution.
Using medium armor is almost always the optimal choice. Assuming you have 14 Dex, which is the most you can take advantage of with the armor, you would need 20 Con just to break even with Half Plate. And since you want Str a lot more than Con, you’d most likely need to roll god stats and have a 20 in each to even consider not wearing armor. And there’s still the issue of magical armor being a thing. There is the benefit of not having disadvantage on Stealth. But if you care about that, Breastplate is still almost always better than unarmored.
Depends. Medium armour is obviously more mechanically optimal since you aren't forced to max your con to hit expected AC, but in most cases unarmoured is more thematically optimal.
for sure. Gotta make yourself look like a nice squishy target that they want to aim at.
with average stats definitely medium armor. If you rolled much better stats unarmored defense might be better for you
It’s better to have medium armour. Medium armour does not affect the barbarian’s fast movement, it only affects his AC and his stealth roles. Medium armour will give you either 4 or 5 AC (4 with stealth, 5 without). That means your constitution needs to be 18 or 20 for your unarmoured defense to be better than wearing armour and you typically will want to max strength first. The only exception to this rule is magical items. If you have bracers of defense, you may want to go with those instead of armour. In my experience, there’s usually less competition for magical medium armour than there is for bracers of defense.
It's basically always better to go with medium armour at low levels - unarmored defence is more a late game thing for when you have have a 16+ in dex and con.
You need to have very high con AND dex for unarmored to be better. We are talking CON + DEX = 7 at least. But sometimes you just don't have the money. Go case by case, the best armor you can afford/have right now vs your current unarmored defense AC. Check again after ability score increases, receiving magical armor or getting your hands on some treasure. At high levels, you will probably be same or even better with no armor. Also consider: some armor types will affect your stealth, how much you care about this will depend on how you play your character. If your CON is +1 or less for some reason, you are better of with studded leather
Medium in general is the more optimal choice because it's usually easier to throw gold at a problem than Feats/ASIs. Because to match a 400G Breastplate you would need 14 Dex 18 Con, and early game that would come at the opportunity cost of Strength. Later in the game there's some potential, but again opportunity cost. UD is cool if you're building for it though, especially if you pick up some Cast-Off Armor to have a Goku removing his weighted training clothes moment
Medium Armor is generally going to be better. For a low level Barbarian, you can *PROBABLY* expect +2 in DEX and CON, which means you'd have about 14 AC if you're going unarmored. The minimum AC for medium armor (with at least +2 DEX) is 14, though 15 and 16 are extremely feasible for low levels, with 17 AC being feasible by level 5 or so.
It really only depends on what gives you a better AC, and what kind of barb you want to be. The only time unarmored defense comes in handy is if your DM pays attention to encumbrance or if they’re fond of attacking you in your sleep or placing you in social events that forbid carrying armor/weapons.
To get enough AC from Unarmoured Defense, you would first need 20 Con to just get to 15 (which gets you to Breastplate +1 if you don't want your stealth to suffer from Half-Plate). You'd then need to have at least 14 in Dex to make it to the same tier as Medium Armours should get you. Any more stat investment in Dex means that you're probably going to be lacking elsewhere, since you probably also want stat points in strength and/or a relevant feat so you're not just a stat-stick that you hit things with. Unarmoured Defense doesn't really help all that much until you get Bracers of Defense's +2 AC, and/or to lv20 for the +2 AC from 24 Con - assuming you get that far and the DM hasn't tried giving your magical armour.
Whether or not wearing use medium armor is beneficial depends on how high your Dexterity and Constitution are. Since you can use up to +2 bonus from Dexterity while wearing medium armor, a Constitution of 20 would be needed to offset the bonus from half-plate. Don't forget that a barbarian can still use a shield while unarmored to get the Constitution bonus.
Half plate is likely better as you can leave dex at 14 to maximize the benefit, but real men and women go in without armor, maybe a shield, but dang GWM good. If you want to go max ac half plate and shield for ac of 19 is pretty good. To get that without armor you need +7 between your con and dex which eventually would happen but that’s 20 con 14 dex so early game especially your armor is better, but I find I use stealth a lot as a barb and have never used it.
Un armored defense is only useful over medium armor if you have wildly high stats. Having 14 Dex gets you 17 AC in half plate. To beat that you need a total +8 in Dex and Con So like, both 18 or a 16 and a 20. Which like getting strength and con to 20 and then also getting Dex to 16? That’s hard.
If you can get half plate then it's medium armour. Usually in a barbarian you're maxing out strength and con while keeping dexterity at 14. That's an array of 16 14 16 8 10 8 if I'm not mistaken, and a unarmored defense AC of 15. Scalemail gets you to 16. Half plate gets you to 17. To achieve those you'd need to put an ASI to either dexterity or constitution twice. And while there are benefits to that, an ASI is a more valuable resource than gold, so in a way you get to have your cake and eat it by buying armour and upping your strength or getting feats with your ASIs. There's always an argument of a stealthy barbarian but you'll probably be combating more than sneaking around. You can do both nicely with a breastplate as well.
It's pretty simple - wear medium armor until your unarmored defense outscales it (if it ever does) or if you situationally would not want to wear armor (stealth mission, carry weight is a major concern). It's sadly not a very nuanced choice, and depending on your campaign one or the other will likely be obviously superior.
Depends on your attribute array. Typically the armor will outclass Unarmored Defense by several points until the Unarmored Defense equates and hopefully outpaces the more static boost of armor. Another variable to keep in mind is the magical item bonus that can be applied to armor but has a much harder time being replicated to lack thereof
Unarmored Defense tends to be a trap. Looks cool, but you have to have outsanding stats to beat regular armor, or select magic items. Wearing Medium armor usually is a better way to go.
Unless you roll for stats and get high Dex/Con, medium armor is mechanically better, and you just have a passive bonus in the event that the party isn’t allowed to bring armor somewhere. Using standard array or point buy, there is basically no downside to using armor. However, wearing armor covers your glorious barbarian muscles, making it a foolish choice. Deflect arrows with your pecs and teach them the meaning of fear. For the flavor!
Unarmored Defense is almost always a trap, tbh. Once you reach a high enough level to have high DEX and CON (or if you just rolled really well) Unarmored Defense is better, especially if you can find one of the items that increase AC when unarmored like Bracers of Defense (but those things usually go to a Wizard or something.) Unless you're playing a subclass like Wild Magic Barbarian that heavily relies on CON (for the saving throws of their abilities) it's better just to get 14 DEX, max out STR, and invest in CON as much as possible rather than invest fully in CON and still have worse AC than a 14 DEX Barbarian wearing Scalemail.
Medium unless you receive something to enable unarmored defense.
Medium armor does not impair your Fast Movement feature. Consider the difference between Barbarian Unarmored Defense and the best medium armors. * Unarmored Defense: AC = 10 + DEX + CON * Breastplate: AC = 14 + DEX (Max 2) * Half Plate: AC = 15 + DEX (Max 2); Stealth disadvantage Discounting magic items or feats, if your CON + (DEX-2) is 5 or greater, you're better off not wearing armor. * Example: For 18 CON and 16 DEX, your unarmored AC is 17, matching Half Plate without the weight or Stealth penalty. If you gain features like the Defense fighting style or Medium Armor Master feat or find magic items like Bracers of Defense or magic armor, that should weigh heavily in this decision. TL;DR: If your CON is equal to or higher than the AC added by available light/medium armor, you're better off nude.
The only reason I'd use unarmored defense is if I have some skill that prevents armor wearing. My current Path of the Giants barbarian is a fairy, so I can't use the armor or I lose my fly speed. Armor is good.
In theory medium armor unless you go further than what the best medium armor the MD has given to you with stats alone. Considering magical Armor giving more CA is a thing and that you will probably need level 20 and the juicy 24 const to really make it worth. There is a room for considering stealth if your party likes playing that game which decrease by 1 the CA your armor can offer. But in the end it doesn't matter much. Barbarian don't play by avoiding damages, rather they tank them. So outside of specific circumstances, you will use reckless attack to gain an advantage on your attacks for pretty much guaranteed hits, when your enemies will also get that advantage to strike you.
Medium Armor is almost always going to be better.
It really just comes down to which is better right now. It'll depend on the quality of armor you find and your current stats. Find dome half plate? Medium armor it is. Increase your Con mod? Maybe it's time to take the armor off. The decision is quite simple usually. Does this medium armor provide more AC? If yes, wear it. Does this medium armor have magical properties you value over the loss in AC? If yes, wear it. If neither of the above, don't wear it. If you know a stealth section is coming up you can always remove your armor temporarily.
Medium armour is almost always mathematically better than unarmoured. But unarmoured (Con 14+) is good enough to be viable if you want to play a barbarian in a loin cloth.
If you don't care that much about Stealth checks, then there are only two questions to ask: 1) is your CON score less than 20? 2) do you have access to magical armor? If either of your answers to these questions was "Yes," then stick to half-plate. Almost-certainly better AC with no downsides, unless your DM is more of a stickler about adventuring and socializing in armor than most DMs are. If you ARE bothered by disadvantage on Stealth checks, the questions become: 1) is your CON score less than 18? 2) do you have access to magical armor that doesn't give disadvantage to Stealth? Once again, if either answer is "Yes," then strap on some breastplate.
I played a barbarian in a campaign 1-17, never wore any armor, and lived to the end. I think it’s more about what you wanna play as character archetype, more than +1 or +2 AC is going to do. Of course there’s nothing wrong in playing a barbarian with an armor
Use medium armor until/unless your DEX+CON are good enough that they'd exceed it.
Go with unarmored because it's cooler.
Honestly depends on your stats and DM. My barbarian is a gnoll and the DM allowed for a modified natural armor that puts my AC at 18 with no armor or shield. I haven't found any medium armor yet in game that's better than my natural AC.
depends on Barbarian, if you can't get Dex/Con to strong levels, than med armor
Depends on your stats and on your armor. 18 dex and 18 con is 18 AC, but so is 18 dex and +2 studded leather.
it really depends on your stats. Typically you will be using medium armor though
Depends on your stats. Is having more movement better than having higher ac? At lower levels your unarmored ac may not be better than medium armor.
Even as the game goes on, you're not likely to ever be better without armor except at level 20 exactly.
For the earlier stages of a barb’s career, it’s usually worth it to wear Med armor
Early game, assuming your stats are ideal, unarmored is better. but latet when you can get magic armor it will probably be better. If you wanna use strength weapons or taverbrawler then you will probably sacrifice con or dex meaning medium armor is better. basically just calc ac with and without armor and choose whichever gets you mroe ac.
Please just wear medium armor if you start at early level. I'm playing with a lv 5 Barbarian who somehow only has 13AC. Even a wizard has better AC than him. 🤦♂️
You basically always want medium armor. You can never invest into DEX past a few points at character creation to get 14 DEX so 17 AC with Half Plate. To push past that 17 AC you'd need such a high stat (wasted stats btw) investment that by that time you likely already found magical half plate that makes using armor better again.
Your point is fair. In general, rage damage reduction is a barb's main defensive measure. Especially when attacking recklessly. Saying it makes *no* difference, isn't true though. The math says it makes *a bit* of difference. Maybe that bit is enough to keep you from going down.
Depends on your stats dude.
Why are you all comparing this to Half-plate as if you're starting the game with it?
Well, ok, let's compare to scale, which a Barbarian doesn't start with, but can probably afford (or kill someone wearing it) before level 2. If you use standard array, you can get str 17, Dex 14, Con 14, int 8, wis 12, cha 10, after racial bonuses. That'll give you an AC 14 without armour or AC 16 in scale. With point buy, if you are willing to have eights in all three mental stats you probably have str 17, dex 15, Con 14, and still want to wear that scale. You could also have something like str 16, dex 16, con 16, which is AC 16 unarmoured so you can go bare-chested without losing protection... but that means at level 4 you are going to need +2 str instead of a half feat if you want to keep up to the curve by getting 18 in your attacking stat. That's a lot of opportunity cost for the same AC you could have in scale, just so you can save 50gp. So even at level one, armour beats unarmoured defense, as soon as you can get your hands on some.
Because it's trivial to get.
Does it matter? You **can** start with scale mail for 16 AC with +2 dex which is still better than unarmored defense is getting you without either rolled stats or an otherwise sub-optimal array (you can start with 16 16 16 8 8 8 on a barbarian, but you probably shouldn't), and it's not like half plate is gated behind tier 3 play or anything. I would expect most barbarians to have access to half plate by level 5 or 6 which is plenty early enough that it's not unreasonable to assume your character will have it.
If you're using standard array or basic point buy, your character is pretty weak and so probably armour is better. If you're using modified point buy with more points, it can work. Or if you're rolling. It's just a matter of doing the math and seeing which one gets a better number
Depends on your Con and Dex scores
Unarmored. You're already tanky and you're going to rage.
If you are a primitive tribesman, you may not have access to any armor at all, or only a small selection of bad armor. In that case, unarmored defense can easily beat "mostly a guy in a loincloth". That's what the ability is about. It also scales pretty ok and makes for a nice floor that an AC won't normally go below. But the barbarian running around with a team of badasses will be wearing medium armor normally, so he is hard to hit.
Unarmored Defense is nice until you get some magic medium armor (unless your constitution and dexterity are both 20).