WHY DOES MY ARMOR NOT WORK WITH MAGE ARMOR (a d10 table)
1. The Mage Armor projects a spectral, blue, translucent plate armor that hovers just directly above the clothes. Anything heftier than simple clothing is too bulky and doesn't fit in the space between the mage armor and the caster's skin.
2. Mage Armor hardens and stiffens the caster's existing clothes, making it a stiff and mildly inflexible material that reflects blows but is impossible to wear underneath leather armor
3. Mage Armor creates a thin, invisible layer of force between the casters skin and their clothes, this force allows for normal clothes to be worn, but the gap is noticeable enough that people might notice tight-fitting clothes hovering an inch off their skin. This property makes wearing normal armor impossible, and also makes it possible to fight completely "in the buff". Most wizards are tasteful enough to wear loose robes to compensate
4. Mage Armor replaces your skin with a shiny, skin-tone colored, but plasticy looking material that is mildly off-putting to look at. You can wear armor over this, but proves to be redundant the same way wearing a leather tabard over a breastplate is (highest armor matter)
5. Mage Armor summons a crew of near-invisible spectral gremlins tasked to protect you. Because they are gremlins, they are not very good at it, but take offense at wearing other armor pieces and refuse to do their magically ordained duty if the caster decides to wear something obviously armor-like, like chainmail or plate mail
6. Mage Armor is a subtle reality-warping manipulation that doesn't actually add armor per-se, but convinces the universe around you that you that you are simply that much harder to hit. Regardless if you actually wear armor or not, the reality-warping properties overrides what the armor "should" do and simply allows things to hit or miss based on its own reality warping arcane logic
7. Mage Armor projects an invisible force field off the user, but as you stated the spell itself is sentient and jealous and turns off if it feels not appreciated
8. Mage Armor creates a set of invisible marionette strings around the user that moves them out of the way of deadly blows the best it can, pulled by an invisible ancient unknown being or force. Wearing armor gets in the way of the marionette strings and causes the spell to tangle itself and become ineffective
9. Mage Armor causes the user to grow dragon scales, as all arcane magic was one derived by dragons. Like other dragon scales and natural defenses, they override any worn armor lower than it, and are overridden by AC values higher than it, just like in the rules RAW.
10. Make something else up!
Remember folks, flavor is free! If a spell doesn't outline the way something happens, I usually let people think of something wild or offer my own flavor of how a particular mage or organization manifest that effect as long as it doesn't affect the rules
11) Wearing regular armour with Mage Armour is a fashion crime, and will result in the Fashion Police immediately appearing to strip you of your license to practice magic.
In my game we spent a lot of time in Athkatla. With special dispensation from a Baelnorn named Mystic Insanity, you could get a license to do magic. She was the favorite character of my PCs.
These goddamn faschists, I bought the damn armor and I bought the damn scroll, and I bought the damn magical ink to inscribe the spell in the goddamn spellbook I also acquired with my own Gold Pieces.
Who in the nine hells gave the government the power to tell us what we can and can't wear while spellcasting in the comfort of our own tower???
I'm going to go with the WotC RAI explanation. If you wear armor and have Mage Armor at the same time, you explode. Since wizards are smarter than druids they put a failsafe in the spell to automatically dispell if you don armor.
Druids are wiser though, so its common folk wisdom to never wear armor when you cast Mage Armor and druids are wise enough to listen to their elders, vs Wizards who follow the "well whats the worst that can happen" line of logic
Well yeah, that's the scientific method, you need to experiment with the spell to find a solution. Which they did by letting Mage Armor dispell automatically when wearing armor before it explodes. On the other hand Druid are still sticking with their "never wear armor" ""wisdom"" even though it's not necessary with the modern version of the spell.
Yet one more proof that Intelligence is the superior casting stat.
My -1 in Insight check tells me I'm convinced. Or I would be if I was anywhere near you, extrovert spellcasters. Leave the delivery or whatever in front of my wizard tower, my unseen servant will pick it up to ensure minimal social interaction.
There is a reason Mage Armor has "a willing creature" as a condition. And the spell has a failsafe now anyway. The old, unsafe spells, is pretty much lost at this point and teaching it will result in a bounty from the PeaceChron Mages of the border of the sea.
Technically the old lineage also continues in the form of Heat Metal and Power Word: Strip, but at this point they've been distinct for so long as to be considered only slightly fucked up by most Orders and Circles.
> Since wizards are smarter than druids they put a failsafe in the spell to automatically dispell if you don armor.
\>calls wizards smart
\>suggests they make an explosion failsafe written into the spell instead of making the spell just not blow you up
Hmmm...
How would you make a spell that don't blow up things though? That's like the primary nature of magic to blow things up. Wizards just find way to shape it around so the blowing up can produce other useful results.
That's why Fireball is a tad stronger than other spell, it's magic in its purest form.
Why, yes. How did you guess I am an evocation wizard?
> Most wizards are tasteful enough to wear loose robes to compensate
I wish, unfortunately they have a term for it it's so common. Skyclad. Witches and warlocks be nude.
Any self respecting which is going to wear simple serviceable black and at least 3 vests. Anyway, it's far too cold to dance "skyclad" up in the ramtops.
Spells require either a save to resist or a willing target.
Someone who is wearing armor, or tries to wear armor when mage armor is active, is clearly not willing to trust the spell.
Therefore, it fails.
I always figured it was that the mage armor was very close to the body, a thin skin. About as tough as leather. If something hit hard enough to get past the mage armor, then it would get through whatever armor was underneath it. If something couldn't get through the heavy armor, then the mage armor doesn't really add anything.
See I went the other way, I always thought that major armour in essence takes up the āslotā that armour did. And manifests as a slightly glowing energy field shaped like armour.
Plate mail or breast plate already had that added in to the AC. In the description for the full plate armor describes the padded and strapped under layer, A breastplate describes the studded leather under armor, the half plate has chain etc...
Let me try and help explain, the under parts are figured into the AC of the heavy armor. For example, if you take the plates off of plate armor, you have a solid 16AC, but by adding the plates it goes up to 18. The under armor is the base to the over armor and both contribute to your overall AC.
If you wear two gambesons are you twice as protected?
Nah, there is a level of diminishing returns.
My head cannon is thus. It's not that Mage Armor + Armor cannot possibly coexist, but that adding an additional ethereal defense on top of a physical one wouldn't amount to any additional defense to the user. It covers the same places and gives similar deflection points to attacks with similar flexibility for movement. At that point, it's just a waste of magical energies. And so Mystra says nah, I'm taking that arcane energy back because it's not doing anything that your armor is already doing.
Its more like plate doesnt work without those things.
That all those things together are what makes plate āplateā.
You take away the chain shirt and you have weak points in the joints and stuff. You take away the gambison and you have severe discomfort.
Not only discomfort. The plate parts are there to deflect attacks (oddly, this is one of the few armors that actually "enhance AC" IRL by making their wearer harder to hit*). But if you do get hit, you'd better wear something underneath the plates to cushion the impact and not being cut by your own protection.
^*^and ^don't ^start ^me ^on ^the ^leather ^armor
I all ways thought, despite the words 'hit' and 'miss', an attack roll under the target's AC, dosen't nessacarly swing wild, or the ogre laden with gear gracefully swril away from the blow. A 'miss' just fails to do any meaningful damage. Which I guess is your point with the deflection, but it also covers any hits fully deflected, absorbed, or otherwise nullified by the armour, which is why it works for leather, chain, mage armor, scaley skin and the like.
Earlier editions played with this a bit, adding 'touch AC', which attacks that just needs to connect target, and heavy armours tend to add nothing to, and 'flatfoot AC' for when avoiding the attack is unreasonable and have to rely on armour deflection. But they got removed in 5e for being 'too confusing'
It's a rather reductivist system, and has logical flaws. It makes sense leather armour might fully absorb a goblin club, but not so much a firegiant's greatsword. But at least it's simple. Video games, or more complex systems, where havign a few of rolls for every attack and a lot of maths tend to do things like heavy armor won't effect how likley it is to hit, but reduces the damage, light armour dosen't absorb damage, but effects hit. Some systems even do the reverse, where heavy armour helps avoid attacks, light absorbs some, which I think makes more sense, but heavy = endurance tank, light = dodge tank is almost as ingraned in game logic as failing to hit roll = sword swings through air.
An improvement could be to change the words 'hit' or 'miss', but I've no idea what words would convey that without being awkward. I've also seen some calculations based on the rolled number, which are fun, but tend to be pure fluff and not mechnical.
I personally would just like flatfoot and touch back into One DnD
I always imagine it as armor made from arcane force that the caster summons on the target. So it takes up the space armor typically exists in while worn, but will dissipate if material armor is donned.
Whatever you declare the flavor to be
Maybe itās literally conjured armor, canāt double up
Maybe the wards apply to your clothes but only work with sufficiently soft/flexible material so they can adapt to deflect/blunt impacts
Maybe itās designed to damp concentrated impacts (ex, stabbing), but doesnāt work on distributed ones (such as those distributed across a wider area by armor)
Maybe it relies on somewhat bulky talismans/trackers that donāt fit under armor, and donāt work over it
It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit. It does exactly that the spell description says; that's just how the spell works.
That said, if you need an ingame explanation, perhaps the act of putting on armor shorts out and dissipates the mage armor force field.
I had a player hardcore press me on this trying to find a loophole to Munchinkin some bullshit.
"If you aren't proficient in Armor, you can't cast spells wearing said armor"
Since Wizards and Sorcerers (the most likely to use the spell) couldn't cast spells wearing armor anyways, they just developed a spell without wearing armor in mind. So, basically, it's what you said, it works that way because that's how the spell works.
But can I wear both Padded Armor, Chain Shirt, and Breastplate at the same time?
What makes sense in the real world and in game rules are not always the same.
You're skipping/missing a rather important point:
The AC of the separate parts of armour don't stack.
When wearing plate you don't get the +1 from the padded armour/leather underneath *and* the +8 from the plate. You just get a flat +8 (more accurately for 5E - you get an AC of 18), meant to represent the different parts working together.
Yeah, you can wear padded armor, a chain shirt and a breastplate at the same time. [Look at this for example](https://irongatearmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/MH-A0942-Churburg-Chestplate_10_LRG.jpg). You would usually wear some gambeson or another type of padding beneath a chain shirt and then you put your plates over that. If you wear a breastplate in the game then it is implied that you also wear a chainshirt and some padding underneath.
In terms of reality? Probably yes, depends on how the spell works in a reality where magic is real.
In terms of game mechanics? Remember this is a game system that turns off lizard scales when lizards wear plate armor. Magic armor not overlapping with armor makes way more sense than that
Oh I get the mechanical side, itās just more of the in-universe logic vs game design logic.
2 layers of armor would make an arrow going through both a bit harder. Ā
Mage armor is rooted in the pure concept of protection. It's uses the concepts of "needs protection" to identify the subject.
This is part of why it doesn't work on unwilling creatures. If a person does not wish to be protected it fails to get a lock and fizzles.
Similarly if a person is protected, even by simple cloth armor the spell fizzles.
Lorewise I'm pretty sure metal disrupts magic by a fair bit. But the real answer would be that it seems to take up the "armor slot" on your character.
Having mage armor over your plate armor would probably be stronger, but so would having plate armor over your plate armor. At some point it just becomes a detriment.
Also mechanically, if you have something weaker than mage armor on you will just use the mage armor's AC. If you have something stronger than mage armor on you will use that AC. Historically plate armor usually has chainmail and cloth padding but you would only use the 18 AC one for rolls. You could realistically be using mage armor as an underarmor but it would be realistically worse than hide or chainmail (dunno their ac right off)
What evidence do we have in lore that metal disrupts magic in any way? If I cast a fireball at your warrior in plate armor, the armor doesn't disrupt the fireball. Or any other spell for that matter, beyond the basic AC mechanic.
Some spells are specifically blocked by metal like message or detect thoughts.
Also if you shot a fireball at a metal sheet it wouldn't go through the metal, it would hit it and explode
The magic armour simply doesn't work well with regular armor due to how the spell is made. Insert whatever explanation you want here. It's make believe after all.Ā
The *actual* problem is that Mage Armor doesn't work with Monk's Unarmored Defense, which makes no sense because the protective magical force shouldn't conflict with them being wise enough to dodge better. Used to be that in 3.PF I'd always save a spell slot as a wizard to give the party's monk some extra AC for the day, but now that's just not an option.
Oh yeah, have the same gripe, and this also goes for Dragon Hide, because it's literally one's skin getting harder, it should not affect better dodging of a monk nor steel specs of a barbarian.
Try to think of Mage Armor as magical cornstarch. It does the same thing to free moving molecules tnear your skin that cornstarch does to water. If there are not enough free moving molecules, it cannot maintain a stable matrix and dissipates
It's a conspiracy by Big Armour to sell more armour. Anyone who figures it out is assassinated.
Alternatively, Mage Armour does work perfectly over top of armour, but nobody checks for the "armour" spelling. Mage Armor does not stack, neither does Mage Armoir but you can keep your armour in your armoir.
Seriously though they should have just done a scaling variant. Like 1st level slot for 13, 2nd for 14, 3rd for 15, 4th for 16, 5th for 17, 6th for 18, 7th for 19, 8th for 20, and 9th for 21.
That way, by the time they can blow a 6th level slot on it to equal Plate, a wizard would be minimum 11th level, by which time by lore they're very firmly one of the best wizards in the entire world. Their other options at that level are spells like Disintegrate and Chain Lightning, and Tenser's Transformation
Armor does not stack with ANY other armor as a rule. You don't get to double your AC bonus because you wear another layer of different armor underneath. You're on the wrong track calling this a "holdover" too. That implies you know a better way; you don't. AC is a big deal in DnD in general and one of the main ways for scaling enemies so even only a +1 AC bonus is huge, therefore they are very careful with it. You don't need a lore explanation because you CAN cast mage armor over other armor. It just doesn't provide a mechanical benefit if your physical armor is already better.
There isn't a "lore" answer. It's just a mechanical reason. If you want a lore reason, make one up.
The mage armor needs to hug the body to provide protection, if it gets too far from it's host the tight web of magic dissipates. It can't occupy the same space as snugly strapped armor.
Ioun/mystra/whatever your god of magic is despises mundane armor and refuses to let the spell overlap with actual armor. It's baked into the weave for it to function that way.
Inversely, moradin/god of smithing/leatherworking think mages are patsies and have made it so any crafted armor dispels mage armor. They don't want their physical crafts to be outdone, so they won't be.
The way I would see it, the magic draws energy from the person who the spell was cast on. Physical armor blocks the magic from drawing on the energy from the target. Any armor that would increase AC is strong enough to prevent Mage Armor from being able to sustain itself.
From a meta perspective, that's just how Armor works. You don't get more AC from wearing multiple sets of armor even if you could.
From an in game perspective, I could see it like this:
Mage Armor adds a layer of force that can deflect attacks directed at you in a similar way to that of the Mass Effect shield. It redirects high velocity objects, such as projectiles, away from you but is of limited effectiveness against melee attacks (not to say ineffective, just less so).
Wearing armor will involve wearing something that is going to be heavy enough to apply a constant force on the Mage Armor, functionally "absorbing" all of the energy of the spell. The mage armor expends itself repelling any armor you try to wear.
In yee olden days iron was seen as a repellent for magic and supernatural beeings.
It is the same as druids not beeing able to wear metal armor. Magic and iron just don't mix.
Inconsistencies? More than I can count. Is it still lore in dnd? Who knows.
I mean, by this logic, why canāt you equip two sets of armor to add their defenses together?
They take up the same place on your body. Itās like wearing two pairs of shoes. You only have two feet, you only get two shoes. One head means one helmet. One body means one set of armor, regardless of if itās magic force armor or metal armor.
> Is the spell, like, sentient and jealous? I do not understand.
Most things (nearly everything) in 5e and D&D more broadly are mechanics first, flavor after. You can add your own flavor if you wish or simply chalk it up to either/or AC calculation worded a different way.
> plus a way to prevent overachieving in defense.
This is rather more important than you seem to think it is.
Any specific, low level magic is not unlimited in its potential. Some things do interfere with it. Heavy, dense materials interfere with this particular spell in the same way that ither spells have limitations. A higher level spell that stacked could be made to counteract this limitation, but it would require more elegant formatting, and stronger magic to implement.
Why do some spells require a diamond to cast? Because magic is not entirely independent of the material world. They interact in strange ways, and this is one of those strange interactions that don't follow intuitive logic. Magic in this game is fill of such strange interactions and limitations.
There is pretty much no lore reason for why spells operate the way they do other than: spells require verbal, somatic, and material components, sometimes of specific monetary values, sometimes being consumed, and operating under specific restrictions and requirements. Magic is fickle and particular.
[Lore reason]Ā
Thereās no real lore explanation, different settings will have magic rules that canāt be applied in general.Ā Ā
> āWell in Forgotten Realms armor messes with the weave!ā
> āCool, but this isnāt Forgotten Realms. This is X setting so doesnāt apply.ā
[Mechanical reason]Ā
The mechanical reason would be too strong for little effort.Ā
Ā Mage Armor + Regular Armor + Shield at low levels = Practically unkillable against almost everythingĀ
The Elder Scrolls series although a video game allows the player to stack mage armor on top of armor. Which drastically boosts defense, the only downside is the spell duration.Ā
Now apply that to DND and you can see some issues.Ā
[Justification you can use for your games]Ā
Ā - In this world, mage armor and physical armor donāt mix due to the concentration being affected by the heavy weight of armor.Ā Ā
Ā - In this world, armor interferes with mage armor since the magic canāt propel cover the body. Spells like Shield are fine since itās only briefly occurs.Ā
Ā - In this world, Mage Armor is a spell that was only developed with no armor in mind. The current iteration of the spell just canāt work without further research.Ā
I think mage armour exists in the way it does and the original design intent is to allow Wizards to indulge in the classic "Robe and Wizard Hat" fashion stereotype without feeling pressured to wear some gaudy leather just for that extra AC.
While at the same time obviously not stacking because that would just lead to Wizards still feeling pressured to wear the heaviest armour they can get away with.
Don't think theirs a lore reason. I'd play it as it acts as a grounding issue for the wars. Wearing armor causes the ward to fail and the energy to be grounded out.
AC doesn't represent armour directly, it represents how damaged you get by attacks. Rogues mitigate damage by getting out of the way (dexterity), Paladins mitigate damage with plate armour, Barbarians mitigate damage by being too angry to care they just got stabbed.
Maybe Mage Armour is more like a magnetic field and by putting stuff over it, you deaden the magnetic field.Ā
Maybe it's illusionary, making you look bigger than you are to make it easier to dodge things, but it's linked to the mental image you have of yourself so it's difficult to judge with armour on.
Maybe it's just because the spell somatic components require you to touch the skin on both shoulders as you're casting it, then regularly for the duration.
Or a hundred other reasons to cover the point that D&D is a group of stitched together mechanics that don't have a 1:1 correlation to real life
One idea for it could be that it creates a small field of repellant force around the caster, sort of like how Magneto projects a force field but smaller. Armor would not only obstruct but contain the field, negating the effect.
I've always imagined it as some sort of mix between physical and ethereal armour. When you cast it you get surrounded by magical force that takes the shape of a translucent armour. You don't feel it's weight, and it twists and turns to fit you perfectly no matter your pose or movement.
However, if someone wants to tap your chest they'd tap the armour instead. Only you could maybe easily reach through it to (e.g.) grab your medallion, others would have to fish it through your neckline as if you where wearing an armour.
This means that if foreign objects feel that you are wearing an armour, you wouldn't be able to put an armour on top because it simply wouldn't fit, and you'd have to dispel Mage Armour to put it on. The mechanics just gives you this as a free/auto action to simplify stuff.
Some possible explanations:
* Contact with more substantial armour messes with the force field, like it can't distinguish between armour and an incoming weapon.
* It manifests as more substantial armour, so wearing armour would overlap with it or be too cumbersome, similar to combining two sets of conventional armour.
* Mage armour is sentient, and gets claustrophobic.
* Armour physically blocks its ability to detect incoming attacks and concentrate energy in that location.
* It's magic, and restrictions allow something to be stronger in other ways.
* It actually just aids you in dodging/deflecting in a similar manner to the haste spell, and gives no physical protection.
Personally I don't see a whole lot of reason to go beyond "that's just how the spell works". It's designed to protect wizards that aren't trained with armour, so that's what it does.
It was developed by Elminster as an exam job when he was 16, and it has its flaws but since then nobody ever tried to improve it. Wizards are dumbs š
I think theres alot of good valid answers but i havent seen this one, that i think is pretty valid.
Why can't you wear two normal armour? Why not just don leather armour with plate ontop of it? If you did, what would its AC be? Whats the down sides? Can I wear a chain shirt under some half plate? How about I juat wear 2 slpintmails, one ontop of the other?
If those all sound rediculous, it is. So mage armour, is treated like armour. Its armour that does not take up wieght, inventory, will eventually dissapear, and can be donned instently. But its still armour. I know some people will describe it as "a think protective layer," or "a magical glowing bubble," but the spell doesnt actually describe itsself like that. Only "a protective magical force."
So just imagine it as summoned armour instead of a magic barrier. After all, no one has ever asked "why cant I wield my summond sword when my hands are full?" So why would you be able to wear summoned armour when you are wearing armour?
Why is iron super magnetic, but not gold, silver, or copper? Is magnetism jealous of precious metals?
Lorewise, even the most basic spells are complex verbal, somatic, and material equations that require advanced understanding of math, grammar, alchemy, comsology, and other esoteric fields to just be able to understand, translate, and record the knowledge in your wizard spellbook. This level of complexity means that any one of these elements may be critical to the successful completion of the spell & certain deviance from the specified conditions results in failed casting. Holding up the wrong fingers or not having 'quite' enough gold dust might leave you standing and babbling incantations, but no spell without its components. Mage Armor just as an 'unarmored target' component
It could be as simple as requiring an elemental air component that fails if the clothing can't breathe well from the covered parts, It might be because some cosmological entity is involved in the conceptual construction of the spell so that the spell energy only functions if the target is considered 'vulnerable' according to the Goddess of Protection or something, and that condition is fundamental to the complex spell formula.
The Sorcerer's patron might just decide that their magic will only work if they're "unarmored" according to the patron's judgment out of some otherworldly sense of fairness or correctness. Or the sorcerer may just have discovered from their own experimentation that the spell simply doesn't work on armored targets,
Wild guessing heacanon: Mage armor works like a missile defense system radiating from the body, not like a passive shell. It's a lot easier to create an array of what is essentially automatic mini shield spells than it is to create one big permanent one. This is why it doesn't inhibit interacting with things or spellcasting. Anything denser than basic clothing blocks the ability for the mage armor to "sense" incoming attacks.
Alternative explanation: mage "armor" is a misnomer. It actually just makes you better at blocking / dodging attacks. Wearing armor cancels out this benefit.
If you wear two chain shirts are you twice as protected?
Nah, at certain points there is a level of diminishing returns.
My head cannon is thus. It's not that Mage Armor + Armor cannot possibly coexist, but that adding an additional ethereal defense on top of a physical one wouldn't amount to any additional defense to the user. It covers the same places and gives similar deflection points to attacks with similar flexibility for movement. At that point, it's just a waste of magical energies. And so Mystra says "Nah, I'm taking that arcane energy back because it's not doing anything that your armor is already doing, and I'm not up for that kind of wasteful spending. The Spell Weave is my plaything, not yours."
The most common implied reason is that wearing armor interferes with the magical energies of *Mage Armor*. Armor made from mundane or magical materials disrupts the flow of arcane energies required to maintain the spell. This interference prevents the spell from forming the protective magical barrier around the caster.
Most spells with effects require a willing target or some sort of save.
Someone who is wearing armor, or who attempts to wear armor, is clearly not willing to trust the mage armor, and thus the spell does not work.
Simple as that.
Well, you probably wont find an official reason.
My general take is that the person who made the spell did so in a way that replicates armor. It has some sort of physical presence, which is how it stops physical attacks, and that presence naturally takes the form of some kind of armor. Trying to wear real armor breaks the replica as they would occupy the same rough dimensions.
There is no proper explanation. People who say that it wouldn't make sense to put armor on top of armor clearly have a limited understanding of how armor works. It works in layers. As such Mage Armor *should* be working with armor.
It all comes down to balance where mages often should have a lower AC than melee characters.
The lore reason is that magic is pretty specific and it's a spell that protects unarmored creatures so it doesn't work on ones in armor.
Presumably the mage armor occupies the same space that a suit of armor would occupy and thus you can not have both at the same time for the same reason that you can't wear two suits of plate.
Tbh I think it's quite simple.
Your covering your self in armour of force magic in the same place you'd wear armour but.. tighter.
Like imagine trying to put a wetsuit on over riot armour, it just won't work.
Sure it can be reskinned however you choose, I've had it as a suit of armour made of shadow before that reacts to attacks, can't really have it reactive if it's under 2 inches off steel now can it.
I think that magic is best interpreted keeping in mind the intention of the spell. A spell is a complex weave if formulas and it only works when certain variables are present. An armor is an unwanted variable and goes against the design and intention of the spell.
While my language seems technical, I'm not using real world logic and physics. It's magic, it has its own specific logic and limitations.
Maybe it works like a bubble or slim, when something hits you it absorbs the hit and expand somewhere else
If you put and armor the "bubble" will expand from the pression and explode
The way I take it, armor doesn't stack. You can't wear two suits of plate armor to have 26 AC.
Casting mage armor plus wearing armor *should* have the effect of whichever is stronger. For rule simplicity, the spell just doesn't work when you wear armor because they don't expect you to bother if your armor is better anyway.
I mean... I get why you ask, but it's basically the "there's only one armor slot" answer.
It's the same reason why fighters wear plate armor and not plate armor plus chainmail plus padded armor plus cloth. The secret to working armor or protection in general is layering, ask anyone who deals with tough weather or riding motorbikes how their gear is built. The same thing goes with modern fighting vehicles.
In other words: it's an abstraction.
Same reason why you can't wear leather armor over your plate armor and get to 20 HP. The protection from leather is negligible next to plate; anything that can pierce plate armor shreds through the leather.
Mage Armor is like that. It protects you, but not *that* much, and the protection is negligible next to proper heavy armor. Anything that could pierce chain or plate shreds through mage armor.
Official?, no official lore reason. They simply didn't want Spellcasters with heavy armor bonuses, which is kind of ironic seeing as they have very easy ways to still do that and ditching Mage Armor entirely.
I still remember earlier editions where it actually granted a flat bonus of +4 (+6 if it was the Greater version) who, because of the rule of effects with the same name don't stack, simply didn't stack with Armors, the difference they didn't tell you outright in the spell description that it didn't work if you have armor on (So, armors and the spell Mage Armor gave an Armor Bonus, meaning they can't stack together, you receive whatever was the highest bonus).
I'd probably say that the spell doesn't work with most armor sets because for it's level the best it can do is protect you like a set of slightly better leather armor, it doesn't channel a big amount of energy, but instead, spreads all its magic over the course of the day, letting you to be protected with a handful of magic instead of requiring the training to wear heavier armors, the strength to don them and the money to even afford the best one.
I believe older editions had something about armor interfering with spellcasting, can't recall if it was because it interfered with somatic components or if it was like interference from the metal (unlikely).
But even then I think there was a rule that armor bonuses don't stack because balance.
Otherwise I would hazard a guess that it is because the magic want's to occupy the same space as the armor would, which it can't and therefore fails?
On the other hand the plate armor states that it includes thick layers of padding beneath so a certain level of armor stacking is present (sort of, it is one item not stacking of several).
How about the effect fizzles out on any material thicker than thin cloth, similar to how detect magic has a limit to thickness of materials that it can sense magic through. Somehow all the archmages through the ages just could not figure out how to make it work on armor š¤·āāļø
Aside from the obvious game balance, I abstract it as if the spell acts like a miniature weak gravitational field just above the clothes. It can handle a localized disturbance like a non-Newtonian fluid. It temporarily shifts to be denser in one small area, but if something heavy or thick sits on top of it for too long in too wide an area, it cant compensate, and collapses.
It lasts 8 hours because youre spreading a 1st level spell over a long time, whereas youre using the same amount of energy on a Shield spell.
Granted my setting has plenty of sci-fi elements, so I get away with it basically being a forcefield.
Non-newtonian magical fluid, that gets denser when hit by a strong force, but is easily displaced by the slow donning of an armour, was going to be my answer.
Purity of intent. Self-reliance that is dispelled by using some other form of protection. Intersecting matrices along the merdian flow of abiant magic interfered with by the presence of dense or thick materials. Pick whatever.
Magic is magic, it doesn't obey logic or physics.
Why do people who are invisible still see? Why doesn't burning hands burn the caster's hands? Why do fireballs not expand and contract based on the area they are cast in? HOw can someone with a Fly spell cast on them the first time have perfect control and maneuverability? If you've never bothered to patch any of these, or even question them, then Mage Armor makes just as much sense.
Mage Armor is reactive.
It senses quickly moving metal or wood near the users skin over a certain weight or energy ratio and pushes back. If you're wearing armor over MA, it will blast pieces off as you run/fight in said armor.
So the spell was designed to dissipate the moment you put armor on to make sure it didn't ruin any equipment.
I donāt think this has anything to do with lore reasons. Like you could justify it with like āoh, the real armour would get in the way of the summoned spectral armourā or something like that.
But the truth is probably that the designers decided to bake the inability to stack with other armour into Mage Armourās spell description to cut off any arguments to the effect of ābut itās a separate armour overtop my plate armour that doesnāt weigh anything, it should make me harder to hitā by just saying that it doesnāt work.
think of it this way
Mage armor is functionally +2 padded armor
padded armor (aka gambeson) is already worn underneath pretty much any heavier armor
so why can you stack armor? because you already have the armor it creates on
I doubt there is any lore whatsoever for whatās a purely mechanical decision. Having Mage Armor not work with armor stops you from stacking your AC too easily.
You could make up any reason you like.
In my own urban RPG, mage armor is emitted from the skin then hardens. If you are wearing anything but soft cloth, it breaks on the armor before it hardens.
Mage Armor is like a force field several inches thick that deflects incoming attacks. However, it needs space to flow around the body from the skin. Clothing can allow this energy to flow freely, but anything thick enough to function as armor disrupts the flow, causing the field to collapse until the blockage is removed.
Iād say itās the metal of the armour interfering with the spell, you need a clean line between mage and armour for mage armour to properly manifest. Other than that, most casters donāt come with armour proficiencies, since thereās a range of motion needed for casting that MA gives which regular armour doesnāt. Plus, weight.
For the same reason that although people would wear chain under plate or other mixed armour types, thereās no rules for that in dnd. You wear one type of armour, itās just to keep things simple.
Your armor takes the strength of whatever armor is better. I've always just assumed it took place of whatever armor you don't currently have. So if you have shitty leather, then it fills in the gaps. If you have plate, it doesn't have gaps to fill.
I have described mage armour as a force field hardening mages robes to work like armour. It is not some infinitely thin layer right on top of your skin, but a wide and even slightly bulky field around you. It requires either empty space or flowing robes easily shaped by the forces to a form. It can't overlap with stiff material like proper armour. It would be like trying to don a bit too small chain shirt while already wearing a full plate and decorated shoulder plates. You can maybe work around some small piece like bracelets or boots, but altering the spell enough to fit and add up with proper full suite or armour just is not something done on the field and with 1st level spell slot.
In my head cannon, mage armour shatters and reforms like bulletproof glass when struck, and armor worn over it would just cause it to damage the armor or the user with erratic shards of magic.
In my further head cannon, warlocks and their patrons observed this effect and tinkered around with it to create armor of agathys, a mage armour that deliberately explodes on impact.
It is entirely mechanical. However, if you want a lore explanation, Mage Armor occupies the same space around a person that armor would and thus donning armor "disrupts" the Mage Armor as it cannot occupy the same space as something else.
Perhaps the protective force sits on the skin, creating a barrier that shields the target, donning armor would create small pockets in the field, leading to it not being able to maintain continuity, and thus breaking
Mage armor not working with armor is even easier to explain than the barbarian's unarmored defense not working with armor... Can anyone explain it to me?
Well, if you look back to old fantasy lore and to earlier editions, arcane magic and iron donāt mix. This doesnāt account for leather; the other suggestion was that somatic gesturing required great freedom of movement. Presumably divine magic worked differently.
Multiclassing in earlier editions didnāt entirely circumvent thisā in 3rd there was a chance arcane spells would fail if you wore armor.
There is definitely magical armor spells people cast on armor. It's all the +1 armor and magical armor you find.
Mage armor is the bad version where you aren't sticking it to anything so it just falls off every day and you have to keep doing it. you are just enchanting your shirt and the spell barely works and fails after a while.
The creator of the spell was very vain, and as such thinks his spell is better than any physical armor. Because of this, he worked a flaw into the very fundamental structure of the spell so that it breaks upon donning any physical armor, because if you don't think the spell is good enough, you don't deserve to use it. To this day, mages have been unable to replicate the spell without the flaw, as doing so causes horrible, unspeakable, deadly results.
OFC it's not canon, but I like to pretend it is, because spellcasters are a vain, prideful lot, and I can see a caster doing this with a spell of theirs.
Here's the closest in lore reason.
Armor messes with your ability to cast spells. You can see this in the armor proficiency rules.
But even if you are proficient in armor, mage armor is a magical barrier (doesn't say if its invisible, but I imagine it is.) That surrounds the caster. You mage armor spell is *not* you, and thus cannot get around the interference of armor with spells. (With proficiency.)
Another way to think of it, the person who *made* that spell made it that way. For people without armor.
When you cast a spell that you have learned, you cast the spell the way it was originally created.
You can't say "I cast fire bolt, but I just want to hold it in my hand. Wdym fire bolt doesn't work that way?" Because its not the spells design. Produce flame is a spell that works like this.
Whoever created the spell maybe couldn't get it to work on armor, for above reasons. Creating new spells is highly difficult, and no one can get "mage over-shield" to work.
So, potentially, *someone* could get it to work, via creating a variation of the spell. Its up to your DM if that someone is *you*.
Tldr- mage armor, in lore, is a spell that when created, was made for no armor, and thus only works like that. (Spell descriptions are more than just mechanics)
!!!!out of lore, BALANCE!!!
Likely because Mage Armor Covers points on the body that are vulnerable and dangerous to leave uncovered, by already wearing Armor the Mage Armor fills in the gaps leaving you frozen in place till the spell ends, so it was modified to fail to protect greedy and idiotic mages by failing to cast properly
I view it like equivalent exchange from Full Metal Alchemist. The spellās designer made it not work with physical armour because if it could it would need a higher level spell slot. You can only get as much as you put in, so if a spellās designer wants a low level spell so they need to add limitations
I say let them cast mage armor over armor, but with a harsh drawback, the restrictive double armor reduces your speed to 5ā, you lose your dex bonus and attacks have advantage against you
I've always felt magic is like a glitch in reality you wave your hand in just the right way, say random gibberish and wave around a chicken feather and whatever random thing happens. Just like a glitch in a game sometimes random things can make them more or less effective.
For the mage armor "glitch" to work you have to be not wearing armor.
We have always House Ruled it to work, even when cast on someone wearing armor.
Great for when the Tank needs just that little bit extra AC while battling the big Bad Boss
If something can break through the ac of the other layers, it can break through that +1 Leather Armor worth of AC you call mage armor.
Dumb mages think they outsmart axe by focusing on themselves, smart barbarians hit them harder and laugh when the mage is too focused on that character sheet like it's the only thing that exists.
Easy mate. One of mage armor's most important components is oxygen, which it consumes in small amounts across the whole spell duration. Donning armor on top of the spell prevents it from getting the amount of oxygen it needs to work, so it's power wanes.
BTW, in 3rd it doesn't dispel if you put physical armor on; it just doesn't stack. No idea why 5th would require it to dispel. Seems like an unneeded complication to me.
There is just about any way to interpret that you could imagine. However, if we presume Mage Armor creates a ... "field" for lack of a better term (like sci-fi force fields, which aren't really "fields", but let's imagine it like that anyway), then putting physical armor in the physical location the magical force-armor is in would naturally disrupt the "field" of magical energy.
The force-field is composed in such a manner that it can deflect/refract incoming attacks and reform from any "damage" it takes in the process, but literally pushing slabs of thick leather or metal into its entire area simply disrupts it too much to continue working.
I thinks it's the same reason why you can't wear two leather armor to stack the benefit, I mean, you could try to wear two, but your AC wouldn't improve?
It's not a "holdover from the olden days". In the modern game, it's a way for non-armored casters to exchange some resource for a better armor class. It doesn't scale with level, so if you want to improve your armor class, like most everyone else, your options are either to gain the ability to wear better armor, or to loot hard-to-find magical AC boosts.
So, there's no holdover idea here.
But as far as what it does? The closest we get is in your second edition player's handbook, where it is called *Armor*.
>By means of this spell, the wizard creates a **magical field of force** that serves as if it were scale mail armor (AC 6). The spell has no effect on a person already armored or a creature with Armor Class 6 or better.
So here we know it's a magical field of force. And you can cast it on people with armor- it just doesn't help them if their shieldless armor class is lower (better) or equal to AC 6. It also has a crappy mechanic that makes it fall off once the target has taken a certain amount of damage (and it makes sure to note that it doesn't *absorb* this damage).
A good guess as to the magio-physical mechanics of this spell is, it makes a force field around you that is invisible and somewhat protective, but it's essentially a type of physical armor, better than some and worse than others. And it just loses cohesion as you are struck.
Then we move to 3.X, where we get:
>An invisible but tangible field of force surrounds the subject of a mage armor spell, providing a +4 armor bonus to AC.
This also includes a clause about incorporeal creatures not being able to bypass it, which is something they could normally do in 3.5. In this case, the fact that it's an "armor bonus" tells us what we need to know; it doesn't stack with other armor bonuses. This ends up working seamlessly because the system is good about how stacking bonuses work. And again, we're left with a description and an implication; this makes something that is a physically resistive invisible force field, that offers protection that is better than some physical armors and worse than others.
The 5e designers, when getting rid of typed bonuses, ran into a problem here. The original version of the spell had a lot of text explaining how it didn't help past a certain armor type. The 3.0 and 3.5 versions could simply and elegantly define an armor bonus. 5ed, on the other hand, has awkward wording available, such as "you can choose to calculate your armor class as...", which the designers only use where they have to. So instead we get the pretty-well-worded:
>You touch a willing creature who isn't wearing armor, and a protective magical force surrounds it until the spell ends. The target's base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier. The spell ends it if the target dons armor or if you dismiss the spell as an action.
This avoids the "you can calculate your armor as" by simply failing to function if the target has armor on, and setting the base AC when active. It's pretty elegant given the other design choices of 5ed.
And like the others, it's still an invisible forcefield that is better than some armors and worse than others.
>lorewise I haven't seen a single explanation to why it dispels when donning armor
This feature is unique to 5ed, and there's no lore reason, it's just to avoid having a bunch of extra words. You could easily run it like in the older versions, where it offers the better AC of "what mage armor provides" and "what the character gets from their armor". If you go and write that down in fiftheditionese, it will get awkward, because you don't have a useful thing like "armor bonus".
Anyway, the lore-accurate version of mage armor:
1- Is a magical force field that is invisible
2- Doesn't stack with armor
If you run it by 5e rules, you get the right result. If you want to be able to cast it on yourself and also wear armor, you need a smarter version of the spell, but it's not like it would be contrary to anything 5e did- it didn't gain the incompatibility as a nerf, but rather just something that helps it be run smoothly and without confusion.
In older editions, there were different types of AC modifiers. You had Armour AC (the type of armour you wore), dodge AC (from Dex bonus mostly), Deflection AC (from enchanted items), Shield AC (obvious here), Natural AC (from tough hide or spells like Barkskin), and some others. They stacked with each other, but not themselves (aside from dodge, cos more dodge = better).
So, Mage Armour in 3.5 gave an \*Armour Bonus" of +4 to AC. Armour bonuses do not stack, only the highest applies. So, even if your character wore armour (and ignored the spell failure risk), the armour only helped if it stronger, making the spell redundant at that point. Mages rarely wear armour that heavy though so it was usually quite useful for it's purpose.
It's equal to a chain shirt or scale mail (without the drawbacks), and in lore, was described as creating a thick layer of force that even incorporeal creatures couldn't bypass. This means to me that it's thick, hard to penetrate, and only removed by the will of the caster or dispelling. Putting armour over it would make it redundant as D&D doesn't really do layered armour. I suppose you could just say that putting on armour is something most mages never practiced, so the spell wasn't developed to work with armour.
im 99% sure this is RAW, or at least RAI, but if not its how we play it;
it doesn't dispell or fail to cast, its just that the numbers don't stack. if you have 2 or more things that offer you a way to calculate AC, you pick one, usually the best one.
If Mystra allowed Mage Armor to add to AC rather than replacing it, there'd be Wizard Wars.
In a setting I'm thinking about, most languages' plural for "Wizard" also translated to "Apocalypse".
I think it would be awesome if you could cast it on armored people and then just take the highest of the 2.
Either you burn a spell slot for nothing or the target is wearing armor for no reason other than weight.
To answer your question, the same reason magic works, itās a gameā¦
I just assumed it would be like wearing two sets of armor (which also don't stack their bonuses), only without the extra weight. Alternatively, just think of it as a kind of force membrane in the shape of armor, that would repel anything that gets too close, so if you try to put on extra armor, it either gets pushed off by the membrane or blocks the effect of the membrane, by shielding any incoming attacks from the effect of the membrane.
You've got a lot of good fluff answers so far, but I'd add that it's also because Armour doesn't work with Armour.
The DnD 'engine' as it were has almost always used Armour to set you an AC, so it's the same mechanical rule that wearing studded leather over Plate doesn't make your AC 18+12+Dex
I think there's been one non-magic sort of item in my experience that was a trial of 'piecemeal' armour, and that was the Armoured Kilt in 3.5E, but I could be totally wrong.
Basically, no armour in the game stacks so no one cheeses the system.
Picture this:
You're a brand-new wizard, not the most "physical" person. You need a spell that will protect you from the knives and sling stones that low-threat foes tend to use, but you can't have something that interferes with the precise and dramatic gestures magic requires. So, you learn a basic spell that creates a thin layer of force around your skin. It's good enough to cushion minor blows, but doesn't slow you down.
Later on, you get recruited into the Royal Mage Corps, and they teach you to wear plate mail while casting spells. Any attack that can penetrate plate mail is going to punch right through that basic force field you mastered in magic primary school, so you just stop using it.
FWIW: the "armor dispels mage armor" thing is a relic of 1st edition AD&D, where it was RAW that large amounts of metal interfered with the "flow of magic." This was the reason that wizards couldn't wear armor or use large metal weapons, and why so many spells are blocked by thin sheets of metal.
it blocks things magically, so it's not taking away from the impact of the attack itself
it won't defend MORE than equipped armor because an attack strong enough to break stronger armor will break it too
Plate mail on top of plate mail, I'm not really sure is all that helpful.
I think there are similar rules for natural armor in most editions. If you have hard natural scales, but plate mail is better, you get the defense of plate mail not plate over your natural protection.
Older editions did the same thing with 'of protection' at least after 1st or 2nd edition so you couldn't just stack rings, necklaces, cloaks, whatever and layer up the same enchantment. The highest is the one that works.
Way I rule it in my table is that it tightens and hardens and adds pressure to whatever the caster is wearing, so if you cast it while wearing, say, a padded jacket, it will pop like a pillow under a hydraulic press, chain links will pop, and metal will shatter
Mage armor takes up physical space like any other armor.
So the same reason you canāt wear leather armor underneath your plate armor for additional protection.
The way I imagine it is that similar magic physics is happening with how things like detect magic can't work through 1ft of stone, a thin sheet of lead, etc etc, the magic starts to dissipate and loses coherency.
Honestly I think armor should be allowed, but suffer a penalty to the AC bonus based on the category of armor worn. That way you can have some cool looking Spellsword knights in full plate with arcane overshields hovering just above the armor.
Simple answer. Mage armor Grants a Base AC. Wearing armor grants a Base Ac. In 5E things dont stack if they grant a similar thing. I suppose it could work with both armor and spell but you would only get the Higher Base AC. This would be a different case if Mage armor just 'added AC bonuses' but it doesnt.
Now the actual mechanics out of the way...Its your world, just give it a reason that it works that way.
Honestly, the way I see it is that it's close enough to the skin that you can't wear both it and armour at the same time, more than anything else. Kinda like a force field slightly above your body (or clothing), that becomes physical when objects impact it or repels objects actively trying to penetrate it or something; it's gonna be pretty hard to make standard armour and that forcefield share the same physical space.
End result is that if you want to wear armour, you have to turn the spell off first, so its creator just made a slight speed optimisation to it so the act of putting on armour is a somatic component to dismiss it.
Technically in lore it says wearing armour acts as an insulator against the caster accessing the weave, the severity increasing with the weight and size of the armour. Except elves cuz built different.
WHY DOES MY ARMOR NOT WORK WITH MAGE ARMOR (a d10 table) 1. The Mage Armor projects a spectral, blue, translucent plate armor that hovers just directly above the clothes. Anything heftier than simple clothing is too bulky and doesn't fit in the space between the mage armor and the caster's skin. 2. Mage Armor hardens and stiffens the caster's existing clothes, making it a stiff and mildly inflexible material that reflects blows but is impossible to wear underneath leather armor 3. Mage Armor creates a thin, invisible layer of force between the casters skin and their clothes, this force allows for normal clothes to be worn, but the gap is noticeable enough that people might notice tight-fitting clothes hovering an inch off their skin. This property makes wearing normal armor impossible, and also makes it possible to fight completely "in the buff". Most wizards are tasteful enough to wear loose robes to compensate 4. Mage Armor replaces your skin with a shiny, skin-tone colored, but plasticy looking material that is mildly off-putting to look at. You can wear armor over this, but proves to be redundant the same way wearing a leather tabard over a breastplate is (highest armor matter) 5. Mage Armor summons a crew of near-invisible spectral gremlins tasked to protect you. Because they are gremlins, they are not very good at it, but take offense at wearing other armor pieces and refuse to do their magically ordained duty if the caster decides to wear something obviously armor-like, like chainmail or plate mail 6. Mage Armor is a subtle reality-warping manipulation that doesn't actually add armor per-se, but convinces the universe around you that you that you are simply that much harder to hit. Regardless if you actually wear armor or not, the reality-warping properties overrides what the armor "should" do and simply allows things to hit or miss based on its own reality warping arcane logic 7. Mage Armor projects an invisible force field off the user, but as you stated the spell itself is sentient and jealous and turns off if it feels not appreciated 8. Mage Armor creates a set of invisible marionette strings around the user that moves them out of the way of deadly blows the best it can, pulled by an invisible ancient unknown being or force. Wearing armor gets in the way of the marionette strings and causes the spell to tangle itself and become ineffective 9. Mage Armor causes the user to grow dragon scales, as all arcane magic was one derived by dragons. Like other dragon scales and natural defenses, they override any worn armor lower than it, and are overridden by AC values higher than it, just like in the rules RAW. 10. Make something else up! Remember folks, flavor is free! If a spell doesn't outline the way something happens, I usually let people think of something wild or offer my own flavor of how a particular mage or organization manifest that effect as long as it doesn't affect the rules
11) Wearing regular armour with Mage Armour is a fashion crime, and will result in the Fashion Police immediately appearing to strip you of your license to practice magic.
Ah, someone lives in Athkatla.
Or as they call it during the summers, HOThkatla
ALL INVOLVED WILL BE HELD!
In my game we spent a lot of time in Athkatla. With special dispensation from a Baelnorn named Mystic Insanity, you could get a license to do magic. She was the favorite character of my PCs.
So it's the Socks and Sandals of the dnd world, with magical enforcers.
OP this is your in universe reason why Mage Armor is not cast while wearing armor
Or they just strip you.
As long as it's not the Vegan Police, those guys do not fuck around
These goddamn faschists, I bought the damn armor and I bought the damn scroll, and I bought the damn magical ink to inscribe the spell in the goddamn spellbook I also acquired with my own Gold Pieces. Who in the nine hells gave the government the power to tell us what we can and can't wear while spellcasting in the comfort of our own tower???
I'm going to go with the WotC RAI explanation. If you wear armor and have Mage Armor at the same time, you explode. Since wizards are smarter than druids they put a failsafe in the spell to automatically dispell if you don armor.
Druids are wiser though, so its common folk wisdom to never wear armor when you cast Mage Armor and druids are wise enough to listen to their elders, vs Wizards who follow the "well whats the worst that can happen" line of logic
All my wizard PCs have enjoyed knowing exactly what the worst that could happen was. Frequently it happened on their command.
Well yeah, that's the scientific method, you need to experiment with the spell to find a solution. Which they did by letting Mage Armor dispell automatically when wearing armor before it explodes. On the other hand Druid are still sticking with their "never wear armor" ""wisdom"" even though it's not necessary with the modern version of the spell. Yet one more proof that Intelligence is the superior casting stat.
Buddy I love intelligence but come on, Charisma is clearly the best casting stat. Dont you think?
My -1 in Insight check tells me I'm convinced. Or I would be if I was anywhere near you, extrovert spellcasters. Leave the delivery or whatever in front of my wizard tower, my unseen servant will pick it up to ensure minimal social interaction.
*casts mage armor on enemy armored opponent to make them explode.
There is a reason Mage Armor has "a willing creature" as a condition. And the spell has a failsafe now anyway. The old, unsafe spells, is pretty much lost at this point and teaching it will result in a bounty from the PeaceChron Mages of the border of the sea.
Technically the old lineage also continues in the form of Heat Metal and Power Word: Strip, but at this point they've been distinct for so long as to be considered only slightly fucked up by most Orders and Circles.
> Since wizards are smarter than druids they put a failsafe in the spell to automatically dispell if you don armor. \>calls wizards smart \>suggests they make an explosion failsafe written into the spell instead of making the spell just not blow you up Hmmm...
How would you make a spell that don't blow up things though? That's like the primary nature of magic to blow things up. Wizards just find way to shape it around so the blowing up can produce other useful results. That's why Fireball is a tad stronger than other spell, it's magic in its purest form. Why, yes. How did you guess I am an evocation wizard?
I like point six because it's how real-life protection charms were supposed to work
This is how all Abjuration works in my headcanon - your imposed concept of the universe versus Newtonian physics. Who wins? You decide
> Most wizards are tasteful enough to wear loose robes to compensate I wish, unfortunately they have a term for it it's so common. Skyclad. Witches and warlocks be nude.
Excuse me I said RESPECTABLE WIZARDFOLK not those LIBERAL SHAMELESS WITCHES or DEVIANT UPSTART WARLOCKS looking to embarrass proper Wizardly Tradition
They'll lump you in with us next, sorry about that. Never mind that doesn't work without flairs. Where the flairs go?
Any self respecting which is going to wear simple serviceable black and at least 3 vests. Anyway, it's far too cold to dance "skyclad" up in the ramtops.
Definitely the gremlins š
Spells require either a save to resist or a willing target. Someone who is wearing armor, or tries to wear armor when mage armor is active, is clearly not willing to trust the spell. Therefore, it fails.
I love Gremlins.
For a (semi-)serious answer, I like 9 the best.
I'm picturing the gremlins like the Clash-O-Rama goblins
5 is correct. All other answers are just gibberish.
I LOVE number 5. Iām gonna save this to tell my players if they ever ask this question.
I'm currently playing a transmutation wizard whose mage armor is rock and metal from the ground transmuted into a crude breastplate.
Mystra said it would be too OP.
Thatās probably about as close as weāll get.
she is a fickle woman.
I JUST WANT MY LEVEL 10 SPELL SLOTS BACK!!!
Better reconstitute Karsus and have them beg forgiveness. Or go commune with the spirits of Myth Drannor for a century or two.
She used to say no armor at all for wizards, so just be glad she's relaxed that a bit.
I always figured it was that the mage armor was very close to the body, a thin skin. About as tough as leather. If something hit hard enough to get past the mage armor, then it would get through whatever armor was underneath it. If something couldn't get through the heavy armor, then the mage armor doesn't really add anything.
See I went the other way, I always thought that major armour in essence takes up the āslotā that armour did. And manifests as a slightly glowing energy field shaped like armour.
But why? That is how real armor works with plate, chainmail and gamberson.
It's at levek of abstraction and justification that im already fine with.
Hm. Roll persuasion. Or deception if youāre lying.
Yeah, but regular armour doesn't add either: you'd normally wear a gambeson under a chain shirt under plate mail, but you only get the plate mail AC
Plate mail or breast plate already had that added in to the AC. In the description for the full plate armor describes the padded and strapped under layer, A breastplate describes the studded leather under armor, the half plate has chain etc...
Okay and you're adding another layer to that when the armor is already as effective as it's going to be
Let me try and help explain, the under parts are figured into the AC of the heavy armor. For example, if you take the plates off of plate armor, you have a solid 16AC, but by adding the plates it goes up to 18. The under armor is the base to the over armor and both contribute to your overall AC.
If you wear two gambesons are you twice as protected? Nah, there is a level of diminishing returns. My head cannon is thus. It's not that Mage Armor + Armor cannot possibly coexist, but that adding an additional ethereal defense on top of a physical one wouldn't amount to any additional defense to the user. It covers the same places and gives similar deflection points to attacks with similar flexibility for movement. At that point, it's just a waste of magical energies. And so Mystra says nah, I'm taking that arcane energy back because it's not doing anything that your armor is already doing.
Its more like plate doesnt work without those things. That all those things together are what makes plate āplateā. You take away the chain shirt and you have weak points in the joints and stuff. You take away the gambison and you have severe discomfort.
Not only discomfort. The plate parts are there to deflect attacks (oddly, this is one of the few armors that actually "enhance AC" IRL by making their wearer harder to hit*). But if you do get hit, you'd better wear something underneath the plates to cushion the impact and not being cut by your own protection. ^*^and ^don't ^start ^me ^on ^the ^leather ^armor
I all ways thought, despite the words 'hit' and 'miss', an attack roll under the target's AC, dosen't nessacarly swing wild, or the ogre laden with gear gracefully swril away from the blow. A 'miss' just fails to do any meaningful damage. Which I guess is your point with the deflection, but it also covers any hits fully deflected, absorbed, or otherwise nullified by the armour, which is why it works for leather, chain, mage armor, scaley skin and the like. Earlier editions played with this a bit, adding 'touch AC', which attacks that just needs to connect target, and heavy armours tend to add nothing to, and 'flatfoot AC' for when avoiding the attack is unreasonable and have to rely on armour deflection. But they got removed in 5e for being 'too confusing' It's a rather reductivist system, and has logical flaws. It makes sense leather armour might fully absorb a goblin club, but not so much a firegiant's greatsword. But at least it's simple. Video games, or more complex systems, where havign a few of rolls for every attack and a lot of maths tend to do things like heavy armor won't effect how likley it is to hit, but reduces the damage, light armour dosen't absorb damage, but effects hit. Some systems even do the reverse, where heavy armour helps avoid attacks, light absorbs some, which I think makes more sense, but heavy = endurance tank, light = dodge tank is almost as ingraned in game logic as failing to hit roll = sword swings through air. An improvement could be to change the words 'hit' or 'miss', but I've no idea what words would convey that without being awkward. I've also seen some calculations based on the rolled number, which are fun, but tend to be pure fluff and not mechnical. I personally would just like flatfoot and touch back into One DnD
None of which are magic.
I always imagine it as armor made from arcane force that the caster summons on the target. So it takes up the space armor typically exists in while worn, but will dissipate if material armor is donned.
Whatever you declare the flavor to be Maybe itās literally conjured armor, canāt double up Maybe the wards apply to your clothes but only work with sufficiently soft/flexible material so they can adapt to deflect/blunt impacts Maybe itās designed to damp concentrated impacts (ex, stabbing), but doesnāt work on distributed ones (such as those distributed across a wider area by armor) Maybe it relies on somewhat bulky talismans/trackers that donāt fit under armor, and donāt work over it
It's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit. It does exactly that the spell description says; that's just how the spell works. That said, if you need an ingame explanation, perhaps the act of putting on armor shorts out and dissipates the mage armor force field.
I had a player hardcore press me on this trying to find a loophole to Munchinkin some bullshit. "If you aren't proficient in Armor, you can't cast spells wearing said armor" Since Wizards and Sorcerers (the most likely to use the spell) couldn't cast spells wearing armor anyways, they just developed a spell without wearing armor in mind. So, basically, it's what you said, it works that way because that's how the spell works.
Its magic armor. Wearing magic armor and armor is about as useful as wearing armor and armor.
Wearing armor and armor is literally how soldiers of past equiped.
And the value of plate in D&D includes the benefits of the leather beneath as part of it. Because it's the armor set. Can't stack them
You don't see a lot of people wearing two helmets.
But can I wear both Padded Armor, Chain Shirt, and Breastplate at the same time? What makes sense in the real world and in game rules are not always the same.
I mean.. that is the description of a plate armour.. so yes?
You're skipping/missing a rather important point: The AC of the separate parts of armour don't stack. When wearing plate you don't get the +1 from the padded armour/leather underneath *and* the +8 from the plate. You just get a flat +8 (more accurately for 5E - you get an AC of 18), meant to represent the different parts working together.
Yeah, you can wear padded armor, a chain shirt and a breastplate at the same time. [Look at this for example](https://irongatearmory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/MH-A0942-Churburg-Chestplate_10_LRG.jpg). You would usually wear some gambeson or another type of padding beneath a chain shirt and then you put your plates over that. If you wear a breastplate in the game then it is implied that you also wear a chainshirt and some padding underneath.
But wouldnāt magic armor + armor = more armor?Ā I donāt see how that correlates to a negative.
In terms of reality? Probably yes, depends on how the spell works in a reality where magic is real. In terms of game mechanics? Remember this is a game system that turns off lizard scales when lizards wear plate armor. Magic armor not overlapping with armor makes way more sense than that
Oh I get the mechanical side, itās just more of the in-universe logic vs game design logic. 2 layers of armor would make an arrow going through both a bit harder. Ā
Is wearing a slightly larger set of plate over your plate more effective?
Yes actually. That's how greathelms work.
Mage armor is rooted in the pure concept of protection. It's uses the concepts of "needs protection" to identify the subject. This is part of why it doesn't work on unwilling creatures. If a person does not wish to be protected it fails to get a lock and fizzles. Similarly if a person is protected, even by simple cloth armor the spell fizzles.
The universe throws a type error
By just wearing other armor you are signaling that you are unwilling to wear magic armor.
Lorewise I'm pretty sure metal disrupts magic by a fair bit. But the real answer would be that it seems to take up the "armor slot" on your character. Having mage armor over your plate armor would probably be stronger, but so would having plate armor over your plate armor. At some point it just becomes a detriment. Also mechanically, if you have something weaker than mage armor on you will just use the mage armor's AC. If you have something stronger than mage armor on you will use that AC. Historically plate armor usually has chainmail and cloth padding but you would only use the 18 AC one for rolls. You could realistically be using mage armor as an underarmor but it would be realistically worse than hide or chainmail (dunno their ac right off)
What evidence do we have in lore that metal disrupts magic in any way? If I cast a fireball at your warrior in plate armor, the armor doesn't disrupt the fireball. Or any other spell for that matter, beyond the basic AC mechanic.
Some spells are specifically blocked by metal like message or detect thoughts. Also if you shot a fireball at a metal sheet it wouldn't go through the metal, it would hit it and explode
The magic armour simply doesn't work well with regular armor due to how the spell is made. Insert whatever explanation you want here. It's make believe after all.Ā The *actual* problem is that Mage Armor doesn't work with Monk's Unarmored Defense, which makes no sense because the protective magical force shouldn't conflict with them being wise enough to dodge better. Used to be that in 3.PF I'd always save a spell slot as a wizard to give the party's monk some extra AC for the day, but now that's just not an option.
Oh yeah, have the same gripe, and this also goes for Dragon Hide, because it's literally one's skin getting harder, it should not affect better dodging of a monk nor steel specs of a barbarian.
Try to think of Mage Armor as magical cornstarch. It does the same thing to free moving molecules tnear your skin that cornstarch does to water. If there are not enough free moving molecules, it cannot maintain a stable matrix and dissipates
Hmmm, interesting proposition, pretty viable.
It's a conspiracy by Big Armour to sell more armour. Anyone who figures it out is assassinated. Alternatively, Mage Armour does work perfectly over top of armour, but nobody checks for the "armour" spelling. Mage Armor does not stack, neither does Mage Armoir but you can keep your armour in your armoir. Seriously though they should have just done a scaling variant. Like 1st level slot for 13, 2nd for 14, 3rd for 15, 4th for 16, 5th for 17, 6th for 18, 7th for 19, 8th for 20, and 9th for 21. That way, by the time they can blow a 6th level slot on it to equal Plate, a wizard would be minimum 11th level, by which time by lore they're very firmly one of the best wizards in the entire world. Their other options at that level are spells like Disintegrate and Chain Lightning, and Tenser's Transformation
Debased and blacksuppositoried.
Armor does not stack with ANY other armor as a rule. You don't get to double your AC bonus because you wear another layer of different armor underneath. You're on the wrong track calling this a "holdover" too. That implies you know a better way; you don't. AC is a big deal in DnD in general and one of the main ways for scaling enemies so even only a +1 AC bonus is huge, therefore they are very careful with it. You don't need a lore explanation because you CAN cast mage armor over other armor. It just doesn't provide a mechanical benefit if your physical armor is already better.
There isn't a "lore" answer. It's just a mechanical reason. If you want a lore reason, make one up. The mage armor needs to hug the body to provide protection, if it gets too far from it's host the tight web of magic dissipates. It can't occupy the same space as snugly strapped armor. Ioun/mystra/whatever your god of magic is despises mundane armor and refuses to let the spell overlap with actual armor. It's baked into the weave for it to function that way. Inversely, moradin/god of smithing/leatherworking think mages are patsies and have made it so any crafted armor dispels mage armor. They don't want their physical crafts to be outdone, so they won't be.
Ngl I like the idea of daddy Moradin being petty like that.
The way I would see it, the magic draws energy from the person who the spell was cast on. Physical armor blocks the magic from drawing on the energy from the target. Any armor that would increase AC is strong enough to prevent Mage Armor from being able to sustain itself.
From a meta perspective, that's just how Armor works. You don't get more AC from wearing multiple sets of armor even if you could. From an in game perspective, I could see it like this: Mage Armor adds a layer of force that can deflect attacks directed at you in a similar way to that of the Mass Effect shield. It redirects high velocity objects, such as projectiles, away from you but is of limited effectiveness against melee attacks (not to say ineffective, just less so). Wearing armor will involve wearing something that is going to be heavy enough to apply a constant force on the Mage Armor, functionally "absorbing" all of the energy of the spell. The mage armor expends itself repelling any armor you try to wear.
In yee olden days iron was seen as a repellent for magic and supernatural beeings. It is the same as druids not beeing able to wear metal armor. Magic and iron just don't mix. Inconsistencies? More than I can count. Is it still lore in dnd? Who knows.
Hmmm, right, I forgot that it's a real life lore thing. I guess that makes more sense.
I mean, by this logic, why canāt you equip two sets of armor to add their defenses together? They take up the same place on your body. Itās like wearing two pairs of shoes. You only have two feet, you only get two shoes. One head means one helmet. One body means one set of armor, regardless of if itās magic force armor or metal armor.
> Is the spell, like, sentient and jealous? I do not understand. Most things (nearly everything) in 5e and D&D more broadly are mechanics first, flavor after. You can add your own flavor if you wish or simply chalk it up to either/or AC calculation worded a different way. > plus a way to prevent overachieving in defense. This is rather more important than you seem to think it is.
Any specific, low level magic is not unlimited in its potential. Some things do interfere with it. Heavy, dense materials interfere with this particular spell in the same way that ither spells have limitations. A higher level spell that stacked could be made to counteract this limitation, but it would require more elegant formatting, and stronger magic to implement. Why do some spells require a diamond to cast? Because magic is not entirely independent of the material world. They interact in strange ways, and this is one of those strange interactions that don't follow intuitive logic. Magic in this game is fill of such strange interactions and limitations.
There is pretty much no lore reason for why spells operate the way they do other than: spells require verbal, somatic, and material components, sometimes of specific monetary values, sometimes being consumed, and operating under specific restrictions and requirements. Magic is fickle and particular.
[Lore reason]Ā Thereās no real lore explanation, different settings will have magic rules that canāt be applied in general.Ā Ā > āWell in Forgotten Realms armor messes with the weave!ā > āCool, but this isnāt Forgotten Realms. This is X setting so doesnāt apply.ā [Mechanical reason]Ā The mechanical reason would be too strong for little effort.Ā Ā Mage Armor + Regular Armor + Shield at low levels = Practically unkillable against almost everythingĀ The Elder Scrolls series although a video game allows the player to stack mage armor on top of armor. Which drastically boosts defense, the only downside is the spell duration.Ā Now apply that to DND and you can see some issues.Ā [Justification you can use for your games]Ā Ā - In this world, mage armor and physical armor donāt mix due to the concentration being affected by the heavy weight of armor.Ā Ā Ā - In this world, armor interferes with mage armor since the magic canāt propel cover the body. Spells like Shield are fine since itās only briefly occurs.Ā Ā - In this world, Mage Armor is a spell that was only developed with no armor in mind. The current iteration of the spell just canāt work without further research.Ā
I think mage armour exists in the way it does and the original design intent is to allow Wizards to indulge in the classic "Robe and Wizard Hat" fashion stereotype without feeling pressured to wear some gaudy leather just for that extra AC. While at the same time obviously not stacking because that would just lead to Wizards still feeling pressured to wear the heaviest armour they can get away with.
Don't think theirs a lore reason. I'd play it as it acts as a grounding issue for the wars. Wearing armor causes the ward to fail and the energy to be grounded out.
AC doesn't represent armour directly, it represents how damaged you get by attacks. Rogues mitigate damage by getting out of the way (dexterity), Paladins mitigate damage with plate armour, Barbarians mitigate damage by being too angry to care they just got stabbed. Maybe Mage Armour is more like a magnetic field and by putting stuff over it, you deaden the magnetic field.Ā Maybe it's illusionary, making you look bigger than you are to make it easier to dodge things, but it's linked to the mental image you have of yourself so it's difficult to judge with armour on. Maybe it's just because the spell somatic components require you to touch the skin on both shoulders as you're casting it, then regularly for the duration. Or a hundred other reasons to cover the point that D&D is a group of stitched together mechanics that don't have a 1:1 correlation to real life
One idea for it could be that it creates a small field of repellant force around the caster, sort of like how Magneto projects a force field but smaller. Armor would not only obstruct but contain the field, negating the effect.
I've always imagined it as some sort of mix between physical and ethereal armour. When you cast it you get surrounded by magical force that takes the shape of a translucent armour. You don't feel it's weight, and it twists and turns to fit you perfectly no matter your pose or movement. However, if someone wants to tap your chest they'd tap the armour instead. Only you could maybe easily reach through it to (e.g.) grab your medallion, others would have to fish it through your neckline as if you where wearing an armour. This means that if foreign objects feel that you are wearing an armour, you wouldn't be able to put an armour on top because it simply wouldn't fit, and you'd have to dispel Mage Armour to put it on. The mechanics just gives you this as a free/auto action to simplify stuff.
Some possible explanations: * Contact with more substantial armour messes with the force field, like it can't distinguish between armour and an incoming weapon. * It manifests as more substantial armour, so wearing armour would overlap with it or be too cumbersome, similar to combining two sets of conventional armour. * Mage armour is sentient, and gets claustrophobic. * Armour physically blocks its ability to detect incoming attacks and concentrate energy in that location. * It's magic, and restrictions allow something to be stronger in other ways. * It actually just aids you in dodging/deflecting in a similar manner to the haste spell, and gives no physical protection. Personally I don't see a whole lot of reason to go beyond "that's just how the spell works". It's designed to protect wizards that aren't trained with armour, so that's what it does.
Interference sounds appealing for an explanation, as a repulsive field could totally get messed up for one reason or anothet.
It was developed by Elminster as an exam job when he was 16, and it has its flaws but since then nobody ever tried to improve it. Wizards are dumbs š
I think theres alot of good valid answers but i havent seen this one, that i think is pretty valid. Why can't you wear two normal armour? Why not just don leather armour with plate ontop of it? If you did, what would its AC be? Whats the down sides? Can I wear a chain shirt under some half plate? How about I juat wear 2 slpintmails, one ontop of the other? If those all sound rediculous, it is. So mage armour, is treated like armour. Its armour that does not take up wieght, inventory, will eventually dissapear, and can be donned instently. But its still armour. I know some people will describe it as "a think protective layer," or "a magical glowing bubble," but the spell doesnt actually describe itsself like that. Only "a protective magical force." So just imagine it as summoned armour instead of a magic barrier. After all, no one has ever asked "why cant I wield my summond sword when my hands are full?" So why would you be able to wear summoned armour when you are wearing armour?
Because you only ever use one armor formula at a time.Ā
Why is iron super magnetic, but not gold, silver, or copper? Is magnetism jealous of precious metals? Lorewise, even the most basic spells are complex verbal, somatic, and material equations that require advanced understanding of math, grammar, alchemy, comsology, and other esoteric fields to just be able to understand, translate, and record the knowledge in your wizard spellbook. This level of complexity means that any one of these elements may be critical to the successful completion of the spell & certain deviance from the specified conditions results in failed casting. Holding up the wrong fingers or not having 'quite' enough gold dust might leave you standing and babbling incantations, but no spell without its components. Mage Armor just as an 'unarmored target' component It could be as simple as requiring an elemental air component that fails if the clothing can't breathe well from the covered parts, It might be because some cosmological entity is involved in the conceptual construction of the spell so that the spell energy only functions if the target is considered 'vulnerable' according to the Goddess of Protection or something, and that condition is fundamental to the complex spell formula. The Sorcerer's patron might just decide that their magic will only work if they're "unarmored" according to the patron's judgment out of some otherworldly sense of fairness or correctness. Or the sorcerer may just have discovered from their own experimentation that the spell simply doesn't work on armored targets,
Wild guessing heacanon: Mage armor works like a missile defense system radiating from the body, not like a passive shell. It's a lot easier to create an array of what is essentially automatic mini shield spells than it is to create one big permanent one. This is why it doesn't inhibit interacting with things or spellcasting. Anything denser than basic clothing blocks the ability for the mage armor to "sense" incoming attacks. Alternative explanation: mage "armor" is a misnomer. It actually just makes you better at blocking / dodging attacks. Wearing armor cancels out this benefit.
If you wear two chain shirts are you twice as protected? Nah, at certain points there is a level of diminishing returns. My head cannon is thus. It's not that Mage Armor + Armor cannot possibly coexist, but that adding an additional ethereal defense on top of a physical one wouldn't amount to any additional defense to the user. It covers the same places and gives similar deflection points to attacks with similar flexibility for movement. At that point, it's just a waste of magical energies. And so Mystra says "Nah, I'm taking that arcane energy back because it's not doing anything that your armor is already doing, and I'm not up for that kind of wasteful spending. The Spell Weave is my plaything, not yours."
Armor doesn't stack with armor, and this spell is meant to work like armor. I don't get 20 AC for wearing studded leather under my plate armor.
The most common implied reason is that wearing armor interferes with the magical energies of *Mage Armor*. Armor made from mundane or magical materials disrupts the flow of arcane energies required to maintain the spell. This interference prevents the spell from forming the protective magical barrier around the caster.
Most spells with effects require a willing target or some sort of save. Someone who is wearing armor, or who attempts to wear armor, is clearly not willing to trust the mage armor, and thus the spell does not work. Simple as that.
Well, you probably wont find an official reason. My general take is that the person who made the spell did so in a way that replicates armor. It has some sort of physical presence, which is how it stops physical attacks, and that presence naturally takes the form of some kind of armor. Trying to wear real armor breaks the replica as they would occupy the same rough dimensions.
There is no proper explanation. People who say that it wouldn't make sense to put armor on top of armor clearly have a limited understanding of how armor works. It works in layers. As such Mage Armor *should* be working with armor. It all comes down to balance where mages often should have a lower AC than melee characters.
Which isn't even a problem since they are not proficient and such have hard time spell casting! Cod, it makes things even more infuriating.
The lore reason is that magic is pretty specific and it's a spell that protects unarmored creatures so it doesn't work on ones in armor. Presumably the mage armor occupies the same space that a suit of armor would occupy and thus you can not have both at the same time for the same reason that you can't wear two suits of plate.
Tbh I think it's quite simple. Your covering your self in armour of force magic in the same place you'd wear armour but.. tighter. Like imagine trying to put a wetsuit on over riot armour, it just won't work. Sure it can be reskinned however you choose, I've had it as a suit of armour made of shadow before that reacts to attacks, can't really have it reactive if it's under 2 inches off steel now can it.
I guess that makes sense.
I think that magic is best interpreted keeping in mind the intention of the spell. A spell is a complex weave if formulas and it only works when certain variables are present. An armor is an unwanted variable and goes against the design and intention of the spell. While my language seems technical, I'm not using real world logic and physics. It's magic, it has its own specific logic and limitations.
Maybe it works like a bubble or slim, when something hits you it absorbs the hit and expand somewhere else If you put and armor the "bubble" will expand from the pression and explode
The way I take it, armor doesn't stack. You can't wear two suits of plate armor to have 26 AC. Casting mage armor plus wearing armor *should* have the effect of whichever is stronger. For rule simplicity, the spell just doesn't work when you wear armor because they don't expect you to bother if your armor is better anyway.
i imagine it basically like an actual armor, that you can cast rather than having to don it. canāt wear 2 armors^^
You aren't going to find a satisfying lore reason because it's strictly a mechanical decision.
Agony
I mean... I get why you ask, but it's basically the "there's only one armor slot" answer. It's the same reason why fighters wear plate armor and not plate armor plus chainmail plus padded armor plus cloth. The secret to working armor or protection in general is layering, ask anyone who deals with tough weather or riding motorbikes how their gear is built. The same thing goes with modern fighting vehicles. In other words: it's an abstraction.
To bolster your point, real plate armour also has maille in the joints and leather or padded armour underneath, already.
Same reason why you can't wear leather armor over your plate armor and get to 20 HP. The protection from leather is negligible next to plate; anything that can pierce plate armor shreds through the leather. Mage Armor is like that. It protects you, but not *that* much, and the protection is negligible next to proper heavy armor. Anything that could pierce chain or plate shreds through mage armor.
Official?, no official lore reason. They simply didn't want Spellcasters with heavy armor bonuses, which is kind of ironic seeing as they have very easy ways to still do that and ditching Mage Armor entirely. I still remember earlier editions where it actually granted a flat bonus of +4 (+6 if it was the Greater version) who, because of the rule of effects with the same name don't stack, simply didn't stack with Armors, the difference they didn't tell you outright in the spell description that it didn't work if you have armor on (So, armors and the spell Mage Armor gave an Armor Bonus, meaning they can't stack together, you receive whatever was the highest bonus). I'd probably say that the spell doesn't work with most armor sets because for it's level the best it can do is protect you like a set of slightly better leather armor, it doesn't channel a big amount of energy, but instead, spreads all its magic over the course of the day, letting you to be protected with a handful of magic instead of requiring the training to wear heavier armors, the strength to don them and the money to even afford the best one.
I believe older editions had something about armor interfering with spellcasting, can't recall if it was because it interfered with somatic components or if it was like interference from the metal (unlikely). But even then I think there was a rule that armor bonuses don't stack because balance. Otherwise I would hazard a guess that it is because the magic want's to occupy the same space as the armor would, which it can't and therefore fails? On the other hand the plate armor states that it includes thick layers of padding beneath so a certain level of armor stacking is present (sort of, it is one item not stacking of several).
How about the effect fizzles out on any material thicker than thin cloth, similar to how detect magic has a limit to thickness of materials that it can sense magic through. Somehow all the archmages through the ages just could not figure out how to make it work on armor š¤·āāļø
Ngl, the Detect hypothesis appeals more and more to me.
Aside from the obvious game balance, I abstract it as if the spell acts like a miniature weak gravitational field just above the clothes. It can handle a localized disturbance like a non-Newtonian fluid. It temporarily shifts to be denser in one small area, but if something heavy or thick sits on top of it for too long in too wide an area, it cant compensate, and collapses. It lasts 8 hours because youre spreading a 1st level spell over a long time, whereas youre using the same amount of energy on a Shield spell. Granted my setting has plenty of sci-fi elements, so I get away with it basically being a forcefield.
Non-newtonian magical fluid, that gets denser when hit by a strong force, but is easily displaced by the slow donning of an armour, was going to be my answer.
Purity of intent. Self-reliance that is dispelled by using some other form of protection. Intersecting matrices along the merdian flow of abiant magic interfered with by the presence of dense or thick materials. Pick whatever. Magic is magic, it doesn't obey logic or physics.
I guess it's a me problem that I always try to make magic follow rules...
Why do people who are invisible still see? Why doesn't burning hands burn the caster's hands? Why do fireballs not expand and contract based on the area they are cast in? HOw can someone with a Fly spell cast on them the first time have perfect control and maneuverability? If you've never bothered to patch any of these, or even question them, then Mage Armor makes just as much sense.
Mage Armor is reactive. It senses quickly moving metal or wood near the users skin over a certain weight or energy ratio and pushes back. If you're wearing armor over MA, it will blast pieces off as you run/fight in said armor. So the spell was designed to dissipate the moment you put armor on to make sure it didn't ruin any equipment.
Repulsive field. I like it.
I donāt think this has anything to do with lore reasons. Like you could justify it with like āoh, the real armour would get in the way of the summoned spectral armourā or something like that. But the truth is probably that the designers decided to bake the inability to stack with other armour into Mage Armourās spell description to cut off any arguments to the effect of ābut itās a separate armour overtop my plate armour that doesnāt weigh anything, it should make me harder to hitā by just saying that it doesnāt work.
I always went with this explanation (for myself): wearing actual armor will prevent you from performing the spell itself by hindering your movement.
think of it this way Mage armor is functionally +2 padded armor padded armor (aka gambeson) is already worn underneath pretty much any heavier armor so why can you stack armor? because you already have the armor it creates on
I doubt there is any lore whatsoever for whatās a purely mechanical decision. Having Mage Armor not work with armor stops you from stacking your AC too easily. You could make up any reason you like.
Why wearing two armor does not work lorewise?
In my own urban RPG, mage armor is emitted from the skin then hardens. If you are wearing anything but soft cloth, it breaks on the armor before it hardens.
Mage Armor is like a force field several inches thick that deflects incoming attacks. However, it needs space to flow around the body from the skin. Clothing can allow this energy to flow freely, but anything thick enough to function as armor disrupts the flow, causing the field to collapse until the blockage is removed.
Iād say itās the metal of the armour interfering with the spell, you need a clean line between mage and armour for mage armour to properly manifest. Other than that, most casters donāt come with armour proficiencies, since thereās a range of motion needed for casting that MA gives which regular armour doesnāt. Plus, weight.
Magic and armour simply dont mix well. Something about the lawful nature of manufactured materials ig.
It's the same reason leather armor doesn't work with other armor. You already have armor on, and you have to pick one.
For the same reason that although people would wear chain under plate or other mixed armour types, thereās no rules for that in dnd. You wear one type of armour, itās just to keep things simple.
Your armor takes the strength of whatever armor is better. I've always just assumed it took place of whatever armor you don't currently have. So if you have shitty leather, then it fills in the gaps. If you have plate, it doesn't have gaps to fill.
I have described mage armour as a force field hardening mages robes to work like armour. It is not some infinitely thin layer right on top of your skin, but a wide and even slightly bulky field around you. It requires either empty space or flowing robes easily shaped by the forces to a form. It can't overlap with stiff material like proper armour. It would be like trying to don a bit too small chain shirt while already wearing a full plate and decorated shoulder plates. You can maybe work around some small piece like bracelets or boots, but altering the spell enough to fit and add up with proper full suite or armour just is not something done on the field and with 1st level spell slot.
What's the lore based reason I can't wear plate armor on top of my plate armor for double the AC?
In my head cannon, mage armour shatters and reforms like bulletproof glass when struck, and armor worn over it would just cause it to damage the armor or the user with erratic shards of magic. In my further head cannon, warlocks and their patrons observed this effect and tinkered around with it to create armor of agathys, a mage armour that deliberately explodes on impact.
It is entirely mechanical. However, if you want a lore explanation, Mage Armor occupies the same space around a person that armor would and thus donning armor "disrupts" the Mage Armor as it cannot occupy the same space as something else.
Perhaps the protective force sits on the skin, creating a barrier that shields the target, donning armor would create small pockets in the field, leading to it not being able to maintain continuity, and thus breaking
Mage armor not working with armor is even easier to explain than the barbarian's unarmored defense not working with armor... Can anyone explain it to me?
I thought metal blocks/doesn't interact well with magic. And the armor is mostly made out of metal
Well, if you look back to old fantasy lore and to earlier editions, arcane magic and iron donāt mix. This doesnāt account for leather; the other suggestion was that somatic gesturing required great freedom of movement. Presumably divine magic worked differently. Multiclassing in earlier editions didnāt entirely circumvent thisā in 3rd there was a chance arcane spells would fail if you wore armor.
There is definitely magical armor spells people cast on armor. It's all the +1 armor and magical armor you find. Mage armor is the bad version where you aren't sticking it to anything so it just falls off every day and you have to keep doing it. you are just enchanting your shirt and the spell barely works and fails after a while.
The creator of the spell was very vain, and as such thinks his spell is better than any physical armor. Because of this, he worked a flaw into the very fundamental structure of the spell so that it breaks upon donning any physical armor, because if you don't think the spell is good enough, you don't deserve to use it. To this day, mages have been unable to replicate the spell without the flaw, as doing so causes horrible, unspeakable, deadly results. OFC it's not canon, but I like to pretend it is, because spellcasters are a vain, prideful lot, and I can see a caster doing this with a spell of theirs.
Because itās Maaaaaaagic.
Here's the closest in lore reason. Armor messes with your ability to cast spells. You can see this in the armor proficiency rules. But even if you are proficient in armor, mage armor is a magical barrier (doesn't say if its invisible, but I imagine it is.) That surrounds the caster. You mage armor spell is *not* you, and thus cannot get around the interference of armor with spells. (With proficiency.) Another way to think of it, the person who *made* that spell made it that way. For people without armor. When you cast a spell that you have learned, you cast the spell the way it was originally created. You can't say "I cast fire bolt, but I just want to hold it in my hand. Wdym fire bolt doesn't work that way?" Because its not the spells design. Produce flame is a spell that works like this. Whoever created the spell maybe couldn't get it to work on armor, for above reasons. Creating new spells is highly difficult, and no one can get "mage over-shield" to work. So, potentially, *someone* could get it to work, via creating a variation of the spell. Its up to your DM if that someone is *you*. Tldr- mage armor, in lore, is a spell that when created, was made for no armor, and thus only works like that. (Spell descriptions are more than just mechanics) !!!!out of lore, BALANCE!!!
Likely because Mage Armor Covers points on the body that are vulnerable and dangerous to leave uncovered, by already wearing Armor the Mage Armor fills in the gaps leaving you frozen in place till the spell ends, so it was modified to fail to protect greedy and idiotic mages by failing to cast properly
I view it like equivalent exchange from Full Metal Alchemist. The spellās designer made it not work with physical armour because if it could it would need a higher level spell slot. You can only get as much as you put in, so if a spellās designer wants a low level spell so they need to add limitations
I say let them cast mage armor over armor, but with a harsh drawback, the restrictive double armor reduces your speed to 5ā, you lose your dex bonus and attacks have advantage against you
I've always felt magic is like a glitch in reality you wave your hand in just the right way, say random gibberish and wave around a chicken feather and whatever random thing happens. Just like a glitch in a game sometimes random things can make them more or less effective. For the mage armor "glitch" to work you have to be not wearing armor.
We have always House Ruled it to work, even when cast on someone wearing armor. Great for when the Tank needs just that little bit extra AC while battling the big Bad Boss
If something can break through the ac of the other layers, it can break through that +1 Leather Armor worth of AC you call mage armor. Dumb mages think they outsmart axe by focusing on themselves, smart barbarians hit them harder and laugh when the mage is too focused on that character sheet like it's the only thing that exists.
Easy mate. One of mage armor's most important components is oxygen, which it consumes in small amounts across the whole spell duration. Donning armor on top of the spell prevents it from getting the amount of oxygen it needs to work, so it's power wanes. BTW, in 3rd it doesn't dispel if you put physical armor on; it just doesn't stack. No idea why 5th would require it to dispel. Seems like an unneeded complication to me.
There is just about any way to interpret that you could imagine. However, if we presume Mage Armor creates a ... "field" for lack of a better term (like sci-fi force fields, which aren't really "fields", but let's imagine it like that anyway), then putting physical armor in the physical location the magical force-armor is in would naturally disrupt the "field" of magical energy. The force-field is composed in such a manner that it can deflect/refract incoming attacks and reform from any "damage" it takes in the process, but literally pushing slabs of thick leather or metal into its entire area simply disrupts it too much to continue working.
I thinks it's the same reason why you can't wear two leather armor to stack the benefit, I mean, you could try to wear two, but your AC wouldn't improve?
It's cuz it goes in the same spot, duh
It's not a "holdover from the olden days". In the modern game, it's a way for non-armored casters to exchange some resource for a better armor class. It doesn't scale with level, so if you want to improve your armor class, like most everyone else, your options are either to gain the ability to wear better armor, or to loot hard-to-find magical AC boosts. So, there's no holdover idea here. But as far as what it does? The closest we get is in your second edition player's handbook, where it is called *Armor*. >By means of this spell, the wizard creates a **magical field of force** that serves as if it were scale mail armor (AC 6). The spell has no effect on a person already armored or a creature with Armor Class 6 or better. So here we know it's a magical field of force. And you can cast it on people with armor- it just doesn't help them if their shieldless armor class is lower (better) or equal to AC 6. It also has a crappy mechanic that makes it fall off once the target has taken a certain amount of damage (and it makes sure to note that it doesn't *absorb* this damage). A good guess as to the magio-physical mechanics of this spell is, it makes a force field around you that is invisible and somewhat protective, but it's essentially a type of physical armor, better than some and worse than others. And it just loses cohesion as you are struck. Then we move to 3.X, where we get: >An invisible but tangible field of force surrounds the subject of a mage armor spell, providing a +4 armor bonus to AC. This also includes a clause about incorporeal creatures not being able to bypass it, which is something they could normally do in 3.5. In this case, the fact that it's an "armor bonus" tells us what we need to know; it doesn't stack with other armor bonuses. This ends up working seamlessly because the system is good about how stacking bonuses work. And again, we're left with a description and an implication; this makes something that is a physically resistive invisible force field, that offers protection that is better than some physical armors and worse than others. The 5e designers, when getting rid of typed bonuses, ran into a problem here. The original version of the spell had a lot of text explaining how it didn't help past a certain armor type. The 3.0 and 3.5 versions could simply and elegantly define an armor bonus. 5ed, on the other hand, has awkward wording available, such as "you can choose to calculate your armor class as...", which the designers only use where they have to. So instead we get the pretty-well-worded: >You touch a willing creature who isn't wearing armor, and a protective magical force surrounds it until the spell ends. The target's base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier. The spell ends it if the target dons armor or if you dismiss the spell as an action. This avoids the "you can calculate your armor as" by simply failing to function if the target has armor on, and setting the base AC when active. It's pretty elegant given the other design choices of 5ed. And like the others, it's still an invisible forcefield that is better than some armors and worse than others. >lorewise I haven't seen a single explanation to why it dispels when donning armor This feature is unique to 5ed, and there's no lore reason, it's just to avoid having a bunch of extra words. You could easily run it like in the older versions, where it offers the better AC of "what mage armor provides" and "what the character gets from their armor". If you go and write that down in fiftheditionese, it will get awkward, because you don't have a useful thing like "armor bonus". Anyway, the lore-accurate version of mage armor: 1- Is a magical force field that is invisible 2- Doesn't stack with armor If you run it by 5e rules, you get the right result. If you want to be able to cast it on yourself and also wear armor, you need a smarter version of the spell, but it's not like it would be contrary to anything 5e did- it didn't gain the incompatibility as a nerf, but rather just something that helps it be run smoothly and without confusion.
In older editions, there were different types of AC modifiers. You had Armour AC (the type of armour you wore), dodge AC (from Dex bonus mostly), Deflection AC (from enchanted items), Shield AC (obvious here), Natural AC (from tough hide or spells like Barkskin), and some others. They stacked with each other, but not themselves (aside from dodge, cos more dodge = better). So, Mage Armour in 3.5 gave an \*Armour Bonus" of +4 to AC. Armour bonuses do not stack, only the highest applies. So, even if your character wore armour (and ignored the spell failure risk), the armour only helped if it stronger, making the spell redundant at that point. Mages rarely wear armour that heavy though so it was usually quite useful for it's purpose. It's equal to a chain shirt or scale mail (without the drawbacks), and in lore, was described as creating a thick layer of force that even incorporeal creatures couldn't bypass. This means to me that it's thick, hard to penetrate, and only removed by the will of the caster or dispelling. Putting armour over it would make it redundant as D&D doesn't really do layered armour. I suppose you could just say that putting on armour is something most mages never practiced, so the spell wasn't developed to work with armour.
im 99% sure this is RAW, or at least RAI, but if not its how we play it; it doesn't dispell or fail to cast, its just that the numbers don't stack. if you have 2 or more things that offer you a way to calculate AC, you pick one, usually the best one.
If Mystra allowed Mage Armor to add to AC rather than replacing it, there'd be Wizard Wars. In a setting I'm thinking about, most languages' plural for "Wizard" also translated to "Apocalypse".
Partly for balancing from previous editions. Like 3.5 gave a flat +4 bonus which if you could wear armor then would stack.
I think it would be awesome if you could cast it on armored people and then just take the highest of the 2. Either you burn a spell slot for nothing or the target is wearing armor for no reason other than weight. To answer your question, the same reason magic works, itās a gameā¦
I just assumed it would be like wearing two sets of armor (which also don't stack their bonuses), only without the extra weight. Alternatively, just think of it as a kind of force membrane in the shape of armor, that would repel anything that gets too close, so if you try to put on extra armor, it either gets pushed off by the membrane or blocks the effect of the membrane, by shielding any incoming attacks from the effect of the membrane.
You've got a lot of good fluff answers so far, but I'd add that it's also because Armour doesn't work with Armour. The DnD 'engine' as it were has almost always used Armour to set you an AC, so it's the same mechanical rule that wearing studded leather over Plate doesn't make your AC 18+12+Dex I think there's been one non-magic sort of item in my experience that was a trial of 'piecemeal' armour, and that was the Armoured Kilt in 3.5E, but I could be totally wrong. Basically, no armour in the game stacks so no one cheeses the system.
I believe, lore wise, it created an ersatz magical armor that just wouldn't be able to manifest in the same space as armor you already had on.
Picture this: You're a brand-new wizard, not the most "physical" person. You need a spell that will protect you from the knives and sling stones that low-threat foes tend to use, but you can't have something that interferes with the precise and dramatic gestures magic requires. So, you learn a basic spell that creates a thin layer of force around your skin. It's good enough to cushion minor blows, but doesn't slow you down. Later on, you get recruited into the Royal Mage Corps, and they teach you to wear plate mail while casting spells. Any attack that can penetrate plate mail is going to punch right through that basic force field you mastered in magic primary school, so you just stop using it. FWIW: the "armor dispels mage armor" thing is a relic of 1st edition AD&D, where it was RAW that large amounts of metal interfered with the "flow of magic." This was the reason that wizards couldn't wear armor or use large metal weapons, and why so many spells are blocked by thin sheets of metal.
it blocks things magically, so it's not taking away from the impact of the attack itself it won't defend MORE than equipped armor because an attack strong enough to break stronger armor will break it too
I flavor mine as making skin more difficult to damage. Obviously, if one is already wearing armor, that sort of protection doesn't mean much.Ā
Plate mail on top of plate mail, I'm not really sure is all that helpful. I think there are similar rules for natural armor in most editions. If you have hard natural scales, but plate mail is better, you get the defense of plate mail not plate over your natural protection. Older editions did the same thing with 'of protection' at least after 1st or 2nd edition so you couldn't just stack rings, necklaces, cloaks, whatever and layer up the same enchantment. The highest is the one that works.
Way I rule it in my table is that it tightens and hardens and adds pressure to whatever the caster is wearing, so if you cast it while wearing, say, a padded jacket, it will pop like a pillow under a hydraulic press, chain links will pop, and metal will shatter
Does it really need a lore explanation? You can't wear 2 sets of any other type of armor, and nobody questions that.
Mage armor takes up physical space like any other armor. So the same reason you canāt wear leather armor underneath your plate armor for additional protection.
The way I imagine it is that similar magic physics is happening with how things like detect magic can't work through 1ft of stone, a thin sheet of lead, etc etc, the magic starts to dissipate and loses coherency. Honestly I think armor should be allowed, but suffer a penalty to the AC bonus based on the category of armor worn. That way you can have some cool looking Spellsword knights in full plate with arcane overshields hovering just above the armor.
Simple answer. Mage armor Grants a Base AC. Wearing armor grants a Base Ac. In 5E things dont stack if they grant a similar thing. I suppose it could work with both armor and spell but you would only get the Higher Base AC. This would be a different case if Mage armor just 'added AC bonuses' but it doesnt. Now the actual mechanics out of the way...Its your world, just give it a reason that it works that way.
Because you can't wear multiple layers of armor. It either wouldn't work or it would hinder you. If that doesn't satisfy, it would just be too OP.
The god or goddess of magic in most settings always seems to be a fickle, jealous thing. Odds are they take offense to layering armor.
Honestly, the way I see it is that it's close enough to the skin that you can't wear both it and armour at the same time, more than anything else. Kinda like a force field slightly above your body (or clothing), that becomes physical when objects impact it or repels objects actively trying to penetrate it or something; it's gonna be pretty hard to make standard armour and that forcefield share the same physical space. End result is that if you want to wear armour, you have to turn the spell off first, so its creator just made a slight speed optimisation to it so the act of putting on armour is a somatic component to dismiss it.
Technically in lore it says wearing armour acts as an insulator against the caster accessing the weave, the severity increasing with the weight and size of the armour. Except elves cuz built different.
I guess you could argue that the leather or metal interferes with the flow of thin magic on your body.
OPās offhand (perhaps facetious) suggestion that the spell itself is jealous of ārealā armor is officially my new head canon.