Let's Clear up Armour Class!
I find that this gets asked about a lot on rules pages and your Armour Class can be a confusing statistic to work out. I’ll make my way though the most common questions for you.
Your Armour Class (or AC) is a number that determines how difficult you are to hit with an attack. The higher this number is the harder you are to hit so do what you can to make this number as high as you can! When you are attacked your opponent will roll a D20 plus their attack modifier against you, if they meet or exceed your AC they hit and damage you.
If you aren’t wearing any armour then your AC will be 10 + Dexterity bonus. This is the basic AC calculation for someone who isn’t wearing armour and does not have a class or racial AC that is better than this.
When you are wearing armour then you will have a different calculation to do. You will find this in the equipment section of the Player’s Handbook [page 145]. In the Armour table you’ll find the calculation next to the armour type i.e. Leather Armour is 11 + Dexterity modifier. Remember that you have to have proficiency in the type of armour to gain the benefit of wearing it.
Certain races have a racial armour class that they can apply because of their natural abilities. The Loxodon has a tough hide. It’s Natural Armor feature means you calculate their unarmoured AC as 13 + Dexterity Modifier.
Barbarians and Monks have an ability called Unarmored Defense. This means a Barbarian’s armour class is 10 + Dexterity Modifier + Constitution Modifier as long as they aren’t wearing any armour, a Monk’s is 10 + Dexterity Modifier + Wisdom Modifier as long as they aren’t wearing any armour or wielding a shield.
There are spells that can change your AC too. The Wizard Class can cast ‘Shield’ or ‘Mage Armor’ to make themselves less squishy in combat situations! Shield briefly adds on top of your AC whereas Mage Armor increases the base statistic. This means that you can stack them if things really go badly!
Items can be used to augment your AC. A Ring of Protection will give you a +1 to your AC so you just add this on top of your current AC once it is attuned. The most popular way of increasing your AC is to use a shield. This will give you a +2 to armour class but there are a few conditions: you can’t use a two handed weapon at the same time as wielding a shield and you can you two at the same time (unless you DM says it’s ok). Also if you aren’t proficient with a shield you are at disadvantage when trying to do anything whilst it’s equipped.
You may end up with a character that can have more than one way to calculate their armour class. This often comes up with the combination of Tortle and Monk. The Tortle’s Natural Armor ability and the Monk’s Unarmored Defense do not stack and do not interact with each other at all. If you have two or more separate ways of determining your AC and it is down to you to pick between them. If this was up to me, I’d pick the highest one!
There you go, if you have any more issue ask in the comments section below.
May you roll well.
