Bracers of defense + Mage Armor stack with Monk Defenses?

5 thoughts on “Bracers of defense + Mage Armor stack with Monk Defenses?

    • tideoftime says:

      Jason is the head writer — what he says is the final word. (He’s also correct in this instance regardless: anything that is a “formula” for determining AC (such as Mage Armor’s 13+Dex, or Monk’s Wis+Dex, or Barbarian’s Con+Dex, etc.) can’t be stacked; anything that is a flat bonus and doesn’t inherently say it can’t be added to “x” *can* be stacked (so Bracers can’t be added to Monk’s Defense because of the latter’s limitation, but they can be added to Mage Armor because MA is a spell and not literal armor). Disclaimer: as it is thematically on-point and represented in a number of martial arts movies/characters, *I* would think that BoD *can*/*should* be added to Monk’s Defenses, but that’s just my personal take on the themes involved.

      (I noted that someone addressed this at the link you provide, in response to the question; I’m just commenting here in case someone doesn’t follow to that other question.)

  1. i think that your personal dm has the last word in like….everything at your table.
    If wotc tomorrow writes in the players handook that every pc at level 20 dies from heart attack i’m not gonna allow it at my table.

    • tideoftime says:

      The DM at a given table has the last word relative to their world, true; however, WotC *is* the final word on what is Official(tm) relative the baseline operation/metaphysics of the game. A hyperbolic example like “every pc at level 20 dies from a heart attack” misses the context of that. (Now, do mistakes happen? — absolutely. Most people who have followed SA since it shifted to 5E/tweeting have long since noted that anything that isn’t confirmed by JC — especially from, bless his heart, MM — should be taken with a grain of salt. But if/when JC says “x”, the only person who can correct that is JC himself when he notes an oversight he made, such as occurred most infamously with Shield Master.)

      Having an Official(tm) baseline is important to understanding the mechanics/metaphysics of the game. Some people confuse/conflate the idea of the DM being the final word with the DM always being “correct” — as a DM of 35+ years, I can vouch as to how *not* true that is in certain contexts. When a DM homebrews so as to create a particular milieu or setting, it “works correctly” if s/he does so with a solid understanding of what the baselines involved are… and *then* shifts/changes things to whatever degree. Doing otherwise creates misunderstandings and false premises that lead to unnecessary retconning and/or shifts in rules later on that create inconsistencies (some of which leave the players with a very bad taste in their mouths, to say the least).

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