Hi all just a quick question in a resent game my character cast mage armour on the partys main fighter as we
Where being attacked by 2 shadows and he was getting a beating due to low touch ac
Now I know that mage armour will not stack with normal armour but I argued that the mage armour would still effect the shadow attacks
But the ref said the spell would have no effect as the fighter was still wearing his normal armour so the spell would have no effect and if we wanted it to work then the fighter would need to remove his armour first
This to me seems wrong as I was'nt trying to get 4 extra armour just 4 ac that would effect the sahdows
Your thought please
Mage armour does not normally count against touch attacks, but does count against incorporeal attacks (including incorporeal touch attacks).
Casting mage armor to protect an armored fighter from incorporeal touch attacks is a perfectly valid and legal tactic. It works. Period.
No, mage armour won't STACK with mundane/magic physical armour: but it sure's Hell OVERLAPS with said armour, and you don't have to rip off your physical armour to get the benefit against incorporeal attackers.
The way your DM should be looking at this is as if the fighter were wearing layers of protection.
Imagine the fighter had a suit of full-plate, granting a +9 armor bonus to AC. Under that suit of full plate, he's also wearing a simple suit of padded armor, granting a +1 armor bonus to AC. The fighter "gets" the best of the two bonuses because they do not stack.
Now, imagine a Bad Guy uses some ability that eats holes in metal. The Bad Guy can then ignore the full plate. In this case, the full plate's +9 bonus simply doesn't count. The good news is that the fighter has his padded armor on, which is cloth, unaffected by the special ability, and is not ignored. In that scenario, the Bad Guy attacks and the fighter gets to keep his +1 bonus from the padded armor.
That's how the mage armor usage works. Better, there's ZERO cause to deny the tactic because the mage armor isn't physical; the fighter isn't literally wearing two suits of armor. There's no question about "what does this do to his mobility?" or "does he overheat?" or "are the suits special-made to fit in layers?" Fortunately mage armor is a force effect that has no real size. It's just... force. And the Bad Guy in your scenario can't ignore it like it can the fighter's normal armor.
The DM made a bum call, nerfing a 1st-level ability that is iconic for this use. Ooops. Live and learn. Direct him to this thread and if he's a good guy he'll get the point. As long as nobody died in-game it's easy to hand-wave "well, that was weird... maybe it was a special shadow... it'll never happen again now that we understand this rule". If someone died... it may be grounds for a re-do or some other adjustment of fate.
Good luck.
