Hi everyone,
Recently a question came up from one of my players for the playtest. He asked if Mage Armor stacked with armor and I informed him that since it is an item bonus it does not stack with equipped armor. Later I noticed that the wording on the spell states "While wearing mage armor, you use your unarmored proficiency to calculate your AC", since specific overrides general I was wondering if this means that by RAW that this means that having Mage Armor in effect forces the caster to use unarmored proficiency when wearing armor.
I am placing the text for the spell below as a reference.
The confusing thing is what is your AC/TAC if you are wearing padded armor which you are untrained with and then cast mage armor on yourself? An unlikely situation to be sure and kind of a silly RAW debate since it will never come up in actual play but there is the conundrum.
You calculate the item bonus the equipped armor gives you by itself (including your proficiency with that armor), you calculate the item bonus the mage armor gives you by itself (including your unarmored proficiency), and since they don't stack you apply the higher one to your AC.
P.S. You might actually end up in this situation if you are worried about anti-magic fields.
Remember, in the rules, "proficiency" does not mean just the UTEML modifier (-2 to +3), but also your level, and as per errata, all characters start trained (+0) in unarmored.
That means, for most characters unarmed proficiency is going to be equal to their level.
I am aware of the errata, I was asking if we follow the text of the spell by RAW that you end up using unarmored proficiency if you have both Mage Armor and any sort of armor equipped at the same time.
The confusing thing is what is your AC/TAC if you are wearing padded armor which you are untrained with and then cast mage armor on yourself? An unlikely situation to be sure and kind of a silly RAW debate since it will never come up in actual play but there is the conundrum.
Indeed that is true, such a situation would rarely occur. Fuzzy-wuzzy's reply does make resolving this event much more easy.
You calculate the item bonus the equipped armor gives you by itself (including your proficiency with that armor), you calculate the item bonus the mage armor gives you by itself (including your unarmored proficiency), and since they don't stack you apply the higher one to your AC.P.S. You might actually end up in this situation if you are worried about anti-magic fields.
It seems much more clearer to me now, it would certainly make sense that a PC would take the higher value since like values do not stack.