D&D 5E Bracers of Defense

[KarinsDad]

In the Hoard of the Dragon Queen online supplement, BoDs are a +3 bonus to AC.

They stack with everything but armor and shields. Which means that they are real good for monks and barbarians, in addition to arcane spell casters where they stack with Mage Armor.

+3 is pretty darn hefty (course, we do not know if there is a +1, or +2 version of them yet).

 

[Uller]

The playtest version worked like Mage Armor (AC 13+Dex). I have a monk PC in my group and wanted to award this to the party specifically for her (as she has no magic items and everyone else has at least one). But I didn't because it would have done nothing for her. These on the other hand will work great

 

[Paraxis]

Basicly they are the only magic armor a monk will get, so it is not so bad. But I would have them be a little more rare than what they probably are. It is like giving the fighter +3 magic armor.

I think having them in +1 and +2 versions would be good to give out at the lower levels.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

As written, they do indeed seem to stack with monk, barbarian or dragon sorcerer armor bonuses, which is silly and imbalanced (unless they cost as much as +3 armor) and hopefully didn't make it into the DMG.

 

[jadrax]

It is like giving the fighter +3 magic armor.

It's like giving the fighter +3 magic armor that doesn't let him use a shield. Which for some Fighter's would be a pretty big issue.

 

[keterys]

They're rare and require attunement, and are the equivalent of +3 armor for people who don't use armor, yep.

I wouldn't call that imbalanced, unless you don't make +3 armor available to people who use armor. Or shields. And at least some of them probably won't take up one of your attunement slots.

 

[Wolfskin]

I was surprised by a +3 AC item, since I was hoping for something along the lines of "the Bracers set your AC at 15+Dex mod". I seems they wanted to make them viable for Monks and Barbarians, who would be pretty shafted if these couldn't be used with their class features for calculating AC.

 

[TwoSix]

Considering there are monsters in the supplement with Challenge Ratings in the upper teens, I assume these bracers are probably in the hoards of those monsters. They're +3 armor for monks and barbarians, that's all. Since we already knew that +3 items were in the system, the real question is the expectation of distribution. It'll be interesting to see how the adventure plays out in that regard.

 

[Dausuul]

As I understand it, distribution is supposed to be governed by item rarity, so we shouldn't need to know monster level. The sense I'm getting is, "You can hand out common items like candy, and uncommons pretty freely. Rares should be distributed sparingly, very rares are big news, and anything legendary or above is strictly at your own risk."

Interesting that magic weapons are uncommon but magic armor is rare.

 

[Wrathamon]

Considering there are monsters in the supplement with Challenge Ratings in the upper teens, I assume these bracers are probably in the hoards of those monsters. They're +3 armor for monks and barbarians, that's all. Since we already knew that +3 items were in the system, the real question is the expectation of distribution. It'll be interesting to see how the adventure plays out in that regard.

I like how he Bracers of Defense are this editions Black Razor

Everyone will have it