Tag: Cleric

What’s up with Barkskin in D&D?

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Barkskin is a spell in Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, which my Elf Nature cleric automatically gets, and every time I look up this spell I kind of scratch my head.  The current online text states:

You touch a willing creature. Until the spell ends, the target’s skin has a rough, bark-like appearance, and the target’s AC can’t be less than 16, regardless of what kind of armor it is wearing.

Normally, your character’s starting armor class (AC) is 10 + dexterity bonus + armor bonuses.  My current elf cleric has an AC of 17:

  • Starting AC of 10
  • Dexterity bonus of +2
  • Armor bonus +2 with shield
  • Armor bonus +3 with chain shirt

Now, if my cleric casts Barkskin on himself, what would happen?

The official D&D rules site, has a ruling to this question (link here):

Q: How does barkskin work with shields, cover, and other modifiers to AC?
A: Barkskin specifies that your AC can’t be lower than 16 while you are affected by the spell. This means you effectively ignore any modifiers to your AC—including your Dexterity modifier, your armor, a shield, and cover—unless your AC is higher than 16. For example, if your AC is normally 14, it’s 16 while barkskin is on you. If your AC is 15 and you have half cover, your AC is 17; barkskin isn’t relevant in this case, because your AC is now higher than 16.

The gist of this answer seems to be: if the recipient’s AC is lower than 16 (no matter how or why), it’s now 16.  Full stop.  If the recipient’s AC is 16 or higher, Barkskin basically does nothing.

So with my current setup, Barkskin isn’t very useful for my cleric.  Nature clerics are proficient in everything up to heavy armor, so I can easily equip myself with the necessary defense without relying on a spell slot every combat.  However, Barkskin might be useful in protecting other members of my party who aren’t so lucky.  Wizards, for example, can’t use armor at all (apart from edge-cases like Bracers of Defense), other less melee-oriented classes also make good targets for Barkskin.  But casting Barkskin on your primary melee character basically does nothing.

Barkskin seems like a good way to shore up party defenses, but not necessarily enhance them.

D&D: Nature Clerics Are Fun

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Since I play Dungeons and Dragons (5th edition) with my two kids, I also make up some additional characters to help bolster their team.  My current favorite is an Wood-Elf Cleric with Nature Domain.

Maybe this is a reflection of real life, but I have often enjoyed playing clerics in Dungeons and Dragons, and if I combine this with my fascination with Tolkein’s elves it was a no-brainer for me, except for one thing: what cleric domain to play?

Elf Deities are numerous, and each one reflects certain domains you can play.  Corellon is a good default choice and covers many good domains to play, and Sehanine covers some other interesting domains that are otherwise overlooked such as Knowledge.  But this time around, I really felt like playing Nature domain instead, so I made my character a priest of Rillifane instead.  Being a wood-elf, this made even more sense.

Nature-domain clerics sometimes get confused with Druids and are often criticized as such.  There was no clear answer online about what the actual difference would be between a nature-domain cleric vs. a druid, but it seems to come down to a couple points:

  1. Clerics derive their power from the divine.  Druids directly from nature.
  2. Clerics serve a higher-power (i.e. emissary of said deity), while Druids are more like sages who explore the mysteries of nature.

The choices partly come down to role-playing “flavor”, but there are some mechanical differences too.

Nature-domain cleric have all the fun of a typical D&D cleric (life gain spells, blessings and still solid melee) combined with the fun flavor of Nature domain.  Unlike a Druid, they also take advantage of Channel Divinity and other things you’d expect from a cleric.  The spells included with Nature Domain are more like utility spells; your nature cleric may not be a one-man wrecking crew, but it does mean you can do wacky, unconventional things like befriending a giant spider rather than outright killing it.1

In any case, part of the fun of D&D is exploring different character ideas and not getting bogged down in purely combat-oriented ideas or which class is better.  After all, there is a great variety of people in real life from a variety of backgrounds, so there’s no reason that D&D can’t reflect the same. 🍃🍄🌸🌻

1 True story, in one adventure, where the party was attacked by giant frogs, I was able to use the Animal Friendship spell to convince the frogs not to eat us, and therefore leave. It was a nice moment of role-playing and reinforces the idea that not all battles in D&D need be fought to the death.