Mage Armor: Long Lasting Protection
Spell Level: 1
School: Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Duration: 8 hours
Components: V, S, M (a piece of cured leather)
You touch a willing creature who isn’t wearing armor, and a protective magical force surrounds it until the spell ends. The target’s base AC becomes 13 + its Dexterity modifier. The spell ends if the target dons armor or if you dismiss the spell as an action.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
At minimum, a character’s AC is 10 + their Dexterity modifier. With mage armor, you can bump that up to a 13 + their Dexterity modifier if they’re unarmored. Chain shirts are medium armor costing 50 gp each; they make your AC 13 + your Dexterity mod (max of +2). These are nearly identical. If you can wear medium armor, you probably don’t need Mage Armor. If you have light armor proficiency, Studded Leather is offering 12 + your Dex mod for 45 gp; that’s definitely good enough. This leaves mage armor with one primary purpose: acting as the armor for characters with NO armor proficiencies!
That category includes exclusively Sorcerers and Wizards (what a surprise)! Functionally you can spend a 1st level spell slot to make your AC match your buddies with decent armor. In combination with Shield, you can represent 20 AC at 1st level for a single round, which is kind of neat. Beyond that, this is a spell you don’t really want to spend resources on in the low tiers, and something you cast and forget about every long rest past 4th level.
If you’re only working with three to five spell slots, asking for one of them to be a passive AC bump is a tall order. Out of combat utility tools can be invaluable for problem solving and progressing the game, and combative damage spells like Frost Fingers or Burning Hands offer you tools to end encounters early and take less hits total because of it. If you burn through all your slots and a fight has three or four creatures still standing, you have to consider that doing something other than Mage Armor would potentially have ended the fight earlier and potentially prevented more hits.
Honestly that’s all there really is to Mage Armor. The more slots you have, the easier it is to just passively have on. The warlock invocation is pretty bad, as when you compare it to the light armor they have access to you're trading +1 AC for an invocation, which is a terrible trade. For a 1st level slot on the classes without armor proficiencies, it's fine. You might just want to wait until third or fourth level to pick it up as opposed to starting a fresh 1st level character with it.
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