Confused about all the defensive wizard spells

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1.Do Ghost armor and Spirit armor stack since one is a deflection bonus and the other is an armor bonus?
2.Do ghost armor and mage armor stack?
3.Do mage armor and spirit armor stack?

Which category does the bonus provided by the spell "shield" fall into and what does it stack with and what doesnt it stack with? +7 ac bonus that stacks with everything would be OP.

Is ghost armor relatively useless once you get bracers with +4 deflection bonus for virtually everyone anyway?

Thank you

 

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. No (both give Armor bonus).

Shield spell also gives Armor bonus in IWD2. It would be rather OP if it actually gave a Shield bonus.

Ghost armor NEVER* becomes useless - the bracers you're referring to also confer Armor bonus, rather than deflection.

* = apart from the occasional Divine Shell from clerics, of course. Plenty of ways to get 5 deflection though, rendering the spell redundant.

 

The manual mentions something like the spell Shield giving +7 AC vs attacks that affect an area? Is this true and if yes, what would an area attack be like that is affected by AC?

Also If my character is wearing no armor or mage armor only how much of a dex bonus to AC will he or she be able to get with a dex of 20?

 

I don't think area attacks are affected by AC at all.

Without any armor, or with only bracers on, you should get the maximum possible AC bonus, in this case +5.
Without armor, you get whatever your dex modifier is, for good or for ilk. Basically +1 for every two points over ten.
+1 @ 12
+2 @ 14
+3 @ 16
+4 @ 18
+5 @ 20
+6 @ 22
an so on. Without armor it is uncapped. Most of the robes will also give you an unlimited dex bonus. Only real armor limits your dex bonus, and I think leather armor (NOT studded) is capped at +6 so if you use armored arcana and have a light armor proficiency, you can still get full dex while wearing leather.

 

Thanks.

Its so cheap to take off armor and shield in combat, cast a spell and put them back on no?

 

The thing in IWD2 is that you likely don't want to wear any real, physical armor. At least not for characters sporting 18+ DEX.

For example, Mage Armor all by itself is better than Leather Armor +2. No limitations to DEX contribution and you're free to wear whatever else in bracer/body armor slots.

 

A few more questions.

As i understand, the categories that dont stack for armor are: Armor, Shield, Dexterity, deflection and miscellaneous?

Which one does "dodge bonus" fit into?

 

In IWD2, "Dodge" falls into miscellaneous. I believe "Miscellaneous" does stack in IWD2.

 

Well, in P&P that just wasn't practical. It took a certain number of rounds to don or remove armor depending on the type. I think leather or padded only took a couple of rounds, while full plate took at least fourteen rounds. You also needed an attendant or the time doubled.

Such a feature has not been implemented in IWD2, or any of the Infinity Engine games. I do not know if that was part of the 3rd Edition rules set or not, but it was most definitely part of the AD&D 2nd Edition rules that Icewind Dale I was based on, along with Baldur's Gate.

 

Thanks all you have been alot of help. I think it might be beneficial to make a bard to cast mage armor and spirit armor on my party.

Well how do you even take off armor while there is an angry kobold attacking you with his scimitar?

But yes that is the problem that you can just do it in IWD2. I hope they remedy this in PoE.

 

Actually it was implemented in spirit in the BG series in the sense that you couldn't switch armors during combat. You could fiddle with your armor pre-combat in order to cast buffs, but due to the way items/spells/character levels/HP/combat worked in the BG series this was generally impractical.

 

What's PoE?

Anyways, while you cannot practically remove armor in hand-to-hand combat normally, there were a few things with donning and removing armor in P&P.
Using the 1st level Cleric spell Command Word or the 4th level spell Greater Command, our group would often use "Strip" or more humorously "Masturbate" on heavily armored characters wearing full plate. It took a long time to shuck armor, but "masturbate" would force them to remove part of the armor, raising their AC (2nd edition rules, armor lowers AC) until it was put back. Since Command Word only lasted a short time, a warrior in full plate usually was still removing his armor when it wore off.
There were rules in the DMG for partially donned armor and each round or so required to finish putting it on raised the AC by one. Therefore making the warrior partially remove his armor would game the system by making the spell effectively have a much longer duration than it was supposed to. More along the lines of "until the character spends an equal amount of time undoing it".
It's been half my lifetime ago since I last played P&P, I'm going to have to look those rules up again to be more specific.
Generally, we'd use "strip" for warriors in things like partial plate, enchanted chain mail, or breastplates, but for somebody with full body coverage, "masturbate" was funnier.

Although a few times the DM got into the act and had females forced to strip or masturbate by a male character act like a Taunt had been used on them after the spell wore off, but be given the bonuses of a bezerker or barbarian rage while charging the spell caster in righteous feminine fury to "pound the pervert". Also if the female was showing something improper because of the order to "strip", the (usually male) party members that would be sexually attracted to her would have to make a save vs death or have a "distraction" penalty to THAC0 and AC. The joke for using save vs death was "little death". I suppose in 3E it would be a will save.

Sorry, got sidetracked reminiscing.