D&D 3.5 Thicken Skin Bonus

[Diarmuid]

In reading the Thicken Skin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/thickenSkin.htm) psionic power on the d20srd it seems that the kind of bonus it provides is not what most people assume it to be:



Thicken Skin
Psychometabolism
Level: Egoist 1, psychic warrior 1
Display: Material and olfactory
Manifesting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 10 min./level
Power Points: 1
Your skin or natural armor thickens and spreads across your body, providing a +1 enhancement bonus to your Armor Class.

Augment
You can augment this power in one or both of the following ways.

For every 3 additional power points you spend, the enhancement bonus increases by 1.
If you spend 6 additional power points, you can manifest this power as a swift action


Almost everything I read seems to lean that this is a Natural Armor bonus to AC. I certainly can see where that line of thinking would come from, and it seemed like that would be perfectly reasonable based on the name and the fluff...but that's not actually what it says at all.

There may be a couple different ways to read this:

1) This bonus wouldnt apply at all if you had any kind of magical armor as that armor would supply a +1 enhancement bonus
2) This bonus would stack with almost every other bonus you could possibly get to your armor class as it's not providing any of the other typical armor bonus types: Armor,Natural Armor, Shield, Dodge, Deflection, etc etc. This is a straight "enhancement bonus to armor class" as opposed to an enhancement to the armor bonus that would apply from something like Magic Vestment.

Should this just be ruled as I think it was intended as a +X enhancement bonus to Natural Armor like Barkskin?

[Name1]

I always read it as a straight enhancement bonus to AC. If it stacks with the "plusses" on armor, I'm not sure by RAW, but I'd say no.

[Venger]

In reading the Thicken Skin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/thickenSkin.htm) psionic power on the d20srd it seems that the kind of bonus it provides is not what most people assume it to be:



Almost everything I read seems to lean that this is a Natural Armor bonus to AC. I certainly can see where that line of thinking would come from, and it seemed like that would be perfectly reasonable based on the name and the fluff...but that's not actually what it says at all.

There may be a couple different ways to read this:

1) This bonus wouldnt apply at all if you had any kind of magical armor as that armor would supply a +1 enhancement bonus
2) This bonus would stack with almost every other bonus you could possibly get to your armor class as it's not providing any of the other typical armor bonus types: Armor,Natural Armor, Shield, Dodge, Deflection, etc etc. This is a straight "enhancement bonus to armor class" as opposed to an enhancement to the armor bonus that would apply from something like Magic Vestment.

Should this just be ruled as I think it was intended as a +X enhancement bonus to Natural Armor like Barkskin?

Number 2 is the correct interpretation by RAW.


I always read it as a straight enhancement bonus to AC. If it stacks with the "plusses" on armor, I'm not sure by RAW, but I'd say no.
That's not exactly the same thing since those are the same bonus types, but they're to different things. if you were wearing gloves of dexterity and also had an item that boosted your tumble checks with an enhancement bonus, the two things would be of the same type, but they'd be boosting different things, so they would stack with each other. An enhancement bonus to armor from magic +x armor is an armor bonus. thicken skin is just a bonus to your overall AC, kind of like a dodge bonus.

[Nettlekid]

Should this just be ruled as I think it was intended as a +X enhancement bonus to Natural Armor like Barkskin?

I'd say this. I think that was pretty clearly the intention of the power, since Natural Armor is described as thick skin which this power gives you, and different powers that grant different types of armor bonuses are all described very differently. Inertial Armor describes tangible force for an Armor bonus, Force Screen describes a disc to block for a Shield bonus, Mental Barrier describes a probability field for a Deflection bonus, Defensive Precognition describes an awareness that grants an Insight bonus, so really Natural Armor is the only one that's being left out.

I agree that the wording does contradict this, and if you wanted to play by RAW then your second definition is accurate. But I think that it's very clearly not RAI.

[Necroticplague]

In reading the Thicken Skin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/thickenSkin.htm) psionic power on the d20srd it seems that the kind of bonus it provides is not what most people assume it to be:



Almost everything I read seems to lean that this is a Natural Armor bonus to AC. I certainly can see where that line of thinking would come from, and it seemed like that would be perfectly reasonable based on the name and the fluff...but that's not actually what it says at all.

There may be a couple different ways to read this:

1) This bonus wouldnt apply at all if you had any kind of magical armor as that armor would supply a +1 enhancement bonus
2) This bonus would stack with almost every other bonus you could possibly get to your armor class as it's not providing any of the other typical armor bonus types: Armor,Natural Armor, Shield, Dodge, Deflection, etc etc. This is a straight "enhancement bonus to armor class" as opposed to an enhancement to the armor bonus that would apply from something like Magic Vestment.

Should this just be ruled as I think it was intended as a +X enhancement bonus to Natural Armor like Barkskin?

Number 1 is false. Magical armor isn't an enhancement bonus to your AC, it's an enhancement bonus to you're armors AC bonus (a distinction you yourself note when mentioning Magic Vestments). It's the same difference between having +X armor and wearing an amulet of Barkskin. So interpretation 2 is correct, this stacks with pretty much everything, since I'm not sure anything erlse provides that bonus. Whether it should be houseruled otherwise is a quite separate discussion, and I say 'no'; because enhancement bonuses to natural armor are pretty easy to get, so changing the power to that basically guarantees it's obsolescence, while keeping it as a rare type ensures it's always useful.