Does a Lizardfolk benefit from wearing +1 leather armor?

Question

I just realized a quirk of wording.

Lizardfolk Natural Armor:

You have tough, scaly skin. When you aren't wearing armor, your AC is 13 + your Dexterity modifier. You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC. A shield's benefits apply as normal while you use your natural armor.

+1 armor.

You have a +1 bonus to AC while wearing this armor.

This, importantly, doesn't say the armor's AC increases - but you just get a bonus to it. Does that mean that a Lizardfolk putting on a suit of +1 Leather armor uses the armor's 11+Dex calculation, which Natural Armor upgrades to 13+dex, and then they receive the +1 bonus, for a total of 14+dex?

Answer 1

It...appears so, but probably shouldn't.

I suspect this is not intended and is yet-another artifact of things sometimes being worded unclearly in D&D 5E...but, well. Here we are.

The simple facts are that +1 Leather would put you at AC 12 + Dex, which is less than the AC 13 + Dex that your natural armor gives you, so by

You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC.

You may use your natural armor to calculate AC. It's a conditional override of the prior statement. "When you aren't wearing armor, calculate your AC this way--if your armor renders a lower AC, use your Natural even though you are wearing armor." Then, when we look at the description of Armor +1, it says

You have a +1 bonus to AC while wearing this armor.

For comparison, a Ring of Protection says...

You gain a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws while wearing this ring.

And a Cloak of Protection says...

You gain a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws while you wear this cloak.

It's the same exact verbiage. It has no bearing on how you calculate your AC--it's just "When you wear this, you get +1 to AC."

If it instead said something like "The AC value of this armor is increased by 1" then it would be clearer. But that is not what it says.

Again, I suspect this may not be intended...but with the rules as they are written--yep.

The basic problem

This is, naturally, a quirk of wording and not something I'd allow at my table.

In my opinion, the basic problem is how the +1 Armor is phrased.

The Lizardfolk's Natural Armor rule makes sense in how it works--it's not like their skin gets less durable if they put a sheet of leather over it.

But the phrasing of +1 Armor being identical to the phrasing of Ring/Cloak of Protection is causing this confusion.

From the same 'it's what makes sense" perspective of the Lizardfolk's armor--it makes sense that the Armor's +1 bonus applies to the armor itself, rather than somehow making its wearer's skin tougher.

Ultimately, this is mild cheese. You're exploiting a quirk in the exact phrasing to turn a suit of +1 Leather into the equivalent of +2 Studded. If your DM lets you get away with this, then sure...have fun.

But I feel like it's pretty clearly things not functioning quite as intended.

Answer 2

Different methods of calculating AC are incompatible

You can either use the +1 armor and calculate AC that way or not wear it and calculate AC using the Lizardfolk natural armor.

Notice that the Lizardfolk trait says:

When you aren't wearing armor

So you cannot benefit from it if you are wearing any armor, magic or otherwise.

While the Leather Armor +1 says that your AC is one higher when you wear it. However, this is clearly part of the AC calculation of the Leather Armor which is incompatible with the Natural Armor AC calculation even if you were allowed to use Natural Armor while wearing it. While some items like Ring of Protection are worded the same, they are still different because they don't have a complete method of AC calculation attached.

Answer 3

This is a case of a true rules conflict and in the absence of an official ruling from the designers, each table will have to decide which rule takes precedent.

The two conflicting rules are

You can use your natural armor to determine your AC if the armor you wear would leave you with a lower AC.

Leather +1 has a lower AC than the species trait, and therefore the Lizardfolk character would use their natural AC and gain no (mechanical) benefit from the magic armor.

And

When, when we look at the description of Armor +1, it says

You have a +1 bonus to AC while wearing this armor.

which specifies an AC bonus to the character[you] for wearing it, rather than a modified AC value for the armor. The wording of this bonus is the same as other magic items that do stack with natural armor, like the Ring of Protection ("You gain a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws while wearing this ring.")

It's not clear that "specific overrules the general" applies in this case -- to my eye they both seem like specific rules. In the end the DM and and players are going to have to determine which of these rules you want to use at your table.