- 5e

I'm a race with Natural Armor (Lizardfolk, Loxodon, Tortle, etc) and I use the Druid's Wild Shape ability, how do I determine my AC? Can I keep my Natural Armor?

TLDR: Rules-as-written (RAW), you should take the creature's AC. Rules-as-Intended (RAI), I'd also lean towards the Wild Shaped creature's AC. Be careful going against these rules, Natural Armor has the potential of some abuse cases (particularly with Tortle)

Let's look at the relevant text in Wild Shape's description:

You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable of doing so. However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense.

We have specific rules in here that say you retain any features from your race and can use them "if the new form is physically capable of doing so." RAW, it's difficult to difinitively say natural armor would apply with that condition but it more than likely favors the case for taking on the creature's armor.

You could try to argue that you'd keep your race's Natural Armor by emphasizing the first part of the sentence but I don't see an honest way to argue against the "physically capable" condition without trying to bend the rules by saying you look slightly different.

Wild Shape's description regarding equipment further suggests natural armor doesn't apply (emphasis below is mine) -- your natural armor merges with the creature and merged equipment doesn't apply:

You choose whether your equipment falls to the ground in your space, merges into your new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal, but the DM decides whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature’s shape and size. Your equipment doesn’t change size or shape to match the new form, and any equipment that the new form can’t wear must either fall to the ground or merge with it. Equipment that merges with the form has no effect until you leave the form.)

While not covering this exact case, RAI is also pretty clear that you would lose that AC because the example of "special senses" is parallel to "natural armor." Both are physical features you would think you'd lose if you were no longer that creature.

If I were to allow Natural Armor to work with Wild Shape, is a level 2 Tortle Moon Druid that shifts into a Brown Bear too strong? What about an Ape?

Absolutely. It effectively gets a level's worth of hit points, a feat (Great Weapon Master) and level 2 concentration spell (Barkskin) for free. You'd still have to chew through the druid's hit points after defeating the brown bear.

The Tortle Brown Bear with Natural Armor has 34 HP, 17 AC (instead of 11), and 18.5 expected damage with a +5 chance to hit.

A barbarian with Great Weapon Master will have 23 HP, 16 AC (with Scale Mail), and 18.5 damage (20.5 when raging) with no improved chance to hit. It can use Reckless Attacks to improve the liklihood of hitting (and criting) and resistance to most damage types at this level.

Regarding the Ape, the Ape itself wouldn't be the problem... the problem be misruling the Ape's multiattack. A player may try to angle-shoot and ask if the Ape can hold a weapon, then if it can hold a weapon that it could make a multiattack with that weapon. Rules-as-written (RAW), the Ape's Multiattack only works with fist attacks. If you're holding a weapon, you only get one attack.

Multiattack. The ape makes two fist attacks.

Let's look at what's available for different natural armors (or equivalent):

I've omitted Locathah from the list above because it's a worse version of Lizardfolk's Natural armor.

If we look at the Monster Manual and a few other sources for Wild Shape, we have some generally good monsters to Wild Shape into and there's some outliers that create some abuse cases:

The outlier/problem here is the Brown Bear. The Monster Manual balances hit point pools with a creature's AC and we can see that with the Brown Bear. If we were to allow a Brown Bear to have 17 AC, the encounter goes from a difficult encounter to a potential boss fight.

Barkskin sets the druid's AC to 16 and it will outperform just about every natural AC from the animal.

https://blackcitadelrpg.com/5e-beasts/ https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/06/dd-five-beasts-for-your-best-wildshape.html https://www.thegamer.com/dungeons-dragons-best-druid-wild-shapes-ranked/ https://dumpstatadventures.com/a-players-perspective/low-level-builds-circle-of-the-moon-druid https://rpgbot.net/dnd5/characters/classes/druid/wild-shape/

When writing/researching for this question, my initial stance for RAW was keeping the race's Natural Armor. I covered it above, but the more I thought about that interpretation the less I could justify it -- the rules clearly state "if the new form is physically capable of doing so." While there is some gray area with that statement, I don't think there's an honest argument for keeping the race's natural armor based on what's written. Rules-as-intended further emphasizes that point and it's one of the more rare circumstances where the gray area argument for RAW vs RAI are aligned.

I initially fell into a trap with the "rule of cool" where I didn't think there'd be too many abuse cases... Then I compared a Brown Bear with 17 AC to a level 2 Barbarian and a level 2 Fighter -- the Brown Bear outperformed the Barbarian and the Fighter in every meaningful combat metric.