Armor Spells

Since I started playing D&D some years ago, I've learned that certain defensive D&D spells are a better analogy for spiritual armor than physical armor is, and there are three spells in particular that fulfill the analogy quite nicely: Mage Armor, Shield of Faith, and Shield.

Mage Armor is a spell that sets an unarmored creature's AC to 13 plus that creature's Dexterity Modifier. AC stands for Armor Class. The higher one's is, the harder one is to hit. One's Armor Class is mostly based on one's armor, though one's Dexterity Modifier (a modifier indicating how nimble a character is) is also taken into account when using Light or Medium Armor, or no armor at all.

What makes Mage Armor better than regular armor is its duration and the fact that one can sleep in it. With regular armor, once you put it on, you can keep it on until you have to go to bed at night, at which point you take it off. Mage Armor doesn't work that way. You can sleep in Mage Armor with no issues (as far as I know), but if you want to do that, you'll have to cast it right before you go to bed. Mage Armor has a duration of 8 hours. Once you cast it, your AC will go from 10+DEX to 13+DEX, and it'll stay that high for 8 hours, at which point you'll lose the AC bonus unless you cast it again. As an analogy for spiritual armor, Mage Armor is incredibly useful in that it emphasizes our need to regularly refresh the armor, even three times per day, and it facilitates our need to never willingly take it off.

With a name like Shield of Faith, one might expect that spell to be a perfect analogy for the Armor of God, or at least a part of it, but it's actually far more limited than that. Shield of Faith adds +2 to one's AC (whether they're wearing armor or not), but it only lasts for a duration of 10 minutes. 10 minutes is plenty long enough for a battle or two, but it's not going to last all day. Instead, Shield of Faith is best suited for individual battles, for when you know that you are being tempted, not for when you know that you might be tempted later.

If Shield of Faith is best for individual battles, Shield is best against individual attacks. With the shortest duration of 1 round (approximately 6 seconds), Shield hardly seems useful at all, but its value is seen in its benefit and its casting time. Its benefit is that it adds +5 to your AC for that one round, which is an incredible bonus. Few attacks can get past a Shield, especially if one's AC was already good to begin with, and Shield's casting time of Reaction allows one to use it in response to an attack that might otherwise have hit them. The other two spells I've discussed have a casting time of an Action, meaning that one has to spend their Action on their turn casting the spell in order to get the benefits for later turns. Mage Armor and Shield of Faith are mostly proactive spells. In contrast, Shield is a reactive spell. When one would get hit by an attack, one can use their Reaction to cast Shield, which increases their AC until the start of their next turn. Shield is like a prayer uttered in the face of a specific temptation. It doesn't say "I may need help later." It says "I need help Right Now."

The best part is that these spells can be stacked to combine their effects. One can cast Mage Armor at regular intervals to keep their armor on at all times, cast Shield of Faith at the start of a battle to give themselves extra defense for that battle, and cast Shield on top of that if anything gets through their already excellent defenses. Using those three spells (and a positive Dexterity Modifier), one can (temporarily) have a higher AC than that offered by any non-magical armor in the game.

But more importantly, these three spells illustrate when we ought to pray for strength to resist temptation. First, regularly (one might dare say always), at least every morning and evening, and maybe one or more times during the day. Second, when we know temptation is upon us or coming soon. And third, in the exact instant when we are being tempted. If we pray at all three of those times, we will be extraordinarily well-defended against temptation, making it much, much easier for us to get through our battles unscathed.

Of course, it will still be up to us to fight or flee. If we linger in tempting situations, those temptations will eventually get the better of us, no matter how good our armor is, but as long as we do everything in our power to end the fights quickly, we should be basically untouchable within our well-maintained spiritual armor, and the best part is that we never have to take it off. Our spiritual defenses can be formidable, and with the right prayers said at the right times, we can keep them up almost constantly.