Arelith

The Barkskin visual effect provides a somewhat useful visual cue that the character has extra protection, however unlike many other buffs is not particularly significant as it gives only around +4 AC and not an immunity to particular spell types or damage shield. There are also other more significant buffs such as Death Ward which do not have a persistent visual effect.

The visual effect is extremely ugly and poorly textured, and obscures important RP information such as:

- Am I talking to an Elf or a Drow, Dwarf or Duergar
- Am I talking to a faction member or just a random traveller
- Does this person have armor on, or just clothing

It also adds to visual effect overload which can cause crashes for many.

As a result, I do not think this visual has a place on a roleplay based server where people spend a long time crafting the appearance of their character. It reduces every character to looking the same for the sake of indicating a minor buff.

If this gets approved I gladly implement the change (+ agree with OP, never liked the visual effect for barkskin either) .

While at it what about stoneskin?

So long as this only affects characters with the spell applied AND it instead shows on description or through another vfx when applied...

Agreed

(I'm doing this only because the full body skin fx are so absolute - I will not be approving other spell vfx changes because of this)