How Do We Make AC Competitive? (3.5 Brainstoming)

[wayfare]

Hey all:

I've been working on a 3.5 project, and one of the things I've noticed is that AC just doesn't work at high levels, unless you are a sword and shield wielding guy with a ton of money pumped into AC enhancements. Even then, a touch attack can bollox the whole build.

So, what is needed to keep AC competitive at higher levels.

One idea I had:

Get rid of AC bonuses from armor (except shields). Replace with this

AC = (10 + the highest of Dex/Con/Wis + Def bonus)

Defense Bonus is 3 tiered:

{table=head]Level|Good|Avg|Poor
1|+5|+4|+3
2|+1|+0|+0
3|+1|+1|+0
4|+0|+0|+1
5|+1|+1|+0
6|+1|+0|+0
7|+0|+1|+1
8|+1|+0|+0
9|+1|+1|+0
10|+0|+0|+1
11|+1|+1|+0
12|+1|+0|+0
13|+0|+1|+1
14|+1|+0|+0
14|+1|+1|+0
16|+0|+0|+1
17|+1|+1|+0
18|+1|+0|+0
19|+0|+1|+1
20|+1|+0|+0
Total|18|13|9
[/table]

[wayfare]

Hey all:

I've been working on a 3.5 project, and one of the things I've noticed is that AC just doesn't work at high levels, unless you are a sword and shield wielding guy with a ton of money pumped into AC enhancements. Even then, a touch attack can bollox the whole build.

So, what is needed to keep AC competitive at higher levels.

One idea I had:

Get rid of AC bonuses from armor (except shields). Replace with this

AC = (10 + the highest of Dex/Con/Wis + Def bonus)

Defense Bonus is 3 tiered:

{table=head]Level|Good|Avg|Poor
1|+5|+4|+3
2|+1|+1|+1
3|+1|+0|+0
4|+0|+1|+0
5|+1|+0|+1
6|+1|+1|+0
7|+0|+0|+0
8|+1|+1|+1
9|+1|+0|+0
10|+0|+1|+0
11|+1|+0|+1
12|+1|+1|+0
13|+0|+0|+0
14|+1|+1|+1
14|+1|+0|+0
16|+0|+1|+0
17|+1|+0|+1
18|+1|+1|+0
19|+0|+0|+0
20|+1|+1|+1
Total|18|14|10
[/table]

Ok, this table above has been suggested as a revision.

Also

Armor would function as DR X/--

Shields would grant a bonus to AC based on Size

Small Shield: +1 to defense vs Melee
Medium Shield: +1 to defense vs Melee and Ranged
Tower Shield: +2 to defense vs Melee and Ranged

any thoughts?

[eftexar]

I think your totals are too high. Here's some math:

10 (base) + 8 (from modifier, because with three choices this skews high) + 18 (from chart) + 4 from magic and other sources = 40

Now an average bab should be able to hit about half the time or more so:
15 (from bab) + 4 (from modifier) +2 (from other stuff) = 21, requiring a roll of 19 to hit.

A high bab hits the sweet spot, but only with heavy feat and ability investment (but the poor rogue) :
20 (from bab) + 8 (from modifier, skewing higher here for melee centric builds) +4 (from other stuff) = 32, requiring a roll of 8 to hit.

[wayfare]

I think your totals are too high. Here's some math:

10 (base) + 8 (from modifier, because with three choices this skews high) + 18 (from chart) + 4 from magic and other sources = 40

Now an average bab should be able to hit about half the time or more so:
15 (from bab) + 4 (from modifier) +2 (from other stuff) = 21, requiring a roll of 19 to hit.

A high bab hits the sweet spot, but only with heavy feat and ability investment (but the poor rogue) :
20 (from bab) + 8 (from modifier, skewing higher here for melee centric builds) +4 (from other stuff) = 32, requiring a roll of 8 to hit.

Ok, would totals of 15, 12, 9 be a bit better?

[Seerow]

Honestly, there's no real way to make AC better without scrapping almost all of the AC and Attack bonuses in the game, and reworking the math from the ground up. Once you do that you can rebalance the math so AC provides as much protection as you want.

But just taking the system as it currently stands, no AC bonuses being slapped on top are going to make it work, because attack bonuses are too unpredictable, and AC varies too much based on temporary/situational modifiers, and with how much cash you're willing to sink into it.

For example, imagine you take your average attacker and average defender, and set it so their attack and defense hit the perfect ratio you want. Well now that defender buys a couple of +5 AC items, and can't be hit by the attacker. Or the attacker picks up a couple feats gaining +12 to attack and hits on a 2. Or the defender starts using combat expertise and fighting defensively, making it impossible to hit him. And so on. There's just too much variation in 3.5 for the values to ever be appropriately balanced, which is why most people simply ignore AC entirely.

[wayfare]

Honestly, there's no real way to make AC better without scrapping almost all of the AC and Attack bonuses in the game, and reworking the math from the ground up. Once you do that you can rebalance the math so AC provides as much protection as you want.

But just taking the system as it currently stands, no AC bonuses being slapped on top are going to make it work, because attack bonuses are too unpredictable, and AC varies too much based on temporary/situational modifiers, and with how much cash you're willing to sink into it.

For example, imagine you take your average attacker and average defender, and set it so their attack and defense hit the perfect ratio you want. Well now that defender buys a couple of +5 AC items, and can't be hit by the attacker. Or the attacker picks up a couple feats gaining +12 to attack and hits on a 2. Or the defender starts using combat expertise and fighting defensively, making it impossible to hit him. And so on. There's just too much variation in 3.5 for the values to ever be appropriately balanced, which is why most people simply ignore AC entirely.

Ok, this is something I've considered for a while...but how about just scrapping the whole enhancement bonus thingy entirely.

[erikun]

The problem with AC is that it's too easy to bypass and to-hit is far too swingy. As Seerow pointed out, it is very easy to get a +10 swing on an attack roll, which would invalidate and meaningful value on a d20 roll. (Anything that was already +30 AC over the target number wasn't a meaningful challange to begin with.)

The problem is that any fix on the AC end will create large problems on the to-hit end. At one side, we have characters with +40 to hit or more; on the other, we have touch-attack wizards with +10 to hit (if that). Any amount of AC that presents a decent defense against the +40 guy will invalidate any attack roll from the +10 character.


Ok, this is something I've considered for a while...but how about just scrapping the whole enhancement bonus thingy entirely.
Wouldn't matter. The problem is not that AC gets a gradual +10 bonus over twenty levels; if anything, low-level AC actually works. Nor is +5 to hit going to matter much. (You'll notice that losing +10 AC has a far greater impact than +5 to hit.)

The problem is still that it's two swingy. When you have one character with +46 to hit and another with +30 (or even one character with values on different weapons) then there really isn't a simply solution you can use to balance them out.

[Seerow]

Ok, this is something I've considered for a while...but how about just scrapping the whole enhancement bonus thingy entirely.

So what, you're just going to scrap +x magic items?

There's still too many other ways to boost attack and defenses. Even something as simple as throwing in bardic music can swing the RNG as much as like 14 points if he's optimized, 4 if he's not.


Like to make it work, you need to go through literally everything that gives a +hit or +ac, and make it straight up not work. Turn it into something else if you want, but allowing 10 different scaling bonuses to hit/ac puts the RNG so all over the place that AC values are completely meaningless.


And past here I started rambling, but don't want to delete it, so it's spoilered.
You can still allow for a range of AC and attack values, but you need to control them carefully. If you have the best Attacker and best Defender, they should both have a shot of doing what they're intended to do. FWIW for this I like making all secondary attacks at -5, rather than continually dropping. So you can set it so the first attack hits the defender on say an 8, while the follow ups hit on a 13. Ends up with the defender blocking roughly 2/5 attacks. So the AC isn't useless (reduced incoming damage by 40%), but the attacker doesn't feel frustrated.

From there, weaker attackers can have worse chances of hitting the best defender, and maybe the weakest attackers don't even really have a chance. Similarly the good attacker can hit weaker defenders easily, even hitting on a 2 against the weakest defender. The trick is that the median should still have a chance to hit both extremes.

Say for example, you have your best attacker at +40. Since you want him to hit on an 8, your best defender is at 48 AC. You probably want to scale the worst for both attack and defense about 8-10 down from this. So your worst attacker will be +30-32, and the worst defender will be 38-40. So worst vs worst has the same odds as best vs best, but the worst attacker needs a 16-18 to hit the best defender (and need a 20 for secondaries), and the best attacker can hit the worst defender on a 2 (and need a 3-5 for secondaries). This keeps both extremes relatively balanced against each other, but lets them feel awesome when dealing with enemies who aren't specialized like they are. Most characters would likely fall into the middle range.