AC: is it worthless?

[Spuddles]

Either you invest a lot in AC, or you invest next to nothing into it. At higher levels, there seems to be no middle ground and armor is only for the enhancements. If monsters buff up or you play against NPCs with PC class levels, then you need a much higher AC for it to be effective.

IIRC, there was a formula that monsters generally should have an AB of CR+13, so that an AC of CR+23 or higher is okay and having an AC of CR+33 is unnecessary, unless you absolutely want to dodge True Strike attacks.

And if opponents optimize to overcome miss chance, you dies. Virtually all forms of concealment are overcome by one or two spells.

Recently my party fought a guy with high AC, miss chance and regeneration. What a pain!

My party was fighting shadow blending incorporeal mirror imaged shadows in a negative energy aligned portion of the plane of shadows. We had a 1/4 chance to choose the right image, followed by 50/50 to get through shadow blending followed by 50/50 vs incorporeal. Then we had to hit AC. And they got hp back every round. And their touches drained strength. So tedious.

Which brings up my following point: how do you effectivel stack miss chance? True seeing and ghost touch would have made their 14 ac way more relevant. Most miss chances ultimately end up at 50%, because if you're trying to stack concealing amorpha with greater displacement (illegal anyway), I just close my eyes as a free action and power attack for full. That is, unless I am a mid CR outsider, then you get hosed by true sight.