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  1. - Top - End - #61
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by navar100 View Post
    There is potential for some DMs to make AC worthless on purpose regardless of RAW numbers. They reflexively coil against the idea that it's ok for monsters/bad guys to miss, at least on the first attack iterative. If the bad guy misses because the DM rolled a 5, fine, but to miss when the DM rolled a 17 makes particular DMs shudder. Combats are to be "challenging". If there's no threat of death, what's the point? That sort of thinking. These DMs need "auto-hits" on some roll and above, say Natural 15 and higher.

    Such DM need to learn it's ok for a PC to have an AC just that good. Such a character is supposed to be hardly hittable for the non-BBEG. The player knows the BBEG will hit him. That's expected regardless of his AC. The player wants the high AC so that the mooks and lieutenants miss a lot. That's a feature, not a bug, these DMs need to learn.
    There's a lot of truth in this.

    I had a game where the core of the party was decently optimized - an Archivist/Master of Shrouds (me), a Wu Jen and a Warblade. There were also a few other players that weren't there for every session, and so hadn't learned to work together as well as the three of us had.

    The DM got very upset, because the Warblade (who had focused on AC, and did most of the mopping up after the Wu Jen would toss down a control spell and I would debuff enemies with my shadows) was basically unhittable by the average mook. He scaled his encounters up to compensate, but that made his enemies too deadly to the other players (who still hadn't learned to do things like stay on THIS side of Evard's Black Tentacles and coordinate attacks).

    It ended up turning into a nuclear arms race, where the DM kept increasing encounter levels to the point where one bad roll meant a PC death. We were generally losing an average of one PC a session (and this was just getting into the mid-levels, so PC deaths were still prohibitively expensive to deal with).

    The DM was pretty frustrated with the Warblade in particular, because the idea of rolling and missing against him 75% of the time just didn't fit with his style of DMing. I argued that honestly, the Warblade couldn't really do much else - the Wu Jen and I were doing way crazier things - and he'd sacrificed a lot of versatility to be that good at avoiding hits. Besides, even with his crazy AC, the Warblade still ended up close to death almost every session, since he was the primary target of most enemies.

    It didn't matter, though. Even though he was an excellent DM in a lot of respects, he just couldn't really accept the idea that, if a character dedicates most of his resources to AC, enemies are going to whif a lot. In the end, the guy playing the Warblade retired him completely, after an enemy in the game stole all his armor and gear...
    Last edited by Piggy Knowles; 2012-05-03 at 01:36 PM.
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  2. - Top - End - #62
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by LordBlades View Post
    How exactly did you count these?
    In most cases it was fairly obvious what the cause of death was. There was the odd edge case where multiple factors came into play - one death came about when the fighter got confused, the cleric tried to disarm him, and the fighter scored a critical hit and decapitated him. You could argue that was due to the fighter's failed Will save, due to the cleric not having enough AC/HP, or due to the cleric just being stupid.

    Those ones were the exception, though. In most cases it was stuff like "instakilled by critical hit", "failed save against a 10d8 breath weapon", "swallowed whole", "six attacks from a Large red dragon", etc. Debuff/slowing spells like Entangle rarely led to death, because enemies tended to focus attacks on the closest/most dangerous PCs rather than distant ones who obviously weren't a threat.
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  3. - Top - End - #63
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy View Post
    There is a reason, IC, that surviving to level 5 makes you a legend and surviving to level 20 makes you a demigod (effectively). An equal CR encounter is supposed to have a reasonable chance of killing you (I believe 1 in 5 is the official number but I can't remember where from). You are supposed to face 13 such encounters per level.

    You will not survive unless you do everything possible to slant things in your favor and, IC, cheat shamelessly.
    Completely agree. Even if you have only a 5% chance to die per encounter(so 95% chance to win), you have about a chance in 10000 to win all the 260 encounters needed to take you from level 1 to 20 without dying.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ravens_cry View Post
    Well, that sounds like an all around unsatisfying experience I must say.
    I actually enjoyed it. We are supposed to hate recurring villains after all.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by LordBlades View Post
    Completely agree. Even if you have only a 5% chance to die per encounter(so 95% chance to win), you have about a chance in 10000 to win all the 260 encounters needed to take you from level 1 to 20 without dying.
    well, normally, PCs die and are res'd one way or another (last breath being the MVP in saph's games, lol) numerous times throughout their careers.

    as for my own experiences, the party I'm in finished "eyes of the lich queen" last week and I got a pretty good use out of my AC.

    rolewise, my factotum/chameleon functions as a gish because the rest of the party is not specced for melee and sometimes encounters necessitate it. (read: enemies move up into your grill and don't give you a choice)

    as a result, I've been leaning somewhat on my divine focus as of late (we are lvl 11 going on 12) to boost my armor the extra 4 points from MCS to full-plate) since we fight a bunch of monsters with full attacks involving a lot of iteratves. (he switched the wraith room at the end for a bunch of vrocks, for example)

    my guy's normal AC is 22 (10 base+3 from ring+ 9 from full plate (+1 enhancement) which is not very good, but lately in combat, I'd been favoring bite of the wereboar to buff for melee, but it also gives +8 to natural armor (if you're fighting melee junkies like how most DMs play vrocks, it helps) which gives me a 30, requiring them to roll a 15 or better to hit, cutting the % from 70% to 30% which is pretty nice, and at 1rd/lvl, it'll take up the whole combat (and even made the dragon at the end miss with most of his iteratives)

    so as for avoiding attacks altogether, it is somewhat all or nothing, but the reason AC matters is full attacks. since each one's at much less than the creature's full to-hit, having a halfway decent AC will help keep your HP in the black
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    First of all, my experience is that most of the players die due to a solid bashing. I never kept track of the numbers, and other causes of death occur frequently, but I am sure that a large number of deaths is just due to getting pummeled. At least in the games I participated in.

    I think there are a few critical issues here, two of them being (1) 'theory vs. practice, or how do you run your game' and (2) 'opportunity cost'.

    (1) If you assume dragons using wraithstrike and optimized NPC's with optimized tactics as 'typical' foes, then AC might get obsolete at some point. At very high levels (16+) this happens, of course.
    Just like you can build a character with an nigh-impossible to hit AC, I can build a foe that can hit it. If you take monsters at face value, sniff around the various MM's and face your players with level appropriate 'typical-by-the-book' encounters AC can go a very long way in protecting a character. The assessments of monster-to-hit from the SRD shows that attaining a very hard to hit AC is doable, and then by definition worth while, as long as the...

    (2)...Opportunity costs are not too high. A rogue starts with light armour and a nice Dex, but then it starts relying on items. Before you know, you are looking at serious expenses. Perhaps for a rogue going for that displacement cloak (and having a buddy that is willing to stand in most of harm's way) is in the end a better choice. However, there is also the other end of the spectrum. A battle sorcerer/paladin/abjurant champion/sacred exorcist (as one of the many available extreme options) has access to mithril full-plate (at the expense of one feat), +9 quickened shield, some dex (if any) and the Air devotion domain (for example). Add silly stuff like magic items (not even the expensive ones, low bonuses on each) and haste and your AC starts looking really really good for not even that much money. Even the plain fighter can pull off a pretty sweet AC. And in my opinion, no experience, that can be pretty well worth it.

    In short: AC is good, unless your DM optimizes 'against' it or it just costs too much money (which depends on your classes/build). In those cases you might as well dump it and go for other means of defense, like miss chance.
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    I'd love to see some of the alternatives to AC for protecting a character.

    As a DM (who is teacher a DM the basics now!) I often find myself lapsing into targeting AC and Ref too often. I don't like the idea of mooks debilitating the party on a failed will save, so I tend to save those for final encounters and mini-bosses. When I say roll a will save you can see the pallor on my players faces.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy View Post
    There is a reason, IC, that surviving to level 5 makes you a legend and surviving to level 20 makes you a demigod (effectively). An equal CR encounter is supposed to have a reasonable chance of killing you (I believe 1 in 5 is the official number but I can't remember where from). You are supposed to face 13 such encounters per level.
    An equal-CR encounter is supposed to take up 20% of party resources. When compared to a CR+4 encounter (100% of party resources, 50% chance of winning) it is reasonable to derive the number for failure at a level-appropriate encounter proportionally, as 10%. That means you are only 25% likely to survive the 13.3 encounters necessary to gain even a single level. You need 274 billion adventurers, statistically, for a single level 20 to emerge from them, and over a trillion for a party of level 20s.

    Fighting CR+4 enemies only needs 3.3 battles, but you have a 10% chance of surviving them all. Fighting CR-1 enemies requires 20 battles, but you have a whopping 35% chance of surviving to gain a level.
    Last edited by Flickerdart; 2012-05-03 at 06:47 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Inevitability View Post
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    Quote Originally Posted by Artanis View Post
    I'm going to be honest, "the Welsh became a Great Power and conquered Germany" is almost exactly the opposite of the explanation I was expecting

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    An equal-CR encounter is supposed to take up 20% of party resources. When compared to a CR+4 encounter (100% of party resources, 50% chance of winning) it is reasonable to derive the number for failure at a level-appropriate encounter proportionally, as 10%. That means you are only 25% likely to survive the 13.3 encounters necessary to gain even a single level. You need 274 billion adventurers, statistically, for a single level 20 to emerge from them, and over a trillion for a party of level 20s.
    Which says a lot about in-world consistency. How many high-level characters are in the published settings, let's take the Forgotten Realms?

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    The figures count all adventurers from anywhere. It is quite possible that there are trillions of adventurers in the Forgotten Realms, counting all of the infinite planes. Remember that 75% of that trillion are corpses. Why do you think it's so easy for parties to find loot?
    Quote Originally Posted by Inevitability View Post
    Greater
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    Quote Originally Posted by Artanis View Post
    I'm going to be honest, "the Welsh became a Great Power and conquered Germany" is almost exactly the opposite of the explanation I was expecting

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Flickerdart View Post
    The figures count all adventurers from anywhere. It is quite possible that there are trillions of adventurers in the Forgotten Realms, counting all of the infinite planes. Remember that 75% of that trillion are corpses. Why do you think it's so easy for parties to find loot?
    I was looking at the Prime Material Plane. Most named Faerun NPCs originate there. Given the (often short) in-world time it takes characters to rise from level 1 to level 20, I wonder there is space to walk for the trillions. Probably they all live under the sea and in the Underdark.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy View Post
    There is a reason, IC, that surviving to level 5 makes you a legend and surviving to level 20 makes you a demigod (effectively). An equal CR encounter is supposed to have a reasonable chance of killing you (I believe 1 in 5 is the official number but I can't remember where from). You are supposed to face 13 such encounters per level.
    An equal CR means the party is expected to win using up 20-25% of its resources. BBEG fights are Cr +1, Cr +2, or the third or fourth equal CR encounter of the day since the party isn't at full resources because of the first and second equal CR encounters.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Malachei View Post
    I was looking at the Prime Material Plane. Most named Faerun NPCs originate there. Given the (often short) in-world time it takes characters to rise from level 1 to level 20, I wonder there is space to walk for the trillions. Probably they all live under the sea and in the Underdark.
    High level adventurers go adventuring through the planes.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Malachei View Post
    I was looking at the Prime Material Plane. Most named Faerun NPCs originate there. Given the (often short) in-world time it takes characters to rise from level 1 to level 20, I wonder there is space to walk for the trillions. Probably they all live under the sea and in the Underdark.
    Most of those that make it to level 20 are incredibly special in one way or another. Take Elminster; he survived pretty much purely on the merits of divine intervention from a greater deity.

    Note that the percentages are pretty much just if you go with random chance. That's kinda the point.

    Anyone who reaches level 20 (or even level 5) almost certainly didn't get there by luck, they got there through careful planning and preparation. Most challenges are overcome before the other side can react, if you win an equal CR challenge in the surprise round then there was no real risk of you dieing. And if you have contingencies set up to get you out of the area if you fail to win in the surprise round then you are much more likely to live to try again later.

    If you DM plays the world honestly and your players actually roleplay their characters then fights are pretty much decided before the first die is rolled. Either the parties scouting elements notice the enemy early enough to give the party time to buff and plan, in which case they should win in the surprise round unless they are really unlucky, or the enemies scouting element notices the party early enough to buff and attack in the surprise round, in which case they probably kill at least 1 PC.

    Both sides stumbling into each other without warning or notice is the kind of thing that should be happening once or twice per level, if that often.
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Most of those that make it to level 20 are incredibly special in one way or another. Take Elminster; he survived pretty much purely on the merits of divine intervention from a greater deity.
    Only because his build was horrible.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Morph Bark View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by JadePhoenix View Post
    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.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    I suppose I'll take up a devil's advocate position.

    First off, there's the ratchet effect, which has been discussed in painful clarity. In Piggy's case, the specializing in AC was effectively worse than useless in the metagame, as the end result was that the warblade ended up just as vulnerable, and his allies were more vulnerable. In PO it's important to consider the effect of your efforts on your DM; yes, this is very messy, but it's worth analyzing different scenarios for robustness.

    Of course, as was previously discussed, the DM can swap feats and use granted treasure to make the baddie more effective than his SRD entry indicates. IF this is used not as a direct response to a high AC, and more as a response to overall party optimization, it's not necessarily a specific ratchet effect. For instance, you can roll random treasure for a Fire Giant, or you can just give him ~5800gp worth of treasure. You can let him keep his feats that he's never going to use, or you can give him better ones. Just a +1 Large Greatsword and Law Devotion (Fire Giants are "often lawful evil") and Weapon Focus is going to give another +5. Devious DMs may provide buffing allies and flanking mooks which don't add much to the XP total, but could add quite a bit to the chance Mr. Fire Giant hits. This is all situational, and it obviously doesn't happen in every game, but it can happen.

    ...Which leads to when it does happen: Boss Fights. These are likely your most dangerous, difficult fights. They're often many CRs higher than normal, and they're often optimized above normal. One could argue that this is when you need your protection the most; this means that if the boss (or more likely his dragon) even targets AC, you need to be able to make that attack have a good chance of whiffing. That target number is going to be far higher than normal. Say we have that same Fire Giant, except since he's a boss fight, he's a Fire Giant Fighter 2 with the elite array, more lewt, and dungeoncrasher. Now he has a Large +1 Magebane Spiked Chain. His feat loadout now includes Combat Reflexes, Knockback, and Knockdown along with Law Devotion. You're going to want more than 35 AC in this scenario.

    Yes, you can make it so that even this particular Boss-Brute-off-the-top-of-my-head has a hard time hitting you. The question is, was whatever you just came up with more cost effective than just grabbing some miss chance items and investing the rest in being able to kill the brute first?
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Boots of speed tend to be necessary for mundane hitters, incidentally it ups ac by 1.

    Tangle foot bags, empowered rays+sudden max of enfeeblement, protection devotionx2 can up your acs versus boss fights

    Protection devotions can easily come from Cloistered cleric dip
    tangle foot bags can be the last iterative or something
    empowered+sudden max ray of enfeeblement is the only real extraneous resource.
    Last edited by Lans; 2012-05-03 at 10:51 PM.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    The question is, was whatever you just came up with more cost effective than just grabbing some miss chance items and investing the rest in being able to kill the brute first?
    If you're not a mage? Yes.

    Miss chance is not something that's particularly accessible or effective for non-mages. A Cloak of Displacement is a 20% miss chance and costs 24k - that means it's completely inaccessible at low-mid level, and even at higher levels it's a purely secondary defence. You're still taking 80% of hits. That's not going to save your life on anything more than a lucky roll. And you don't want to have to count on lucky rolls for your survival.

    Certainly pick it up when you can! And if you're a mage, you can invest in miss chance via Mirror Image and Blink, and dump AC entirely. But for everyone else, AC is your #1 defence against attack rolls.
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Their is truenaming fighting style and invisible fist for monks, a shadow stance for sword sages and people with feats, fell mist robes for incarnates.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Isn't the major displacement cloak command word activated (standard action to turn on), and have a limited amount of use?

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by sonofzeal View Post
    If you're not a mage? Yes.

    Miss chance is not something that's particularly accessible or effective for non-mages. A Cloak of Displacement is a 20% miss chance and costs 24k - that means it's completely inaccessible at low-mid level, and even at higher levels it's a purely secondary defence. You're still taking 80% of hits. That's not going to save your life on anything more than a lucky roll. And you don't want to have to count on lucky rolls for your survival.
    You could like totally just be a Neried (ECL 6, 3 HD, 3 LA but you could get 2 negative levels in backstory fighting a wraith, failing those Fort saves, then exchange your 1 HD for a class level so ECL 4. RAW you can do it, but only if DM lets you exist before game).
    Displacement constant ability. As well as cha deflection bonus to AC.
    It has an at will touch that causes drowning as well (as well as a few spells).
    Drawback you are Fey if that matters.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    Yes, you can make it so that even this particular Boss-Brute-off-the-top-of-my-head has a hard time hitting you. The question is, was whatever you just came up with more cost effective than just grabbing some miss chance items and investing the rest in being able to kill the brute first?
    Well, there are ways around miss chance as well, so your argument goes both ways.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    What I've heard is that AC is either all or (almost) nothing.

    If you're a squishy wizard at mid levels, and you need to spend quite a bit of cash just to be able to make your enemies miss 30% of the time, (and you're rarely in melee combat anyway and have ways to escape if you get into melee combat), then you might as well spend your money elsewhere and drop the 30% to 15% or 10%

    If you're a tank that spends a good fraction of his cash/spells per day to to raise AC, then very few attacks will actually hit, and touch attacks are considerably rarer then normal attacks, then the investment was worth it. This is especially true when paired up with DR, miss chances, regeneration/healing, and most of all "no" buttons like wings of cover, for when they actually hit.

    Alternatively, there's "very cost effective": if you're an abjurant champion/ardent savant that can get an AC in the 50's without even trying, then it's definitely worth it.

    At high op play the same factors are true, but you're boosting touch AC instead of normal AC, and keeping the same factors into consideration.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by JadePhoenix View Post
    Well, there are ways around miss chance as well, so your argument goes both ways.
    To my knowledge these ways include True Seeing (or Illusion Purge, but who casts that?) and Pierce Magical Concealment. Please enlighten me if there are more ways.

    In the case of True Seeing, you're either facing a demon or a caster. I agree that miss chances are useless in a demon-heavy game, but I'd call that a corner case. And if you're facing a caster with 6th level spells, True Seeing is just one of many, many things you have to worry about.

    In the case of Pierce Magical Concealment, I'd have to say the mage slayer line is also somewhat niche. If it isn't, then there's also Pierce Magical Protection, making both AC and miss chances null and void for the gish. At that point you just have to kill him first.

    It's so much easier for magical characters to pump AC that I usually focus on them in AC discussions. But, as Son of Zeal points out, mundanes don't have such luxuries, so they may wish to pump AC because it's the least bad option. The thing about mundanes is that they usually have to spend most of their resources granting relevant offense, so that too many resources spent on defense leads to the "ignore the monk" problem. I suppose I could be reminded of that multi-templated stony swordsage - IIRC it had pretty decent AC and attacks - but again the concept behind such a build seems very niche. IME, when it hits the fan, the main defenses of the mundane meleer against attack rolls are, in order:
    (1) Killing them before they kill you
    (2) Enemies targeting the caster
    (3) Oodles of HP

    YMMV, of course.
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    To my knowledge these ways include True Seeing (or Illusion Purge, but who casts that?) and Pierce Magical Concealment. Please enlighten me if there are more ways.
    Blindsight and Mindsight both spring to mind.

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    In the case of True Seeing, you're either facing a demon or a caster. I agree that miss chances are useless in a demon-heavy game, but I'd call that a corner case. And if you're facing a caster with 6th level spells, True Seeing is just one of many, many things you have to worry about.
    I'm not saying miss chances are useless, I'm just saying it might be countered. Also, there are items with true seeing, such as the Scout Headband, usually considered a must have items for melee characters.

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    In the case of Pierce Magical Concealment, I'd have to say the mage slayer line is also somewhat niche. If it isn't, then there's also Pierce Magical Protection, making both AC and miss chances null and void for the gish. At that point you just have to kill him first.
    But that is exactly my point. You can counter both so you shouldn't depend on just one.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    Illusion Purge
    what is this? I can't find it in the SpC, it sounds useful (if situational)
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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Randomguy View Post
    If you're a squishy wizard at mid levels, and you need to spend quite a bit of cash just to be able to make your enemies miss 30% of the time, (and you're rarely in melee combat anyway and have ways to escape if you get into melee combat), then you might as well spend your money elsewhere and drop the 30% to 15% or 10%
    Mostly just spell slots, really. Combinations of polymorph, alter self, greater mage armor, shield, and luminous armor get you the AC of most non-caster characters that sink 1/2 their wealth into it.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Ultimately it looks like combat is simply too deadly in optimized d&d to rely on defense at all, ever. Winning is about investing in going first and still hitting hard enough to end combat before the other guy manages to. Short of some spellcaster's tricks where lower level spells can be used to increase defense without trading away wealth or offense, true protection is unattainable on a practical scale without sacrificing all chance of winning.

    This does not mean that all hope on defense should be abandoned, but rather that things with minimal effects that always work, for minimal costs, will be the best defensive items in case combat makes it to the second round.

    As attack bonuses are widely variable, AC bonuses are not a reliable form of defense for a low investment.

    Low cost protective items also tend to provide bonuses other than AC bonuses, because WotC had a way of "balancing" prices for AC boosting items, but not for other protective items.

    The short version is improved initiative is better than armor class, and the gap only widens as levels increase. Things that provide flat % bonuses are next best because they will almost always have the same reliable (if minor) effects. Armor class boosts are simply too high an opportunity cost for characters who must divide their wealth between offense, defense, and initiative/extra actions.

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    Default Re: AC: is it worthless?

    Quote Originally Posted by Randomguy View Post
    What I've heard is that AC is either all or (almost) nothing.
    I disagree. For most characters, there's a significant difference in the ease of getting "Poor", "Decent", and "Good" AC as I defined it earlier.

    I mean, yes, for mages it's all-or-nothing. If you're going Abjurant Champ it's likely "all"; if you're trusting Mirror Image + Blink + Flight + Invisibility, then it's probably not even worth shooting for "Poor". For mages, there's ways to get "all" and ways to make "nothing" still be viable.

    For everyone else though, you're usually looking at something in between. Most people can manage "Poor" AC at most levels, which at very least will block some primary strikes, most iteratives, many attacks by clusters of weaker enemies, and prevent enemies from Power Attacking.

    Most characters can manage "Poor". Many can manage "Decent". Getting "Good" or higher takes serious work though, at least in the mid levels when monster ABs are at their peak relative to the gold you get. You can't expect to have AC that even-CR melee threats are wiffing on a 19, not unless you're bankrupting yourself for it.

    So no, I don't think it's all-or-nothing. Not in the general case.
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