Front line AC

[Barstro]

There is a bit of concern that my party is about to lose its main front line melee tank. There is always the possibility that my character will be tapped for that job. At the very least, he is now more likely to be targeted by enemies.

What sort of AC should a front line melee PC have?

EDIT: This is currently for level 10.

[sovin_ndore]

At what level?

[Dusk Eclipse]

You can use this table to compare your AC to the attack bonus of monsters by CR, you probably want 13-14 higher than that in order to stay relevant, though at some point it becomes a fool's game, since the attack bonus scale a lot faster than AC.

[Barstro]

At what level?

Really? Even though I kept telling myself "don't forget to mention it's level 10" I still forgot?

Editing original post.

[Barstro]

compare your AC to the attack bonus of monsters by CR, you probably want 13-14 higher than that in order to stay relevant, though at some point it becomes a fool's game, since the attack bonus scale a lot faster than AC.

Well. All my little tricks to increase his AC won't come close to BAB+13 and he is on the low end of hit points. Back to the drawing board.

[Dusk Eclipse]

According to the table I linked above, the average attack bonus of monster at level 10 is 24, so you want your AC to be around 36+, depending on your build this might not be easy to archive without severely impacting your offensive capabilities so investing in non AC defences, miss chances for example are pretty good, a minor cloak of displacement is still quite pricey at this point, but a wand of Blur or Mirror Image is quite affordable.

[Elder_Basilisk]

You should have enough AC to do your job without dying.

How much that is will vary. There are a lot of ways that you can defend yourself other than AC. Damage Reduction (stoneskin, barbarian class feature, adamantine fullplate, righteous might), miss chances (blink, displacement), not taking full attacks--either through clever positioning or killing monsters before they can full attack-- or just having tons of hit points, etc.

You can keep AC high enough to matter if you focus on it, but you will face a variety of creatures, and some of them are higher CR than your level and some of them hit more reliably than the average monster of that CR. You will need to evaluate your character and decide what kinds of defenses you need and what defenses are available to you. A barbarian with a falchion and a paladin with a sword and shield have different strengths and weaknesses. The paladin will have an easier time focusing on AC and self-healing. The barbarian will have trouble getting the same AC, but can get damage reduction and will typically have more hit points and deal more damage when the paladin isn't smiting. If you are a magus instead, you can still hang on the front line but your strategies won't be a carbon copy of the paladin or the barbarian.

[Silvrfox]

Your current build is really where you start, so knowing that would help. Cleric dip, holy shield, protection devotion and or law/chaos devotion are quick boosts, and of course cleric spells are very defensive. Arcane caster dip, one level on a fighting class chassis and you can take Abjurant champion. Hope it helps.

[Dusk Eclipse]

:Points at the PF tag in the thread's title: Quite a few of those suggestions don't exist in PF, just saying, but yeah if the OP can tell us his builds we might be able to offer some ways to increase his AC achievable by his class.

[Crake]

According to the table I linked above, the average attack bonus of monster at level 10 is 24

I think you might have been looking at the AC column, which is 24 for CR 10, the "High Attack" column had 18 in it

[Dusk Eclipse]

Woops... yeah you are right, my bad.

[sovin_ndore]

Tankiness is made up of three things:

• Hit Points - Combination of HD, CON modifier, and occasionally spell effects such as False Life or Protection from Energy.
• Avoiding Damage - This includes AC and effects that grant Miss Chances. The magical equivilant would be Saves or Spell Resistance.
• Damage Mitigation - DR, Energy Resistance, fast healing.

When trying to build a tank, it is important to properly weight the value of these effects.

Hit Points
If you want to increase survivability, the first thing I would suggest would be to focus down CON modifier. Unless you are currently pulling an average of 9HP per level and AC is a roll off, +2 AC is worth less than +1 CON modifier. Appropriate spell effects that generate scaling hit points are also generally going to be better than AC boosting spells for the same reason, even if this is situational such as Protection from Energy.

Avoiding Damage
AC - Assuming you are within a reasonable threshold relative to your opponent's To Hit, +1 AC represents about a 5% damage mitigation (it is actually slighly higher if you consider the interraction of critical confirmation rolls). This is of degrading efficiency as you level because as the To Hit on monsters you encounter increases, the threshold before this becomes a roll-off also increases.
Miss Chance - The value of a miss chance does not scale by level, but it may be occasionally ignored.
Note: Keep in mind that Miss Chance and AC actually interract like real world multipliers and the higher your AC, the less value you will get out of your miss chance.
If you AC is already low, I would suggest looking at acquiring a miss chance first rather than trying to pump your AC.
SR or Saves Don't forget you also need to avoid magical damage. Buy a vest of resistance if you don't already have one. As save DCs and saves scale much more slowly than AC and scale without expendature of WBL, these bonuses remain significant much further into the game. Other more esoteric defenes like SR are also great but harder to acquire on the fly.

Damage Mitigation This is both generally hard to acquire and situational. It is much more useful against multiple small damage sources (rapid firing archers) than it is against single sources of significant damage (fireball). If something like dipping Crusader might be an option, you may be able to get some reasonably scaled damage and standby healing without trying too hard.

If you have a prepared spellcaster in your party (Wizard, Cleric, etc), it might be worth seeing what they could do to provide buffs for you in the short run as spell options for any of these would be cheaper than buying persistant effect items.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder Unchained has some nice tables for typical AC, saves, to-hit values, damage and other statistics for a generic enemy combatant by CR. This works well as a quick and dirty peek behind the curtain as far as what the system probably expects you to have in terms of offense and defense.

Basically, build your character such that you can reliably withstand attacks from CR 12 or so on that table and you should be okay.

[Vhaidara]

Depending on how your GM runs the monsters, the answer might surprise you. As low as humanly possible.

The problem with a high AC is that smart enemies (ie, the ones you really should be scared of) won't bother targeting you. Especially since resource invested in AC are resources not invested in actually being a threat.

I had a thread going on a while back about how efforts to make a tnky frontliner tend to backfire because of the lack of an aggro mechanic in 3.pf. If you would take 10 rounds to drop and deal 30 damage per round, but your friend (who the enemy can reach at the low low cost of an aoo from you) would drop in two rounds and is dealing 100 damage per round, are most enemies going to spend 10 rounds beating on the brick wall of your face while your friend rips them a new one, or will they just go squash your friend, then turn around and wail on you?

[Barstro]

I'm playing a ranged Inquisitor. There are a few Judgements and spells he could use to boost AC, but he has low HP and is ill suited for front line. I was just curious if he could be could enough for a temporary stint up front (two sessions, max).

[sovin_ndore]

Yeah, spells are your friends for that... even trying to obtain some applicable scrolls might make more sense than trying to purchase equipment or change your focuses to fill that role.

[Nibbens]

Depending on how your GM runs the monsters, the answer might surprise you. As low as humanly possible.

The problem with a high AC is that smart enemies (ie, the ones you really should be scared of) won't bother targeting you. Especially since resource invested in AC are resources not invested in actually being a threat.

I had a thread going on a while back about how efforts to make a tnky frontliner tend to backfire because of the lack of an aggro mechanic in 3.pf. If you would take 10 rounds to drop and deal 30 damage per round, but your friend (who the enemy can reach at the low low cost of an aoo from you) would drop in two rounds and is dealing 100 damage per round, are most enemies going to spend 10 rounds beating on the brick wall of your face while your friend rips them a new one, or will they just go squash your friend, then turn around and wail on you?

I was going to make this very comment. Not quite Ninja'd, but yeah, close. lol.

During the really rough fights, stack on mirror image and Displacement. So, at first, there's a 50% miss chance, and only if there's a hit, then there's a 1 in 3 through 6 chance (depending on what number is rolled for the mirror images) that the attack actually connects. And it's lovely that the mirrors are not a "miss chance" because they wouldn't stack with displacement otherwise.

You can have low ac, run right up to the main baddy through all the AoOs and stand a really good chance of not getting hit.

[Barstro]

Given when this scenario might occur, it just doesn't look feasible. I'll have him stick to being a ranged OP slinger of death.