Light Armor Cleric help

[Starsinger]

So, I'm playing a Cleric and the DM has houseruled a "minimum Strength to wear Heavy Armors" house rule. I'm playing a Wisdom+Charisma build so my strength is crap.

Is there a way I can get Wisdom or Charisma to AC instead of Dex/Int or a way I can generally increase my AC?

[Drglenn]

Wow, that's a dumb houserule. How's a cha based paladin (for example) meant to be effective in next-to-no armour?

As for the actual question: no, without playing a class that gets cha or wis to ac (i think some wardens get wis) I don't think there's any way of getting it.

You could ask your DM to make a feat that lets you do it.

[Vknight]

Or you could call crap with several other players. That rule can hurt plenty of builds to such an extent he should allow players to vote on it.
Also just how nasty is this rule. Do you need 12Str to wear Hide Armor?

[Kurald Galain]

Sorry, but this DM fundamentally misunderstands how 4E works. Every class, by design, has one of (1) high dex, (2) high int, (3) a feature that adds their prime attribute to AC, or (4) heavy armor. Strength is not relevant to this equation.

[Vknight]

Exactlly why is he doing this? To punish players that want to be low strength so they have to waste points to be effective

[Fox Box Socks]

That would really, really piss off Chaladins and Battleminds.

The catch built into the system is that if you're a Cleric with 8 strength wearing Chainmail (or Scale), then you're damn near at carrying capacity even without extra equipment.

[Hidden Sanity]

With that houserule, you Don't play anything that doesn't have good Dex, Int, or Str(Or some other such class feature), sorry, your DM broke your defences.

[Dalek-K]

This reminds me of a house rule in a 3.5 game...

The DM said something along the lines of "Your body weight counts against what you can carry"... Needless to say the wizard couldn't even walk -_-;;; and many of the other classes couldn't pick up their weapons and wear armor (rogue)... It was quite sad...

How many players are affected by this? If everyone (or most) thinks it is crap then tell the DM to cut it out. Sure the DM makes the rules but if the players don't want to play by them they don't have to.

[MLH]

This might be the worst house rule I ever heard about. Armor proficiency feats already have a minimum strength requirement, so for characters who want those it's either redundant or an obstacle, and characters with armor proficiency from their class basically get them taken away for no good reason. What's he hoping to gain from this?

There probably is a way you can increase your AC by other means but you honestly shouldn't have to put up with it, even if all the other players don't mind.

[TheAbstruseOne]

I'm going to go along with everyone else and say that this is a bad house rule. Namely because it's not needed considering that there's already encumbrance rules in 4e that cover the exact thing he's trying to houserule to cover.

[Dimers]

Is there a way I can get Wisdom or Charisma to AC instead of Dex/Int ...?

Making a hybrid character could do it. It'd pretty much ruin your build, though; the only other class build in PHB1/2/3 that wants to advance both Charisma and Wisdom is a ranged-weapon bard, and bards are not one of the classes that can help you with AC. Barbarian, warden, sorcerer ... monk or avenger can help if your Str is so low your DM says you can only wear cloth armor. Only the avenger could make decent attacks while still helping AC in this case, and again, only if you're limited to cloth. In addition to the lack of stat synergy, though, hybrids often don't perform their roles as well as full-class characters do; it can be hard to make hybridization workable. A Wis+Cha cleric|avenger wouldn't be a good striker or a good leader.


... or a way I can generally increase my AC?

There are TONS of ways to do that. Unfortunately, they're all minor or very circumstantial, and most of them are mutually exclusive; there's no easy way out of this problem. As Kurald said, 4e classes were designed so that every build could either use heavy armor or make good use of a stat that improves AC. Accordingly, there hasn't been any need to publish feats (et cetera) to deal with an overwhelming lack of AC.

If the DM is insistent on trying this out, it could still be fun to play in the game. If the party really comes together in your character's defense or if she doesn't play enemies smart, you might not need AC anyway. And she may relent about the rule once she sees that the party healer is getting dead with undue haste.

In the meantime, here are two more tacks to try: (1) Find out exactly what penalty you would take for wearing chainmail. (2) Ask the DM if she really thinks that verisimilitude should trump balance and survivability. Maybe she's aiming for a gritty, let-the-bodies-hit-the-floor game and this is just one step toward that.

[Kurald Galain]

This might be the worst house rule I ever heard about.

How about "you grievously wound yourself whenever you roll a 1 on an attack roll"? I wish I was kidding about that one...