Oops. A high AC?

[Chronos Flame]

Hey everyone. I recently reached epic in my Sunday night game and my character has leadership (and now epic leadership). I'm not using it to add to the party really, but I started a mage's guild. My DM ruled that my cohort (and his, and so-on) could have leadership as well, and could be PC classes, mostly just to have some leveled NPCs as a part of the guild who have some sort of leadership role. When I made it down to a 16th level char I decided on a Gish to lead any warrior mages in the guild. Well she ended up with like a 54 AC I believe. This is far higher than any other member of the party (and we are all 20-21). My question is this: is this more or less normal and I just sort of accidentally optimized this NPC or is this the upper end of the spectrum? If the former, what is the highest AC you can reach without stepping on the toes of the RAI?
PS. She is Hexblade3/Sorc5/Abjurant Champ5/ Argent Savant3

[Golden Ladybug]

Yeah, I don't think the problem here isn't that the NPC is too optimised. 54 AC isn't the best of the best, but its pretty respectable for a high level character.

I think you should be fine, because at this point in the game, AC has really stopped mattering most of the time. Most level appropriate encounters will breeze through any AC you can muster, and if the Warrior types have a chance of not getting hit, than that's good.

I'd say its a non-issue unless your group complains about it, and I doubt they would.

[Randomguy]

Highest possible? Both deepwarden (I'm not sure at what level deepwarden though) and fist of the forest get con to AC, add the ACF that paladins can get for cha to AC instead of to saves, take 2 levels of Suel Arcanamach and monk to get a feat that gets you cha to AC again, an amulet of natural armour +5, a ring of protection +5 and the shield spell, assuming no levels of abjurant champion. On top of that you can get the draconscale husk ACF, which gives a +12 armour bonus to AC by level 20.

Assuming +8 con and cha and no dex bonus at level 20, which is a bit of a conservative estimate, that would be within the ballpark of 68 AC. With 14 Dex you've got 70 AC, with a pretty high touch AC, too.
And if you add on a magic item that lets you use Sirene's grace a few times per day then you push that up to 71 and 73. And a magic item for bite of the wereboar a few times per day gets it even higher. And this is all without squeezing in any levels of abjurant champion, which you probably could. I wouldn't know, though, I haven't got races of the stone so I don't know how many levels of deepwarden you'd need.

I'd say you've just accidently optimized your AC, but even with your relatively straightforward build you could push it higher by swapping hexblade levels for paladin levels and taking serenity, and by adding in a level of spellsword instead of one of sorcerer, to let you wear heavier armour.

[RaggedAngel]

The best AC? Mind Blank, Invisible Spell Superior Invisibility, Superior Invisibility.

Don't worry about those little numbers on your sheet; like everything else in this game, magic invalidates it entirely.

[Chronos Flame]

Huh, I guess I learned something today. I'm probably going to leave her as is, but wow. Thank you very much.

[Acanous]

As stated above, it's really not AC you've got to be worrying about. Not when there's epic characters around.
More important is what that NPC fills her spellbook with.

Seeing as she's gishing it up, it shouldn't be a problem, really. Unless your party is very low tier or very poor at optimization, they'll outshine that NPC to the point where she's useful flavor, but not game-wrecking.

[Chronos Flame]

If I may mildly derail my own thread (though not entirely) Does anyone have suggestions for what her spells known should be? She has retributive spell and smiting spell if that matters. Assume she reached level 20? (lvl 16 sorc equivalent)

[Golden Ladybug]

Well, you've got Abjurant Champion, so you'll want Shield, and maybe the feat that lets you prepare spells as a Wizard to get Greater Luminous Armor.

As a Gish, you'll definitely be wanting Haste, Wraithstrike, Nerveskitter, Overland Flight/Phantom Steed, True Seeing, Superior Resistance, Greater Magic Weapon, Wings of Cover, Wings of Flurry and all that good stuff. You're also gonna want something go over the standard checklist of things to have; something to target each Save, something with an Attack Roll, some things without an Attack Roll, something that ignores Saves, something that Ignores SR.

And, other than that, take interesting spells that you'll use each day. Stuff that a God Wizard would take is often useful, as is looking up the spell lists of other Gishes.

[Polarity Shift]

54 is not high. Quite the opposite.

[Mystify]

Highest possible? Both deepwarden (I'm not sure at what level deepwarden though) and fist of the forest get con to AC, add the ACF that paladins can get for cha to AC instead of to saves, take 2 levels of Suel Arcanamach and monk to get a feat that gets you cha to AC again, an amulet of natural armour +5, a ring of protection +5 and the shield spell, assuming no levels of abjurant champion. On top of that you can get the draconscale husk ACF, which gives a +12 armour bonus to AC by level 20.

Assuming +8 con and cha and no dex bonus at level 20, which is a bit of a conservative estimate, that would be within the ballpark of 68 AC. With 14 Dex you've got 70 AC, with a pretty high touch AC, too.
And if you add on a magic item that lets you use Sirene's grace a few times per day then you push that up to 71 and 73. And a magic item for bite of the wereboar a few times per day gets it even higher. And this is all without squeezing in any levels of abjurant champion, which you probably could. I wouldn't know, though, I haven't got races of the stone so I don't know how many levels of deepwarden you'd need.

I'd say you've just accidently optimized your AC, but even with your relatively straightforward build you could push it higher by swapping hexblade levels for paladin levels and taking serenity, and by adding in a level of spellsword instead of one of sorcerer, to let you wear heavier armour.
Thats nothing. I put together a build that had an AC well over 100. It basically added almost every stat to AC, then optimized for ridiculous stats.

[Averis Vol]

for epic no, but 54 AC is nice for a level 16 character. especially without even trying.

[Slipperychicken]

Phoenix Cloak (BoED) + Evasion + [Reflex Save = 14]. Maximum chance to deal damage to you is 5%, and that's after they hit. The upper limit on AC's effectiveness, no matter how high the attack roll.

[Hiro Protagonest]

54 is not high. Quite the opposite.

Judging by your posts in other threads, you set the optimization bar extremely high. Like, Mailman would be a typical build in your games, but only if he also has a bunch of Contingencies and Celerities ready to go off.

Just go look at the attack bonuses of brute monsters at this level.

[Rossebay]

Judging by your posts in other threads, you set the optimization bar extremely high. Like, Mailman would be a typical build in your games, but only if he also has a bunch of Contingencies and Celerities ready to go off.

Just go look at the attack bonuses of brute monsters at this level.

Hahaha, right? Good times. What poor, poor DM would want to deal with that?

Anyway, yeah. I've had an AC of 64 at times, and that wasn't too gamebreaking. Nothing to worry about.

[Polarity Shift]

Judging by your posts in other threads, you set the optimization bar extremely high. Like, Mailman would be a typical build in your games, but only if he also has a bunch of Contingencies and Celerities ready to go off.

Just go look at the attack bonuses of brute monsters at this level.

Yes. They're in the mid and high 50s, thus 54 is hit on a 2. That isn't high. Quite the opposite.

My own level of optimization has nothing to do with it (if I made a level 20 creature, it'd either ignore AC entirely, attack touch AC, or have > +70 to hit, all of which are a higher standard than I assumed here by far).

Since you brought my personal games into it I encourage my players to make powerful characters after having being taught all the high level tactics by someone who also encourages his players to make powerful characters. One of them in my real world game is indeed an optimized blaster, and he needs that ability to OHKO things because the enemies don't play around.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Yes. They're in the mid and high 50s, thus 54 is hit on a 2. That isn't high. Quite the opposite.

Frost giant jarl has +30, and is one CR too high.

...Although the greater stone golem has +48 and is CR 16. I hate the CR system.

Then the Hound Archon Hero has +25, +27 with Divine Favor.

Thn Marilith gets six attacks at +25. But it also gets some good SLAs.

Then there's Horned Devil. It gets +25 at best, but some SLAs as well.

Then there's the fact that all the outsiders get a bunch of immunities and resistances, but then again, so does the golem.

[CTrees]

Hahaha, right? Good times. What poor, poor DM would want to deal with that?

Actually, I'd love to DM a group of players like that. The things I could do, and the way I could play the enemies? That sounds fantastic.

[Chronos Flame]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Honestly I lurk these forums a good bit, but this thread has given me an idea of just how much optimization varies between games. I mean I am the most optimized member of my party and I am an elemental savant, fire no less.

[Golden Ladybug]

Actually, Fire is a pretty good Element (not as good as, say, Unholy or Force however). Throw some Searing Spell on that Scorching Ray and nothing will stop you :smallwink:

[Mystify]

Actually, Fire is a pretty good Element (not as good as, say, Unholy or Force however). Throw some Searing Spell on that Scorching Ray and nothing will stop you :smallwink:
Its better than peircing cold. Peircing cold is stopped by having the cold subtype, whilst searing spell doesn't care about the fire subtype.

Which raises the odd scenario of creatures who heal from fire. They take half damage because they are immune, but simultaneously heal from the damage. If your healing-from-fire is good enough, you can still absorb a searing spell and come out ahead.

[Godskook]

Let's see, for a baseline we've got:

10 base
11 Composite Armor bonus(Mithral Full Plate as an example)
4 Shield bonus(Tower shield)
5 Armor enhancement
5 Shield enhancement
5 Deflection
5 Natural Armor enhancement
5 Defending weapon

That's 50 AC right there, and we're not even broaching optimized yet.

Semi-optimized, take the above and scratch out the armor and shield bonuses(25 AC loss) and use an Air Goblin with max Dex/Wis wearing Twistcloth armor. The new numbers are:

10 base
1 Twistcloth
5 Armor enhancement
5 Deflection
5 Natural Armor enhancement
5 Defending weapon
14 From 38 Dex(18 base, +4 racial, +5 level up, +6 Enhancement, +5 Inherent)
9 From 29 Wis(18 base, +6 Enhancement, +5 Inherent)
1 Size
4 Shield Potion

That's 59 AC, and I haven't even broken out spell-casting or polymorph shenanigans yet.

[Polarity Shift]

Frost giant jarl has +30, and is one CR too high.

...Although the greater stone golem has +48 and is CR 16. I hate the CR system.

Then the Hound Archon Hero has +25, +27 with Divine Favor.

Thn Marilith gets six attacks at +25. But it also gets some good SLAs.

Then there's Horned Devil. It gets +25 at best, but some SLAs as well.

Then there's the fact that all the outsiders get a bunch of immunities and resistances, but then again, so does the golem.

Remind me again why a level 20-21 party is caring about level 16 enemies? The cohort might be 16, but they're fighting 20-21 stuff with the rest of the party. And even if the cohort were off soloing level 16 stuff, you have still just drastically underestimated the to hit scores you will face. They're mid to high 40s, so that AC is barely doing anything.

You also named a bunch of casters, aka creatures that will not melee you and could care less about any amount of AC.

[D@rK-SePHiRoTH-]

50 at level 20 is not high. 50 is the lower end of a "good" ac
Below 50 it becomes non relevant.
70 is high (altough tarrasque will still easily hit you)
85 is the upper end of a "high" AC, meaning that you really don't need to go further
I am not speaking of theoretical optimization, all of the above are easily obtained with some multiclassing and standard wealth by level
(incidentally, if you go for the highest AC, you will end up having insane touch ac too)

But as Person Man said, don't go too high, or your DM will simply adjust the hit bonus of the monsters.

Monsters hit bonus +15 is a good place to be.


Phoenix Cloak (BoED)
Can't find the cloak you mentioned.
On BOED I found Starmantle Cloak, that halves the damage you take and does not combo with evasion.
There is a Phoenix Cloak is on MiC but it gives you flying speed.
What cloak were you talking about?

[Hiro Protagonest]

Remind me again why a level 20-21 party is caring about level 16 enemies? The cohort might be 16, but they're fighting 20-21 stuff with the rest of the party. And even if the cohort were off soloing level 16 stuff, you have still just drastically underestimated the to hit scores you will face. They're mid to high 40s, so that AC is barely doing anything.

You also named a bunch of casters, aka creatures that will not melee you and could care less about any amount of AC.

The character is level 16, if you'll read the OP again.

As for the caster thing, those were the closest I could find to CR 16-17 melee creatures. Their SLAs aren't much beyond "At-Will Greater Teleportation".

[Polarity Shift]

The character is level 16, if you'll read the OP again.

As for the caster thing, those were the closest I could find to CR 16-17 melee creatures. Their SLAs aren't much beyond "At-Will Greater Teleportation".


Remind me again why a level 20-21 party is caring about level 16 enemies? The cohort might be 16, but they're fighting 20-21 stuff with the rest of the party. And even if the cohort were off soloing level 16 stuff, you have still just drastically underestimated the to hit scores you will face. They're mid to high 40s, so that AC is barely doing anything.

You also named a bunch of casters, aka creatures that will not melee you and could care less about any amount of AC.

Hm... I wonder...

[herrhauptmann]

So the level 16 gish is a cohort of a cohort?
Don't worry about the high AC (at level 16, 54 is respectable in a CR appropriate game). But that character is going to get crushed if she's running around with an epic party.
And considering she's an official of the mages guild, perhaps it would be better (for believability) if you didn't have the master, the assistant master, and HIS assistant all running around instead of taking care of the guild.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Hm... I wonder...

*facepalm*

The cohort thing should've made me read the OP more closely.

[Weezer]

Can't find the cloak you mentioned.
On BOED I found Starmantle Cloak, that halves the damage you take and does not combo with evasion.
There is a Phoenix Cloak is on MiC but it gives you flying speed.
What cloak were you talking about?

Yeah, it appears he meant to type Starmantle instead of Phoenix.
What makes you think the starmantle cloak doesn't combo with evasion. Evasion states:


If she makes a successful Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, she instead takes no damage.

It seems apparent to me that the Starmantle Cloak's ability to:


Contact with the starmantle does not destroy
magic weapons or missiles, but the starmantle ’s wearer is entitled
to a DC 15 Reflex save each time he is struck by such a weapon;
success indicates that the wearer takes only half damage from
the attack.

qualifies as making all attacks with magic weapons "an attack that normally does half damage on a successful save", thus combined with evasion and a decent reflex save you are essentially immune to all weapon damage on everything but a 1.

[D@rK-SePHiRoTH-]

What makes you think the starmantle cloak doesn't combo with evasion
[...]
"an attack that normally does half damage on a successful save"
The half damage thing is not an inherent property of the attack.
It is not the attack that normally deals half damage on a succesful save.
It is instead the wearer of Starmantle that takes half damage from the attack, on a succesful save.
This does not qualify the attack in any way. The attack in itself is in fact normal and unchanged, and does not become an attack that allows a save.

To prove this theory, think about a fighter with wirlwind attack, attacking 2 targets: one of them has a starmantle cloak, the other one doesn't.
It is the same attack, but one guy is recieving a save, while the other is not.
Can you say that the whirlwind attack is an attack that "normally does half damage on a successful save"?

[Godskook]

Remind me again why a level 20-21 party is caring about level 16 enemies? The cohort might be 16, but they're fighting 20-21 stuff with the rest of the party. And even if the cohort were off soloing level 16 stuff, you have still just drastically underestimated the to hit scores you will face. They're mid to high 40s, so that AC is barely doing anything.

You also named a bunch of casters, aka creatures that will not melee you and could care less about any amount of AC.


Hey everyone. I recently reached epic in my Sunday night game and my character has leadership (and now epic leadership). I'm not using it to add to the party really, but I started a mage's guild. My DM ruled that my cohort (and his, and so-on) could have leadership as well, and could be PC classes, mostly just to have some leveled NPCs as a part of the guild who have some sort of leadership role. When I made it down to a 16th level char I decided on a Gish to lead any warrior mages in the guild. Well she ended up with like a 54 AC I believe. This is far higher than any other member of the party (and we are all 20-21). My question is this: is this more or less normal and I just sort of accidentally optimized this NPC or is this the upper end of the spectrum? If the former, what is the highest AC you can reach without stepping on the toes of the RAI?
PS. She is Hexblade3/Sorc5/Abjurant Champ5/ Argent Savant3


Hm... I wonder...

Its called irony

[Polarity Shift]

If the cohort is fighting, it will be with the party.

If the cohort is not fighting, its stats do not matter.

The OPer asked if their stats mattered.

[Chronos Flame]

Perhaps I should Clarify (Though Godskook sort of already pointed it out.) This is a cohort's cohort. I was statting out all of the officials of the mage's guild so that the DM would have stats for them should he wish to use the guild in a later game with others, or even with us. These are not running around with an epic party or anything. I was simply surprised by the high AC (Now a 59, simply after finishing picking spells).

Also, yes, thank the lord for Searing Spell. I would have been useless (almost) for a couple of levels now if not for that.

[herrhauptmann]

Perhaps I should Clarify (Though Godskook sort of already pointed it out.) This is a cohort's cohort. I was statting out all of the officials of the mage's guild so that the DM would have stats for them should he wish to use the guild in a later game with others, or even with us. These are not running around with an epic party or anything. I was simply surprised by the high AC (Now a 59, simply after finishing picking spells).


Ahh, if he's going to be a quest-giver NPC, then his high AC won't matter. Nor will the rest of his stats.

If he ends up as an antagonist, then that high AC will be problematic for a party 3 or more levels below him. Particularly if they're an unoptimized party, or just warrior heavy/caster light.