DR vs AC post since I got a little off topic in anther thread

[Grasharm]

Background for this tread simple. In another tread (summoner handbook) it was put forth DR 1 or 2 is not useful. I feel it is and wish to continue the discussion but since it is not a Summoner specific point I felt it was better to start a new thread rather than clutter up that thread with off topic discussion

[Grasharm]

Last point made before I opened new thread:


No, I am pretty much saying it is worthless, Cushioning Band's version especially so. Let's look at the math of this, shall we?

Let's look at a typical CR 1, the ghoul, and compare it against the easiest source of DR at that level, a 1st level Inquisitor using the Resiliency Judgement for DR 1/magic. Ghouls have 3 attacks that each deal 1d6+1 a piece. A weak attack, as you put it, that DR 1-2 should be able to handle, right? Assuming they all hit, since the supposition is against lots of weak attacks, they normally average 4.5 a hit or 13.5 total. Knock off 3 for hitting DR 1 3 times for average 10.5. Inquisitor with Con 14 is at 0 hp, less and she's in the negatives and bleeding out, despite the DR, not to mention the saves against paralysis and disease.

Let's say that's too tough an example and we back-pedal to a trio of goblins, who, at CR 1/3, should be a suitable encounter for a 1st level party. Assuming again the Inquisitor with Resiliency going and all the goblins hit, they each do 1d4 with their shortbows or dogslicer, averaging 2.5 a hit or 7.5 in total. Knocking off 3 again, that's 4.5, which is about half the Inquisitor's hp at that level. Still rather hurt for the trouble, where if the Inquisitor had gone for Protection, she may have not been hit at all.

Contrast with 3 orcs, also CR 1/3, they each do 2d4+4 or 9 average. DR 1 or not, that unlucky Inquisitor is very much into the negatives after 2 hits, most likely dead if there was a crit in there, which is likely with those falchions.

Let's look at a more relevant example, where we compare to an Invulnerable Rager at 4th, the same level as Summoner's get Cushioning Bands, for DR 2/-.
Let's have him fight a Grizzly Bear, a suitable CR 4. Grizzly bears deal 1d6+5 each attack, averaging 8.5 an attack or 25.5. Knock off 2 each hit and that's 19.5. Average HP on a barbarian of that level while raging is around 45-50, so that'll buy the barbarian 1 extra round of breathing and hoping they can placate said bear or make it into bear jerky.

Now that we've looked at that, let's compare to relevant DR. Take a Lemure, a CR 1 devil with DR 5/good or silver. Goblins can swarm that thing and, unless they manage a crit, they aren't going to hurt it while it slowly devours them one by one. They can't throw torches and oil flasks at it, since it's immune to fire and acid flasks are also irrelevant, due to Acid Resistance 10. The ghoul will claw and gnaw at it but on average will due neglible damage, as it roll a 5 or 6 on each die to even damage it and get that paralysis and disease to go off, which the Lemure is likely to resist anyways with the Fort +4 against the ghoul's Fort DC 13. The orcs have a fighting chance, as almost every hit will damage it, just not as much as they'd like. They average 4 damage a hit against it, so it'll stand a round, perhaps 2 if they roll low, in which time it may kill one with its claws.

Or take a Summoner with Protection from Arrows. If you grabbed a tribe of goblins and had them plink against him, they'll never get through that DR 10/magic, at least till it runs out but when you average 2.5 a hit, 40 hp of protection is a long time. As would other archers for the most part, unless equipped with a magic bow but then they'd be of an appropriate CR or higher, most likely. So, as you'll have hopefully seen, DR 1 or 2 is pretty negligible, it's when you get to DR 5 or higher that it becomes respectable and you have to pull out the stops or get around it to threaten something with that kind of DR.

[CTrees]

I'll go with DR5 being the lowest that's really noticeable, though at higher levels it needs to be much higher.

[Toliudar]

A point of DR might be nice if it helps to ignore environmental factors - pressure underwater, sandstorms, stinging insects. But mathematically, in combat...likely to be more of a pain than it's worth after the first level or two.

[NOhara24]

Miss Chance > DR > AC.

Miss Chance is always a flat chance that the enemy will miss, no matter what. It doesn't take much to see how that would be useful.

Damage Resistance is more useful the more times an enemy attacks you. At levels where a Barbarian has DR 1 in a typical campaign, being able to shrug off 1 damage out of every time someone attacks you is no small potatoes.

AC is easy to acquire and cheap to stack. However, with the exception of cheesed-out AC builds, it's largely useless. My Crusader in the last game I played could hit an enemy with 33 AC by rolling a two. Even better? I could take 11 on attack rolls using Aura of Perfect Order, meaning that I could hit an enemy with an AC of 43 without fail.

[Jeraa]

DR 1 or 2 is way overpowered. It like, makes you totally immune to housecats. Everyone knows that the only thing keeping low-level wizards and commoners in line are the dreaded house cats.

Really, DR 1 or 2 is nearly useless. It has a minor benefit at the very low levels (when damage is still in the single digits), but after that (when damage is regularly done in double or triple digits) negating 1 or 2 damage isn't great.

[Frozen_Feet]

AC eventually gets outstripped by attack bonuses. DR gets outstripped by damage bonuses by way more, and way faster.

Between levels 1 and 5, DR of 5 or above can be a big deal, bigger than AC even. Beyond that, damage quickly rises to double digits, meaning even 10 or 15 doesn't warm you much.

AC serves to reduce damage much more, since it can negate whole attacks' worth. High AC also serves to dampen Power Attack, one of the main sources of melee extra damage.

[Grasharm]

okay first lets deal with your examples:

The Ghoul:
Your fictional inquisitor is still up and able to cast her own CLW rather than on the ground bleeding out at this moment. Now since you want to do math we will do math which we can do since you have decided to put it up against another measuring stick in the protection +1 AC. +1 AC is a flat 5% miss chance or an overall reduction of 5% damage assuming it is relevant. The DR will get you a 22% reduction of total damage or is roughly 4X better than the AC in this case. As for the saves She will have to make well that is harder to be put into numbers and is very subjective. I would argue still being standing and paralyzed is better than being on the ground and bleeding out since 5% less of 13.5 is roughly 13 damage so with the +1 AC that's where you are mathematically speaking.

The Goblins:
I can do the same thing here I did with the ghouls and let's skip to the point DR math ends up being 10X better than your equivalent AC

The Orcs:
Well even though math says that DR is still twice as good I would argue here that the AC is better. Miss chance is always better when stacked against being one shotted.

Da Bears:
Since you don't put it against AC here I won't make that comparison but I would point out that without the DR your barbarian would be dead on the second round irregardless and surviving to that third round means your party is getting a whole rounds of attacks extra with you in the mix rather than going on scramble defense as the fighter goes down.

Lemur/spell:
Okay I think everyone can agree more is better. More AC, more HP, and more DR and that is all your saying for the rest of this. Yes DR 5 is better than DR 2 just like +5 AC is better than +2 AC. I'm going to rest my case here.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I wouldn't say DR 1 is worthless per se, though it might not be all that useful. I think it's better to look at relative worth, since building characters and using tactical options in combat is mostly about weighing different choices and picking the best one. If your best use of a swift action is to get DR 1/Magic, well, that's better than not using the swift action at all.

Let's suppose (for the moment) that given everyone's standard getup some attacker needs more than a 2 and less than a 20 to hit your character. That gives him some probability X of hitting, 0.05<X<0.95. He does some average damage D, so that his expected damage per hit is D*X. If your AC goes up by A, the expected damage is now D*(X-A*0.05), meaning you effectively reduced your damage by 0.05*A*D. If your (assume unresisted) DR is B, the expected damage is (D-B)*X, meaning you effectively reduced your damage by X*B.

Suppose A = B, or in words the bonus to armor is the same as the granted DR. This is true with the Inquisitor, at least in cases where the DR wouldn't be overcome. For DR to be better than AC in this case, X > D/20. In words, the probability the attacker hits you (no buffs) has to be greater than the damage divided by twenty. For instance, if Bob the NPC needs an 11 to hit you with his stabby thing (50% chance), that stabby thing should do less than 10 average damage if you're throwing up DR instead of AC. If it does more damage, then you're better off with AC.

Of course, there are also corner cases. NOhara's crusader may hit you 100% of the time whether or not you buff AC, in which case DR is obviously better. He won't Mountain Hammer every round, anyway. There are also cases of "You vs. Army," where you're getting pelted with many many arrows, all of which have a 1/20 chance of hitting no matter what you do to AC. DR is obviously better in this case as well.

Edit: Another corner case is when DR > Damage, but I don't see this coming up that often.

[ericgrau]

A well armored guy can avoid 75% of hits even at high levels. Someone weakly armored is unlikely to be 15 points behind so it's rare where a monster actually hits you on a 2.

If he hits on a 11-20, for example, 1 point of AC negates 10% of his damage output. In general it's worth 5.3%-50%. Typically 7.5%-10% If he does more than ~15 damage per hit, that's worth more than a point of DR. Otherwise the DR is worth more. If he does more than ~30 damage per hit, 1 AC is worth 2 DR. Fortunately many foes do small damage but have 4-5 attacks, so DR isn't worthless. There are plenty of level 10-15 foes that do less than 30 damage per hit (but hit many times).

As you get to higher AC and higher DR each point costs more, so what I'd do if possible is get both. i.e., once one starts getting too expensive (by gold or by build levels) switch to the other until it catches up in cost. For example let's use the above and assume foes do 30 damage per hit so that DR 2 ~= 1 AC. Look at the difference in cost between a DR 1/- iron ward diamond and a DR 3/- iron ward diamond and keep getting AC until the next point of AC costs that much. Then upgrade the DR.

[Grasharm]

hrmm I think I mislabeled this post to begin with. It should just be read as is DR 1 or 2 worthless. I feel nay it is quite useful. This was not actually ment to be a comparison between DR and AC. That has been done and I'm sorry I jinked this.

But hey sober couldn't have put it better myself

[ericgrau]

Oic, well as a rule of thumb I say 5-10% is never worthless so DR 1 or 2 is still useful at most levels when foes are doing around 10-40 damage per *hit* (which again stays true even at mid levels since high damage comes from many hits). Most things you get are only worth 5-10% but you get 10 different things in your build and it really adds up.

Even in high optimization builds we're talking 1 or 2 things worth 25-50% and anything worth more only applies in rare situations. The rest is still maybe a 5-15% boost to X.

[Big Fau]

AC eventually gets outstripped by attack bonuses. DR gets outstripped by damage bonuses by way more, and way faster.

Between levels 1 and 5, DR of 5 or above can be a big deal, bigger than AC even. Beyond that, damage quickly rises to double digits, meaning even 10 or 15 doesn't warm you much.

AC serves to reduce damage much more, since it can negate whole attacks' worth. High AC also serves to dampen Power Attack, one of the main sources of melee extra damage.

The thing is, AC starts being negligible around 12th level. Once you hit 15th, if you don't have a Miss Chance effect, you will be getting hit more often than not. Attack bonuses of your stock enemies increase far faster than the PCs can usually keep up with unless they sink a huge amount of resources into AC. At 20th level, your AC needs to be in the 40's at minimum, preferably up in the 50's or 60's, and it just takes so much effort that noncasters really cannot afford it.

DR is much harder to come by, and relevant DR (like /Byeshk) is almost entirely unattainable, but if it's above 15 it ends up playing a noticeable role for a noncaster. Good luck finding it without being a spellcaster, and more than a few sources of DR are feats.


Really though, the Developers overvalued AC, DR, BAB, and damage bonuses for PCs. Then they completely overlooked the existence of stackable miss chances, or they thought that "A spellcaster spent a daily spell slot on this, so it's balanced because he has less spells/day".

[Grasharm]

Okay since I said it I'll put my out feelings about DR vs AC. DR is better than AC but since AC from different sources stacks vs DR overlapping the Quantity of AC wins out over DR in the end. Lets face it if we could get a DR of 10 as easy as we could get +10 to our AC then we would be all over it.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Lets face it if we could get a DR of 10 as easy as we could get +10 to our AC then we would be all over it.

...Mineral Warrior? +1 LA, DR 10/Adamantine and some other nice stuff.

Also, Iron Bones is pretty easy, and it's one of the weakest maneuvers of its levels, as is Adamantine Bones. Even on crusader, with their combination of a lot of maneuvers readied and damage soaking.

A good rule of thumb is that constant, always on DR/alignment, material, or - equal to your level is adequate protection. DR equal to twice your level is good protection Any DR/magic is worthless past... level 4?

[Siosilvar]

Okay since I said it I'll put my out feelings about DR vs AC. DR is better than AC but since AC from different sources stacks vs DR overlapping the Quantity of AC wins out over DR in the end. Lets face it if we could get a DR of 10 as easy as we could get +10 to our AC then we would be all over it.

I'm not so sure about that. +10 AC helps a lot more than 10 damage off of a 40 damage attack does. That +10 AC, on the other hand, takes you from 75% to be hit to 25% to be hit, which lops 20 points of average damage off that attack. It doesn't help you as much when you are hit, but it makes you a lot more survivable.

[Cieyrin]

A good rule of thumb is that constant, always on DR/alignment, material, or - equal to your level is adequate protection. DR equal to twice your level is good protection Any DR/magic is worthless past... level 4?

I'd say Level 5 for DR/Magic losing value, as while PCs can afford a magic weapon by then, not everybody will till level 5-6.

[Alienist]

I disagree with the majority of opinions presented so far.

Among other things:

(A) Adding 1 AC does not reduce the average damage by 5%, it doesn't even work as an approximation, it is just bad maths.

(B) DR and AC are not usually substitutes. Apparently there is this one build that nobody ever takes... but on the whole, nobody ever says to themselves "I think I'll stop adding AC to my character and add some DR instead". Rather, typically the choice is between AC + DR or more AC + DR.

I present a third alternative. The problem is that mechanically DR and AC are not at all similar.

AC is most similar to miss chance %, and DR is most similar to the much maligned Toughness.

The question shouldn't be "how much AC am I prepared to give up to get some DR" ... because nobody ever does that. AC is always maximised regardless of whether one chooses to add DR on top of it.

The question should be "how much better than Toughness is this amount of DR?" if you're getting your DR from spells you might like to compare it to temporary hit points instead, though that is also problematic, since again, you can have both.

Since (as has been pointed out) it is safe to assume that DR is not greater than the maximum damage (which would equate to infinite hit points) it doesn't need any advanced math either. The basic 'formula' is "how many hits does it take to kill me?" multiplied by the amount of DR that applies.

Examples:
You've got 16 hit points. The monsters do 8 points of damage per hit. It takes 4 hits to kill you. You add 1 DR. That DR is worth 4 extra hit points. However, it still takes the monsters 4 hits to kill you.

(Note: DR and Toughness were both useless)

If you add DR 2 instead of DR 1, then that is worth 8 extra hit points against those particular monsters. In that particular case the DR keeps you alive for an extra hit. Hooray!

DR 3 would be an extra hit again. (Six total for those keeping track at home)

A lot of people are very disparaging about the Barbarian's DR 1 at seventh level. However, if he has say ~50 hit points, and the monsters are doing 10 points of damage on average, then that equates to 6 more hit points, and could (in some situations) be the difference between life and death, or even merely staying conscious long enough to get in an extra attack or two.

Is it going to save him in the example of the triple digit damage monsters? No. If you have 50 hit points and the monsters are doing 100+ damage, you're screwed. However, I think that is a silly example because if the DM is throwing triple digits damage around when you have only double digits hit points, then what you as a player need to do is extend a single digit, oscillate it in the vertical dimension a few times, and then walk out.

[Ernir]

mechanically DR and AC are not at all similar.

... pretty much.

The times when you're comparing it is when you're deciding on how many resources to invest in it, like GP, spell slots, LA, and (very unlikely) feats and class levels.

And it so happens that there aren't very many efficient ways to get lots of DR. There are some exceptions (Mineral Warrior and Astral Vambraces come to mind), but who buys a friggin' armor of invulnerability (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicArmor.htm#invulnerability)?

[Jeraa]

There are some exceptions (Mineral Warrior and Astral Vambraces come to mind), but who buys a friggin' armor of invulnerability (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicArmor.htm#invulnerability)?

It may be (almost) useless against a lot of level-appropriate monsters, but against the majority of the worlds people, who would be 1st-3rd level, its very useful. They wouldn't have magical weapons, and the typical soldier has a 13 strength. Wielding a longsword, their damage would typically be 5.5 damage. So you either take 0 damage, or 1 point from your average soldier. Your average orc warrior has his damage cut in half. And thats assuming they hit you. Armor of Invulnerability does make you darn near invulnerable to (most) low-level mooks.

The game may revolve around the PCs and their enemies, but there are other people in the world. Not everything has to be beneficial to the PCs.

[kulosle]

Well, once your get to mid levels the only AC that matters is touch attack AC. And having damage reduction, any amount, is important. Especially because the majority of monsters get more damage by getting more attacks. You still shouldn't let your AC drop too low, because the lower it is the more someone can safely power attack you. Miss chance is obviously the best. Then I make sure I have a reasonable DR, then I decide whether or not to think about AC, some times I feel safe not having AC though. The thing is that DR can't be optimized without focusing way to much of your resources on it. But every build has a way of dealing with high AC, either they don't care because they aren't targeting your AC, or they are only targeting your touch/flatfooted AC, or they stacked bonuses faster than you can. So against PC's I'd say DR wins, but 1-2 doesn't make a noticeable difference. Against a monster I'd say DR win's unless you stacked enough AC, but any amount of DR, even 1-2, is definitely important.

[Big Fau]

It may be (almost) useless against a lot of level-appropriate monsters, but against the majority of the worlds people, who would be 1st-3rd level, its very useful. They wouldn't have magical weapons, and the typical soldier has a 13 strength. Wielding a longsword, their damage would typically be 5.5 damage. So you either take 0 damage, or 1 point from your average soldier. Your average orc warrior has his damage cut in half. And thats assuming they hit you. Armor of Invulnerability does make you darn near invulnerable to (most) low-level mooks.

Not by the time you can afford a +4 suit of armor (it's a +3 modification).


The game may revolve around the PCs and their enemies, but there are other people in the world. Not everything has to be beneficial to the PCs.

Law of conservation of detail kicks in here. Why bother mentioning it at all if most people are never going to have a reason to use it? Even if it isn't meant for the PCs, that armor is ungodly overpriced and NPCs have a bad WBL progression anyway. None of the level 1-4 Mooks are going to be able to afford it.



It's a waste of ink.

[Godskook]

The thing is, AC starts being negligible around 12th level.

This isn't entirely accurate, since AC still acts as a power attack defense, even if it doesn't stop you from being hit.

[nyjastul69]

...

+1 AC is a flat 5% miss chance...

Nitpick. A miss chance in the game is a defined term that determines whether a successful hit is actually a 'hit'. Sometimes a hit actually misses. A +1 to AC makes it 5% less likely that an attack will hit, but it gives no miss chance.

I'm posting this because some users could be mislead by that usage. I apologize if this too pedantic.

In regards to the topic at hand, DR is never bad. Less damage is always good, at any level. I think the relevant question is what did your DR cost you? Also, DR2/- is much different than DR5/(whatever breaches it). I feel the former is superior as it is not as limited. YMMV.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

(A) Adding 1 AC does not reduce the average damage by 5%, it doesn't even work as an approximation, it is just bad maths.Hm, I double checked my stuff (and saw that I got tongue tied on some wording), posted a rebuttal, and then saw the post you were actually referring to. Whoops.
(B) DR and AC are not usually substitutes. Apparently there is this one build that nobody ever takes... but on the whole, nobody ever says to themselves "I think I'll stop adding AC to my character and add some DR instead". Rather, typically the choice is between AC + DR or more AC + DR.That's partly why I focused on the Inquisitor's two defensive judgments. There you can have one or the other on, but not both, and you might actually nab DR 1/magic at first level depending on the enemies. Invulnerable Rager is a popular barbarian archetype, which you could theoretically weigh against that armor archetype, but the comparison is a bit shaky at that point. That said, the thread title is "DR vs AC," so yeah.


I present a third alternative. The problem is that mechanically DR and AC are not at all similar.

AC is most similar to miss chance %, and DR is most similar to the much maligned Toughness.I was going to say that it's similar to extra HP, the difference being straight-up HP is better against harder-hitting enemies (and enemies who ignore the DR) while DR makes healing more efficient, however much that matters.
*snip about hits per death*Most hits usually have a variance in damage, which means that (especially at the lower HP end) it's hard to predict exactly how many hits it's going to take to kill you. Also, in low op you're going to be healed, and in high op you're likely to have fast healing 1 going, so that makes your math a bit harder to calculate (and it makes DR a teensy bit better).

[Xodion]

AC is easy to acquire and cheap to stack. However, with the exception of cheesed-out AC builds, it's largely useless. My Crusader in the last game I played could hit an enemy with 33 AC by rolling a two. Even better? I could take 11 on attack rolls using Aura of Perfect Order, meaning that I could hit an enemy with an AC of 43 without fail.

This seems to be a common idea on the internet, that AC is useless and can't keep up with to hit modifiers, but this doesn't match up with my experience in games. In our last big campaign my character was completely unhittable, and while we are all fairly optimising players, I wasn't initially trying to do this. The only stuff that killed us was homebrew stuff our DM built to specifically get our weak points, and the bosses were a complete joke (this was the Age of Worms campaign).

I think it depends on what you want to do - I was using Improved Combat Expertise so I couldn't hit for love nor money, but 1 time in 20 I battered them with plenty of power attack and sneak attack, and it was my job to get in the way and take the blows rather than deal damage.

What would people consider to be a high AC by level, enough to make AC worthwhile later in the game?

[Saph]

This seems to be a common idea on the internet, that AC is useless and can't keep up with to hit modifiers, but this doesn't match up with my experience in games.

Ditto. We've just finished a Pathfinder game that ran from level 1 to level 5. My character was a Dervish Dance Magus, and I lost count of the number of attacks that were 1-3 AC points away from killing me. My Shield spell quite literally saved my life in half our sessions.

At higher levels AC can be bypassed, but that just means it becomes a 'good' defence rather than a 'make-me-unhittable' defence. I've seen plenty of mid-level PCs die when an extra 4 points of AC would have saved them.

[Ceaon]

I think it depends on what you want to do - I was using Improved Combat Expertise so I couldn't hit for love nor money, but 1 time in 20 I battered them with plenty of power attack and sneak attack, and it was my job to get in the way and take the blows rather than deal damage.

Why were your enemies attacking you if you weren't a threat to them? Why weren't they attacking your allies first?

Turtle tactics require mindless enemies, a lenient DM or aggro-drawing tactics. You can't expect the first to always be the case, and D&D 3.x lacks any real means for the third. If it was the second though, I can only applaud it. It seems it was fun and made your character a valuable member of the party.

[Xodion]

Why were your enemies attacking you if you weren't a threat to them? Why weren't they attacking your allies first?

Turtle tactics require mindless enemies, a lenient DM or aggro-drawing tactics. You can't expect the first to always be the case, and D&D 3.x lacks any real means for the third. If it was the second though, I can only applaud it. It seems it was fun and made your character a valuable member of the party.

It's a combination of 2 and 3 really - we are sticklers for good roleplay and my character was arrogant as hell, so he would goad and intimidate, and enemies would (realistically) take a round or two to realise they couldn't hit him. He was also much faster than the rest of the party, so would close down the enemies and switch between battlefield control and high-AC tanking to prevent them from getting close to the rest of the party.

But yeah, AC is only worthless if you dismiss it immediately instead of actually trying. DR can be very useful early on, but it's not nearly good enough at high levels to be better than AC in my opinion.

[mucco]

Okay, let's bring out the math. Assuming DR always protects its full amount, the effectiveness of AC compared to DR depends on the damge you're being dealt. With DR 5 and 1d6+1 attacks, DR is very strong. If the attacks are 1d12+567, however, AC might be a better bet.

One point of AC equals 5% chance to avoid x damage. 1 point of DR equals 100% chance to avoid 1 damage. For the two to be comparable, x must equal 20. Therefore, when the attacks deal less than 20 damage, DR is more efficient; the opposite happens when attacks hit for more.

AC, however, has a very high variance so it's not a surefire way to be protected. Miss chance doesn't either, but the two combined are relatively safe.

Note that AC and DR are very difficult to scale at high levels, particularly DR. This, along with the numbers before, means that DR is worthless at high levels. It is possible to keep up with AC, but it will take many resources. Miss chance, on the other side, is not a big effort and it works on top of AC. Still, I maintain that it's not enough.

[Ernir]

This seems to be a common idea on the internet, that AC is useless and can't keep up with to hit modifiers, but this doesn't match up with my experience in games.

Yeah, in my experience AC is a royal pain to deal with, and miss chances are something that just leave you out to dry the moment True Seeing shows up...

This may be a topic for (yet) another thread, though.

[kulosle]

This seems to be a common idea on the internet, that AC is useless and can't keep up with to hit modifiers, but this doesn't match up with my experience in games. In our last big campaign my character was completely unhittable, and while we are all fairly optimising players, I wasn't initially trying to do this. The only stuff that killed us was homebrew stuff our DM built to specifically get our weak points, and the bosses were a complete joke (this was the Age of Worms campaign).

What would people consider to be a high AC by level, enough to make AC worthwhile later in the game?

What level was your campaign? Level 12 was the given level, which is probably about right, lower level for higher op games. This main holds true if you DM actually throughs NPCs at you. If you only ever fight monsters than AC stays helpful through out the entire game. The goal of a good AC is to be missed 75% of the time. That is usually you ECL + 20, you don't necessarily need that high of one, but shoot for a minimum of your ECL + 15. But to be honest it doesn't really go at a flat rate like that. Against enemies with class levels the rate goes up as you level up. Once I can afford to through quicken spells at you I'll have a plus +20 to all my spell touch attacks or wants arcane fusion comes up. Not to mention a lot of casters just end up doing battle field control after a certain point. Again this is subject to DM, if he only throws blaster wizards, sword and board fighters, and heal pot clerics then AC might stay relevant longer. On all my rogues I know you'll be flat footed for all my attacks after a certain level, and on some builds they are touch attacks as well. So whats your flat footed touch attack AC?

I don't know what kind of concealment you use, but mine aren't subject to true seeing at all. Bottle of smoke is my preferred method. Yes this hinders me but not nearly as much as it hinders enemies. I always make sure to have blind sight or sense or tremor sense or mind sight. Then I either attack from ranged or I use AoE. Or there are ways of making it so that ghost touch is what screw you over, by not actually being in the material plane half the time. Blink i think is the one that does that. Great thing to persist.

[Trasilor]

I am sorry, but I must reiterate that Alienist is correct with this statement.




(A) Adding 1 AC does not reduce the average damage by 5%, it doesn't even work as an approximation, it is just bad maths.


Simple math example.

Suppose you have an AC of 20, and you have the ability/item/what-have-you to increase your AC by 1. If you enemies have a +19 to hit you, then the bonus to AC does not help (enemies would only miss on a 1 for both ACs). Conversely, if your enemies had a bonus of +0 the bonus to AC moot as the enemies only hit on a natural 20. In either case, it does not equate to a 5% less damage.

Regarding the question as to which is better DR 1-2 or + AC 1-2, it is fairly subjective. The DM can and generally will (I know I do) alter encounters to either exploit players' weakness or cater to players' strengths. IMO, either argument is valid, thus making this entire debate somewhat moot.

[Brock Samson]

Perhaps this has already been stated, if so I apologize.

But has anyone taken into account the feelings of the DM? In that - most DMs get sick of NOT hitting a character whose AC is extremely high, so they give their enemies much larger to-hit numbers or attack them in alternate means, making the AC eventually a dimishing return.

Same (though less so) with DR. If you have DR 10 at level 3, perhaps you're eventually just going to start getting hit with lots of magic and energy damage. But provided any amount of damage gets through, my guess is your DM is not going to feel you're sailing through the encounter.

In summation: a little from column A, a little from column B, and perhaps you won't have a Monster Manual thrown at your head.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

What you're saying is a specific case of a general optimization concept: Overspecialization ceases to work in the metagame, because the DM will (over)compensate for said specialization, and then you have nothing to fall back on. Versatility is good. In this case, versatility in protection (high AC and DR and miss chances) makes you much tougher.

Just to throw it out there, DR complements a Crusader's class features far better than additional HP. As previously stated, DR makes healing more efficient (crusader's strikes/stances), and more importantly it makes steely resolve + stone power that much more potent. Were I to play a Warforged Crusader 1, I would take Adamantine Body for the DR. The AC bump is just icing.

[candycorn]

Ok, easiest source of DR, IMO. Astral Vambraces.

Let's take a Dwarf Crusader 1, with the feat, and a 16 Con. 13 HP, and DR 2/magic.

Let's compare vs a Ghoul (CR 1), full attacking. Ghoul's attack is horrible (+2/+0), but let's say all hit.

1d6+1 (4.5 avg), 1d3 (2 avg), 1d3 (2 avg) = 8.5 average damage - 6 for DR = 2.5 average damage.

Effective? Absolutely. Even assuming every attack hits.

Vs 3 goblins?

Assuming 3 morningstars all hit (with a +2)?

3.5 damage per hit, on average, 10.5 total average. -6 for DR across 3 hits? 4.5 average damage.

Effective? Absolutely.

A small amount of DR, at low levels, is effective, in conjunction with a decent AC. Especially when you have a means to heal (such as Crusader and martial spirit stance). If the dwarf was an Azurin, with an extra essentia, and thus, DR 4/magic? The enemies above would be completely trivialized, even if the Crusader had an AC of 2.

[ericgrau]

Miss Chance > DR > AC.
Maybe at level 20 when money is no object. If you look at monster attack bonus and the cost of getting each of those things the exact opposite is true for levels 3-14. And those that don't get them from items get them from incredibly precious rounds instead, until you get quicken at about the same time the item becomes affordable.

For general discussion I like to assume we're all playing by the same rules, the DM isn't a jerk who nullifies anything the PC does, and the player isn't a system breaking jerk either. The reason I suggest getting a mix is that in D&D it simply gets very expensive to get way too much of any one thing. For most things cost goes up by bonus squared. Even when you grab miss chance at around level 15, I'd get all 3 defenses if possible to get the best defense for your money. Heck AC still does more at level 15, it's just that the next point of AC doesn't do more at that point so you get a cloak of minor displacement or whatever and then you get more AC after. Even when DR doesn't do much a super cheap DR 1/- armor crystal is worth the negligible cost if you can't find another useful armor crystal, etc.

So in short the response to "is DR worth it" is "yes a certain amount of DR is certainly worth it." The only question is how much can you get before the cost of the next point of DR is no longer pennies and no longer worth the cost.

[Talya]

The only way these two abilities can be compared is vs. specific enemies.

Both can be argued to reduce damage taken by a certain percentage.

DR reduces damage by a percentage equal to (DR amount)/(average damage done per attack.)

AC reduces damage by a percentage that is far more complicated to calculate. For instance, if the enemy will hit you on a roll of 11, they'll hit you on 10 out of 20 attacks. Increasing your AC by 1 in that situation means they'll hit you on 9 attacks instead of 10 attacks. This is 10% reduction in damage taken from that enemy. Increasing it another +1 means they'll hit you on 8 attacks instead of 9 attacks, this is actually about an 11% reduction. However, this changes greatly depending on the enemy's odds of hitting you to start with. So the effectiveness of AC depends both on the enemy AND your current AC. If the enemy can only hit you on a 19 or 20, and you boost your AC by +1, you've just cut your damage taken by 50%. Conversely, if they will only miss you on a 1, and you boost your AC by +1, you're only reducing your damage taken by just over 5%.

[Karoht]

I'm doing a homebrew campaign right now.
We've got the following in terms of damage avoidance/mitigation.

AC
Miss Chance
DR/Resistances
Shielding (temporary HP)
Regeneration
Fortification (mitgates Critical Hit damage only)
Spell/Power Resistance
Shrug Off-Custom Feat-Half the damage up front, one-quarter the following round, one-eighth the round after that, one-eighth the round after that, always rounded up.
Damage Sharing-Spells like Life Link. Anything which distributes damage across more than one target.
Evasion and Improved Evasion for certain effects.

And one that often gets ignored is Incorporiability which has a variety of uses, and can greatly avoid quite a bit of damage depending on the enemy involved.

[Doug Lampert]

One point of AC equals 5% chance to avoid x damage. 1 point of DR equals 100% chance to avoid 1 damage. For the two to be comparable, x must equal 20. Therefore, when the attacks deal less than 20 damage, DR is more efficient; the opposite happens when attacks hit for more.

No. If my opponents hit on a 19 then 1 point of AC reduces the damage I take by 50%, sure that's only 5% of some theoretical maximum if every attack hits, but who cares? The reduction in damage taken is what matters, and in that situation I've gone from being hit twice in 20 attacks to being hit once in 20 attacks, which means that the AC is worth more than 1 point of DR unless the foe does 2 or less damage on average.

On the opposite side, if my opponent hits on a 2 while power attacking for -10 with a two handed weapon then one point of AC saves me 2 points of damage as he needs to power attack for one less.

AC is valueable depending on the chance to hit, and on whether the opponent knows the chance and can calculate an optimal power attack (and if he doesn't know the AC and can't go for straigth for optimal then he's likely to power attack for what he thinks is a bit on the high side till he misses and then adjust, which makes AC even more valuable).

Since the chance to hit tends to hover arround 50% between itteratives and power attack and the like (most people power attack for too much even if they know the target's AC), so AC tends to reduce damage by about 10%.

DougL

[Boci]

It's a combination of 2 and 3 really - we are sticklers for good roleplay and my character was arrogant as hell, so he would goad and intimidate, and enemies would (realistically) take a round or two to realise they couldn't hit him.

Not really. Unintelligent creatures will generally ignore you and go for whoever is causing them the most pain (not you) and intelligent enemies will generally go the vulnerable / threataning. Your parties tactic seemed to rely on you reguarly fighting enemies who were smart enough to understand an insult but not smart enough to rise above it.

[Xodion]

What level was your campaign?
...
On all my rogues I know you'll be flat footed for all my attacks after a certain level, and on some builds they are touch attacks as well. So whats your flat footed touch attack AC?

I don't know what kind of concealment you use...

It was the full Age of Worms campaign, levels 1 to 21, and the more loot we got the more ridiculous it got. As a Monk/Rogue my Touch AC was in the mid-40s at the end, and my Flatfooted AC was the same as my normal AC in the mid-60s. Like I said, using Improved Combat Expertise meant I couldn't hit anything when I did this, but being able to switch between good to hit and decent damage to absolutely unhittable AC was an amazing tactical advantage.


Not really. Unintelligent creatures will generally ignore you and go for whoever is causing them the most pain (not you) and intelligent enemies will generally go the vulnerable / threataning. Your parties tactic seemed to rely on you reguarly fighting enemies who were smart enough to understand an insult but not smart enough to rise above it.

Obviously this wasn't our only tactic, as some enemies were smart enough to rise above it. Kyuss had watched his armies swinging and missing for the entire campaign, so ignored me completely, but people we hadn't encountered before wouldn't know. Unintelligent creatures would attack me because I was always the first party member to arrive (60ft move speed), and would try and prevent them from getting to the rest.

[Boci]

Obviously this wasn't our only tactic, as some enemies were smart enough to rise above it. Kyuss had watched his armies swinging and missing for the entire campaign, so ignored me completely, but people we hadn't encountered before wouldn't know.

No, but they might know that the one saying "Come at me bro" might have decent defences and to instead target the wizard/rogue (this is just a guess, I don't know who the over party members where).


Unintelligent creatures would attack me because I was always the first party member to arrive (60ft move speed), and would try and prevent them from getting to the rest.

At first sure, but as soon as the other party members damage the creature and you don't, how were you stopping them from ignoring you?