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ngilop
2013-06-02, 10:59 PM
I found this while looking for my thread that asked why the healers needs to go up a tier or whatever the title was.. never found it in 30 minutes of looking.. but I did find this in a post by Yora about level bonuses to AC, Just thought I post it and see what you all thought.


A= Fighter
B= other full BAB classes
C= average BAB classes
D=poor BAB classes

{table=head] Level | A | B | C | D
1 | +0 | +0 | +0 | +0
2 | +1 | +0 | +0 | +0
3 | +1 | +1 | +0 | +0
4 | +1 | +1 | +0 | +0
5 | +2 | +1 | +1 | +0
6 | +2 | +2 | +1 | +0
7 | +3 | +2 | +1 | +1
8 | +3 | +2 | +1 | +1
9 | +3 | +3 | +1 | +1
10 | +4 | +3 | +2 | +1
11 | +4 | +3 | +2 | +1
12 | +5 | +4 | +2 | +1
13 | +5 | +4 | +2 | +1
14 | +5 | +4 | +3 | +2
15 | +6 | +5 | +3 | +2
16 | +6 | +5 | +3 | +2
17 | +7 | +5 | +3 | +2
18 | +7 | +6 | +3 | +2
19 | +7 | +6 | +4 | +2
20 | +8 | +6 | +4 | +2
[/table]

Just to Browse
2013-06-03, 12:02 AM
A +1 to my AC at level 7 is something I don't care about at all, and it's hard to care at level 5. If you're adding a scaling AC component, it really should be at minimum 1/4 ECL.

Also, the fighter getting +2 over other classes really isn't that interesting--there are other ways of fixing the fighter without adding extra tables (and it'll start controversy like: why doesn't the monk get it? Why not CW samurai?).

Finally, scaling bonus AC does not work with multiclassing and it encourages blasting saves. Neither of those are good for D&D 3e.

ngilop
2013-06-03, 01:14 AM
could you explain your post again.. im honestly not quite understanding of what you said.

what i am getting is 'scaling bonuses are bad' becuase of blastign saves ( i have no idea what that even means) and multiclassing?

how does this get messed up with multiclassing?

and the biggest gripe about AC is that unlike BaB it does not scale to level, here i actually make it scale. but somwhow letting AC scale is now a bad thing?

I knwo you pointed out the +1 AC at levle 7. thats for wizards and other poor attack bonus progression classes, or classes that in fluff are supposed to be bad at fighting. so why should a class that is not supposed to be good at fighting deserving of a better AC scaling than classes that in Fluff are supposed to be good at fights?

I have different progressions, which you seem to have totally glossed over and then come back to rip apart in teh same post. only poor BaB progresion classes don't get at least 1/4 level AC progression so why you said
If you're adding a scaling AC component, it really should be at minimum 1/4 ECL. is correct in 3 out of the 4 scaling AC bonuses I have. again do you really bleive that teh classes with the worse BaB in the game and therfore fluff and 'supposededly mechanics wise' be the worse at fighting get the best scaling AC bonus?

how doe sit not work with multiclassing lets say somebody wants to be a fighter10/wizard 5/ Abjurant Champion5 would get a scaling bonus of
Fighter 4 Wizard 1 Abj Ch 1, or 6. thats still pretty good and the same that a 20th levle Full BaB class would get.

do you want me to give wizards a scaling AC bonus equal to level or what.. im just not understanding why and what you beleive they should be getting

Just to Browse
2013-06-03, 01:57 AM
Multiclassing has a problem because if you take level dips you don't get AC bonuses, and there's no fractional progression so we can't calculate AC bonuses from multiclassing. For example warblade 5 / crusader 5 / fullBABPrC 10 gets 1 + 1 + 3 = +5 instead of +6 for following a full BAB class, and while it's easy to extrapolate for a player that goes all full BAB all the time, what about a player that does monk 3 / fighter 2 / ranger 2 / incarnate 1 ?

It's bad because you now have a scaling bonus to AC but no bonus to saves, so saves are inherently a better target, and D&D 3e is already rife with problems involving SoDs, so making saves a better choice turns a bad problem into a worse one.

My problem with +1 at level 7 is that it's kind of useless, and in being useless it just becomes something annoying to keep track of rather than a relevant and interesting bonus. If you're handing out bonuses at that speed, you might as well just not give them a scaling AC bonus at all. And the scaling bonus is only above 1/4 in fighter and full BAB. It appears to be something smaller and wonky in the 3/4 bab column.

I also don't see how I glossed over different bonuses, considering that was literally the only component in this post and the only thing I complained about.

ALSO: monsters with lots of HD make this ridiculous. The tarrasque goes almost one entire RNG off the scale.

ericgrau
2013-06-03, 08:45 PM
So you heard a complaint somewhere and applied an arbitrary amount as a solution to it?

PC AC, PC attack bonus, average monster AC and average monster attack bonus already all scale at about 1.25 per level. The thing is PC AC requires equipment rather than levels. There is some variation depending on various factors, plus secondary attacks and power attack have attack roll penalties. AC is about 4-5 times cheaper than boosting your attack bonus so it's generally worth it to pump AC assuming foes use physical attacks at least 1/5th to 1/4th of the time. The cost goes up the more you get, and down the less you get, so depending on how many foes use physical attacks you get more or less AC but it still settles on X cost that is worth it. Thus you can figure that while AC might scale a little faster or slower than my initial estimate, it will be somewhere in that ballpark. But by level 5 or so spending some amount is almost always worth it. Unless zero foes use physical attacks.

So there's the basic mathematical theory you can use as a starting point, and then do a more complicated analysis from there. If instead you recycle bad rumors and throw out random solutions it doesn't accomplish anything better than throwing darts at a dartboard of rule changes.