Items that give you a miss chance?

[Katana1515]

Hi! looking for some fairly affordable sources of Miss chances for a BBEG (In this case a vampire enchantress, bonus points for suggestions that fit with this fluff!).

As an aside I am unclear as to whether sources of miss chance stack or not? say if I had one item give a 20% miss chance and another give 10% will i have 30% as a total?

[Sir_Thaddeus]

Minor Cloak of Displacement is great; 20% constant miss chance, for fairly cheap (not sure of 3.5 price, but in Pathfinder it's 12000gp).
Major Cloak of Displacement is 50%, but more expensive and is only active for a few rounds per day.

As for stacking, I'm not sure if miss chances stack, but if they do I doubt it'd be like that. More likely having a 20% and a 10% would mean an enemy has to roll for both, which I think is equivalent to 28%. A more rules-savvy member of the Playground will have to check me on whether that's possible, though; it seems likely that miss chances don't stack, period.

If your BBEG didn't ban Illusion, then Mirror Image functions sort of like miss chance, but is something else entirely and thus definitely stacks. It's a fairly good spell in general.

[Darrin]

Hi! looking for some fairly affordable sources of Miss chances for a BBEG (In this case a vampire enchantress, bonus points for suggestions that fit with this fluff!).


The cheapest is probably a weapon with the Smoking property (+1 enhancement, Lords of Darkness). About 8300 GP, and you can put it on something like armor spikes, hidden blades, or a shield. You could probably throw the Warning and Eager properties as well, so the PCs can't get the drop on the BBEG.



As an aside I am unclear as to whether sources of miss chance stack or not? say if I had one item give a 20% miss chance and another give 10% will i have 30% as a total?

I don't think I've seen a definitive answer on that. It also depends on the source. For example, miss chance due to concealment or something that blocks vision will stack with blinking because these are actually two different effects: the first is a 20% chance you didn't see your target clearly, while the second is a 50% chance that your target just isn't physically on the same plane. I think if you've got different effects/sources, you roll those separately.

I'm not sure what happens when you have different miss chances from the same thing, such as concealment. I think you just use the highest percentage.

[Story]

Apparently, Rules Compendium said that miss chances never stack, but many people ignore it because it's Rules Compendium and it doesn't make sense.

[Der_DWSage]

Multiple Concealment Sources do not stack, you simply take the highest.

Source:http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/combatModifiers.htm (Just CTRL+F 'Miss Chance' and you'll see it soon enough.)

[Averis Vol]

The shadowy diadem from dragon magic page 103 is 4.4k and grants concealment and immunity to energy drain for up to 10 rounds 3 times a day with a swift action activation. The only problem is that it fizzles out in the presence of a light spell of 3rd level or higher.

[Shalist]

Ring of Entropic Deflection (MIC 123, 8000g); any turn you end at least 10' away from where you started, you gain a 20% miss chance (edit: vs. ranged attacks that have an attack roll, as per 'entropic shield' /edit ). This increases to 50% if you're wearing an item that provides a bonus to your speed.

[Waker]

Not an item, but taking Shape Soulmeld (Fellmist Robe) gives you a flat 10% miss chance against creatures more than 5ft away. If you have essentia, you can raise it even higher.

[Katana1515]

Thanks for the responses guys! I think the interpretation I will go with is that they don't stack for now though I shall discuss it with my players some time soon. Think I will go with the suggestion of a Smoking quarterstaff for now, Maybe fluff the head of the staff as being some sort of Censer gushing black smoke over the area?

As for taking fellmist robe I like the suggestion! Its one of my favourite soulmelds however I cant see it working well for the vampire without serious feat investment (no con score). However she is going to have a couple of heavyweights to guard her person. One was going to be a warblade gestalt. Going to seriously consider Incarnate to fill it out the other side of that now.

[ericgrau]

The minor cloak of displacement is 20,000 gp in 3.5. What level is the BBEG? If it's under level 15 then 2-3 points of AC is just as good and way cheaper. If you're worried about spells then touch AC is still cheaper until about level 13-14ish. Even past level 15 you get both miss chance and AC. Compared to the smoking quarterstaff the +1 AC items (+1 deflection, +1 natural armor, +1 armor, +1 mithril buckler) are still a better detail, but the quarterstaff is a better deal than upgrading to +2 AC items. You may wield a weapon such as a quarterstaff in a buckler hand.

A ring of blinking is 27,000 gp and you give enemies a little miss chance but you get much more miss chance.

And you may use multiple items. Multiple sources of concealment don't stack and you use the highest one, but if you have multiple sources of miss chance and no 2 are concealment then you roll separately for each. Rolling separately is mathematically worse than stacking, but better than nothing. So you could have the smoking quarterstaff, ring of entropic shield, cloak of minor displacement, ring of blinking, etc. all at the same time because only one is concealment. You would roll 20%, then 20%/50%, then 20%, then 50%. All together it's as good as 74-84% miss chance. 4 points of AC is roughly as good as another 30% miss chance for only 6,000 gp, and increases that to about a 82-88% chance that the attacker will miss. Assuming you already had greater mage armor up 24 hours anyway and your best player's attack bonus is under ~17.