Why all the hate for AC [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Seward

2016-04-04, 09:06 PM

I don't know. I made a concerted effort to make a decent tank exactly once, and she can get AC in the mid-40s routinely by level 12 without gimping her offense much and with extremely high saves (multiclassing plus spending cash on save items will do that).

I mean, I've also played a sorcereress who was AC12 until level 10ish, then got by with AC16-18 until level 16, played a monk who had AC only slightly higher to 16, so I get how you can do without, but for most characters, achieving enough AC to survive a full-attack from a level-appropriate monster is only a moderate expenditure of resources, and worth it to handle situations where they get the drop on you and you're in a tight spot. Flatfooted AC in particular is a handy thing.

A lot of knowing whether to spend on defenses has to do with your role in the group, and how enemies will perceive you. If you are primarily a support character (eg, core bard, or medic-support style divine caster, or most mystic theurge etc) then you will not normally be seen as a big threat and will not tend to get focus fire unless you are seen as the reason they can't lay a finger on the party barbarian/artillery/archer/other DPS character that is ripping them into pieces.

By contrast if you do big, flashy, high damage burst effects, expect the survivors to open up on you with everything they have. Surviving the "beta strike" is often as important as surviving that flatfooted round next to the melee monster when you rolled poor initiative.

What I don't like is characters that put a ton of resources into AC and/or saves, but are so ineffective from an offense or support standpoint that there is zero reason why anybody would target them. In 3.5, this was the "combat expertise+fight defensively" guy, who even if he somehow hit anything with his -10 to hit, he usually had so little strength and investment in his weapon that he could be ignored completely. A related character is the cleric or wizard who spent the first three rounds casting spells like shield of faith or mage armor or whatever instead of doing something useful.

You have to accomplish your role. If the reason you were useless in a fight is that somebody ripped your liver out, you may want to consider investing cash, class abilities or feats into better armor class. If the reason you were useless is you keep failing key saving throws, bump up that cloak of resistance or look for a class/feat boost or even long-duration buff like Heroism that could help. If the reason you were useless is the monsters could pretty much ignore you, that's a much more serious problem. Some characters will get that obscure DR or perhaps a meaningful ranged attack or potion of fly because their basic stuff works on most enemies. If you are ineffective against most enemies you need to do something to crank up your main attacks. Spellcasters have a similar dynamic but different problems, (relying on save-suck when your DCs are too low, not enough spell slots, damage spells are pitiful and not worth a standard action, etc) that can often also be mitigated with cash or feat/class ability choices.

Some characters will not ever have a problem with low AC until something kills them, others will be just fine until level 20. But the vast majority of characters will have more useful actions over their career if they invest moderately in armor class, and if your role means you will be drawing fire from melee/archer types, you should invest more. Investing so much that you are essentially wasting enemy actions each time they stupidly target you means you are a "tank" but you need a compelling reason why they'll think attacking you is a good idea. This can be real, as in the case of my halfling dex-tank, or it can be fake, as in the case of my dwarf warchanter with a big axe and 3 weapon capsule retainers, used every combat to fool people into thinking he had a heavily enchanted axe as he charged into the middle of the enemies. Finding that balance is tricky, so investing so much in AC that physical combat with you is futile can be a trap, similar to the monks who think that all they need is wisdom and dex (when they don't have any wis/dex to damage type tricks), or archers who think they can get by with low strength and again, lack some kind of dex-to-damage option.

PallentisLunam

2016-04-04, 09:07 PM

10(base) +5 Mithral Full Plate, +5 Tower Shield, Gloves of Dexterity +6(to get max dex bonus of +3), +5 Ring of Deflection Potion of Shield of Faith, +5 Amulet of Natural Armor Potion of Barkskin = only 41 AC and that is at the expense of opportunity costs of +4 on both armor and shield, as well as buying the expensive ring and amulet.

Shield Specialization, Combat Expertise, the Potion of Barkskin would actually stack with the AoNA, Oils of Magic Vestment, Small Size, Reduce Person

Seward

2016-04-04, 09:14 PM

AC is good; but there is always, no matter how high it gets, a 5% chance it will be breached.

That is why you also have hitpoints. In Pathfinder, there are a few good items to handle when the GM rolls two 20s - there are at least two moderately priced head-slot items that will negate one crit a day. Stuff like that, or forcing enemy rerolls or whatever can also help with the burst damage and a run of GM luck.

The really good tanks have high AC and high saves, often have something like evasion and/or high touch ac or elemental resistances to mitigate energy damage and they all have at least moderate hitpoints. Those that lack the ability to dodge scorching rays or evade fireballs often just go with "lots of hitpoints" or some kind of swift or free action self-healing ability as mitigation.

One thing I like is to be able to tune your AC a bit to balance it with offense. Eg, you have combat expertise+fight defensively as well as power attack and reckless rage. Depending on your opposition, you might go for moderate damage and attack rolls but very high AC, or high AC and decent damage, or moderate AC but high damage. A different variant might be a tank that sometimes fights with tower shield up, and sometimes slings the shield and goes for the big, two-handed swings.

This kind of flexibility lets you handle fights where the opposition isn't dangerous physically but needs to be killed quickly, or which is dumb but dangerous in melee but it is ok to take a few extra rounds killing them if they can only hit you on an 18+ and can't get to the rest of the party.

awa

2016-04-04, 09:15 PM

part of the problem is a lot of things can just bypass large portions of defense
that said in practice i find high ac usually isn't that big a problem, just focus on lots of small bonuses and you can match level appropriate enemies at least for low to mid level after that it gets harder and harder and more monster have ways to ignore it.

OldTrees1

2016-04-04, 09:16 PM

Shield Specialization, Combat Expertise, the Potion of Barkskin would actually stack with the AoNA, Oils of Magic Vestment, Small Size, Reduce Person

So now it costs 2 feats and your race(small size) not to mention 2 pre combat buffs(magic vestment not included due to long duration) that eats into the action economy. That is a different cost, for some that is actually more expensive that the ring + amulet.

You still are having it be quite expensive and is still not cost effective vs the 20% miss chance items(or the 50% miss chance items)

Seward

2016-04-04, 09:18 PM

Defense is a multi-layered thing.

One reason monks make decent tanks in a lot of editions is they handle the "not physical attack" stuff pretty well. They won't be dumping any of wis/dex/con, they get 3 good saves, they get various immunities and evasion, high touch AC, often fairly decent against combat maneuvers, they're reasonably mobile etc. It's like the whole class is set up to cover everything except AC (and Pathfinder gives some help there). So you can kind of focus on AC and have a nice cockroach of a character.

As long as you also remember to have a decent strength, power attack and some means of doing reasonable damage with each hit of your flurry.

Seward

2016-04-04, 09:23 PM

2 pre combat buffs(magic vestment not included due to long duration) that eats into the action economy. That is a different cost, for some that is actually more expensive that the ring + amulet.

Generally it's beneficial for an AC focused character (or one with an AC weakness that sometimes has to tank) to have a moderate number of cheap consumables to give an edge when you know you are about to kick down a door, or do something like zerg a castle or ancient tomb. If you have reliable spellcasters in the party with a few extra spell slots, or maybe you buy a pearl of power or two then you can dispense with consumables.

(I do a lot of organized play, with random party at the table, so I have a consumable bias, as you can't count on any help from spellcasters, and may not even have any at the table. It's just less expensive for the set-piece-battles when the casters do help out)

The bigger your basic permanent item+feat+class+race bonuses are, the better platform you are for spellcasting buffs or consumables, especially if you can get some of your bonuses outside of the most common categories (eg, an ioun stone +1 insight to AC for 5k is better than upgrading a ring of protection from +1 to +2, because shield of faith is pretty common, as is prot evil)

Hamste

2016-04-04, 09:24 PM

Shield Specialization, Combat Expertise, the Potion of Barkskin would actually stack with the AoNA, Oils of Magic Vestment, Small Size, Reduce Person

Actually, potion of Barkskin doesn't stack with Amulet of Natural Armor. They both provide enhancement bonuses to natural armor so they overlap.

You also just listed three spells/potions that would have to be drank right before combat and only one of those 3 might actually last multiple encounters. That is at least three rounds of set up just so you can be mildly tanky. There is also magic vestments but those at least can be used well in advance. To get just to 41 using the above listed you are using 6000 gp a day on magic vestments, 900 gp a shield of faith, 900 gp a barkskin and 250 gp a reduce person. It isn't exactly inconsequential and you get hit hard ever day you happen to not get into combat but use magic vestments or have to fight low/no loot fights. The prices go down significantly if you happen to be adventuring with a high level cleric and druid though.

Seward

2016-04-04, 09:28 PM

10(base) +5 Mithral Full Plate, +5 Tower Shield, Gloves of Dexterity +6(to get max dex bonus of +3), +5 Ring of Deflection, +5 Amulet of Natural Armor = only 41 AC and that is at the expense of opportunity costs of +4 on both armor and shield, as well as buying the expensive ring and amulet.

On the other hand 20% miss chance (equivalent of just under AC 41 vs the Solar due to 1 already being a miss) is really cheap to buy. A ring of blinking can even get a 50% miss chance IIRC.

That's a very expensive way to get to 41 AC. But how you get there is system dependent. My Pathfinder dex based halfling tank was getting into the low 40s fully buffed as early as level 7, but couldn't do it routinely from "as soon as I take my first action" until about level 13. Said tank never buffed in combat with anything that took more than a swift action to bring up, but I was pretty aggressive about doing even relatively short duration buffs if I thought trouble was coming out of combat, willing to waste wand charges or whatever when the problem didn't materialize. (eg, a wand of shield only lasts 10 rounds, but only costs 15gp per charge to precast. It really isn't a big deal past level 5 or so, especially on a character with quickdraw who can draw it, cast, sheath it and still be able to move while going down the corridor when the benefit is +4 to AC and immunity to magic missiles. The only downside is the noisy command word if you are trying to sneak.)

By level 10, even minute-duration-buffs are good for multiple encounters when the party is initiating the conflict (the zerging a castle or tomb type scenario, or scry+fry or whatever). Hell, even round-level stuff works pretty well, you can get haste to last for 2-3 encounters if your party is comfortable pushing the pace and letting searching/looting take care of itself after you've secured the area.

Miss chance stuff doesn't tend to work well against critters with true seeing, and 20% isn't really enough. It's very easy to get dead when they hit you on a 10+20% miss chance vs they hit you on a 16, especially when you consider iterative attacks and secondaries that only hit you on a 20 if you have AC, but hit you on a 15+20% miss chance otherwise. Miss chance also does nothing to mitigate power attack, where that dude in fullplate+tower shield will often get the benefit of enemies assuming they need to go easy on the power attack, just from his appearance.

PallentisLunam

2016-04-04, 09:29 PM

So now it costs 2 feats and your race(small size) not to mention 2 pre combat buffs(magic vestment not included due to long duration) that eats into the action economy. That is a different cost, for some that is actually more expensive that the ring + amulet.

You still are having it be quite expensive and is still not cost effective vs the 20% miss chance items(or the 50% miss chance items)

Regardless of how you build it it will take resources my point is that it can be done and without hamstringing your character.

And all the magic concealment in the world doesn't help against that Solar who has constant True Seeing

Damn it, ninja'd

Strigon

2016-04-04, 09:31 PM

I think the primary issue isn't with AC in particular, but rather AC when other options are considered.
For most purposes, miss chance is more cost-effective than AC, making AC less useful. Then you consider that miss chance doesn't become less useful just because enemies hit harder and it's even better.
Then there are all the touch attacks, attacks that don't even roll to hit, and area of effect. All these things render AC inefficient at best.

In short, AC does exactly what it should do, in a vacuum. It stops things from punching you. The issue becomes when things stop punching and start attacking in other ways.

OldTrees1

2016-04-04, 09:33 PM

Seward

2016-04-04, 09:35 PM

For most purposes, miss chance is more cost-effective than AC, making AC less useful. Then you consider that miss chance doesn't become less useful just because enemies hit harder and it's even better..

Miss chance is a complement to AC. It isn't a replacement. And it is not at all cheap until the very high levels unless you have a friendly caster able to provide blur for you routinely and you initiate most fights, and if you're getting that, you are likely also getting things like shield of faith and barkskin too, or at least a circle of prot evil.

To put things in perspective on cost, here's what my halfling tank spent on AC items when she hit level 12. Most of her AC comes out of class abilities, raw stats and feats.
+2 belt of dexterity (4k)
+1 ring of deflection (2k)
Jingusa of the Fortunate Soldier (5k, +1 luck to AC)
Ioun stone (5k, +1 insight)

wand of mage armor, pearl of power 1 (1.75k) +4 armor to AC
wand of shield (.75k)
Scroll of barkskinx4 (.75gp, uses UMD to activate)

maybe 20k of her wealth by level. I always add the resistance item in, she had a +3 cloak and an ioun stone that gave +1 competence to saves, so overall about 33kish of her wealth. In Pathfinder, expected WBL is 108k at level 12 (she spent far more on her weapon, boots of haste, etc)

While she only got +4 directly from her items and another +0-12 from consumables, her base AC was 26(30 with mage armor). The balance was because of a 23 base dex, size small, dodge, a couple class abilities and traits that added a couple more points.

But if she raged it went up 2 (dex increased by 4), if she fought defensively it was only -2 to hit and +6 to armor class (more feats and more than 3 ranks acrobatics), and the rage bonus canceled out her defensive attack penalty. So just acting cranked the AC up by +8. +9 if she used boots of haste. Should I actually enter battle with shield or barkskin up, I'm at 40 without even trying. And there were other situational bonuses to her AC that sometimes came up, not to mention the occasional game where she's rocking a barkskin+4 or a shield of faith+3.

If you are doing a sword+board tank in Pathfinder, the cost isn't that much higher. Typically they have 13 starting dex, to allow fitting in dodge, they'll take classes with lots of bonus feats, so dodge, shield specialization and a few other things that boost AC are part of the package, along with class abilities or traits which sneak in a little more. Pathfinder society rarely plays past level 11, so the mithril fullplate is rarely worthwhile (it's cheaper to just enchant a normal breastplate). So you'll see something more like this:

Plate+3 (10.5k)
Shield+3 (9.5k)
amulet nat armor (2k)
ring+1 (2k)
ioun stone+1 (5k)
Jingasa +1 (5k)
so again, about 31AC at rest for 34k of expense, add a +3 cloak and 43k total

But since you aren't a halfling weilding a scimitar one-handed you may not need to spend as much on offense as my little tank did.

Said tank will have shield spec, dodge, 13 dex, there are two traits that could add 2 more, and some class ability options, so maybe 36AC walking around. They'll all have 3 ranks in acrobatics so they can fight defensively for -4 to hit/+3 damage (39AC) and boots of haste (40AC).

Frankly, for L12, 40AC is more than enough for nearly all opposition, as long as you aren't somehow hitpoint fragile for the bigger melee critters. It's nice to crank it a few points higher when facing really dangerous opposition. Such a tank won't be fighting defensively all that often.

OldTrees1

2016-04-04, 09:37 PM

Miss chance is a complement to AC. It isn't a replacement. And it is not at all cheap until the very high levels unless you have a friendly caster able to provide blur for you routinely and you initiate most fights, and if you're getting that, you are likely also getting things like shield of faith and barkskin too, or at least a circle of prot evil.

12K for continuous blur. If defense is 3/4ths your WBL as is sometimes suggested, that can be purchased as part of your defense low mid level (though not high low level).

27K for on demand Blink. This is a mid level item due to its utility in addition to the defense value.

PallentisLunam

2016-04-04, 09:38 PM

Actually, potion of Barkskin doesn't stack with Amulet of Natural Armor. They both provide enhancement bonuses to natural armor so they overlap.

You also just listed three spells/potions that would have to be drank right before combat and only one of those 3 might actually last multiple encounters. That is at least three rounds of set up just so you can be mildly tanky. There is also magic vestments but those at least can be used well in advance. To get just to 41 using the above listed you are using 6000 gp a day on magic vestments, 900 gp a shield of faith, 900 gp a barkskin and 250 gp a reduce person. It isn't exactly inconsequential and you get hit hard ever day you happen to not get into combat but use magic vestments or have to fight low/no loot fights. The prices go down significantly if you happen to be adventuring with a high level cleric and druid though.

Whoops :smallbiggrin: screwed that one up.

But at high levels you will make your money back fairly quickly and like you said, especially if the buffs aren't coming out of a bottle.

My favorite miss chance items are
1) Minor Cloak (beaten by True Seeing)
2) Ring of Blinking (better miss chance and not beaten by True Seeing)

My point was that while one can heavily invest (never meant hamstring) in order to get the AC you are talking about, I can slap a Ring of Blinking on any character(caster, goliath, halfling, ghost, even a cat) for a tiny fraction of the cost(usually for other reasons entirely).

Blinking however only gets you a 20% miss chance vs the solar AND it has a 20% chance to screw you over as well. Definitely not something I would want on my character

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-04-04, 09:41 PM

My favorite miss chance items are
1) Minor Cloak (beaten by True Seeing)
2) Ring of Blinking (better miss chance and not beaten by True Seeing)

My point was that while one can heavily invest (never meant hamstring) in order to get the AC you are talking about, I can slap a Ring of Blinking on any character(caster, goliath, halfling, ghost, even a cat) for a tiny fraction of the cost(usually for other reasons entirely).I like wearing a ring of the darkhidden and casting no light, either from a cantrip slot or from a(n eternal) wand. This is the really, really cheap option, and not much can overcome it without spells.

I also like wearing a speed-boosting item and a ring of entropic deflection to ward off ranged attacks.

And though it requires several feats (albeit useful ones, both in tandem and on their own), combining Combat Reflexes, Evasive Reflexes, Karmic Strike, and lots of reach means you can basically step out of the way of any melee attack made within your AoO reach. A sparring dummy of the master and the martial stance press the advantage together mean you can move a total of 20' to avoid every melee attack made against you.

OldTrees1

2016-04-04, 09:45 PM

Whoops :smallbiggrin: screwed that one up.

But at high levels you will make your money back fairly quickly and like you said, especially if the buffs aren't coming out of a bottle.

Blinking however only gets you a 20% miss chance vs the solar AND it has a 20% chance to screw you over as well. Definitely not something I would want on my character

To each their own.

I find the ability to waste 20% of my opponent's efforts (back up to 50% for spells) to be well worth the minuscule cost relative to the comparable 41 AC. I can handle the 20% miss chance myself while I distract the opponent. Plus, I usually select the ring for its utility(which we are not measuring here).

I like wearing a ring of the darkhidden and casting no light, either from a cantrip slot or from a(n eternal) wand. This is the really, really cheap option, and not much can overcome it without spells.

I also like wearing a speed-boosting item and a ring of entropic deflection to ward off ranged attacks.

And though it requires several feats (albeit useful ones, both in tandem and on their own), combining Combat Reflexes, Evasive Reflexes, Karmic Strike, and lots of reach means you can basically step out of the way of any melee attack made within your AoO reach. A sparring dummy of the master and the martial stance press the advantage together mean you can move a total of 20' to avoid every melee attack made against you.

Good list. Personally I have avoided the ring of darkhidden because it seems to be poorly worded. But No Light seems like a reasonable interaction.

Jowgen

2016-04-04, 09:55 PM

First off, it is clear to me that the best defense period is total concealment; particularly the true-seeing-proof kind. It brings both a 50% miss-chance and breaks LoS for spell et al. My favorite combo in this regard is a Vapor Bottle (Shining South) with Pierce Magical Concealment on a non-caster. Still, AC does have it's place in some ways.

For example, I find that Touch AC always stays at least somewhat viable. There are a lot of potent (special) attacks that require a touch; including a whole category of spells, anything with Wraithstrike, and of course certain downright broken things like Aboleth Mucus. Also, from the top of my head it seems to me that most things that have touch-based abilities as their main-shtick don't have particularly amazing attack bonuses; although obviously there are exceptions. Touch AC can be hard to boost without serious investment, but I think in general its worth having it at least moderately high as an extra layer of defense.

Lastly, this old list (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?381621-List-of-ways-to-deny-enemies-X-to-AC-other-defenses) of mine (which I no longer bother sig'ing) might be of interest.

Seward

2016-04-04, 10:05 PM

My melee characters with blindfight will mess you up. Which is most of them by level 8ish.

3/4 WBL on defense, really? No, I don't advocate that. If you really want lots of defense you need to consider investing some of your build into that.

But sometimes it's easier, depending on the character class etc, to improve a character via level-up choices than via cash investment. So maybe an offense-oriented character class or archetype will spend a lot more on defense than one naturally durable that has offense trouble, if they're trying to fill the same role.

But if you ignore the benefits spells can bring you're making things much harder on yourselves. Compared to WBL, a 5% investment in consumables can make huge differences any time you are prepared for a fight, as can just having spellcasters in the party who reserve a few low level spell slots to buff their allies on a routine basis.

Then you get a character like my wizard. She's a burst-damage oriented character that draws heat after the first round, and sometimes needs to move into harms way to position optimally. Her only WBL on defense is her +1 cloak of resistance and +2 belt of constitution at level 10. She relies on spells for everything else. When prepared, she gets effectively +3-4 to saves, +6 on attack mod for her ranged touch, AC is 26(28 if evil) and is immune to some kinds of AOOs. She can keep most of that up for about a half hour, some of it lasts nearly 2 hours. When not ready, well, AC18 and behaves a lot more like a squishy wizard. However looking at her WBL, you will find a significant investment in her spellbook, and about 1/4 of her spell slots devoted to defensive buffing, all done out of combat. She never did fit in the most common miss chance spell (mirror image) because it puts a "this is a wizard kill me" sign on her head before she's had a chance to remove any of the opposition. (she looks much more like an archer). She also tends to have things like cover and distance to protect her a lot of the time, and prefers defenses that don't degrade over the course of a rapid series of intense encounters.

PallentisLunam

2016-04-04, 10:10 PM

I don't think I have ever seen or myself taken Blind-Fight in any build...

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-04-04, 10:14 PM

Multiple defending weapons stack, so wield several of them at the same time and hit 'em with a Chained greater magic weapon at higher levels, and you're golden.

Seward

2016-04-04, 10:26 PM

Blinking however only gets you a 20% miss chance vs the solar AND it has a 20% chance to screw you over as well. Definitely not something I would want on my character

Yeah. I'm not a fan of rings of blinking except on rogues (in 3.5, you get sneak attack, in Pathfinder not so much) and on characters that like to scout by moving through walls. That's kinda cool if you can't get earthglide somehow.

In Pathfinder, cloaks of displacement are hideously expensive and use the only resistance slot (there are no vests of resistance). The 20% cloak of resistance is a decent buy in higher level 3.5, but I'd be sure all the AC items are of similar cost to raise.

If you are a normal character, not one of the ones I described above that has role = "tank", AC40 is pretty much not worth the cost until higher levels. But even then it doesn't have to be all that expensive.

Consider a bog standard 3.5 core cleric with 12 starting dexterity at level 16 (or lower dex and cheap gloves of dexterity)
base 10, dex+1, fullplate+9, magic vestment+4, shield+2, magic vestment+4
For 2k total investment (mw fullplate+darkwood shield) and 2 L3 spell slots you are at AC30
You can quicken Shield of Faith, so a swift action brings you to 34, and you can devote a L1 slot as well,
plus by now you have a bag full of pearl of power 1, so you'll have it any time you expect a fight in the next 15 minutes

So to get to 40, you need only another +6. Your neck slot is used for wisdom item, so you can't have an amulet of nat armor.
But there's a bit more out there:
5k ioun stone +1
9k mithril fullplate instead of fullplate
16k gloves of dex+4

now you're only +3 short. A Potion of Barkskin CL6 can get you there. Noncore there are other sources of armor boosts.

You have so much WBL that burning 600gp for an hour-long barkskin when you expect trouble isn't a big deal, and the 30k or so on the rest of your armor is pocket change by L16. You'll still have room for miss chance stuff if you really want it.

Arcane casters have alter-self, druids wildshape...you get the idea.

Note that for every OTHER character in the party with this cleric, they can ALSO get +4 enh on armor+shield if they pay 9k for pearl of power 3, 18k if they have a shield to enchant. That's cheaper than actually enchanting the armor/shield or allows non-enhancement bonuses on the item.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-04, 10:28 PM

One little-appreciated aspect about the AC debate is how much it is influenced by magic item availability. In Living Greyhawk 3.0, a lot of players thought that AC was pointless because in the early days, finding any magic items was a huge struggle. Characters with 30-50% of wealth by level were pretty common. Now, you can carry on offense at low levels (1-7, etc) on a good strength score, rage, weapon specialization, and/or sneak attack, but it's hard to get an adequate defense without normal wealth by level. By the time the campaign transitioned to 3.5, it had sorted out some of those issues and was a lot closer to normal wealth by level. And getting AC to effective levels was entirely possible and useful at that point.

The other way that items play into the AC equation is by boosting offense. Items like armbands of might, counterstrike bracers, the energy or holy weapon enhancements, or the ring of thunderclaps benefit one-handed weapon users a lot. Two handed weapon users like the ability to pile even more damage onto what they already had, but they don't need miscellaneous damage boosting items to elevate their damage output to "effective" levels. One-handed weapon users generally do need that assist.

That said, it's entirely possible to get an adequate AC. (And it is somewhat misleading to do the comparison at 20th level too since the basic +5 shield/+5 mithral armor/ as much dex as you need/ioun stone/boots of speed/dodge/etc, +5 ring of protection/amulet are easily affordable by 16th level at the latest (or nearly duplicable by magic). After that point, AC tends to stall out because you can't normally get +6 items).

3.5 +5 mithral fullplate +13, +5 heavy shield +7, natural armor +5, Deflection +5, Dex +3 (mithral fullplate and dex gloves as needed), insight +1 (ioun stone), haste +1 (boots of speed)= AC 45 with only minimal effort. Temporary boosts such as +2/3 luck from Recitation, additional natural armor from alter self, the dodge feat, small size, Combat Expertise, etc can easily boost that to AC 55 or more (all of the above would be at least 61).
3.p +5 mithral fullplate +14, +5 heavy shield +7, natural armor +5, deflection +5, Dex +7 (including +4 armor training--that said, it might be hard to actually get dex that high on most fighters), insight +1 (ioun stone), luck +2 (jingasa of the fortunate soldier with fate's favored trait), trait +1 (defender of the society trait), haste +1 (boots of speed)=54 before figuring in things like the Dodge feat, Combat Expertise, Shield focus, greater shield focus, etc.

So, it's quite possible to have a very good AC. In pathfinder, it is possible to make the average monster of your character level need a 20 to hit you even when you're level 20 and without using Combat Expertise, etc.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/monsterCreation.html
shows average high attack bonus on a CR 20 monster as +30. Our sword and board guy above can handle that even without the extra +4 max dex from armor training or spending any feats (though he will need one feat or small size if he has no fighter levels since Defender of the Society requires you to be a fighter).

Now that said, AC will often get a bad rap because a lot of people focus on AC to the exclusion of other things.
1. AC is only one of your defenses. By the time you reach mid levels, you can expect to have to make saving throws, resist grapples, avoid ranged, incorporeal, and normal touch attacks, and generally have a balanced and layered set of defenses. If the bad guy needs a nat 20 to hit you with a sword but touch attacks automatically hit, you'll be sorry when you run into shadows (or a bad touch cleric). And if you have lousy saving throws, you'll be turned to stone or roasted by breath weapons. (And by mid-high levels, you'll want a source of re-rolls for your saves even if it's just a no-wishes luckblade tucked into your belt as a backup weapon). And if you can't resist grapples, you'll get swallowed whole or immobilized by black tentacles.
2. You need to have a good offense. If you have great defenses but don't deal enough damage to quickly kill your foes, they will ignore you and kill your dangerous friends then gang up on you later. Even if the monster don't kill your friends, the character without level appropriate offense is often dead weight in the party. The monsters don't attack him and he doesn't do enough damage to make a difference to the outcome. The key is to have enough offense that you can wreck the enemy if they ignore you and enough offense that they can't afford to take AoOs from you.

Le Petit Mort from the pathfinder boards has a pretty good analysis of pathfinder target numbers for effective damage, AC, etc here:
https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/bench-pressing-character-creation-by-the-numbers/
Green (or even blue) offense and green or blue AC is quite doable, but it does require some effort for the character.

Bobby Baratheon

2016-04-04, 10:41 PM

Pumping constitution (stacking templates, items, etc) and going fist of the forest/deepwarden can get you massive amounts of AC by adding your constitution bonus to AC twice. One replaces your Dex (meh), and the other functions as the monk class feature but with Constitution. With natural armor, bracers of armor and other goodies you easily pump your AC. I once had an AC higher than forty on an unarmored dwarf of level 7.

EDIT: it's a very specific build path, though, and might not be palatable for everyone. Also, as mentioned above, AC is only a partial defense. You still need saves, and miss chances on top of that are always nice.

OldTrees1

2016-04-04, 10:55 PM

3/4 WBL on defense, really? No, I don't advocate that. If you really want lots of defense you need to consider investing some of your build into that.

Sorry, that was a copy paste typo. I meant 3/8ths as per PHBII. (they list it as 3/4ths of the remaining after spending 1/2 on offense)

Seward

2016-04-04, 11:15 PM

Just read what Elder Basilisk said again, and pretend I said it. Agree 100%. I've been in home campaigns where we just learned how to use the "air barrier" because defensive items just weren't available and there was no downtime to craft any. Not even things like heavy armor.

By level 16 when the basic, core items run out of juice, you have more scope to simply have buffs running nearly all the time or nearly so, and more feats, class abilities and whatnot to keep moving things onward and upward. in the 17-20 game, inherent bonuses from Wish to attributes start becoming cost-effective.

But no matter what, you need to matter in a fight. I've played plenty of support oriented characters that aren't the source of damage, buffers, debuffers, battlefield controllers, healers and a mix of all, but even they are well served to have at least a couple things they can do a day to finish off a wounded enemy. Even better, if you find yourself in a party full of other support characters, if you can reconfigure yourself into offense that's a big help (prepared casters of all kinds, or things like Pathfinder Spirit Shamen have a lot of options, lacking such things maybe just rarely tapped consumables). There isn't any point in having any kind of defense if your actions don't matter, because you'll only be targeted by AOE's and by accident.

While it is possible to contribute a bit with a wizard who's out of spells, or a TWF rogue in the elemental encounter (In Order of the Stick, Haley contributing her hitpoints to the cause by drawing the elemental's fire is an example of this), you don't want that to be your normal state.

HunterOfJello

2016-04-04, 11:23 PM

AC is very useful at low levels and then becomes much less useful at higher levels as you both fail to keep increasing it versus the attack scores and the enemies start being primarily dangerous for reasons that bypass and ignore AC completely.

A great higher level tank would need amazing AC, amazing saves, tons of immunities, and more. And yet even after all of that an enemy can still shoot a SLA over your head and blast all of your friends behind you anyway.

Seward

2016-04-04, 11:40 PM

A great higher level tank would need amazing AC, amazing saves, tons of immunities, and more.

Well, yeah. The point is that if you work at it a bit, it can be done, while still having "green" level offense. Not the best in the party, but solid and reliable, and you can afford to take a little longer to kill the enemy. It's also easier on your allies, because they don't have to protect you with battlefield control, heal you or rescue you from a bad situation. They only have to worry about themselves.

Which leads to....

And yet even after all of that an enemy can still shoot a SLA over your head and blast all of your friends behind you anyway.

My experience is a well built tank will end up fighting some of the encounter by themselves. This is easier to do if you don't look like a tank, oddly. (my halfling looks and acts exactly like a raging barbarian who stupidly charges into the middle of enemies). Because of this the rest of your party gets action economy in a way familiar to people good at battlefield control, and unlike battlefield control, when your buddies are done with the rest of the encounter, you've got your focus target dead too.

If your party really sucks, well...once the bad guys actually took my party members hostage to get me to stop fighting. We negotiated a "both sides back off and leave" situation, which wasn't ideal, but better than the alternative.

You can also do quite a bit to enable other party members, who need things like flanks or clumped up enemies to function (yeah, just drop the fireball on my tank. She'll be fine!). My favorite being the time I ran forward, the enemies who had a bunch of swarm-fighting and flanking teamwork feats collapsed on me. Then the whirlwind-attack-trip-fighter moved forward. A flurry of spells later that bounced off the tank but got the trip fighter was wasted when the party cleric undid the whirlwind fighter's status effects.

Then he proceeded to trip everybody, and hit them, and also had a feat that made them provoke AOO's when tripped. This was the only time my dex-tank-fighter ever got to use ALL of her combat reflex AOOs. That was just made of awesome, as the two of us ended surrounded by unconscious bodies (my own full attack finished off the stragglers). The GM just rolled her eyes and was like "well, that was their tactics. They just hit the wrong team".

Seward

2016-04-04, 11:49 PM

I don't think I have ever seen or myself taken Blind-Fight in any build...

It starts to be pretty useful around level 7 when you encounter a ton of wizards who favor mirror image, or invisibility or blur or darkness or fog effects. Given that in Pathfinder society, an 8k ioun stone of wisdom plus a 250gp wayfinder can get you the feat for a moderate amount of cash, it's more common than other places (the wisdom being helpful for the will save and perception, even if you don't have something like a monk AC bonus or ranger spellcasting that you want to boost).

It's a fairly common feat after you've got your basic feat mix nailed down, and your problem isn't defense, but handling special situation offense. It's also extremely common for the "martial flexibility" classes, because taking a move action to slot it in is worthwhile if you'll hit a lot more often for the rest of the fight.

I've got characters that use scrolls of see invisible instead, or my wizard who uses echolocation once she turned level 9, but being able to cope with concealment is a super-common problem, at least after 5th level. Yes, sometimes a dispel or glitterdust or faerie fire or something will bail you out, but again, in organized play, you can't rely on any of that, so you want to have your own plan.

Also every archer in the universe has improved precise shot by level 11-12, and in Pathfinder, they have it by level 6 if a ranger or a zen archer monk, so the 20% concealment is just not useful on a large category of foes. Given that true seeing is only a 5th level cleric spell/6th level wiz spell and very common among outsiders, I'd be pretty cautious about relying on concealment. If you go noncore, the options increase rapidly, as blindsight isn't especially hard to work in in the 11-20 game, via spell or item.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-05, 01:45 AM

Well, yeah. The point is that if you work at it a bit, it can be done, while still having "green" level offense. Not the best in the party, but solid and reliable, and you can afford to take a little longer to kill the enemy. It's also easier on your allies, because they don't have to protect you with battlefield control, heal you or rescue you from a bad situation. They only have to worry about themselves.

Definitely this. One of my favorite 3.5 characters I played was a halfling monk/fighter/paladin/pious templar (halfling to tone down the ridiculousness of the combo just a little bit--and to add humiliation to her enemies' defeat). Ridiculous saves, evasion, mettle, a pretty darn good AC (longsword and heavy shield with high enhancement, mithral breastplate with high enhancement, enough dex to max out the bonus, small size, etc), improved grapple and close quarters fighting to stop grapples, elusive target to stop power attacks, and... surprisingly good damage between a holy, green starmetal sword, judicious use of power attack, divine might, smite, weapon specialization, melee weapon mastery, counterstrike bracers, and a ring of thunderclaps (she'd use an unarmed strike to deliver the touch attack, so it was really a ring of "get an extra, slightly less effective attack 4/day").

I never ran her offense numbers through any kind of comparison, but she was pretty effective offensively (in one scenario, she killed some kind of advanced Glabrezu member of Iuz's boneheart in hand to hand in the middle of an anti-magic field without much help from the rest of the party (who did useful things like put up the anti-magic field to keep the other bonehearts from killing us all)). The defensive abilities she had meant she wasn't generally sucking up a heal spell from the cleric in round 2, so that action could be bolt of glory or something similar. They also enabled her to sometimes run past the enemy lines (I loved finding a way to give my dodge buddy a flanking AoO then use elusive target to make him hit the guy he was flanking with) and start hacking enemy spellcasters to death without worrying overly much about being cut off from the rest of the party. Counterintuitively, defensive skills enabled me to use more aggressive strategies with the character than I would have been able to do with some other characters. I wasn't worried about maximized flamestrikes or disintegrates. I could survive a few physical attacks. And even if a gargantuan zombie shark bit me, there was a good chance I'd beat his grapple check on the Improved Grab.

Eldariel

2016-04-05, 02:16 AM

The deal with AC is that it's generally not efficient to invest gold in it. It's a limited defense: high AC stops some warriors, animals/vermin/dumb-irrelevant-enemies-you-can-just-be-smart-against, some magical beasts and that's about it. It doesn't stop touch attacks, fort-save targeting attacks, reflex-save targeting attacks or will-save targeting attacks, nor does it stop effects with no hit or save (e.g. cave-ins, lava floods, tornadoes or such; standard fare with magic), and unless you invest in it heavily, it does a worse job vs. the relevant of those enemy types than miss chance generally does.

Generally, high AC is a nice bonus but only if you aren't gimping your offense and utility for it. Spending 50% of your wealth on AC for example is a no-no; you're essentially getting nothing vs. caster types, many monsters (that prefer combat maneuvers), anything with Wraithstrike, incorporeals, etc. and even the enemies AC works against generally have ways of at the very least casting True Strike (a bloody 1st level spell) to probably hit you with slight extra effort. I generally get +1 Ghost Ward armor and animated shield and then acquire Magic Vestment and some other buffs and that's the extent of my AC investment even on a level 20 character - if I further enhance it, it's for special abilities (Soulfire, Greater Fortifications, etc.).

You just get much more for your gold if you invest it in basically anything else. Since you have limited amounts of gold, investing it in AC is a fool's errand. HP is a much better defense as is "not being there to be hit", and saves are generally more critical and cheaper (every save has its share of "save or you're ****ed"-effects). Then just immunities. It's perfectly possible to acquire immunity to damage which makes AC even more pointless.

Take the Solar you mentioned for instance. Sure, a Solar only has +35 to hit. It also has 9th level magic however - if it wants, it can buff its to hit midway through the +50 region. It can also attack with magic instead of weapons (Wish is a pretty strong spell for example). It can also e.g. Miracle or Wish basically any buff in any book if it feels like it. So the +35 is just the tip of the iceberg. In general, any humanoid enemy powers you face will be made up at least partially of casters.

That said, a caster in a party (or 4) makes it easy to get high AC with spells. Which is totally worth it 'cause the spells you use for it eventually go into slots you don't want offensive spells in anyways (or come as side-benefits of spells like Shapechange, or last forever like Polymorph Any Object). You can get AC near 100 by level 20 with a caster, more in a party of mixed casters. That's nice, even if it only protects you vs. one category of attacks (generally the least relevant one). No real reason not to, especially since you can make much of it work vs. touch/incorporeal as well.

If I were to rate the various defenses a character could have, it'd be like this:

Best
Immunity (to whatever you're facing)/Expendable bodies/Instant revival/etc.
Immediate mobility/Contingencies/Active defense
Saves + Rerolls
Miss Chances/Untouchability (incorporeality/etherealness/invisibility/etc.)
Touch AC
HP/Durability
AC
Worst

It's just...if something intelligent wants to hit you, it will use some completion item of True Strike/Wraithstrike/whatever and hit you. Or cast a spell/spell completion/whatever at you instead. You'll need to be really high up the AC ladder to make them not hit you; there are far fewer ways to bypass e.g. Regeneration, Delay Death, Astral Projection, or company. You'll have much less to worry about if they can't affect you or if they can't see you or if they can't hit the square you're in. Thus, a character with limited magic item budget would do well to focus on the things that protect you from the most dangerous adversaries, rather than the ones you'd use vs. grunts/summons. Particularly since battlefield tactics can compensate for having to deal with grunts fairly efficiently (just summon things to stop 'em/use higher reach weapon and trip 'em/etc.).

If you can get high AC for cheap or free, go ahead! Better AC is always nice. But if you have to choose between e.g. high AC or immunity to damage, I think they choice is rather obvious.

AvatarVecna

2016-04-05, 02:39 AM

I won't say AC sucks, because it doesn't, but optimizing AC beyond a certain point is pointless; the difference between AC 100 and AC 100000 pre-epic is non-existent (most anything will only hit either AC on a natural 20). The issue most people have with optimizing AC is that it focuses on one particular portion of one particular attack method. In order to successfully deal damage with a targeted ability (weapon, attack spell, etc), you have to:
Target the person you wish to hurt
Hit on the attack roll
Deal enough damage to bypass any damage defenses they possess

The third point (about dealing enough damage to bypass damage mitigation) is easy to accomplish; most characters don't have any such defense like DR or regeneration or Fast Healing or insubstantiality, and those that do rarely have very much of it (and it can usually be bypassed in some way, like with a specific damage type). Creatures are more likely to have such defenses, but they too tend not to have them too high either. For a defender, resisting damage is best done with either high numbers or (more commonly) having an immunity. Immunity to fire is more common than immunity to HP damage, to be sure, but both exist in the game, as does immunity to dying.

The second point is simple AC optimization; there's a lot of ways to optimize AC, but it's all ultimately based on the attack roll. No matter how crappy your AC is, even the most skilled warrior in existence can miss on a natural 1, and no matter how godly your AC is, even the puniest shaky weakling hits you on a natural 20. Defenders have to worry about attacks target their Touch, FF, and standard AC, with Touch AC being the most commonly problematic one to optimize. AC can get pumped pretty high, but pumping it past a certain point is wasted resources, because you've reached the point where nothing can hit you except with a nat 20, and pumping it higher isn't going to improve those odds.

The first point is where most defenses against attacks come from: namely, not getting successfully targeted. Some ways of getting around this involve not being viable targets (being out of weapon range, for instance), while some ways involve making it difficult to impossible to target you (various sources of miss chance, such as concealment, cover, the Blink spell, etc), while some ways involve tricking them into not targeting you at all (illusions, feats that make an enemy accidentally target another enemy standing next to you, spells that teleport-switch you with that enemy's ally, etc). There's a lot of ways to optimize this part of your defenses, probably as many (if not more than) there are ways to optimize AC. But even assuming such things are equally common, this one is still considered better by optimizers because the ability to avoid being targeted is useful for defending against all kinds of things, whether they require an attack roll against AC or not.

AoEs don't care about AC (they care about saves instead), but they still have to care about Line of Sight, Cover, and actually targeting the people you're trying to hit; an Obscuring Mist prevents a caster from centering a fireball close enough to you to hit you, cover makes you more likely to survive the explosion, and being invisible while there's an illusion of you 50 ft over yonder are all things that can keep your butt from getting Fireball'd. Single-target SoDs usually go for saves and/or SR instead of touch attacks, but even the ones that don't require an attack roll at all still require Line of Sight/Effect, and so it still gets gimped by things like a character who can take out-of-turn movement to move back around the corner out of sight, or things like a character being invisible. The classic high-op example is a wizard who can't be killed because he sends out a clone to adventure for him while he's sitting in a private demiplane that can't be scried/plane shifted/teleported into, in a building warded to hell and back, with dozens of long-term buff spells that make him basically untouchable (and immune to everything); his AC might be somewhere in the 4 digit range, but even if his AC was 10 he'd still be basically impossible to affect.

EDIT: I also like that a Solar with True Seeing is being brought up as the reason why non-AC defenses aren't that good. Ignoring that...
things like cover and concealment aren't affected by True Seeing
True Seeing isn't that common of an ability (unless your DM has a tendency to throw high-level mages at you)
there's ways to affect those with True Seeing (Gnome Wizard 10 can take an ACF to make True Seeing susceptible to SR-penetrating CL checks)
there's ways to make True Seeing a hindrance (making an illusion spell with the Invisible Spell metamagic creates an illusion that can only be detected by someone with True Seeing...which they're pretty not to attempt to disbelieve, since they have True Seeing up and think they auto-penetrate all illusions)

...you still have to deal with the fact that a Solar isn't going to be extraordinarily hindered by a character with a high AC, because they still have casting as a Cleric 20, not to mention a laundry list of SLAs.

Gruftzwerg

2016-04-05, 02:50 AM

To put it simple:

- Don't put to much resources into AC, cause it will limit and punish you to much in other areas. Try, to get Blur/Displacement and some DR instead. This will make you really tanky.

- Don't dump AC if you are the frontline, cause you will eat most of the Power Attacks, and a decent AC helps to migrate these otherwise insane damage spikes.

Willie the Duck

2016-04-05, 07:14 AM

Jormengand

2016-04-05, 08:59 AM

My main problem with AC is that it doesn't usually scale very well with level. A first-level wizard hits another, identical first-level wizard, with a ranged weapon, on a 10. A 20th-level wizard hits another, identical 20th level wizard, with a ranged weapon, on a 2, and that's only because you can't hit on a 1 or even so much as roll a 0 in the first place. If you want to increase your AC, you have to buy equipment; it won't just get better as you get better. This is odd, when your hit points, attack bonus, and saves all increase.

What this means is that at low levels, you can afford to get massive armour boosts (by level 3, you should have enough wealth for a comfortable AC 23, which a fighter hits on 20-STR or 20-DEX) but at high levels, getting enough AC to stop a fighter hitting you is extremely expensive. It's a lot easier just to focus on doing something that stops the fighter attacking you in the first place (something something total concealment something something).

Max Caysey

2016-04-05, 09:44 AM

Spells like wraithstrike or even limited wish negades the use for armor. There are so mane applications where autohits negates armor. Grappling too.

Lerondiel

2016-04-05, 10:38 AM

How well a high AC build works in practice is very dependent on the nature of the campaign, other PCs and the DM.

DMs regularly alter CRs and styles of opponents when they see a character rarely hit in combat - 'not being challenged' or 'boringly untouchable'. The game can devolve into a thinly veiled battle of DM vs AC....with a bizarre frequency of enemy grapplers, rust monsters, swarms etc and often other PCs as collateral damage.

I've seen tanks emerge from 30+ combat rounds of attrition to realise their entire party went unconscious and bled out minutes before.

But in other situations with heavy close quarter dungeon crawling against hordes of unsophisticated brutes, casters can find an AC-on-legs the perfect ally.

So there's plenty of scope for success or failure, love or hate.

After exploring defensive builds, you tend to get back to the base equation:

A highly successful encounter is one where a credible threat is overcome while depleting minimal party resources.

AC obviously protects one resource - HP, but as mentioned earlier miss chance is the better defence, and class features boost AC far more effectively than typical WBL can.

In some parties healing is scarce so AC is extremely valuable, while others have it coming out the wazoo and plan aggressive tactics around losing most HP every encounter.

Eldariel

2016-04-05, 10:47 AM

DMs regularly alter CRs and styles of opponents when they see a character rarely hit in combat - 'not being challenged' or 'boringly untouchable'. The game can devolve into a thinly veiled battle of DM vs AC....with a bizarre frequency of enemy grapplers, rust monsters, swarms etc and often other PCs as collateral damage.

I've seen tanks emerge from 30+ combat rounds of attrition to realise their entire party went unconscious and bled out minutes before.

But in other situations with heavy close quarter dungeon crawling against hordes of unsophisticated brutes, casters can find an AC-on-legs the perfect ally.

So there's plenty of scope for success or failure, love or hate.

I find it generally ties more to the world. If magic, magical creatures and casters are common (e.g. Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms), chances are spell-defenses are more important than physical defenses. If magic is rare and casters are an anomaly and perhaps the ties to auxiliary planes are heavily choked (many homebrew low-magic settings), you can expect to face mostly physical creatures and then all you really need to worry about are AC, touch AC, HP, combat maneuvers, and some anomalous casters.

The one constant though is that casters are generally offensively more dangerous than physical types - spells that kill on a single success (failed save/touch hit) are generally more common among enemies than attacks that kill in a single hit (though in a sufficiently polarized world, this equation might change as well). There are also more ways to protect yourself from attacks than from spells, generally. These two reasons are why I'd generally give more significant consideration to anti-caster defenses than to AC in particular (though summons, simulacrums & al. guarantee that you'll need to make sure you have some plan to survive physical attackers in basically any scenario).

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-05, 02:19 PM

EDIT: I also like that a Solar with True Seeing is being brought up as the reason why non-AC defenses aren't that good. Ignoring that...
things like cover and concealment aren't affected by True Seeing
True Seeing isn't that common of an ability (unless your DM has a tendency to throw high-level mages at you)
there's ways to affect those with True Seeing (Gnome Wizard 10 can take an ACF to make True Seeing susceptible to SR-penetrating CL checks)
there's ways to make True Seeing a hindrance (making an illusion spell with the Invisible Spell metamagic creates an illusion that can only be detected by someone with True Seeing...which they're pretty not to attempt to disbelieve, since they have True Seeing up and think they auto-penetrate all illusions)

...you still have to deal with the fact that a Solar isn't going to be extraordinarily hindered by a character with a high AC, because they still have casting as a Cleric 20, not to mention a laundry list of SLAs.

1. Cover and concealment are not especially relevant or universally available either. +4 AC from stepping behind a pillar/tree/corner is not going to make a difference unless your AC is decent already. And sources of concealment that are not illusions (minor cloak of displacement is an illusion) are generally not always on (you usually have to cast fog cloud/etc and you can't dive into bushes in most dungeons) and often protect your enemy as well as you. Also, both are negated by Improved Precise Shot which is to be expected on enemy archers past level 11 or so. (Not that every enemy is an archer--just that cover/concealment isn't likely to help against the archers you do face).

2. If you peruse the high CR monsters in the monster manual or bestiary, a lot of them have true seeing. (My estimate is that it's something like 20-25% with another 10-15% having blindsight or some similar way to foil invisibility). The following is a non-exhaustive list compiled in 10 minutes or so of looking through the bestiaries. A lot more have see invisibility, blindsight, tremorsense/blindsense, blindfight, or other abilities that will mitigate invisibility, blinking, and other common non-AC defenses.
True Seeing: Balor, marilith, glabrezu, nalfeshnee, Erinyes, planetar, solar, ghaele (on spells typically prepared list), purrodaemon (pathfinder), Qlippoth-Thulgant (Pathfinder), Thrae Queen (pathfinder), grim reaper (pathfinder); blindsense: all dragons, nightcrawler; Tremorsense/Blindsight, Formorian Queen, astral leviathan (pathfinder), earth elementals in pathfinder (but not 3.5), Shoggoth (pathfinder); Blindfight: Winterwight (at least in pathfinder)

Enough monsters (including nearly all the high end demons though not many devils) have true seeing that relying on illusionary effects to keep you from being targeted is a pretty risky bet. (And a number of the monsters that do not have it have some abilities to get it--a pit fiend could use his wish ability for example and Rakshasa often have class levels).

3. OK, a particular gnome wizard with an obscure alternate class feature can make true seeing a sometimes thing. I'm not sure how this makes a cloak of displacement or the displacement spell work for a paladin or a human wizard--or even a gnome wizard who didn't take that specific build. But I guess it's good for that gnome.

4. I'm not seeing how this invisible spell metamagic helps the rogue with a ring of blinking or the cleric with a cloak of displacement. Heck, I'm not even seeing how it helps the wizard with the invisible spell feat and the right spell prepared in most situations. It might let him add an illusionary wall to his fortress or set up an ambush but it's not going to make his contingent greater mirror image any more effective against a balor.

5. A lot of the things that defeat AC also defeat non-AC defenses? Ghostform? A ghost touch weapon does it. Displacement/invisibilty/mirror image? True Strike defeats them too. Since a lot of non-AC defenses are spells (and to be fair, a lot of AC defenses rely on spells like magic vestment etc too), Greater Dispel Magic/Chain Dispel/Reaving Dispel/etc are just as likely to strip them as they are to strip the AC based defenses.

6. While a lot of this discussion suffers from the Playground's fixation on level 20 and above/everyone is playing a Schroedinger's wizard/all exploits printed in the most obscure dragon magazine article or splatbook are available syndrome, it should be pointed out that AC is more important for characters who are focused on or frequently involved in melee combat. While the wizard who is summoning monsters or casting spells may want to focus on non-AC defenses more than AC, the barbarian/paladin/warblade/CoDzilla whatever who is mashing enemies with his greatsword/longsword cannot generally afford to have a subpar AC. Against a character with good saves and appropriate magical defenses, who is attacking in melee, the most effective way for monsters to deal damage is often a full attack (with power attack, etc). For those characters, AC is definitely not at the bottom of the defensive totem pole.

Since the solar has been our example, an unbuffed solar who hits with every attack with his greatsword will do 114 damage. (Much more if buffed or power attacking). If he uses his bow, that's 54 damage and four (easy) fortitude saves or die. If he uses firestorm, he does an average of 70 damage across the area (which may or may not be more dangerous to the party as a whole depending upon reflex saves and evasion, fire resistance, and other non-AC defenses). Destruction is a save or die but a character fighting a solar should have defenses against death effects and enough save bonuses that it is most likely just 35 points of damage or less. There are lots of things the solar can do other than direct offense but the most likely way that the solar actually kills a well built level appropriate character is to go CoDzilla on him and the best defense against that is to have an AC that the solar can't afford to power attack and only hits once or twice on a full attack.

7. A lot of discussion also assumes that there has to be huge offensive sacrifice in order to obtain effective AC. The numbers don't bear that out--especially in the context of a cooperative game where allied spellcasters with barkskin, shield of faith, magic circle, and holy aura can substitute for the expensive deflection and natural armor bonuses. Magic armor and shields are cheap, as are a lot of the miscellaneous AC boosts like the rose prism ioun stone. Once we ascertain that you're not going to be stuck with a +3 sword instead of a +7 sword because you have +5 armor and a +5 shield, the (relatively low) level of sacrifice involved becomes a lot more clear (at most, it's a +5 sword instead of a +7 sword and that's assuming the guy with the sword sticks with masterwork armor).

One of the interesting things that I discovered when benchmarking a boring pathfinder fighter with numbers feats against a barbarian was that a sword and board fighter is not actually very far behind the barbarian in terms of average damage per round vs equal CR opponents. (I didn't analyze more situational classes like paladin, swashbuckler, cavalier, etc; my expectation is that rage and challenge etc result in more damage than rage but they are, generally, limited to one target and have more limited uses; without their abilities, those classes will a lot further be behind the raging greatsword barbarian if they go sword and board; I expect 3.5's ecclectic mix of multiclass mutts and swordsages are harder to benchmark (more so since the single class barbarian or fighter with a greatsword is a less useful comparison point), but my experience suggests that well constructed mutts don't need to be very far behind that damage curve. That said, the comparison isn't terribly useful in 3.5 since sooner or later everyone animates their shield and uses both hands for fighting so by the time you hit high levels there really isn't much of a design tradeoff between AC and offense).

Waazraath

2016-04-06, 08:45 AM

How well a high AC build works in practice is very dependent on the nature of the campaign, other PCs and the DM.

This is very important in this discussion, I think. It's tricky and difficult to make generalized statements of the use of AC, because everybody's opinion is strongly influenced by personal experience. If that experience is mostly high or low level, with casters or martials, with a DM that favours incorporal undead or heavy hitting giants, is often descisive for how one looks at it. Of course, we can all theorize on how things work outside our own experiences, but in general, experiences colour our opinions much more.

Having said this, I do have a rather strong opinion on the question of the OP, "why all the hate for AC". Based on my own experiences as a player and a forum reader (where I did encounter this attitude as well), the answers are for me:
1) group think
2) lack off system mastery.

Let my explain. A lot of reasonalble objections can be made against the usefulness of AC. A lot of them have been made here as well, in this thread. The investment that is often required in WBL. The lack of usefulness against touch attacks. The (cheaper) alternatives, like miss chance. The fact that AC alone is not very useful, but only as part in a multi layerd defense. And all this is true.

But then you have the internet, and people without actual playing experience and / or less system mastery, who simply echo what they (think) they hear. And that leads to much less intelligent statements, AC suxorz, it's no use, play a caster and use mirror image that's much better!!1! Especially in a game environment (3.x) where there already is a strong bias against martials (for whom AC is more important, since they are in the front lines) and in favour of casters (who have much easier acces to miss chances and other effects). And often, as Elder_Basilisk also correctly noticed, the theorizing includes a lot of high level examples, and wizards that always have the correct spell, and it is assumed the correct spells are always memorized and often even already casted before an encounter begins. While in actual play a fifth level wizard who walks around in the wilderniss with a party can just as easily be surprised, get his lowly armored butt kicked in the surprise round, and then needs to be the waste of space in round 1 of combat because he needs to speld a lvl 2 spell on mirror image.

AC is a very handy somthing to have. Also at the higher levels, even if your moderately high AC doesn't stop the first hit of the giant with the huge club, it may stop the second, and probably will stop the third and fourth. Add in a layered defense, with a cloack of displacement and a little DR (overrated in my opinion, since the amount is rarely enough to make a true impact, less then a missed attack due to AC in any case). As for touch attacks: a lot of AC modifiers also help against touch attacks. It's just a matter of getting the right kind of AC boost. In my experience, a simple feat like protection devotion extremely improves the survivability of a party; in such a party, having your own character upgrade its AC a few points more above the average, leads to many encounters with relevant ECL that hardly hit at all.

But again, ymmv; if you encounter mostly casters, pit traps, and breath weapons, you end up with a totally different conclusion.

OldTrees1

2016-04-06, 08:57 AM

Having said this, I do have a rather strong opinion on the question of the OP, "why all the hate for AC". Based on my own experiences as a player and a forum reader (where I did encounter this attitude as well), the answers are for me:
1) group think
2) lack off system mastery.

Let me explain. A lot of reasonalble objections can be made against the usefulness of AC. A lot of them have been made here as well, in this thread. The investment that is often required in WBL. The lack of usefulness against touch attacks. The (cheaper) alternatives, like miss chance. The fact that AC alone is not very useful, but only as part in a multi layerd defense. And all this is true.

But then you have the internet, and people without actual playing experience and / or less system mastery, who simply echo what they (think) they hear. And that leads to much less intelligent statements, AC suxorz, it's no use, play a caster and use mirror image that's much better!!1!

I think your answer here is a fairly good general answer for argumentation on the internet. This video will make you angry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc) goes more in depth on this phenomena.

Vhaidara

2016-04-06, 09:17 AM

Snowbluff

2016-04-06, 09:33 AM

I think your answer here is a fairly good general answer for argumentation on the internet. This video will make you angry (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc) goes more in depth on this phenomena.
Yep.

I agree with the quote content as well. AC is fine, and really to optimize for some cases, just don't blow all of your money on it.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-06, 09:55 AM

Another point that hasn't been mentioned is that AC is not a good stat if you want to tank. Because if you have an AC of 7698, but do 1d10+3 damage because all of your investment went into AC, your enemy will never hit you. Not because of your AC. Because why would you attack the heavily armored mosquito when his friend next to him is pointed a railgun at your face and is made of tissue paper (the ubercharging barbarian with AC 20 and 17d10+567 damage)? The one who is more dangerous is significantly easier to kill

The big question is going to be, "What are you going to do with your AC?" If the answer is, "be on the battlefield and not die" then you need to rethink the plan. Staying home also lets you not die and if your entire contribution to the party is "not dying," staying home is just as useful. On the other hand, if your high AC enables you to survive standing toe to toe with a troll so that he doesn't get at your more vulnerable party members and survive running past two fire giants to smack down the enemy wizard, that's a lot more useful. But you have to be able to do enough damage that the troll doesn't want to just run past you either and you have to be able to actually smack down that wizard or you are a very survivable bag of uselessness.

Willie the Duck

2016-04-06, 12:55 PM

But then you have the internet, and people without actual playing experience and / or less system mastery, who simply echo what they (think) they hear. And that leads to much less intelligent statements, AC suxorz, it's no use, play a caster and use mirror image that's much better!!1! Especially in a game environment (3.x) where there already is a strong bias against martials (for whom AC is more important, since they are in the front lines) and in favour of casters (who have much easier acces to miss chances and other effects). And often, as Elder_Basilisk also correctly noticed, the theorizing includes a lot of high level examples, and wizards that always have the correct spell, and it is assumed the correct spells are always memorized and often even already casted before an encounter begins. While in actual play a fifth level wizard who walks around in the wilderniss with a party can just as easily be surprised, get his lowly armored butt kicked in the surprise round, and then needs to be the waste of space in round 1 of combat because he needs to speld a lvl 2 spell on mirror image.

I hate to promote the idea that people on the internet are full of it mentality because no one actually uses the "suxorz", and the "!!1!"s and we all think it's everyone but us who's the internet bad guy. But... I really do agree. A lot of the stuff people bring up in the general theme of "3e-breaks-down-on..." involves comparisons that do not fit my experience of the game as really played (which will vary wildly, I know). In general, at the levels we play, my group has not run into the situations that people usually describe (batman wizards always outshine the martials and has the right spells prepared, druids are best at everything, clerics never have to act as heal batteries, everything is on a 15-minute workday, etc.). One of those is AC. AC can be a solid defense, and building a character with significant investment in it can work. The system just doesn't make it easy.

BAB scales automatically, yet AC takes lots of time and effort. After the first 23 AC (I'm thinking the reasonable max for fighter with plate, tower shield, and Dex 12), improving your AC is either a serious investment in feats and class features, or highly dependent on how conveniently you can turn your WBL into optimized gear (magic marts, y/n?, etc.). Likewise, AoO make rushing past the low damage output tank to get to the squishy party members a difficult choice, it certainly doesn't make it a foolhardy tactic. It takes a lot of careful planning to create a character who can make an opponent stay on them (by being a threat) and also survive the experience. On the other hand, the high DPS warrior (lion totem/shock trooper or ToB build) or the reach/trip, reach/stand still, etc. builds are easy to make and do not require nearly the same level of careful planning.

Waazraath

2016-04-06, 01:35 PM

I hate to promote the idea that people on the internet are full of it mentality because no one actually uses the "suxorz", and the "!!1!"s and we all think it's everyone but us who's the internet bad guy. But... I really do agree.

Ghehe, fair enough... suxorz is indeed over a decade ago that I seriously saw people type like that, the !!1! is something that I do see every now and then, but on purpose as stye figure (dunno if this is a word in English, sorry if it's not), and indeed, of course I am one of the people on the internet as well. But I guess it was clear what kind of attitude I was describing anyway. Glad you agree!

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-06, 02:37 PM

BAB scales automatically, yet AC takes lots of time and effort. After the first 23 AC (I'm thinking the reasonable max for fighter with plate, tower shield, and Dex 12), improving your AC is either a serious investment in feats and class features, or highly dependent on how conveniently you can turn your WBL into optimized gear (magic marts, y/n?, etc.). Likewise, AoO make rushing past the low damage output tank to get to the squishy party members a difficult choice, it certainly doesn't make it a foolhardy tactic. It takes a lot of careful planning to create a character who can make an opponent stay on them (by being a threat) and also survive the experience. On the other hand, the high DPS warrior (lion totem/shock trooper or ToB build) or the reach/trip, reach/stand still, etc. builds are easy to make and do not require nearly the same level of careful planning.

AC/survivability isn't actually hard to build in 3.5 or Pathfinder and high DPS shocktrooper/reach/trip etc builds aren't necessarily easy either.

In Pathfinder, it turns out that all you need to do to get a functional AC/Survivability build with solid damage is start with an 18 strength, increase it every opportunity, wield a bastard sword (Playground consensus is that bastard sword proficiency is a terrible feat, but on the benchmarks, bastard sword can hit green EDV at level 5 by moving into a flank and power attacking... longsword cannot), take all the boring feats (weapon specialization, toughness, dodge, shield focus, etc) and buy good armor/weapons. But you have to actually get the +2 fullplate and the +1 heavy shield and the gloves of dueling. In 3.5, lack of weapon training makes it a bit harder, but the same amount of damage optimization that goes into the other builds (armbands of might, melee weapon mastery, etc) will make it work.

And the shocktrooper/reach/trip/etc builds actually require more system awareness and planning to pull off. (13 Int, all the pre-reqs for shock trooper, remembering to use elusive target so that an enemy who tries to power attack your dumped AC into oblivion doesn't actually get the bonus damage).

So why is there a perception that functional AC/high damage is hard to pull off and that reach/trip/etc builds are easy?

1. To some degree, it is a more demanding playstyle. Reach/Trip, Shocktrooper, etc builds require less situational awareness at the table. They depend on being very good at one (generally effective) target and just using that tactic all the time. Making effective use of AC/damage build requires deciding whether it is more important to take some AoOs to get in the mage's face or to open with some archery or to move to block the orcs' charge lanes to your wizard and ready an action. If your character has improved grapple, you need to know when it's best to use that and when to stick to your sword. The numbers give you tools to make some options effective that would not be effective for other characters, but they will be different in every fight and you have to see them.

Heck, getting maximal effectiveness out of the strategy means that you need to know when to change it up and loose your shield to swing the sword two-handed for bonus power attack and strength damage. A lot of players are more comfortable getting one tactic and sticking to it.

2. It is easier for your party to screw up. Uberchargers just charge things. Hooray. Stay out the charge lane and you're golden. Reach Trippers can get frustrated when their party has barbarians who decide "I charge it! YOLO!" and negate the carefully laid plan to get a readied action and an AoO on two different opponents who won't end up with any attacks because they'll be tripped outside of their attack range. But they're just fine if the barbarian bites his shield for 8 initiative counts and then charges the tripped opponents. On the other hand, the fact that you can go toe to toe with the fire giant for 4 rounds doesn't matter if the fire giant never attacks you because your partner is the YOLO barbarian who's AC is equal to his character level. The fire giant is going to smack the barbarian around until he's dead before attacking you, and so will his friends. So the cleric still has to burn his heal spell in round 1 or 2.

3. It's harder to get the glory. Your damage numbers aren't (quite) as big as the barbarian's. You don't completely shut down enemies like the reach tripper (unless it's pathfinder and you have step-up and disruptive (there aren't that many numbers feats so you'll have some spare ones for things like that)--in which case you may well completely shut down the enemy spellcaster).

4. You need to be disciplined in the equipment purchases. You need to upgrade your +1 fullplate to +2 and get the +1 amulet of natural armor. Your purchases aren't as sexy and if you get distracted by shiny things like a cloak of arachnida, you won't hit the AC numbers you need to.

5. People don't generally post builds for it online, so you have to do the work yourself. Why? Because it is "obvious" and non-sexy. A bastard sword and shield ("Boo, everyone knows bastard sword suck") fighter with weapon specialization and shield focus? Who needs a build to do that? You're just taking all the numbers choices and ending up with a solid character. We'd rather talk about batman wizards.

Vhaidara

2016-04-06, 02:58 PM

bastard sword can hit green EDV at level 5 by moving into a flank and power attacking... longsword cannot), take all the boring feats (weapon specialization, toughness, dodge, shield focus, etc) and buy good armor/weapons.

I'm sorry, but this confuses me. First, what is "green EDV"? Second, how does a bastard sword manage it in a way that the longword +1 feat couldn't, given that the average difference between the longsword's d8 and the bastard sword's d10 is 1 point of damage, half the benefit of Weapon Specialization, which is known to be a bad feat?

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-06, 03:31 PM

I'm sorry, but this confuses me. First, what is "green EDV"? Second, how does a bastard sword manage it in a way that the longword +1 feat couldn't, given that the average difference between the longsword's d8 and the bastard sword's d10 is 1 point of damage, half the benefit of Weapon Specialization, which is known to be a bad feat?

Green EDV (Estimated Damage Value) is a reference to a pathfinder benchmarking system I found useful and interesting and means that the character's average damage per round against the average CR=character level monster is 25% of that monster's hit points.

https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/bench-pressing-character-creation-by-the-numbers/

The way that bastard sword with a flank and power attack manages green EDV at level 5 but longsword does not is that after you take weapon focus and weapon specialization, you're out of straightforward damage-increasing feats that aren't just a way to game the benchmark at level 5. (At level 5 since you don't have a second attack, Furious Focus would do it for the longsword). Now, that particular result--bastard sword is "viable" but longsword is not is an artifact of running the benchmark at level 5. If you run at level 10 (and probably at level 6 or 15) they're both viable. But the fact that the relatively small damage boost from the bastard sword pushes the fighter across that threshold at level 5 indicates that there are significant consequences for small numerical differences at the margins. That's the bastard sword's niche: It's a little bit ahead all the time and at a number of points, that little bit will be make the difference between a 2 round kill for the party and the bad guy getting a 2nd or 3rd action.

And I disagree about weapon specialization being a "bad" feat. That's playground groupthink, but in actual play, it makes a big difference and tends to push characters' damage output from "mediocre" to "good" or from "good" to "excellent." Sure, it doesn't give characters the sexy set of options that Elusive Target, Improved Trip, or other good tactical feats do, but it's one more number to add to the pile and adding up small bonuses is generally the way to make the game's math work in your favor.

137beth

2016-04-06, 04:01 PM

MaxiDuRaritry

2016-04-06, 04:04 PM

Amphetryon

2016-04-06, 05:27 PM

And I disagree about weapon specialization being a "bad" feat. That's playground groupthink, but in actual play, it makes a big difference and tends to push characters' damage output from "mediocre" to "good" or from "good" to "excellent." Sure, it doesn't give characters the sexy set of options that Elusive Target, Improved Trip, or other good tactical feats do, but it's one more number to add to the pile and adding up small bonuses is generally the way to make the game's math work in your favor.
Dismissing statistical analysis and reported play experience as 'groupthink' not recreated in actual play is an interesting tactic.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-06, 05:37 PM

AC isn't bad, but it is Go Big or Go Home. The issue with AC is that unless your AC is really high, an awful lot of enemies will hit you on a natural 2. In those cases, increasing your AC provides no benefit unless you can increase it enough such that enemies will miss you on a 2. For a lot of builds, the investment needed to make AC useful isn't worth the benefit you get compared to, say, getting a permanent miss chance (which is much easier and usually more effective).

Permanent miss chance? Core, the lesser cloak of displacement is the only way to do it. (Ring of blinking is also core more expensive, gives your attacks/spells a 20% miss chance and would need to be activated every 30 seconds in order to be "always on"). While it is definitely nice, it has some significant drawbacks:

A. 20% miss chance is not going to alter your tactical options very much. Let's say the enemy hits you on a 2. Are you going to be willing to risk an AoO because you have a 20% miss chance? Heck no. If the enemy needs to hit 4 of 4 attacks to kill you are you going to stand around and take the full attack because you have a 20% miss chance? It does make a difference, but you're probably not hanging out with a 40% chance of being killed. Do you want to take that chance then find out the enemy has blindfight so it's really an 85% chance of dying?

A 20% miss chance is a nice thing to add to a layered defense but it's not a substitute for having AC.

B. It and most other miss chance sources start to suffer significantly at high levels where many foes have true seeing, blindsight, blindfight, see invisibility (which reduces blink's miss chance to 20%--or to put it another way, drops it from "very nice" to "don't count on it for survival") or some other effect.

C. Miss chances are only cheap in comparison to bracers of armor and robes of the archmagi. A minor cloak of displacement is 24,000gp--or the price of a +4 mithral fullplate (or a +3 regular fullplate, +3 heavy shield, +1 amulet of natural armor, and a +1 ring of protection).

Elder_Basilisk

2016-04-06, 05:42 PM

Dismissing statistical analysis and reported play experience as 'groupthink' not recreated in actual play is an interesting tactic.

All I've seen for this "statistical analysis" and "reported play experience" is a few guys here saying "suxxorz." (Maybe you're referring to some thread from months or years ago and maybe it's valid and maybe it's another of the tiresome "Schroedinger's wizards are the only thing anyone should play" threads that impersonate analysis here on a regular basis). I'm pretty sure my play experience is at least as valid as yours. And I'm able to do my own statistical analysis which says pathfinder fighters with weapon specialization can outdamage raging barbarians and fighters without it don't. (2 handed fighters--the guy with the bastard sword or longsword is behind a raging barbarian with a greatsword).

zergling.exe

2016-04-06, 05:48 PM

Dismissing statistical analysis and reported play experience as 'groupthink' not recreated in actual play is an interesting tactic.

The level of play that the playground plays at almost universally makes Weapon Specialization a poor choice. If you were to find an entire board that played the way 3.5 was playtested, you would find a large number of players using Weapon Specialization and would find it fairly effective.

Thus 'Weapon Specialization is bad' is a product of playground groupthink.

Anlashok

2016-04-06, 05:59 PM

Thus 'Weapon Specialization is bad' is a product of playground groupthink.

Or y'know. Play experience and numbers not making the feat seem favorable to them.

You like the feat, that's fine, but the special snowflake attitude just makes you two come off as tools. For no real gain either.

Yogibear41

2016-04-07, 01:26 AM

Or y'know. Play experience and numbers not making the feat seem favorable to them.

You like the feat, that's fine, but the special snowflake attitude just makes you two come off as tools. For no real gain either.

Ha, I play mostly Melee Characters and in my opinion Power attack is super overrated too. That's pretty much sacrilege around here. Only thing its good for in my mind is if you move then can only make one attack, and then only if your to hit bonus it still high enough to hit the monster if you roll a 2 on the dice. Otherwise, I rather hit and do less damage than miss completely. Should basically never use it in a full attack as hitting with an extra attack should net more overall damage than a few extra points on each attack from power attacking.

Guess I've just seen to many people, "I power attack for 10!" and miss terribly, 3 or 4 rounds in a row when the monster would have died in 2 rounds if they just attacked normally.

Obviously using things like wraith strike, or Shock trooper change this significantly.

I like weapon specialization, but not because its weapon specialization, I like it because Melee Weapon Mastery. :smallsmile:

Waazraath

2016-04-07, 03:05 AM

Or y'know. Play experience and numbers not making the feat seem favorable to them.

You like the feat, that's fine, but the special snowflake attitude just makes you two come off as tools. For no real gain either.

??? He says nothing weird, does he? The level of play assumed on fora like this is assuming a higher optimization level then happens at a lot of tables; this is at least both my own experience, and logic: people come here to learn more about the game, and they get to know more about optimization. And 3.5 was play tested with a blaster wizard, healbot cleric, etc., so definitely at a much lower optimization level, so of course weapon specialization works better in such a game environment.

As for power attack: indeed, its glorified because it is assumed to work with wraithstrike, persisted buffs, polymoprhed chars with huge strength bonusses, and shock trooper. And I've often seen in sold as 'the only viable melee route' on fora, sometimes 1 out of 2 viable routes together with chain tripping. But that's nonsense. And if you mostly play short campaigns at lvl 1-5, with humans, elfs and dwarves, withouth extra rage whirling frenzy water orc barbarians that have huge bonusses to hit, power attack isn't all that. Arguably weapon specialization might even be better, at these levels. And even at higher levels, and higher optimization levels, power attack is a (very) good option, but by no means mandatory.

ryu

2016-04-07, 03:38 AM

Waazraath

2016-04-07, 04:18 AM

You do realize that at higher levels of optimization fighter itself is considered non-viable right? Even in core only it's considered an order of magnitude worse than barbarian, and barbarian is still only tier 4. I don't think we even need to justify taking it seriously out of core.

Nah, I don't realize that, totally ignorant about it, that's why I specificly mentioned low op play :smallwink:

As for the barbarian tier 4, it's one of the more obvious inconsistencies in the tier system... the tier 4 place is awarded to it for 'doing one thing quite well', that is, doing damage. But to do so, it assumes a barbarian with a ACF for pounce, and a specific build with the shock trooper feat tree & leap attack (that isn't earlier online then mid levels, due to barbarian being feat starved). The system is supposed to rank 'classes', though, not acf's or specific builds. Plenty of viable fighter builds can be made to do 'quite well' damage as well (though not too much else), like archer builds, fighter shock trooper builds, trip builds, etc.

Banjoman42

2016-04-07, 06:05 AM

Nah, I don't realize that, totally ignorant about it, that's why I specificly mentioned low op play :smallwink:

As for the barbarian tier 4, it's one of the more obvious inconsistencies in the tier system... the tier 4 place is awarded to it for 'doing one thing quite well', that is, doing damage. But it assumes a ACF for pounce, and a specific build with the shock trooper feat tree & leap attack (that isn't earlier online then mid levels, due to being feat starved). The system is supposed to rank 'classes', though. Plenty of viable fighter builds can be made to do 'quite well' damage as well (though not too much else), like archer builds, fighter shock trooper builds, trip builds, etc.
Fighter is listed as a high tier 5, after all.

But even in low level play, barbarian is going to have the upper hand. In just first level alone, the barbarian gets 2 more HP, 2 more skill points, and a handy +2 Str and Con when they need it. If the fighter takes weapon spec as you've perscribed, then said fighter gets a +2 damage bonus with a single weapon and a small AC boost from heavy armour (if they can even afford it).
Core feats and feats in general are just flat out bad. There are execptions, but even those are not as good as Rage and DR bonuses.

I would not say that Power Attack is overrated. There are dozens of situations that grant a +2 or higher attack bonus. A +4 damage bonus (assuming you are using a two handed weapon) will increase your average damage by much more than that extra 10% chance to hit, especially if you would hit the target on a 10 without the extra +2 attack roll bonus.

Now compare it to weapon specialization, and you'll see power attack is much better. A +2 damage bonus with one weapon is worthless in any situation you lose your equipment (or if you're disarmed). And the damage bonuses gained with power attack are going to be much better than a measly +2, even with the attack roll penalty accounted for.

Waazraath

2016-04-07, 06:19 AM

Fighter is listed as a high tier 5, after all.

But even in low level play, barbarian is going to have the upper hand. In just first level alone, the barbarian gets 2 more HP, 2 more skill points, and a handy +2 Str and Con when they need it. If the fighter takes weapon spec as you've perscribed, then said fighter gets a +2 damage bonus with a single weapon and a small AC boost from heavy armour (if they can even afford it).
Core feats and feats in general are just flat out bad. There are execptions, but even those are not as good as Rage and DR bonuses.

I would not say that Power Attack is overrated. There are dozens of situations that grant a +2 or higher attack bonus. A +4 damage bonus (assuming you are using a two handed weapon) will increase your average damage by much more than that extra 10% chance to hit, especially if you would hit the target on a 10 without the extra +2 attack roll bonus.

Now compare it to weapon specialization, and you'll see power attack is much better. A +2 damage bonus with one weapon is worthless in any situation you lose your equipment (or if you're disarmed). And the damage bonuses gained with power attack are going to be much better than a measly +2, even with the attack roll penalty accounted for.

No, the bbn can get +4 str and con 1 time /day (assuming 3.5, not PF - am not familiar with that). And have a -2 on AC, for that. While the fighter has a significant higher AC, from lvl 2 onward gc should be enough for much better armor. Let's take lvl 3 for example: the fighter has full plate, weapon focus (assuming weap spec tree), one other bonus feat. The barbarian has 4 more hp, 1 rage / day, uncanny dodge and a few skill points more with a rather unimpressing skill list (only listen is a significant improvement). This really isn't the difference between a class that "does one thing well" and one that "does one thing poorly".

And I might not be clear, but I'm not making the point that weapon spec is better then power attack. Of course it's not. What I object again is the line of reasoning where the first is a utter waste of space, and the second is mandatory. Because that's nonsense.

OldTrees1

2016-04-07, 06:46 AM

I like weapon specialization, but not because its weapon specialization, I like it because Melee Weapon Mastery. :smallsmile:

+1 Attack and +1.33 Damage per feat (or +1 Attack and +2 Damage per feat if Weapon focus was already required as a feat tax)? Seems about as valuable as power attack. :smallconfused:
To each their own. :smallsmile:

Hal0Badger

2016-04-07, 07:00 AM

I'm able to do my own statistical analysis which says pathfinder fighters with weapon specialization can outdamage raging barbarians and fighters without it don't. (2 handed fighters--the guy with the bastard sword or longsword is behind a raging barbarian with a greatsword).

A fighter with 2 handed weapon, with weapon specialization at level 5, deals around 1 point of less damage on average and less accurate than a raging barbarian, assuming they have both 18 strength score, since rage adds +3 damage and another +2 to attack rolls.

Yogibear41

2016-04-07, 11:45 AM

+1 Attack and +1.33 Damage per feat (or +1 Attack and +2 Damage per feat if Weapon focus was already required as a feat tax)? Seems about as valuable as power attack. :smallconfused:
To each their own. :smallsmile:

I rather sacrifice damage for accuracy, I suppose years of playing MMOs when I was younger, where reducing your miss chance by even a few percentage points, always lead to way more damage output than dealing higher damage with each attack. That and the fact that I have had days where I have played for hours on end, and only rolled higher than 10 like 4 times the entire night.........

Also I favor sword and board over 2 handed weapons, usually for role-play reasons. And power attack gives a significantly less rewarding return then as well.

Yogibear41

2016-04-07, 11:49 AM

A fighter with 2 handed weapon, with weapon specialization at level 5, deals around 1 point of less damage on average and less accurate than a raging barbarian, assuming they have both 18 strength score, since rage adds +3 damage and another +2 to attack rolls.

To be fair he never said which level, might be a point where the fighter comes out ahead. Resource management also plays a role too, the fighter gets his feats all day long, while the barbarian runs out of rages. That may or may not matter in your game, some games "endurance" is a great asset to have, while in others you might only have 1 encounter a day. For a bad comparison compare a "blaster" warlock to a "blaster" wizard or sorcerer. The latter do more damage, but the warlock gets to do it for eternity.

Seward

2016-04-07, 12:43 PM

Well, that can be part of the argument. Yes, it is possible to optimize a tank to have great defense. It is a lot harder to make an entire party with great defense. Once the opponent switches from attacking you (which is reasonable, since you are doing the least damage), all that defense is not being used. On the other hand, if you take the same amount of resources and make yourself better able to drop that opponent one round sooner... I think that's the main argument I hear.

Here's an extremely typical encounter with my tank.

1. Tank charges into the middle of the enemies, does enough damage in one hit to make them respect the full attack.
2. Tank gets attacked with full attacks because most critters have a big full attack and a lame single attack. Plus she looks like a raging barbarian with little or no armor.
3. If the bad guys have save/suck type abilities, the tank is often targeted (eg, paralysis, so can be coup-de-graced), sometimes because they assume a weak save, sometimes because the rest of the party isn't in range/LOS yet.
4. Tank shrugs all that off, full attacks and kills the first dude she wounded.
5. Tank continues to get some heat, because now she's considered danagerous.

Meanwhile in round 1-2 the rest of the party is acting, while the tank has consumed often 50% or more of the enemy actions by herself, to little effect. By the end of round 2, if the tank fails to kill her opponent, someone else in the party will killsteal it. By round 2 the light infantry are in range, the archers have got their line of sight, some buffs or battlefield control will be up etc.

If the bad guys continue to focus on the tank, they continue to fight with one hand behind their back. But it isn't uncommon for them to dial back power attack, or fish for another weak saving throw. If they ignore the tank, she'll take a chunk of hitpoints out of another opponent in round 3, and kill that opponent on her own in round 4.

The point is that unless they entirely ignore the tank, or limit their response to a single individual fighting the tank and also have equal or larger numbers than the party, then the rest of the party is fighting an effectively lower EL encounter. Meanwhile, it's not at all uncommon for a tank to tune armor class vs offense (the most obvious being the interaction between fighting defensively and power attack) so if the tank is getting ignored, it can dial up the offense.

But yeah, you have to do it right. My tank spent maybe 1/3 of her cash resources on defenses because her class abilities and feats and race and such were a big part of her defenses, while she had 50% of her wealth just tied up in her main weapon, and more things that enhanced her offense (boots of speed, a blindfight item, potion of fly, etc). That's because being a halfling swinging a 1d4 18-20 crit weapon with one hand (a requirement for some of her defensive stuff, and dex-to-damage) is going to have to make up the damage/per/round over a traditional barbarian+greatsword with both significant per-hit bonuses and simply more attacks (I had to figure out how to flurry with a scimitar. It took multiclassing+feats). Defense oriented character classes like paladin or monk often have to invest less in defense and more in offense.

A more offense oriented character (say, barbarian with 2h weapon) will likely spend more on defense because his class abilities aren't helping much.