Arcane Casters and Defense


Advice


I'm playing a wizard in a Jade Regent campaign. We're closing in on level 12. I've still got a 16 AC and around 60 HPs. Nothing can miss me. How can I solve this problem without wasting tons of rounds and spells?

*I almost always have Overland Flight cast, so I try to stay out of reach of melee attackers.
*I have a Ring of Invisibility and know how to use it. I dungeon crawl while flying invisibly ten feet off the ground behind my tankish companions.
*I'm playing an Enchanter, and have dominated some CR 7 hobgoblin fighter/rogues. A lot of the time I won't cast spells beyond a Haste or a mid-level Summon so I won't pop my invisibility and waste a turn going invisible again.

Should I be rocking Stoneskin all the time?
Do I need to find ways to boost my AC?

What are the best tips for squishy characters with regards to defense? Stay behind the fighter only works if the enemy obliges you and attacks from one direction.


Well, Mage Armor's always a good, reliable, cheap option, assuming you aren't already using that.

False Life/Greater is also a good solution to the HP problem.

Snag a Ring of Protection and/or an Amulet of Natural Armor.


Stoneskin can prove expensive in the long term. The best defence? One option is to try NOT looking like a mage (I do this all the time). Get some fake armour and carry a rapier or somesuch even if you cannot use it (if you can carry the weight) and try to look like a rogue or possibly a Cleric. Obviously your flying tactic will give you away to some degree.

Another deception is to disguise yourself as something relevant to the dungeon and try to look like a prisoner, this might require the use of a few skill points and also a low level spell to pull off but carrying fake manacles, etc again may mean you get that vital round or two to cast.

The disguise route isn't foolproof but if your dm plays intelliggent monsters realistically it might move your caster down the 'potential threat list' enabling you to get a spell off.


Boosting Ac is pretty pointless. Even milking out as much as you can without armor and shield you likely will be hit on a 2 r better.

Stone skin, A fair Con score, Miss chance (this here is a big one. Even a cloak of lesser displacement will help more then having spent much more coin on Ac items.)

Also a big one is what you do on the field. Playing smart and stay out of harms way as much as you can goes a long way.

-Edit- Just to illustrate my point even a CR10 tends to have around +19 to hit (some a bit less some a bit more.) so on a 2 we need to have at least 22 AC to have any effect. The coin cost to get a mage up to that is pretty staggering and not sustainable in the long run as the to hit will keep going up even though your AC options will run out.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

mirror image


Ring Of Blinking.


Some spells you can cast to buff yourself: Displacement, blur and mirror image give enemies a % chance they'll miss you. Mage armor, ablative sphere, shield and alter self can give you hard AC bonusses.

Some items you can get: bracers of armor, ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, an ioun stone of +1 insight bonus to AC and things like +dex.

Some buffs your group can help you out with: barkskin, shield of faith, shield other and magic vestment. Especially magic vestment is a great one for those without armor, as it gives you an armor enhancement bonus.

In general, you'll always be the one that can be hit so prepare accordingly. Getting items will mean that you won't ALWAYS be hit on any roll, but high CR monsters will still have an easy time hitting you.
The right approach would be to ensure enemies get to make a mininum of attacks against you. Melee monsters will have to move to you, so stay mobile even if it means you can't cast that round. If your group has ways of seeing you while invis, get a ring of invisibility. Enemies will need true seeing, life-sense, blindsight or something similarly powerful to spot you and thus make you a primary target. Other less pricey options are stealth, teamies that position themselves around you and simply using your spells to scout ahead - arcane eye and clairvoyance/audience can take the sting out of (future) encounters like no other spell can.


Oh and if you're truly terrified of what is to come, memorize Resilient Sphere once every damn day. This lvl4 spell is a life-safer.


Decoy ring is my enchanter's best friend. You should be able to withdraw at any time to trigger 3 rounds of greater invis and some distracting copies of yourself, but if your DM doesn't like that idea, Polypurpose Pancea yourself to sleep and have your familiar wake you. Any time there is the possibility of my getting aggro, this combo goes off. This way your are still free to do your enchantments as well.


A belly warmer.


mage dont need AC - they never ever should be in the front.
always make sure you can avoid - as a mage :
blur, displacemant, morror image, invisibility, summon for shields, fly, blink (and pass through a wall), D-door.... etc.


I'm not sure how, if you're invisible all the time, folks would be targeting you specifically anyway. I mean how would they know you're there until you cast a spell?

What you're doing now seems reasonable, and unless you have some great desire to get much more up close and personal, I'd recommend using a lot of spells that are illusions, enchantments or similar. Any spell that won't break the invisibility bubble but will cause much confusion and grief. Transmutation spells, especially beneficial ones to your allies, will help a lot.

Items like Wings of Flying might help free up your spell slots a bit.


Slightly off topic, but relevant.

Your overland flight maneuverability is average. You'll have to roll a fly check every round in order to hover 10' off the ground. You may want to read up on the fly skill and maneuverability ratings.

Boots of levitation are an easy solution.


I have Fly maxed out due to an Int +4 item. It's like a +16 or... something. Good enough for what I want to do with it.

Mirror Image and Displacement seem reasonable. I don't like the short duration of Displacement, though, as it's really only good for one combat, and will take a round to cast, so it's pretty situational. A Ring of Blinking seems solid, but it does give me a misfire chance with my own spells that I don't like. Plus I don't have Craft Ring, and already use a Ring of Invisibility as my bonded object.

Maybe I'm just running into some bad luck with encounters.


You can reasonably get enough AC to stop mooks, but you don't need to worry about mooks anyway, for the most part. You will never have enough AC to stop big melee monster attacks, so work on things that prevent or divert those attacks. People have already talked about the importance of miss chances.

Also note: fire shield punishes enemies for attacking you, and(say) resist fire and a wall of fire combine nicely for much the same effect. Enemies at the bottom of a pit or the other side of a wall will have a hard time attacking you.

Good scouting and intelligence spells can let the party sneak up on enemies, prepare for them,and ambush them to great effect. Good boost spells on your friends can make a big difference too.


Sporting an AC 16 with 60 hitpoints at level 12, it sounds like you haven't spent any resources in defenses or hitpoints since level 1.

At this point, it is likely too late for an investment in AC to easily get you out from behind the eight ball. Focus on increasing your hitpoint pool instead.

16,000gp Belt of +4 CON (gives you +24 hitpoints)
4500gp Wand of False Life (gives you 1d10+3 temporary hitpoints)

This should put you into a hitpoint total where you can suck up an attack somewhat safely.

If you have the Quicken Spell feat, use a couple slots for some defense spells. Quicken Mirror Image is powerful. Even Quicken Vanish can allow you to get to a better position safely while still allowing you to cast normally when getting there.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Mage armor (cast, lasts 12 hours at CL 12) and shield (wand, 1 min at CL 1) together should give you a minimum AC of 18 + Dex mod in most combats. Add/upgrade an amulet of natural armor and a ring of protection, not to mention a dusty rose ioun stone (+1 insight bonus to AC) and a jingasa of the fortunate soldier (+1 luck bonus to AC and negate one critical hit or sneak attack per day), and there's no reason your AC should be below 20 even out of combat.

Based on the "balanced approach" detailed in the core rules, a 12th level character should have protective gear worth about 27,000 gp. Amulet of natural armor +2 (8,000 gp), dusty rose ioun stone (5,000 gp), jingasa of the fortunate soldier (5,000 gp), and ring of protection +2 (8,000 gp) total 26,000 gp. Add in the wand of shield (750 gp) and you're right about the recommended distribution, with a persistent AC of 20 (10 +4 armor from mage armor +2 natural armor from amulet +2 deflection from ring +1 insight from ioun stone +1 luck from jingasa) + Dex mod/combat AC of 24 (+4 shield from wand) + Dex mod.


I hang back, have my cohort between me and the baddy, along with my meatshields. If the party has already formed the frontline, my cohort spends the first round hanging close to me covering my flank or rear. I buff them up close before they move into attack, then I drop obscuring mist on myself and our backline then summon things to obliterate enemies. If we're fighting alot of ranged attackers, I'll go prone while dropping control spells that interfere with ranged attacks and line of sight.

If we're fighting melee brutes, I drop control spells to prevent them from getting at me, while having my cohort defend me, while my meatshields charge forward after their buffing. I bring up some summons to act as roadblocks or wallop baddies.

Sure, the occassional time I'll eat a spear, and if we're surprised I may take a hit or two with my AC 18, but generally it is not in the baddies best interest to worry about hitting me since I've already made my contribution to the fight.

My wizard has a rule that a smart wizard (is there any other kind?) is never the first or last to enter a room, he ensures even when we're travelling down a road that a proper formation is kept. He stays alive through discipline and tactics, and that doesn't cost a thing.


I want to reiterate that my character is rocking a Ring of Invisibility. He's almost always invisible before a combat encounter starts, as that's become his default way of traveling unless he's talking to someone. And I'm almost always flying via Overland Flight. I do have Bracers of Armor +4.

The group is loot light. We're sitting on close to 100,000 GP worth of loot that we can't sell because the GM follows very strict rules for town GP limits. I have access to Teleport, and have been using it, but it's a tedious process to sell off that much loot a few thousand at a time, and we can't offload some of our more expensive loot items.

As far as tactics go, the other three party members are melee combatants (a fighter, a monk, and a bard-barian). I'm almost always out of the way, in the air, invisibly during combats. I try to cast things like Summon Monster and Haste so I don't lose Invisibility. When I do risk becoming visible, it's to drop massive area of effect spells, like confusion or envious urge.

My problem now is the same as before, except now the GM is saying that creatures can See Invisibility when they cannot. He's blanketing all oni as being able to see invisibility, and oni are our party's primary foes. Our most recent encounter was against some ja noi oni that killed me in the second round of combat with arrows, despite the fact I was invisible.

AC isn't going to save me now. My wife is playing a fighter with a 29 AC, and she is having issue staying alive (again, she's got +2 plate mail, but we can't upgrade it, nor buy any more gear, because we can't offload any of the loot we've been slowly accumulating throughout the campaign).

What spells are going to save me? And I'd prefer if they were level 7, as the last town we visited (a merchant port) had no scrolls higher than level four for purchase, and after the GM randomly rolled, only had a single level 2 scroll from my list of spells I wanted to buy, all of which were Core Rulebook spells (it's not like my list contained racial spells or spells from splat books). I'm saying that I'll have to spend my two free spells per level to pick up something defensive, and one of those two is going to be an Enchantment spell.


Quote:
<snip> 100,000 GP worth of loot that we can't sell because the GM follows very strict rules for town GP limits. I have access to Teleport, and have been using it, but it's a tedious process to sell off that much loot a few thousand at a time, and we can't offload some of our more expensive loot items.

While I applaud the GM for using one of the tools he has to prevent wealth and items from getting out of control ... he might just be a bit overzealous at this point and or it is time to just deal with the tedium. 100k of wealth sitting around doing nothing essentially is no wealth. Being unfamiliar with Jade Regent, how much time pressure are you under and how free is the party to more or less choose what to do with their time? Might be time for the party to "choose" their next adventure as 'find the biggest, richest town within a few hundred miles' and pay it a visit or at least something substantially a step up from there current known markets.

Quote:
My problem now is the same as before, except now the GM is saying that creatures can See Invisibility when they cannot. He's blanketing all oni as being able to see invisibility, and oni are our party's primary foes. Our most recent encounter was against some ja noi oni that killed me in the second round of combat with arrows, despite the fact I was invisible.

While the previous quote makes me think of a slightly overzealous but probably capable GM this statement sends red flags running up and alarm bells going off as potential trouble if true (assuming the GM doesn't know something you are unaware of about the oni). Being hardcore and by the book is one thing, rewriting the rules altogether for the point of making it impossibly tough and deadly for the PC/players is another, particularly when its starts to damage the fun factor for the players.

Quote:
What spells are going to save me? And I'd prefer if they were level 7, as the last town we visited (a merchant port) had no scrolls higher than level four for purchase, and after the GM randomly rolled, only had a single level 2 scroll from my list of spells I wanted to buy, all of which were Core Rulebook spells (it's not like my list contained racial spells or spells from splat books). I'm saying that I'll have to spend my two free spells per level to pick up something defensive, and one of those two is going to be an Enchantment spell.

Depends on which GM is the real GM, the 'hardcore but a fair one' or the 'I'm going to alter rules and set up the PC's for death no matter what they do one'. For the first I'll second things like Blur, Displacement and Mirror Image as your best spell defenses that can be reasonably maintained at your level (particularly when coupled with Fly/Overland Flight). Against Archers/Ranged attack consider Wind Wall and if its foes that are hard to reach or not the immediate target of your melee companions consider Sleet Storm. Grease is another good one for a single annoying foe whether at range or not or used as area control on a choke point.

If the other guy shows up prepare for hardship no matter what steps you take. And consider an out of game conversation between player(s) and GM if need be to air any concerns. Perhaps the hardcore (inexperienced?) DM is simply having issues adjusting to and feeling the Ring of Invisibility is overpowerful and being hardcore ... stomping hard in relatively straight forward but less than ideal manner.


Personally, I think no caster should focus on AC unless you are draconic sorcerer. Say you have + 2 dex mod for your armor clase. You need +8 bracer of armor, +5 ring of protection, +5 amulet of natural armor to reach 30 AC. At your level, no GM should ever give out this much worth of magic items. I hate games that rains down magic items like they worth nothing. Anyway, most monster around your level should have +15-20 for attack rolls already. Means you still have 50% chance of being hit even if managed to you get all those items.

Or the other hand, with ring of blink which is much cheaper, you only get 50% chance of being hit. Even if they have some way of hitting you, they only reduce the chance to 20% unless they can do force damage. If combine with displacement and mirror image, you are very hard to be hit. That's why casters are overpower if they know what they are doing.

So if you have something like ring of protection, give it to those who need it more. Don't waste it.


Push come to shove, learn Still Spell. Prep every spell with still spell. Wear full plate.

I'm kidding, sort of.

For any arcane caster, your AC is always going to be a weakness, unless to put some effort into fixing it. Whether that is simply a spell in combat, or if it is long term investments of feats and equipment, is up to you.

Arcane Armor Training/Mastery is one route, though it requires you pick up proficiencies too.

Still Spell and heavy armor works, but drops your power level, and kills your touch attacks.

Heavy usage of in combat defensive buffs works too, but eats your combat actions.

How you want to fix your issue is up to you, but there exist options.


Consider investing in Emergency Force Sphere for emergencies. Otherwise a combination of flight, invisibility, mirror image and contingency should be fine. EFS will save you against things with detect invisibility or true seeing.

Lantern Lodge

Say F*** the story line and make the next few games RP of you and the party selling the equipment. Did this to a DM of mine that wanted us to RP getting/selling equipment. Took it to the next level and turned it into bartering for food and water and obtaining farmland with livestock. Ate up 6 games of this with all the players in on it, and enjoying it to some extent. Needless to say he is no longer as strict when it comes to equipment management.

On terms of him giving monsters abilities they dont have. Well you either suck it up or refuse. Refusal can be leaving or derailing. You have to remind your DM its a 2 way street. You cant have a game with out a DM and the DM cant have a game with out players. Either the DM sticks to the rules or the DM is gonna have some trouble with angry players. Its one thing to die to a monster through hard written rules and unlucky die, its another to die from some thing that should not of existed in the 1stt place.


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For a minor boost in AC, consider the masterwork mithril buckler.

No penalty for use without proficiency as its armor check penalty is zero.
Made out of mithril, so there is no arcane spell failure chance.
Get it enchanted to improve its bonus to AC.

Also, remember that you can enchant your ring with a second effect at a cost of +50%.
It seems you have the cash and you have the arcane bond so you can enchant it yourself.
It would be an investment in time and money.

Another thought would be to take a level in monk, for the wisdom bonus to AC.

It's hard to beat a quickened mirror image, though.
Also, wind spells usually defeat archers and don't break invisibility.


martryn wrote:


The group is loot light. We're sitting on close to 100,000 GP worth of loot that we can't sell because the GM follows very strict rules for town GP limits. I have access to Teleport, and have been using it, but it's a tedious process to sell off that much loot a few thousand at a time, and we can't offload some of our more expensive loot items.

I agree with the guy who said "pause the storyline until you can get some real equipment". At your level, flying around with 100k of gold is okay for a session or so, but beyond that it's just silly. Alternately, invest in a crafting feat, settle down somewhere and spend a couple of months cranking out wands. Yes, the people of Minkai will suffer that much longer, but hey -- they'll suffer forever if the final BBEG eats you alive, amirite?

Bracers of Armor +4... that's a nice item, check. Doesn't stack with Mage Armor, which is a minor nuisance.

Buffs: there are a bunch of low level "minutes per level" buffs. You should cast these in advance whenever you think combat might happen. Shield spell, +4 shield bonus. Cat's Grace, +2 to AC (including touch attacks) and reflex saves.

Once you can buy stuff: Start with a ring of protection. Gives a deflection bonus, which will help against touch attacks. Next, amulet of natural armor, nearly as good... doesn't help with touch, but does work when flatfooted. Dusty rose ioun stone, that's a more obscure item (and more expensive) but it's another +1 insight bonus. And, yes, jingasa of the fortunate soldier -- an Asian themed item that's very appropriate for Jade Regent. If you get a +1 ring of protection (2,000), +1 amulet (2,000), the jingasa (5,000) and the stone (5,000), that's +4 AC for 14,000 gp. Go +2 on the ring and the amulet (now 8,000 each) and you have +6 AC for 26,000.

Note that all of these are relatively inexpensive items that should be available in any decent sized city. I might throw in one more item: the ever handy Lesser Metamagic Rod (Extend). For just 3,000, you can double the duration of three low level spells (1st-3rd level) per day. Your minute/level buffs can now last 24 minutes! You may still get surprised by random encounters and such, but you can now buff up at the entrance to a dungeon and not have to think about it again for a loooong time.

Anyway: assuming you have a +2 Dex bonus, your AC is now 22. Given just two rounds of buffing far in advance of combat, Shield and Cat's Grace will raise that to 28. Things are still going to hit you sometimes but it should no longer be auto-hit.

But, seriously, you need to go get some stuff. I appreciate your DM not wanting to play Magic Wal-Mart but, again, 100k in unspent treasure is a bit much. Talk to the other players and make this clear to the DM.

Doug M.


Oh, and Quickened Spell. As someone pointed out, Quickened Mirror Image is incredibly effective / annoying. You have to burn a 5th level slot but if you're 12th level you should have enough of these to spare. Combat starts, poof, 2-5 duplicates appear to soak up attacks.

Also, Haste. I dislike Haste but it makes a lot of sense for you -- better AC for everyone and more attacks for the three melee fighters.

Also, I notice that you guys don't have a cleric! That's part of your problem right there -- you're the only one buffing, there's no healbot, and nobody's rocking a party safety net with Breath of Life or Raise Dead. Small wonder you're feeling vulnerable. If someone has a decent UMD, I'd say you should add a Cure Light Wounds wand and a scroll or two of Breath of Life to your shopping list.

Doug M.


martryn wrote:
I want to reiterate that my character is rocking a Ring of Invisibility. He's almost always invisible before a combat encounter starts, as that's become his default way of traveling unless he's talking to someone. And I'm almost always flying via Overland Flight. I do have Bracers of Armor +4.

You use to be level 12 with 60 hitpoints and AC 16. It's been 7 months. What progress have you made to shore up your defenses?

...casting False Life regularly?
...+2 Belt of CON?
...leveled to 13th and picked up the Toughness feat?
...picked up a mithril buckler?


jade reagent has a huge swath of time where the party is in the remotest section of the world. Lack of access to resource bases is part of the adventure.

My party would have been thoroughly frustrated without a magic item crafting character in the group. (really helped off-set the useless magic item problem, tho' when you run out of mats... you're hosed)

earlier suggestions are not bad, mirror images and miss chances are very useful, and worth the action economy to cast them, if you don't want to go down the road the 'quicken'.

you can also work harder to maintain battlefield control as a means of defense, summoning monsters, wall spells, area denial, pits, forceful hand spells, tentacles, anything that forces enemies to use time and resources to move around the battlefield to reach you can be worth your time.


MC Templar wrote:
jade reagent has a huge swath of time where the party is in the remotest section of the world. Lack of access to resource bases is part of the adventure.[/ooc]

That's true from the end of module #2 to about halfway through module #4 -- about a quarter of the AP. But these guys are 12th level, which suggests they're late in #4 or into #5 already.

Doug M.


When my current character gets high enough level, I hope to cast dominate monster on a troll to keep as a pet. Then use magic jar to run around in it's body. Yeah, you hit me. So what? I'll get better.


Quote:
While I applaud the GM for using one of the tools he has to prevent wealth and items from getting out of control ... he might just be a bit overzealous at this point and or it is time to just deal with the tedium. 100k of wealth sitting around doing nothing essentially is no wealth. Being unfamiliar with Jade Regent, how much time pressure are you under and how free is the party to more or less choose what to do with their time? Might be time for the party to "choose" their next adventure as 'find the biggest, richest town within a few hundred miles' and pay it a visit or at least something substantially a step up from there current known markets.

For some reason this strategy never seems to work. As I mentioned, our party recently took at trip to the largest harbor city within teleportation range. This was where the merchant's guild (or it's equivalent) was supposed to be located. We sold... 15,000 GP of loot or so. And then the caster level in the city is only 5th, so our fighter can't buy/upgrade to new armor. And I was lucky to snag a 2nd level arcane scroll. The third and fourth level scrolls I was looking for were strangely absent.

Quote:

You use to be level 12 with 60 hitpoints and AC 16. It's been 7 months. What progress have you made to shore up your defenses?

...casting False Life regularly?
...+2 Belt of CON?
...leveled to 13th and picked up the Toughness feat?
...picked up a mithril buckler?

Well, we took about a two month break to try some World of Darkness stuff. And then, with the holidays and some really bad weather, we've not really progressed any further.

The few sessions we did have, I lost my cohort to some insanely ridiculous encounters. We were attacking a bandit stronghold, and while I knew we were going to come against some opposition, I figured bandits are bandits at any level, and it shouldn't be too much trouble to take them out with some smart tactics. Being an invisible flier, I scouted the area, and I told the GM I was looking for a small niche somewhere out of view of guards, where the party could quickly move inside the stronghold in a direction the bandits wouldn't expect. I teleported the party inside the stronghold, and immediately these wood piles began exploding. Apparently they were like Advanced Wood Golems or something, and they used their splinter ability during the surprise round, and for some reason I teleported the party within range of both of the golems, and everyone except the monk started combat with 40-50 less HPs. On the very first round of combat, we had multiple guards firing arrows down into our position from guard towers with windows that apparently looked into the courtyard of the stronghold, specifically into the narrow niche that was "out of view" of the towers where we happened to be standing. Did I mention that it was after dark, so there was dim light if any at all? On the second round of combat, two doors swung open and the party was facing a high level druid, his weretiger companion, a dozen guards, and a guard lieutenant. The monk, being a jerk, dimension door'd into a guard tower, leaving all the injured party members to deal with the bulk of the combatants. While I was still flying and invisibile (though down in the teens in HPs), the bardbarian and fighter were in the open and squeezed between golems, druids, lycanthropes, and a mass of low-level mobs. And my poor goblin rogue cohort, which I had fostered a relationship with as mentor since the second session, almost two years ago in real time, and a full year of game time, and 11 character levels ago before I had even taken Leadership as a feat, was surrounded by the low level mobs, and they hacked and hacked until she was so far past dead, even Pharasma didn't know where she was. And my goblin was pregnant, too, with the child of a hobgoblin that I had dominated in the previous module (it's a long story).

By trying to play stealthy and smart, we managed to string together five separate combat encounters (the mini-boss of this mini-dungeon crawl also showed up a few rounds later). I'm happy to report that I saved the day with a Cloak of Dreams, a Persistent Confusion, and an Envious Urge, but it was one of the most infuriating sessions and combat encounters I ever lived through.

So I'll pick up Mirror Image for sure (I think the Bardbarian knows it). I have been looking to acquire Stoneskin. Again, I would love to pick up spell scrolls and do everything you guys have suggested, but I had issues attempting to buy 2nd level arcane scrolls from the last town we visited. And without the raw cash on hand, I can't even begin to craft a new ring and/or useful Wondrous Magical Items.


Yeah... I don't think this one can be easily solved in game. It sounds like you have a long history with this game, so hopefully you can have a levelheaded discussion with the GM about both yours and his expectations. I'd discuss things with the other players and see if they share your concerns, then gather together on your next game day and have a serious talk about what's going on. It's possible this encounter is a reaction to something your group has been doing that he's unsatisfied with. Whatever is going on, the air needs to get cleared. He may not even change anything at first, but at minimum the discussion will help him to direct things in the future. Just keep the discussion calm when you have it.

Liberty's Edge

A few ways to buff your AC:
Bullet Shield(negating the need for a Ring of Protection)
A +1 Defending Quarterstaff, Make it Dueling later for +4 Init.
Cast Greater Magic Weapon of the Quarterstaff.
Amulet of Natural Armor.
At some point start getting a Mithral Buckler and Armor, The +2 to AC from each when compared to Mage Armor and Shield is going to be important at 14th-15th level.

10+Dex+6Deflection+Natural armor+3Dodge+4Armor+4Shield
So an AC of 33-34 should be doable. Oh and combine that with Mirror Image as other have suggested and your defenses have just improved by quite a bit.
If you have access to Rise of the Runelord: Anniversary edition I would suggest you get a hold of Blood money and use it to have a Stoneskin up when you know combat is going to happen.

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