If I were to make a character who couldn't be hit except for a natural 20 by any being published by Paizo, how high would my AC need to be?
Or put in another way, which published Paizo being has the highest attack modifier and how high is it?
I have a character with 64 AC, and I want to know if I need to tone it down and reinvest some resources elsewhere, or if I need to make it higher.
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If I were to make a character who couldn't be hit except for a natural 20 by any being published by Paizo, how high would my AC need to be?
Or put in another way, which published Paizo being has the highest attack modifier and how high is it?
I have a character with 64 AC, and I want to know if I need to tone it down and reinvest some resources elsewhere, or if I need to make it higher.
I can't help you with the highest attack modifier trivia question, but you've made enough characters to know that, while getting the AC up there as an intellectual exercise is all well and good, characters will be much better served by having higher saves, CMD, etc. When a character is THAT much of a 1-trick pony, there are just too many ways to neutralize him or - worse yet - turn him and that high AC on his companions.
I'd say that if your average +4 CR foe needs a 19 or higher to hit you then your AC is more than high enough.
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That is high enough Ravingdork. You might even want to tone it down to 60 and you'll likely still be on the 5% to get hit mark and 2.5% to get crit.
As a Monk/Druid mine will likely be around 71 in the future... so I'll be doing the same.
I think a 41 AC may be Average for most encounters, 55 would probably be ideal for the bigger/meaner creature encounters.
Is that a mythic monster?
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999AC is too much:)
But seriously, you should probably turn the AC down a tad to get a better offensive capability. I mean, after a certain point, foes will just stop trying to hit you, and the larger foes will just reach behind, or walk over you. On a side note, do you have stalwart? It gives you DR from fighting defensively, and therefor could be more useful than AC if your GM uses the Massive Damage optionaly rule.
Simple rule of thumb :
If your AC is so high that any attack that has a 25% chance of hitting you has a 95% chance of hitting your allies, then you are too high.
This is a team game, and when you play 'Look at me I'm the uber tank and nobody can touch me' then you're basically forcing the GM to put things out that can touch you, and that means they never miss on your allies.
In my current game, I have two people who top out in the low 30's, and 3 people in the low to mid 20's. So if something has only a 25% chance of hitting A&B, it has a guaranteed hit on the other 3 on the first hit, and probably hits on the second and third attacks regularly. The obvious way around this is touch attacks, CMD attacks, and area of effect attacks. However, if as GM I use these obvious counters too much, then I am a Dick GM (per the boards).
It's a lot like Hero system. If you give the Brick the Big Defense, you usually make him easier to hit. If you make the speedster really hard to hit, you give him less defenses.
Unfortuantely, PF has that all tied into one stat, AC. The closest you get to defense is DR and Resistance. So a 64 AC means things normally can't hit you in combat, and they just ignore you after a swing or two if they have half a brain. Or they switch to things that can hit you, like touch attacks or area of effect or spells, but then you basically get sandbagged by those and b%*$+ because your AC is useless.
Offense isn't a problem. My guy can solo the tarrasque...in melee.
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Ok, if you can Melee a tarrasque with an AC64 and win, then never mind tuning down AC. But remember, if 20s are the only things hitting you, vorpal, with its 2.5% activation chance, possibly more when critical focus and other things are taken, may become a problem, and when your GM needs to find things that can give you a challenge, it is difficult. Try instead going for stalwart or similar abilities that convert AC to DR so that you can get hit, just not hurt.
What's your touch/flatfooded? If a bunch of incorporeal undead came your way, could you hold your own?
What's your touch/flatfooded? If a bunch of incorporeal undead came your way, could you hold your own?
AC 64, touch 22, flat-footed 57
(+18 armor, +5 deflection, +7 Dex, +15 natural, +9 shield)If I were willing to give up my Dwarven hardy racial trait, I could add that shield bonus to touch AC.
With a 120-foot movement speed and the ability to make a full attack AND move, I doubt the incorporeal undead could keep up with me.
(Not that they'd want to with an attack line like +40/+34/+29/+24/+19 (2d6+52/17-20/×3).)
Yeah, if I were the GM looking to challenge you, I'd either: a) focus on the rest of the party; b) throw a bunch of touch attacks at you, like enervation; c) have incorporeal creatures ambush you in your sleep; d) grapple you (depending on your CMD); e) use some horror elements and throw unkillable mobs in very close quarters; or f) use an anti-magic field in combination with the above. Depending on your level, time stop and wish would probably be fair game too...
Remember that incorporeal undead would take half damage from your attacks, are immune to crits, and precision based damage.
From your perspective, if I was you, I'd probably burn a +1 bonus on ghost touch for your armor just to pump your touch AC higher.
*EDIT* Found the crit rule... nevermind.
Ghost touch on armor is a +3 bonus
Enemy NPC just use Curse of Thaco and PC then sure that lowest AC best.
Grappling won't be much of an option as even the tarrasque has a difficult time accomplishing that.
He doesn't have any Mythic Tiers or Templates, but it does take "Mythic or Deific" to shut down his regeneration. Not at all clear what that means.
Well if any +6 or higher 'total bonus equivalent' weapon can now defeat DR/Mythic, all the prestige of defeating the Tarrasque kind of went down the drain.
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RD: You need to get a t-shirt that says: "You won't be laughing once I reach Level 20".
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I'm wondering where your Will is at. A mid-level wizard with a Dominate spell and you become the weapon that destroys your party.
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Note that Dominate spells do have a 1 round casting time, so if the wizard is out in the open, even if flying, a few pot shots might disrupt the casting. Moreover, if you are encountering an evil wizard, a potion of Protection from Evil will stop the compulsion effect before it even starts.
Confusion on the other hand, now that is just being a jerk. =)
I'm wondering where your Will is at. A mid-level wizard with a Dominate spell and you become the weapon that destroys your party.
With +13 Will save he ought to be okay unless said spellcaster is a min/maxed enchanter abusing Spell Perfection.
Also, he can move 240 feet and full attack said caster with 6 attacks at +40 to hit and each doing over 50 damage and requiring DC 30 Fortitude saves to avoid stun, so said caster better have good defenses of his own.
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The CR 25 Treerazer only hits you on a nat 20 with a +44/+39/+34/+29(4d6+24/19-20/x3), as published in the Inner Sea World Guide. As a nascent demon lord with powerful spell-like abilities wielding a major artifact, he's one of the toughest Paizo-printed creatures I could find, and he only hits you on a nat 20. He has other things that might maybe get you, but you hit him most of the time on your first two hits, and the third one is pretty close too.
You might want to look at him to address other possible weaknesses, I don't know your whole character sheet but it is worth looking at.
EDIT: Quickened greater dispel as an SLA is pretty rough though. Could do a good job lowering defenses. He also turns you into a plant if you fail a DC 39 fort save.
Since PF is backward compatible with 3.x, as a GM I would just whip out Deities & Demigods and enjoy all those gods and demigods whose every roll counts as a 20. Or however that worked.
So I say, go ahead and get it up as high as you can. Might make for a fun campaign to fight some gods.
I'm wondering where your Will is at. A mid-level wizard with a Dominate spell and you become the weapon that destroys your party.With +13 Will save he ought to be okay unless said spellcaster is a min/maxed enchanter abusing Spell Perfection.
Also, he can move 240 feet and full attack said caster with 6 attacks at +40 to hit and each doing over 50 damage and requiring DC 30 Fortitude saves to avoid stun, so said caster better have good defenses of his own.
+13? Little low for a level 20 if you're worried about turning on your friends. I'm looking at a CR 20 end of module caster here with DC 27-32 will saves in its casting block. I wouldn't feel comfortable fielding a character with less than +17-22 personally. If your AC is lets say: 55, can you rely on some friends to boost that by 5-10 in a truly epic fight, and have a better will save?
Dot
Is there such a thing as too high?
The highest paizo published monster attack bonus is +44, without buffs, belonging to this charming devil.
The highest attack bonus attainable by a PC that I can think of would be slightly higher (48 - 52 I think, but I don't have time to put that together right this second), and of course you could up that with a template, but it'd either break the rules or use up way to many resources to be bothered with.
Gunslingers, tweaked save or suck wizards (magic users in general), and anything with a brilliant energy weapon are really your only concern when it comes to being hit at all, really. Although the super high AC builds make me miss the 3.5 missle master...
I'm wondering where your Will is at. A mid-level wizard with a Dominate spell and you become the weapon that destroys your party.With +13 Will save he ought to be okay unless said spellcaster is a min/maxed enchanter abusing Spell Perfection.
Also, he can move 240 feet and full attack said caster with 6 attacks at +40 to hit and each doing over 50 damage and requiring DC 30 Fortitude saves to avoid stun, so said caster better have good defenses of his own.
+13 only? I'm assuming this character is level 20 and a level 20 wizard could easily have a 30 INT. That is a base dc 10 + 9 spell level + 10 INT MOD and we are at 29 without even trying. That gives you only a 25% chance to save. Specialist wizard, and spell focus/greater spell focus makes that a 32 pretty quick. Now you only save 10%, any number of one-off abilities will push that up one more where you only save on a natural 20. Hardly min/maxed or abusive of feat combos. YMMV, but I would be very concerned about that.
A +13 isn't so bad when you can, as a non-action, add +1d10 to the roll AND reroll the d20 AFTER the results are known.
How many times a day?
Heighten spell + Focus + Greater Focus
18 Int + 2 Race + 5 level + 6 Headband + 5 book
DC = 10 + 13 Int + 9 Lvl of any spell heightened + 2 Focus = 34
I know there are ways to increase the DC/Int beyond that.
Sounds Mythic