Is Armor Class useless?


Advice

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Scarab Sages

Artanthos wrote:
Dwarfakin wrote:
IMHO, AC is effective to a certain point then becomes useless. Yes you may have a 42 AC, but the BBEG has a +43 to hit. At a certain point in the game your AC is not important against the BBEG, but is essential to protect yourself from his minions that nickel and dime you to death. Cause its not always the boss you need to worry about.

By that point, I will have a 55+ AC. I can live with a demon lord missing 60% of the time with his primary attack.

As an aside: most demon lords have true seeing. Magic effects granting concealment won't work.

It depends on how it grants the concealment. Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, Smokesticks etc work just fine.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

What's more, said demon lords tend to be CR 23+, so you may only ever encounter one in your character's entire career. (Hopefully.)


On the other hand, True Seeing only works until you get Mind Blank. And anyone with access to Mind Blank should be running it 24/7.

Scarab Sages

Athaleon wrote:
On the other hand, True Seeing only works until you get Mind Blank. And anyone with access to Mind Blank should be running it 24/7.

Typically only full arcane casters will have Mind Blank running 24/7.

Most wizards are not willing to permanently sacrifice all of their 8th level spell slots to Mind Blank the entire party.

Scarab Sages

Imbicatus wrote:
Artanthos wrote:
Dwarfakin wrote:
IMHO, AC is effective to a certain point then becomes useless. Yes you may have a 42 AC, but the BBEG has a +43 to hit. At a certain point in the game your AC is not important against the BBEG, but is essential to protect yourself from his minions that nickel and dime you to death. Cause its not always the boss you need to worry about.

By that point, I will have a 55+ AC. I can live with a demon lord missing 60% of the time with his primary attack.

As an aside: most demon lords have true seeing. Magic effects granting concealment won't work.

It depends on how it grants the concealment. Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, Smokesticks etc work just fine.

Barring specific circumstances, those effects will also impair the party.

Dark Archive

My PFS dwarf melee alchemist (fighter 1/alchemist x) was regularly in the 30s to 40s by level 11-13 w/ other mitigations as well. This wasn't even spending a ton of effort on his defenses, but utilizing his extracts and class abilities (enhance potion). In the few occasions where he could not get his 10 min/level extracts off, then he had much less defenses but most of his buffs would last a full scenario. I couldn't go AoNA due to needing AoMF. Easy ways that I could have increased my AC would have been getting a magical shield to hold w/ the tentacle. Or ring of protection. While I had enough AC for most of the stuff that the scenarios threw my way, I also made use of other mitigation strategies. I had smoke bombs for concealment. Wings for positioning. Enlarge person for reach w/ combat reflexes (and being a beastmorph I also had grab/trip on my natural attacks). Cornugan Smash and a 23+ intimidate bonus for an effective +2 AC against many targets.

He regularly has the barkskin and mutagen bonuses up since they are in the 10 min/level ranges. With Accelerated Drinker and a Tentacle carrying the potion, I can pop shield extract + shield of faith potion in first round. Also have Veil of Heaven potion for another +2 against evil outsiders if necessary. The Ablative Barrier and Resinous Skin are more 10 min/level extracts that are usually always on.

Base 10
+2 Mithril Full Plate: +11
Dex: +2
Feral Mutagen: +4 (FCB to more NA)
Barkskin: +4
Shield Extract: +4
Shield of Faith potion (enhanced): +3
AC: 38

Other Mitigation:
Ablative Barrier: Turn 5 damage into nonlethal
Resinous Skin: DR 5/piercing
Spontaneous Healing: 25 HP/day

Situational Mitigation:
Fluid Form: DR 10/slashing
Blur
Displacement
Veil of Heavens: +2 sacred vs evil outsiders
Cat's Grace
Haste

Sczarni

So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.

Depending on the DM/Campaign, there would be potential variation... assuming that DM applied that variation and the player somehow understood he would do such a thing before getting too far into the campaign.

Super :3


Kazumetsa Raijin wrote:
So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.

I am not sure how you would come to that conclusion based on the thread. Also AC only protects you against HP damage, your saves protect you from being entirely removed from the fight or turned against your team with a single action. I am not sure how anyone could call them equally important with a straight face.

Liberty's Edge

andreww wrote:
Kazumetsa Raijin wrote:
So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.
I am not sure how you would come to that conclusion based on the thread. Also AC only protects you against HP damage, your saves protect you from being entirely removed from the fight or turned against your team with a single action. I am not sure how anyone could call them equally important with a straight face.

I think he means any other defense vs. damage, which is true. Saves are an entirely different category with basically no overlap (since almost none of the ways to up Saves and AC are meaningfully mutually exclusive).

Sczarni

andreww wrote:
Kazumetsa Raijin wrote:
So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.
I am not sure how you would come to that conclusion based on the thread. Also AC only protects you against HP damage, your saves protect you from being entirely removed from the fight or turned against your team with a single action. I am not sure how anyone could call them equally important with a straight face.

Probably because you don't understand the title of the thread. : P

This is about AC being useless or not useless - Not about saves being better or more important. There are a PLETHORA of things that can "remove you from the fight in a single action"(including a pounce, as that is a single action and without decent AC or super high DR it will remove you from a fight). I'm not sure how you can't comprehend that. ;)

Scarab Sages

andreww wrote:
Kazumetsa Raijin wrote:
So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.
I am not sure how you would come to that conclusion based on the thread. Also AC only protects you against HP damage, your saves protect you from being entirely removed from the fight or turned against your team with a single action. I am not sure how anyone could call them equally important with a straight face.

Nobody is saying other defenses are unimportant, only that AC remains viable.


Lune wrote:

A poster in another thread stated the following:

Quote:
Armor Class is useless to players and animal companions. Armor class is the worst Mitigation in game.

He apparently believes that AC is useless. While it is entirely within the realm of possibility that I am woefully misinformed I don't believe that is true. However, as I try to stay open minded to other ideas I would prefer to allow myself to be convinced.

So what of it? Do you believe that AC is as useless as this person thought? If so why? If not, why not?

Mechanically, AC is the *best* form of mitigation, that's why it's so hard to get. It's been said repeatedly in this thread, but at higher levels being hit by the first attack is more or less guaranteed (unless your primary investment was in AC); at that point, AC is protecting you from iterative attacks.

Relying solely on HP to protect you is foolish, especially if you're dealing with homebrew villains. By 10th level, a well-built Gunslinger can deliver hundreds of HP damage per round; setting that aside, even the official monsters will tear you apart with iterative attacks/rends/etc. you won't have the HP to withstand that for long.

DR sounds like a better solution, but decent DR is even harder to stack up than AC, and it's easily bypassed using magic. Proper survival in Pathfinder involves intelligent balancing of your defenses and adapting to the situation.


andreww wrote:
Kazumetsa Raijin wrote:
So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.
I am not sure how you would come to that conclusion based on the thread. Also AC only protects you against HP damage, your saves protect you from being entirely removed from the fight or turned against your team with a single action. I am not sure how anyone could call them equally important with a straight face.

Well, it is not like hp damage can remove you from the fight either.

Sczarni

spectrevk wrote:
Lune wrote:

A poster in another thread stated the following:

Quote:
Armor Class is useless to players and animal companions. Armor class is the worst Mitigation in game.

He apparently believes that AC is useless. While it is entirely within the realm of possibility that I am woefully misinformed I don't believe that is true. However, as I try to stay open minded to other ideas I would prefer to allow myself to be convinced.

So what of it? Do you believe that AC is as useless as this person thought? If so why? If not, why not?

Mechanically, AC is the *best* form of mitigation, that's why it's so hard to get. It's been said repeatedly in this thread, but at higher levels being hit by the first attack is more or less guaranteed (unless your primary investment was in AC); at that point, AC is protecting you from iterative attacks.

Relying solely on HP to protect you is foolish, especially if you're dealing with homebrew villains. By 10th level, a well-built Gunslinger can deliver hundreds of HP damage per round; setting that aside, even the official monsters will tear you apart with iterative attacks/rends/etc. you won't have the HP to withstand that for long.

DR sounds like a better solution, but decent DR is even harder to stack up than AC, and it's easily bypassed using magic. Proper survival in Pathfinder involves intelligent balancing of your defenses and adapting to the situation.

In regards to that thread you quoted; Perhaps that character had a mean or green DM, or was just playing the wrong kind of campaign in regards to his expectations?

I didn't read the thread though, so just throwing that around. Sorry to cross-thread or derail!


andreww wrote:
Kazumetsa Raijin wrote:
So based off of everyone's responses... It comes down to AC being just as useful as any other defensive stat in the game.
I am not sure how you would come to that conclusion based on the thread. Also AC only protects you against HP damage, your saves protect you from being entirely removed from the fight or turned against your team with a single action. I am not sure how anyone could call them equally important with a straight face.

First, there are several attacks that can be made to attach riders to them that apply status effects - which require being hit to have a chance to take effect. So it's not quite true that AC only protects hp. And mitigating hp damage does cause a status effect of sorts; it prevents the status of being able to be removed from the fight in one round via HP damage.


Fruian Thistlefoot wrote:

Rylar- So your saying you Disregard intelligence of the creture/npc? Your strat is great for the first 8 levels but if Having the highest AC means you auto get threat seems way too easy.

If the Wizard opens up a blast and out-damages the High AC low Damage fighter the monster should be pretty pissed off at the wizard and just ignore AC fatty.
Smarter enemies tend to target lighter armored people as well. The Front-liner has to be more crafty then just stack AC to get targets to focus him and stay off his party.
I'm actually against DMs who Hand players aggro of creatures based on their Class choice. If they step between the party and the creature by all means but if the Monster has the pick of attacks typically they will target the weaker looking targets. Unless you do something to make it target you like piss it off with good damage.

Most fantasy themed shows/movies/literature I've experiences tends to show melee vs melee and caster vs caster at the start of any battle. Also the players strategy should reflect their role, the "tank" guy is going to charge into the battle, while the casters are going to stand behind him so running past provokes AoO.

Also the theory that high ac means low output is silly. The tower shield user in my current group is still swinging his sword for enough damage to get noticed (usually by killing a mook).


andreww wrote:

How are you getting a 34 dex and wisdom?

You might have better luck with a monk1/druid19 wearing wild full plate while wildshaped into an air elemental and arguably getting the full benefit of their dex and wis as they don't count as wearing the armour while wildshaped. Its a bit skeevy on the rules side of things.

Alternatively a lore or primal oracle dip into sorcerer combined with shapechange and seamantle can easily reach the mid 60's.

18 Base

+6 Headband and Belt
+5 from leveling*
+5 from Tomes for each

*This is where I made the mistake, I added those 5 to both Wis and Dex.

So, 34 Wis and 28 Dex, AC drops by 3.

Dark Archive

AC also limits full on power attack in the mid to upper tiers. EG my present score with Meridoc at level 12 is 38 until shield of faith makes it 40. Profane bonus is holy vindicator's shield.

armor 11, shield 4, profane 8, nat 3, def 0, ins 1, dod 1, sz 1 +10

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