@Kazaan: Do you happen to have a link too that thread? Wouldn't mind reading over their variations, as they sound interesting.
concealment, cover, percentage miss chances, armor as damage reduction from UC, called shots from UC, damage reduction, grace and sanctuary spells
concealment, cover, percentage miss chancesThat sounds an awful lot like "chest-high walls" to me.
drop a smokestick
blinkblur
It takes a lot of feat slots, but crane and serpent style feat lines may be more the feel you are going for. Crane allows one melee attack to be negated a round with the second feat in the line, serpent lets you roll sense motive in place of AC once a round. Not much better than the duelist prestige class, I know.
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I'll preface this by noting that you posted this in the rules forum, and if you're looking for by-the-books rules on this, I think everything has already been mentioned. Below is my advice on this, if that's what you actually wanted.
If it's a problem of the enemies not having high enough AC, just increase it. You are the GM after all. Either increase the base AC from 10 to whatever you want (10+APL/2 maybe), or give them an "adventure" bonus to AC equal to the difference between the AC you want them to have and the AC they end up having after you build them. If you settle on a static system (something with an equation or table, like the 10+APL/2 suggestion), you can even extend it to players.
As far as making the defense "active", here's one idea:
1) Only use flat-footed AC. It replaces regular AC, and touch AC is removed.
2) There is a separate defense roll of BAB+dex bonus+dodge bonus+shield bonus+insight bonus+(any effect that increases attack bonus). All ties go to the attacker. This replaces touch AC and therefore cannot be attempted when the character would be denied their touch AC.
3) A natural 1 on a defense roll always fails, and a natural 20 always succeeds. If both the attacker and defender get natural 20s, the attack hits if the attacker's total equals or exceeds the defender's total.
4) A natural 20 allows for a "critical defense", causing the attacker to provoke an attack of opportunity from the defender. The defender must first confirm the critical defense by rerolling the defense roll and beating the attacker's attack roll. A character with a light or heavy shield threatens a critical defense on a 19-20, and a tower shield threatens on an 18-20.
5) Add new feat Improved Critical Defense: critical defense threat range for one type of shield (buckler, light, heavy, or tower) is doubled.
6) Add new shield enhancement Blocking: +1 bonus, critical defense range is doubled.
Yes, deflection bonus is replaced with shield bonus for the purpose of touch AC, flipping their importance. This system intentionally makes shields more useful. You could also add defense equivalents for Critcal Focus and the various critical feats.
Although I feel that this example is a good simulation, and balanced as far as I can tell without playtesting, any type of "active defense" rule will slow the game down with additional rolls. YMMV.
Kazaan... thank you for responding first off.
Interesting system you described but it and the second alternative still resort to wear a ton of armor to have a good chance of survival. The second alternative is the problem of have a 45% of having a worse armor class and only a 50% of being marginally better.
The heavy armors are something only a small selection of characters have. Not everyone gets to go go tooling around in full plate or has a chance to put on their massive sets of armor before being jumped.
Super genius games has a product called Anachronistic Adventures: The enforcer that has a feat chain called avoidance. It allows you to operate unarmored at all but the highest AC's heavy armor could produce.
There is also a product called feats of battle that had the feat web of steel, that feat allowed you to add an armor bonus to your AC so long as you were armed with a weapon which you had the weapon focus feat with. It is another route to unarmored combat. You could even bake both of those into the classes as neither stacks with armor, so its an either or situation.
Take for a example a high cleric jumped in his temple during a sermon. It is hard to justify him being in his full combat wombat battle gear. Sure, he might on the battlefield be clad in the most ornate of plate and the heftiest of tower shields but he might only have a ring of protection on at best while giving his sermon.
Sure, there is the magical enchantment that lets you pretty much be a power ranger and summon all your defenses to you. But it again approaches the edge realm of suspension of disbelief if too many use it.
I have a set of house rules to replace the bulk of magic items that give +x bonuses. Characters choose from them them as they level up (including npcs). Makes +x armor/weapons, stat boosters, save boosters, and rings of prod/amulets of armor unneccessary. Also means characters can operate without their gear if they have to. I can link you if you are interested.
Plus... there is the fear of over gearing the players if too many evil villains who are supposed to be beatable (albeit after a dramatic fight) get beaten and their massive magic item stores fall into the hands of the players. Soon everyone is wearing the +5 full plates, +5 rings of Protections, +6 to agility stat buffing items, and what ever other toys a book can put out.
There has to be a better way around it than just either letting the players stomp on everything with their to hit bonuses that way outpace the AC values at a certain point or eventually having everyone wearing magical tactical dreadnaught armor.
See above
Edit:
link to the part of my house rules most relavent to your need. The first post in that thread describes the whole system, that link is just the updated distinctions.
The idea is that NPCs that would have npc wealth just get the distinctions, PCs and npcs with pc wealth get both the archetypes and the distinctions and only a handful of other non +x magic items over the whole course of their career. This way npc villains can get all the +x bonuses they need without meaning hte pcs have a treasure trove of items to sell, use, swim through after the fight.
I have a couple thoughts on this:
First of all, I think you're trying to solve the wrong problem. What makes you think that a fight where everyone misses most of the time is going to be any more dynamic than one where they hit more, but there's a huge HP pool to burn through? Why would a higher AC make the fight more interesting? From my own experience, it will just become the "stand there and hope to roll a 20" you want to avoid, and frustrate your players.
Additionally, part of the advantage to being a full BAB class (instead of a 3/4 BAB one) is that you do hit on your first attack almost all the time. If you bump ACs to the point that a fighter or raging barbarian has a 50% chance (for example) to fail to hit, then what are the rogues, magi, and the like going to do, with their attacks being 3-8 points worse?
Simply increasing AC is not an effective thing to do.
Side note: Vital Strike and Spring Attack don't work together - VS is (effectively)] a standard action, and SA requires a full round action.
I know this adds "more rolling" to the game, but it's better (and it has the players jazzed when their turn is up) than me standing there reading off the opponent his this character, move to next.... I try to spice it up with flavored battle descriptions, but players start to turn to their phones or losing themselves in a players handbook...No, the second I introduced active defense--instant change! They loved it, and the dice roll determined the flavor of the battle, enhanced my descriptions, if you will. It has been very exciting, and we all look forward to the next combat.