Martial class gaining AC as level progress

[solarius]

boosting ac hasn't been a good idea since dnd 3.0 to 3.5 to pathfinder, because "ac doesn't scale with level". that's why most martial builds focus on kill the enemy before they kill you, and dump ac when level goes higher.
now the simple question is: would it be broken if we let ac scale with level like bab does, but at a slower rate?

a rough idea is:

all full bab class gain 1 point of "parry" ac when wielding melee weapon at every even class level. This represents their improved skill of parry incoming physical blow. this nets them a total of 10 points of free ac at level 20.

all 3/4 bab class gain 1 point of parry ac when wielding melee weapon at every 4th class level.

all 1/2 bab class doesn't gain any benefit, cause full casters don't bother trivial stuff like ac.

i imaging the 10 points of free ac for PC who goes close and personal wouldn't really help them become impervious to scary monsters, but could make defensive builds more viable.

what's your thoughts on this suggestion?

[wynterknight]

solarius wrote:

boosting ac hasn't been a good idea since dnd 3.0 to 3.5 to pathfinder, because "ac doesn't scale with level". that's why most martial builds focus on kill the enemy before they kill you, and dump ac when level goes higher.

now the simple question is: would it be broken if we let ac scale with level like bab does, but at a slower rate?

a rough idea is:

all full bab class gain 1 point of "parry" ac when wielding melee weapon at every even class level. This represents their improved skill of parry incoming physical blow. this nets them a total of 10 points of free ac at level 20.

all 3/4 bab class gain 1 point of parry ac when wielding melee weapon at every 4th class level.

all 1/2 bab class doesn't gain any benefit, cause full casters don't bother trivial stuff like ac.

i imaging the 10 points of free ac for PC who goes close and personal wouldn't really help them become impervious to scary monsters, but could make defensive builds more viable.

what's your thoughts on this suggestion?

I haven't tried this, but according to others' posts on this subject it seems to slow combat down a lot when AC goes up. The combination of making everyone harder to hit + still having a lot of hp means combat takes a lot longer. Of course, I haven't tried it, and the system has been used in games like Star Wars and D20 Modern, so take this advice for what it's worth.

[solarius]

well, it certainly slows down the combat, cause lost of high level martial builds focus on kill the enemy in the first turn they act via lance charge or pounce, making the combat very swift.

is it really a bad thing to slow down the combat pace when casters save or die the enemy more and more often, and damage dealers get a dpr so high that either they or the enemy can stand more than 1 round of combat before one side falls dead?

but i also come to realize AC isn't the only thing martial class needs to remain in combat long enough in order to make the combat interesting.

[johnlocke90]

I think you underestimate how much AC people can get if they actually focus on it. There are like 8 different bonuses you can add to AC and at higher levels osmeone can buy all those magic bonuses. This could bump someone into almost unhittable at high levels.

[solarius]

right, with unlimited resources the ac can get really high, but unlimited resources isn't the way most games play, and with unlimited resources, an assult oriented build can kill monsters twice over or more, so...

[Aunt Tony]

If you're just gonna advance AC enough to allow your choice of equipped armor to affect how often you're hit... then why scale BAB at all in the first place?

This is really a question of "how do we trick the players into feeling more powerful without using math that can't be done in the DM's head?"

The answer is simple: allow the players to hit more often as they gain levels and to deal more damage, but keep combat length roughly the same or shorter (taking into account the lower miss variance). We do this by scaling HP.

Therefore, scaling AC is unnecessary and simply complicates the part where the game already bogs down (combat).

This is why games like NWN(2) were so nice: the computer handled all the boring math while still giving the users tools to have a live DM "at the table", so to speak. The best of both worlds, all wrapped up in a nice online-connectable package. Of course, for some truly funky homebrew stuff it required a minor ability to create digital assets (art and/or code), and that's the reason why it didn't get any more popular than it did. Though, to be sure, it got quite popular for a while until other video games drew the folks away...

And then we have the current mad scrabble to create the better VTT and/or MMO -- and Paizo is certainly not immune to the lure of that fair siren, eh...?

[spalding]

Honestly getting enough AC to not be hit by anything in the monster manuals as well as 1~2 rounding all said monsters while still having around a 65% chance of success on your save throws as a human fighter isn't hard with core only, let alone with everything else out there or changing race. This is an old argument that died right out of beta (and I helped kill it then). I think the last time we had this seriously go around it was a 15(perhaps20) point buy level 16 fighter that nailed a balor to the wall in 1~1.5 rounds with the balor unable to do crap to the fighter. Anyone else remember the link to that thread? I think it was like 3 years ago.

[Lemmy]

I had a similar idea, although I never used if as I was afraid of screwing game balance.

Every class got an untyped bonus to AC. This bonus was equal to (BAB+1)/3 (rounded down) or CR/3 for monsters (rounded up). That meant that at 20th level:

Full BAB ended up with a +7 to AC, Medium BAB with a +5 and poor BAB with a +3. (Monks were an exception, as they used their Monk levels instead of BAB).

My idea was giving these bonuses, but making it so Rings of Protection and Amulet of Natural Armor didn't stack with each other, so PCs would buy cool stuff instead of +1 items.

It'd also reduce item dependency and give martials characters a solid advantage, I think.

But as I was (and still am) uncertain about it, I never used the rule. I really like it, though.

[solarius]

Aunt Tony wrote:

If you're just gonna advance AC enough to allow your choice of equipped armor to affect how often you're hit... then why scale BAB at all in the first place?

That’s a wired question. If my choice of armor won't affect how often I'm hit, then why do we need all those armor? If you are talking about growing ac cancel the effect of bab and making ONLY armor affect hit chance, then:

1st: it's at a slower rate, for different classes
2nd: it's for classes only, doesn't affect monsters (heck, they can have a natural armor any value you like, from 1 to 100. why bother derive mechanic for they? it's not likely they'll level up by killing PCs anyway.)

Aunt Tony wrote:

This is really a question of "how do we trick the players into feeling more powerful without using math that can't be done in the DM's head?"

The answer is simple: allow the players to hit more often as they gain levels and to deal more damage, but keep combat length roughly the same or shorter (taking into account the lower miss variance). We do this by scaling HP.

Therefore, scaling AC is unnecessary and simply complicates the part where the game already bogs down (combat).

The question and answer just doesn't connect. The whole argument of "bog down combat" thing just amuses me, as well as the too much math thing.

So the only difference between giving a scaling AC and without it, is the PCs are harder to kill and live longer when facing physical attacks.
And yes, it makes the combat long cause PCs are harder to kill. If this is a problem and players want to quicken the pace of game by keeping their characters more fragile thus die faster, then that's beyond my understanding of fun.
It's not like I'm suggesting making the monsters harder to kill thus make players feel less powerful and tedious, but rather make the players tougher and MORE powerful.

Secondly, I thought the only difference this suggestion involves math is when you upgrade your char (how often does that happen?), you put 1 point higher AC on your chart just like your bab does. What's the extra math involved, really? It is the same as you upgrade your ring of protection +1 to ring of protection +2, thus gaining 1 point of AC, just without the price.

AC value does grow in the current system, so higher AC for higher level character is a feature already present. It's just wildly recognized that going defensive consumes too much resource (mostly gold to buy equipments) and become unwelcome. By giving away some AC free of charge I wish this can be balanced.
In short, the whole suggestion is just a tweak of number, to reduce the resource required or improve the effectiveness if PCs want to build char defensively, that’s all.

Besides, a naked lvl 20 epic fighter gets stroked in melee as often as a naked lvl 1 mage, doesn't that sound wired?

[spalding]

Except it isn't widely recongized that AC costs too much in resources (especially at the current resource rate!).

+ 5 full plate + 5 ring +5 amulet is 125k, throw in the cloak and you are at 150k for +24 to your AC meaning a starting point of 34 without spending 1/4 your wealth at high levels and with plenty more AC options available. At lower levels AC is still easy to get dirt cheap and extremely effective.

All in all this would simply be unneeded and just something else to stack on.