I'm one of the people who are bothered with the fact that a character's AC doesn't scale with level.
It feels wrong to me, that a level 10+ character who isn't decked out in his armor and magic gear is just as easy or only marginally harder to hit than a level 1 mook. Some of you may be familiar with samurai movies like Lone Wolf and Cub, where the hero gets rushed by a whole squad of enemies, but they just can't touch him, even though he's not even wearing armor. He just dodges and parries everything. Or the hero in any medieval/fantasy movie is surprised while his guard is down, he doesn't have his armor, but he can still take out the attackers relatively unharmed.
I think in a game of epic heroics, like pathfinder skilled combatants, especially the heroes, should be able to do the same.
That's why i came up with the following simple idea:
All creatures add either their Base Reflex Bonus (called reflex bonus) or Half their Base Attack Bonus (called parry bonus) as a dodge bonus to AC, whichever is higher. Using your base reflex bonus represents using your superior reflexes to dodge incoming attacks, while using half your base attack bonus represents your ability to parry. The parry bonus can only be used if the creature is wielding a manufactured weapon or a shield it is proficient with. The reflex bonus can only be applied while wearing light or no armor and while the character is not carrying more than a light load.
To prevent Reflex bonus abuse a character who multiclasses will use the good and bad base save bonuses for prestige classes when taking levels in any other than their first level class.
Finally so the ACs don't stack so high, that combat is mostly spent missing every blow, all magic items and item enchantments giving bonuses to AC will cost twice as much.
I haven't run the numbers on this against typical attack bonuses on different levels and I'm also not sure what this will do to caster/martial balance yet. so I will have to see.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome.
While I agree, conceptually, I'm not sure the math works out very well. Essentially, the increased AC seems like it would actually hurt martial classes more than casters. While this may not seem immediately evident due to the slow BAB of Casters (and the fact that none of the full-casters have good reflex saves, and only the Bard has good reflex of the half-casters), the main problem is that many martial classes are reliant on full attacking. Higher AC means the iterative attacks are significantly less likely to hit, while touch attacks go from being impossible to miss, to almost impossible to miss, and saving throws aren't altered at all.
If you do make this change, then Full-attack rules probably need to change as well, to make sure that martial characters don't drop immensely in DPR.
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It feels wrong to me, that a level 10+ character who isn't decked out in his armor and magic gear is just as easy or only marginally harder to hit than a level 1 mook. Some of you may be familiar with samurai movies like Lone Wolf and Cub, where the hero gets rushed by a whole squad of enemies, but they just can't touch him, even though he's not even wearing armor.
That's because conceptually, D&D/Pathfinder does it differently than in movies.
A (naked) 20th level character may be just as easy to hit than a 1st level mook, but since he's got 20 times as many hit points, he's still 20 times as hard to bring down. So Pathfinder translated in movie: Lone Wolf (being high level) takes a lot of damage (fluffed out as parries and dodges) and gets out of the fight still living and breathing.
Pathfinder defines HPs as such: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.
(emphasis mine)
My impression is that if AC and HP scaled, combat would be interminable (unless damage also scaled appropriately)
TL:DR
If defense scales, then hit points need to remain fixed.
I suppose you guys are right. I think I'll scratch this idea.
The idea's has merits, I wouldn't scratch it completely
I don't have time to elaborate right now, but stay tune for more...
I always liked the Star Wars game were they did have scaling AC and reputation scores. The used HP and wound points. HP was essentially your combat stamina, while wound points was your actual health. Crits effected your WP not your HP which meant you could take out a significantly higher character with a lucky shot. It added a bit of realism.
Have you seen the Defense Bonus alternate rule from the D20 SRD site? It might do what you want.
I'd tie the defense bonus to the overall power of the class rather than its proficiencies and use the Armor as DR variant but that's just me.
That should give you a scaling AC bonus and still let armor be meaningful without messing with damage too terribly badly.
The class Defense Bonus thing didn't appeal to me for 2 reasons:
1. It makes physical armor obsolete from a certain level upward (of course that would change with Armor as DR rule)2. I don't like the way the AC bonus is tied to something that seems completely unrelated (how does knowing how to wear heavy armor make you better at defending against attacks?)
I went for Base Reflex/Half Base Attack because it could be explained with something and it would make sense that a good martialist should be capable of parrying and someone with good reflexes be good at dodging attacks.
Maybe i could combine my original idea with Armor as DR, but then I have never been so sure about that rule either. It seems to put too much favor on focussing damage into less attacks. It's not like things like TWF are doing too well as is.
That's going to be true of any scaling bonus except for a few edge cases though.Have you seen the Defense Bonus alternate rule from the D20 SRD site? It might do what you want.
I'd tie the defense bonus to the overall power of the class rather than its proficiencies and use the Armor as DR variant but that's just me.
That should give you a scaling AC bonus and still let armor be meaningful without messing with damage too terribly badly.
The class Defense Bonus thing didn't appeal to me for 2 reasons:
1. It makes physical armor obsolete from a certain level upward (of course that would change with Armor as DR rule)
Well, if the bonus adds to the AC granted by the armor, it wouldn't make the armor obsolete. With class defense it is either this or armor, so once you hit +9 CDB not even full plate is going to be better anymore.
Yeah, I'd change which classes use which columns. I'd also consider reworking the table itself.
2. I don't like the way the AC bonus is tied to something that seems completely unrelated (how does knowing how to wear heavy armor make you better at defending against attacks?)
That is one way, i just wanted to tie it to something that's already there.
I went for Base Reflex/Half Base Attack because it could be explained with something and it would make sense that a good martialist should be capable of parrying and someone with good reflexes be good at dodging attacks.
Hmm. Here's the only real problem I see. You have 4 effective tracks, A is classes with a high reflex save, B is high BAB, C is medium BAB, and D is low reflex. A is always 2 points higher than B. B and C are identical for the first 3 levels then C falls a point behind at levels 4, 12, and 16. C and D are identical until level 8, when D falls one point behind. It's just not a very even progression.
Also it seems that high reflex save classes are also classes that are likely to have a high dexterity. Any way you slice it, it seems like high reflex classes will have the highest armor classes for nearly the entire game.
You also still have to figure in armor. Yes the high reflex classes will get a better AC bonus from this, but remember that other classes still have armor. Also i made sure to mention that you are only allowed to add your Reflex bonus if you are wearing light or no armor at all. (I did that specifically with the ranger in mind who has medium armor proficiency and a high reflex save)
Well having a little more AC wouldnt hurt monks and rogues, they could really use it.
What if you just went with half your BAB as your defense bonus and gave a flat +2 if you have levels in a class with a high reflex save? You get a smooth progression out of that, most classes will want armor, and you avoid any multiclassing weirdness with reflex saves.Still, if your idea works best for you, that's all that matters.
That is another way to go about it i suppose. Monks should use their monk level instead of BAB then, as they do for Flurry and maneuvers.
I will think about it. But first I would need to figure out what to do with overscaling AC, wether to use armor as DR or what.
I really like the idea, I could see it working well if you were also using some sort of Wounds/Vitality rules, working off the whole idea that you are simply getting better at fighting and/or better at avoiding damage.
As often happens though, a lot of the Pathfinder rules sort of operate under the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" idea. (at least in my personal opinion)
You can solve the problem of armor becoming obsolete by changing its function. Make it improve your scaling bonus instead of replace it.