Any chance of nerfing tower shield specialist to get rid of 40+ Acs?


Homebrew and House Rules

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Scarab Sages

Bbauzh ap Aghauzh wrote:


But when the GM ignores the turtle after the first round with intelligent bad guys, isn't that adversely affecting others too?

Not all turtles can be ignored.

Some have abilities invested into battlefield control.

The the case of the tank upsetting the OP, he makes the entire party tanky just by standing there. It's like saying, "Ignore the high AC life oracle, she's not dealing any damage."

Ultimately though, if the group is having fun, I see no issue.


As a quick aside, I find it kinda laughable that opinions on AC swing so wildly on the boards, sometimes by the same people in different discussions (not that I'm saying that this is the case here, just a general observation).

That outta the way, I think that (money/fame check aside) a character with high AC who has spent the majority of his resources on AC is just as valid and reasonable a build as a character who spends a majority of his resources on hitting consistently, or a character who focuses on having high save DCs. I think that challenging a character within the confines of a PFS mod is one thing (and this goes for any character, not just a high AC one), but in response to the OP I think that asking to "nerf" a character who has focused significant resources on doing anything that makes things hard on you as a GM is not so good. There are plenty of things that you can do to challenge a high AC character that have nothing to do with "nerfing", and everything to do with challenging his expectations: targeting his CMD (dirty trick is a personal fav) and target them with spells (especially the non-attack kind) are acceptable options.

I definitely think that it's helpful to remember that you want to challenge them, but that they should feel like they're investment in resources is a good one. That's why I would caution against "just having the enemies ignore them" (at least not initially) because then the person who has focused on this feels like they've wasted resources, and the rest of the party suffers because they're now getting attacked instead of the "tank". After a round or two, though, even most average intelligence characters would probably not focus on the high AC guy anyway, so now everyone has benefitted: the high AC guy gets to feel like his contributions matter, the rest of the party is spared for a few rounds, and you as a GM still get to feel like you've challenged the party and have enjoyed the combat.

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