My friend is starting a campaign at level 10 (a miss guided idea in my opinion but meh) the other players are newbish (hence I think it's a miss guided idea) so I'm helping them with shopping.
I've always been aware that casters have a more interesting shopping list but doing 3 shopping lists at the same time made it really obvious.
One player is playing a sword and board oracle who had to split shopping between enhance plate armour, an enhance shield, an enhanced morning star, a cloak of resistance a ring and amulet of AC a headband and a belt. After all that he has like no money left virtually just enough for some CLW wands and some dust for restoration and a couple utility scrolls.
One is playing a earth breaker wielding barb. He wants to sink almost all his wealth into armour and rings and amulets to achieve not that much AC really. Likely 25 for a very heavy investment and it will go down to 23 raging so in my opinion not worth
Then there is the sorc, he is playing a gnome with 14 Dex so with Mage armour his AC is 17 before spending and seeing as it's not worth the investment until you hit about 15+level he decide to basically spend nothing on AC and rely on flight/mirror image/invis and greater invis/DDoor for defence. So he just needs a belt of Con and a headband and a cloak. From there he is pretty much free to shop xD
So my question is this. How much are you guys normally willing to spend on defence what are the more crazy things you like to spend on? Rods/scrolls/Wands do not count as crazy.
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Generally with a melee build (unless I'm building specifically to max AC) I'll invest in +1 gear. So +1 Armor/shield (if worn) Amulet of Natural armor, and ring of protection, and even all of that may not be needed depending on the build and your reasonable expectations to achieve a decent AC. Beyond that the return on investment isn't really worth it until you have all the other utility items and weapons you need.
For Characters like the Barbarian/Bloodrager types. I may not spend anything on defense and just go pure weapon/strength, those characters are designed to simply kill faster than they are killed, trying to spend gold on defense slows down how efficiently you kill while not really adding very much to your own survive-ability.
Then with the casters, you pretty much nailed it, a decent con score and maintaining the various spells to avoid damage is all you need, from there you get all the tools and tricks you want. Casters starting at lvl 10 just jump right into being a little OP without having to suffer through the lean times (level 1-5)
So a character in full plate and a light shield with 12 Dex for you would have 25 AC? I recommended boosting the enchant on the shield and armour to 2, I think they decided to get a +2 ring as well but I had nothing to do with that. Dusty rose would have been cheaper.
So what fun stuff do you buy with casters and barbs? Other than a bigger and bigger sword xD
A 25 AC won't do much for you at 10th level.
If you're going to invest in AC at that level, don't settle for less than 30.
Really? So you'd go +2 to the shield armour, ring amulet and dusty rose prism?
The oracle would be better served using a couple lesser rods of extend spell and magic vestment.
For the barb, a 10th level character would start with 62k, so if it were me I'd buy (assuming a base dex of 14):
mithral breastplate 4350
up it to +4 16000
amulet of natural armor +2 8000
ring of protection +2 8000
dusty rose prism ioun stone 5000
belt of physical perfection +2 16000
total 57,350gp, AC28 which is decent for a 10th level character.
You could save 6000 by going with a belt of Str+Dex instead. If he has the Beast Totem rage power his AC will actually increase when raging.
If you don't mind giving up the cloak slot
mithral breastplate 4350
up it to +2 4000
amulet of natural armor +1 2000
ring of protection +1 2000
dusty rose prism ioun stone 5000
lesser cloak of displacement 16000
belt of physical might (str+dex) +2 10,000
total 43,500gp, AC24+20% miss chance which is roughly equal to AC28.
EDIT: I've got a post here that details the most efficient step by step incrementing of AC. Note the post is from before they nerfed the jingasa of the fortunate soldier, so ignore it in the list. Also note that the lesser cloak of displacement is effectively 4 instances of +1 ac for 4000gp packaged together.
Isn't there's a rule suggesting you shouldn't spend more than about 25% of your money on boosting AC? (If only because it makes some characters potentially unhittable, and it's a real hassle for the GM to role-play enemies fighting opponents they can't hurt).
Isn't there's a rule suggesting you shouldn't spend more than about 25% of your money on boosting AC? (If only because it makes some characters potentially unhittable, and it's a real hassle for the GM to role-play enemies fighting opponents they can't hurt).
It's a guideline, not a rule. And I personally find it woefully lacking when trying to keep up with advancing monster attack bonuses. Even my suggestions above only get you to a cr10 foe needing a 10 to hit you.
I think the ABP progression for level 10 is a good snapshot for where an unspecified character should be at that level. Per unchained, a level 10 character should have approximately:
A +3 Cloak of Resistance (9000 gp), a +2 Ring of Protection (8000 gp), +2 Armor (4000 gp), a +2 Weapon (8000 gp), a +1 Amulet of Natural Armor (2000 gp), a +2 Headband (4000 gp), a +2 Belt (4000 gp), and about 23,000 or 31,000 gold left over (Unchained says "half WBL" in cash which would be 31k, but WBL for level 10 is 62k, so the remainder would be 23k).
So that's (23/39) ~ 59% of their spent cash invested into purely defensive items, and (8/39) ~ 20% of their cash spent on purely offensive items.
So I would suggest something like this:
Everybody gets a +3 Cloak, +2 Ring, +2 Armor (or +3 Bracers), +1 Amulet, a +2 Belt and +2 Headband, anybody who wants a weapon gets a +2 one and has 23k gold to spend on whatever, and anybody who doesn't gets no weapon and has 31k to spend.
Never heard of anyone giving up the resistance cloak before :P ain't that sacrilege.
Wouldn't those guildlimes to AC mean you couldn't have a set of plate mail to like level 4/5? Seems a bit far-fetched
I believe the designed goal of AC in mid to higher levels are
1) stop mooks from auto-hitting you
2) stop iterative attacks from auto-hitting you
I don't believe AC was meant to stop primary attacks from regularly hitting you.
So 15+level gives you AC that accomplishes this goal and is reasonably possible, breastplate +3 +14 dex+2 ring +2 amulet is 25 AC.
Getting super AC is usually a far greater investment, and unless doing one of the ways to "cheat" and use a shield, less damaging.
48 million, but will get my neighbor to pay me back for it.
If the Barbarian wants more AC there's always Beast Totem. If you take Guarded Stance too your AC could get pretty high. There's also a Shield Brace feat which would allow you to use a shield along with certain two-handed weapons (not earth breaker though). Add a little debuffing and you can be pretty tough for most enemies to hit without blowing all your gold on AC.