Tatics guide: My character has suboptimal AC! What now?

[lakobie]

Unicore wrote:

I think if you want to be a giant Barbarian, and not invest in Dex, I'd recommend teaming up with a Champion to bring the divine retribution, or atleast make sure your healer is ready to help you out a lot.

Investing in dex doesnt do anything except relfex saves. Barbarians get medium armor all the way to Master and dex cap for medium is 1-2. Barbs generally have 2 less ac than fighter while raging, 3 less if Giant barb and thats only if the fighter is in heavy armor (its 1-2 in medium). Barbs also gain resitance to a few types of damage while raging, while fighters only get 1 resist based on the armor they wear

[Deadmanwalking]

lordcirth wrote:

Alex Mack wrote:

Kyrone wrote:

Barbarian have 12hp per level and temporary HP from rage, they just absorb the damage with their ABS.

Sure, but you also absorb way more critcal hits which come with nasty debuffs (unless critcal specilization is strictly a PC Thing?).

And looking at the feat support and build incentives the AC of your average Barbarian is prolly gonna be 2-4 Points behind your average fighter.

There might be a few monsters with crit spec, but since PCs don't get it by default either, I don't think there's many.

For the record, in the whole Bestiary, there are two monsters with Critical Specialization. Both would clearly be statted as Fighters in PF1 (it's the Graveknight and Hobgoblin General).

This is not a common ability.