Forum

[Felon]

Originally Posted by Flipguarder

Im currently playing a ranger who wears plate. When I saw what ac light armor will get me in later levels I was a little pissed that I spent 3 feats to lower my ac.

Plate should grant better ac then any other armor because its a clear tier format, each one being harder to obtain than the last. I understand what you are saying about having an unobtainable ac but I think that makes sense.

The tiered armor feat progression serves those classes (like say, the cleric or sorcerer) who have armor proficiency options that could be improved upon without sacrificing an AC bonus (be it Dex, Int, or a class feature) that they may have. Now, your ranger is a nimble skirmisher--it makes perfect sense to me that he can dodge and weave around attacks and thus have as good of an AC as a guy in full plate.

Clearly, you don't agree, and feel that strapping on they heaviest armor a given character can wear should be the best option bar none. In other worlds, old-school D&D. Fair enough. To each their own. But that doesn't indicate anything's broken by letting the ranger have a top-knotch AC in hide armor.

Swordmages and Wardens have other abilities and more mobility that make up for the fact that they will get hit more than a paladin, who has very few abilties to lower the amount of damage he takes, and less mobility too.

This is all pretty subjective. IME, paladins are fine. They certainly have as much damage mitigation as a swordmage. And fighters...geez, they are so fine. But at least we seem to be able to agree then that defenders as a group don't necessarily need a better AC than every other class in order to fulfill their role.

Without the MW rules, an archer ranger and maybe even a trickster rogue will pretty much always have a better ac than your tank.

If thats ok with you then fantastic, you can just ignore the mw rules. But that is what those rules are trying to correct, and I think its a reasonable try at that.

I don't have a big beef with the PHB MW rules, so I'll probably introduce them in an appropriate fashion. I'm on the fence with the stealth-errata MW. Clearly, as every bit of math here has shown, it just swings the pendulum in the favor of heavy armor weaerers until the light armor wearers can play catch up with their ability score increases.