Armor Specialization (Plate)

[Wulf Ratbane]

Man, people who wear plate are never satisfied .

Uther, Excalibur, 1981.

Can't speak for Igrayne.

 

[Goumindong]

Which is why he should want the best possible protection.

When we had a Fighter in our group, we always gave him the best defensive magical items first. Other PCs got his hand me downs.

The concept of not doing so, just to encourage enemies to attack him more often is silly.

No, no one is giving him a lower defense so that you would encourage enemies to attack him more often. Stop reading your bias into what I type.

What i was saying was that once you get above the amount of protection required to get you through the day, more than that runs up against your efficiency barriers.

 

[KarinsDad]

What i was saying was that once you get above the amount of protection required to get you through the day, more than that runs up against your efficiency barriers.

Show some real numbers.

This is an interesting claim, but where is its basis in fact?

 

[Goumindong]

Well that depends on how many attacks you can expect to take in a day.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Which is why he should want the best possible protection.

When we had a Fighter in our group, we always gave him the best defensive magical items first. Other PCs got his hand me downs.

The concept of not doing so, just to encourage enemies to attack him more often is silly.

Since the end of the adventuring day and the point at which any party member reaches zero surges are so closely correlated, any party is best served by attempting to spread damage around in proportion to each character's effective hit points per day.

If the fighter is significantly more well-defended than the rest of the party, then any foe who isn't tactically deficient will simply ignore him. Additionally - if you're making your fighter a powerhouse of defense, then he's likely to be offensively weak compared with other party members, meaning that his combat challenge counts for little.

Apart from that: the fighter simply cannot pin down every threat in a fight.

All that adds up to make always pumping your fighter's defenses suboptimal. Heuristically you want to pump the defenses of whoever runs out of surges first each day.

Real numbers: Your fighter and wizard are facing a ranged foe. The fighter cannot close with the ranged for for some reason (terrain, distance, other combatants, whatever - it's pretty common). The fighter throws a javelin and marks the foe.

If the fighter's defense against the foe is more than two points better than that of the wizard, a foe with any tactical sense will never target the fighter. At that point, the ability of the fighter to spread damage around has been nullified, and the adventuring day will end that much sooner because of the wizard running out of effective hitpoints first. No matter how much better the fighter's defenses get, he will not change that point.

If, on the other hand, the fighter's defense is one point better than that of the wizard, he can switch in and out of marking the foe in order to split damage, muddying the tactical waters. There will be a sweet spot for ideal damage splitting versus mitigated damage, and it's very hard to work out where it falls as it varies with monster, wizard and fighter stats.

If the characters were all in melee, the same factors matter, but the entire equation is changed by the damage the fighter causes via his combat challenge. On the first such scenario each round, the monster must take the fighter's potential attack into account, meaning that the defenses can have more disparity before the same point is reached where attacking the wizard becomes the only tactically sound choice.

 

[Goumindong]

If the fighter is significantly more well-defended than the rest of the party, then any foe who isn't tactically deficient will simply ignore him.

This is not true. E.G. Lets take a level 12 Human Pit fighter, 18+3 str, 15+3 wis, 14+1 con. plate, plate spec, armor spec.

He will have, at level 12 assuming a +3(Githzeri) Plate an AC of 10[base]+6[lvl]+8[plate]+2[gith]+3[enh]+1[spec]+1[pit fighter]+2[shield]= 33 AC.

Now lets take a level 12 Wizard, 20+3 int, wand. He has an AC of 10[base]+6[lvl]+6[int]+3[enh]+1[special cloth]= 26

That is a pretty big differentiation[no leather armor, no staff mastery etc etc] for a total difference of 7.

Anyway, the fighter lays his mark down[without the -3 mark feat and without distracting shield AND without shield push] and that makes the difference now 5 points of AC. Assuming that the monster hits for an average of 20 damage[so, 1d10+15 damage], this will mean that he will gain 5/20 x 20 = 5 damage per round if he attacks the wizard as opposed to the fighter.

Anyway, the fighter does, at level 12 with a longsword, 1d8+8 damage on a hit and hits on average 60% of the time.[longsword bonus proficiency, one handed weapon mastery] Lets still assume for the sake of ridiculousness that he doesn't have any feats that increase his DPR with a heavy blade.

Anyway, he does an average of 12.5 damage on a hit[26.5 on a crit] and an average of and hits a normal hit about 55% of the time. So his average damage per swing is going to be about 8.2.

So if an enemy decides to attack the wizard as opposed to the fighter, he will take in an average of 8.2 damage each time he does so and his DPR increases by 5 damage per round.

For the most part, its still a raw deal to attack the wizard, on an individual level per attack. And we are looking at the extreme case here. In reality, a fighter is going to also have effects that further decrease the difference in AC[-3 mark, distracting shield], give him the ability to negate attacks entirely[shield push], and increase his average damage[weapon focus, weapon expertise, superior weapon proficiency, vicious weapons, etc], the person being defended is likely to have a higher AC and we're looking at pretty much the top end of AC for the fighter.

Now, this examination isn't perfect, and I am assuming that the enemy is not a perfectly tactical genius that knows everything that is going on. I am assuming that the enemy is playing for "this fight and this fight only" rather than "this fight and the next fight". Since knocking out a hero's healing surges is the smart way to go if you're being tactical in the long run [I.E. gang up on the guy with the amount of total health and don't stop until he is down, move on to next guy with lowest amount of total health and don't stop until he is down...] that would skew your results, and frankly most DM's don't play that way and should not play that way[it doesn't make sense in the context of how your NPC's are likely to think and act]


In short, no, you're not likely to ever have a situation where the fighter has an AC so high that he is going to make it better for someone to ignore him. The only time he will be ignored is if he is unable to hit the target of his mark for some reason. The issue of AC efficiency is almost always an issue of "how many healing surges do i have left at the end of the day, how many should i have left at the end of the day?"

 

[CapnZapp]

Uther, Excalibur, 1981.

Can't speak for Igrayne.

Can't remember her wearing plate in that scene though.

 

[Goumindong]

All that adds up to make always pumping your fighter's defenses suboptimal. Heuristically you want to pump the defenses of whoever runs out of surges first each day.

Real numbers: Your fighter and wizard are facing a ranged foe. The fighter cannot close with the ranged for for some reason (terrain, distance, other combatants, whatever - it's pretty common). The fighter throws a javelin and marks the foe.

If the fighter's defense against the foe is more than two points better than that of the wizard, a foe with any tactical sense will never target the fighter. At that point, the ability of the fighter to spread damage around has been nullified, and the adventuring day will end that much sooner because of the wizard running out of effective hitpoints first. No matter how much better the fighter's defenses get, he will not change that point.

Monsters can use basic heuristics too. This is not something that is relegated only to your players and because of this your assertion falls apart.

E.G. Lets say your fighters AC is 7 points higher than your wizards. That is a pretty big deal.

However, lets say a single monster is in melee, and that single monster makes the decision that the extra damage that they do against others per turn is not offset by the extra damage that others do.

E.G. lets say you hit for 8.2 average/attack and the enemies do 40 Damage per attack/round with a hit rate of 50% against you and 85% against your allies with another 10 damage per attack/round at 50% against you and 75% against your allies since he is marked. Well, that makes a total of 16.5 DPR at the margin for them all attacking you.

But, if they aren't splitting their damage they save the DPR against themselves extending their ability to fight. AND they reduce the ability of players to spread healing around[second winds, etc] with self healing powers. The entire encounter has to have no ranged enemies because once the decision to attack the fighter is made[and its likely going to be at the beginning of the fight], attacking others becomes strictly inefficient. Interestingly however, as the fight goes on and enemies DPR drops, attacking the fighter becomes a better and better deal, possibly even negating the advantage of starting to attack someone else.

In short, even with such a massive difference in AC, and such a weak average damage on your combat challenge, you're still going to make enemies think twice about simply having everyone gang up on you.[this also ignores your ability to toss out multiple marks with other powers, and the ability of enemies to target other defenses, like reflex which might be low, the ability of other players to have effects that change their AC or negate attacks]

 

[KarinsDad]

Since the end of the adventuring day and the point at which any party member reaches zero surges are so closely correlated, any party is best served by attempting to spread damage around in proportion to each character's effective hit points per day.

This does not need to occur. The Fighter could have 8 surges left over and the rest of the party can have 0 to 2 surges left over and it could still be good. There is no way that a party can balanced this out completely, so it makes sense to have the PC attacked the most be the most heavily defended. If the Fighter never or rarely uses a surge in a given day, it just means that the Leader can spread his healing across 4 party members instead of 5. That's actually a good thing.

If the fighter is significantly more well-defended than the rest of the party, then any foe who isn't tactically deficient will simply ignore him.

...

If the fighter's defense against the foe is more than two points better than that of the wizard, a foe with any tactical sense will never target the fighter.

If foes ignore the Fighter, they will take a beating.

Also, even if the Fighter has an AC of 6 higher than the Wizard (unusual in the game, but it could happen), the DM would have to metagame the foes to have them take a swing from the Fighter in order to take a 4 better swing on the Wizard.

How does a foe KNOW that the Fighter has AC 3 higher than the Wizard without the DM metagaming the info?

Additionally - if you're making your fighter a powerhouse of defense, then he's likely to be offensively weak compared with other party members, meaning that his combat challenge counts for little.

A Fighter is not a Striker. Having a decent attack is good enough. It's not as if that's difficult with little effort.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

How does a foe KNOW that the Fighter has AC 3 higher than the Wizard without the DM metagaming the info?

Considering that the fighter is wearing solid steel and carrying around a ginormous dinner plate in one hand, while the wizard is wearing pajamas...I'd think this would be the standard NON-metagaming assumption to start with...?