Party AC difference

[KarinsDad]

If your DM plays monsters to never provoke Fighter OAs, then the Fighter is better at controlling the battlefield than he otherwise would have been.

Allowing players to perfectly predict critter actions is putting a huge chunk of power in their hands.

Your DM's decision is rather humorously ironic -- he's taking an ability that is often effective and turning it into one that is perfectly effective.

Maybe in your world, but most of my monsters, just like most of my PCs, rarely provoke Opportunity Attacks. Total in my home game, I have one player who will purposely provoke OAs with her PC once every 4 or 5 encounters because her PC has special bonuses for OAs while moving and she's the Cleric. She sometimes has to get to the other side of a larger room quickly in order to heal or some such. Other than that, our PCs and quasi-intelligent monsters go out of their way to avoid OAs nearly all of the time.

If your monsters and PCs do OAs right and left, have at it. I find that a bit of a bizarre and atypical game where the creatures ignore the world physics, but as long as you are having fun, that's what's important.

 

[keterys]

I actually do provoke OAs all the time, as a PC or DM, though almost never from the fighter with the big two-handed sword. It's very often worth doing, so long as the penalty for the OA (X% chance of Y damage, possible status effects) is worth the benefit (+2-3 attack, granting CA to the rest of my group, whatever)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Hmmh interestingly we seem to all be playing in a different world as KarinsDad. Not sure it is a bad thing though...

 

[KarinsDad]

(Sorry I didn't elucidate earlier; I had guests show up and games to play.)

We're talking, as far as I could tell, about whether or not the system can tolerate a large initial spread in party AC. To that point, it really becomes incumbent on those players whose PCs have low AC to take some large part of the responsibility for mitigating that onto themselves.

I beg to differ.

Let's take the AC 13 Dex 16 Sorcerer. This player went out of their way to put 5 or 9 starting points (race dependent out of 22) into AC. The Paladin put zero starting points into AC, but has an AC of 20. That's one player that put 22% or 41%, a hefty chunk, of starting points into it and the other that put 0%.

There's a flaw here.

To now say "Hey Mr. Sorcerer, why don't you take Leather Armor?". So, the Sorcerer takes Leather Armor and has an AC of 15.

The Sorcerer still has a lower AC than nearly every single other pre-feat class with the exception of a Shaman, even though the Sorcerer took a feat.

On top of this, the first levelSorcerer doesn't have a lot of defensive powers since the Sorcerer is a Striker. At first level, the Sorcerer has one Daily power that might be considered a bit defensive as well as offensive if it dazes a foe or some such. And, this Sorcerer is also disincentivized to take powers like Bedeviling Burst, Tearing Claws, Tempest Breath, and Thundering Roar because it brings the PC too close to his foes.

That's it. The Sorcerer went out of his way to be a bit defensive and is still way behind the curve. The Paladin (Fighter, etc.) did nothing and are way above the curve. Don't get me wrong. The Defenders should have high ACs, I'm more concerned with the fact that there are classes that go out of their way to up their ACs and may or may not make it to an average AC.

I'm concerned that there is a 7 difference when a player goes out of their way to boost Dex between best and worst without a feat.

If the player puts in Dex 14, than the difference is 8. Then, same level foes hit that PC on a 6 and N+4 foes hit that PC on a 2. Say what? A suggested potential encounter and the PC gets hit on a 2? By game design? With Dex 16 and Leather Armor, the PC gets hit on a 5 in that case.

So, this is really all a long-winded and rambling way to say that a large relative low-high AC spread isn't intrinsically game-breaking; it just needs more carefully considered tactical play. And the tools for this play can reside (1) within the builds for the entire party and (2) even within the builds for the single characters with low AC.

I don't see it. Combat is chaotic. The best laid plans of the PCs (and the DM) go askew all of the time.

In fact, one of the frequent things I hear in my home game from one player to another or to me is: "Oh no, you ruined my plan". My players are always thinking about what to do next and a monster moves, or a PC slides a foe, or a PC moves into a group of foes, or whatever.

Combat is chaotic. The chances of an AC 12 or 13 or even 15 Sorcerer not getting into the brunt of an encounter at some point is virtually nil. At least if the DM runs the quasi-intelligent monsters as quasi-intelligent.


Your point is that AC is not the entire picture. I agree. But, the static defenses like AC and NADs are a very large part of the picture since they are not dynamic. The dynamic elements change. For example, concealment for a Warlock. There will be times when that Warlock is dazed or stunned or immobilized and he cannot move. His normal defenses just dropped by 2 in addition to any combat advantage.

So, the static defenses are very important. The dynamic elements of the game system do affect this, but to a much lesser extent.

 

[KarinsDad]

I actually do provoke OAs all the time, as a PC or DM, though almost never from the fighter with the big two-handed sword. It's very often worth doing, so long as the penalty for the OA (X% chance of Y damage, possible status effects) is worth the benefit (+2-3 attack, granting CA to the rest of my group, whatever)

Hmmh interestingly we seem to all be playing in a different world as KarinsDad. Not sure it is a bad thing though...

I am DMing 2 games at the moment and playing in 1. I was playing in 2 not so long ago.

In none of these games do I see PCs doing OAs often.

I suspect that people who claim that they do OAs a lot are doing them a lot less frequently then they are. I do not think that my experience is that uncommon due to the fact that it repeats regardless of which group of players I am with.

Rather, I suspect that people remember the OAs because they are rare. It seems like they happen a lot because people remember them as special.


So, I challenge you and keterys to keep track of how many DM OAs and PC OAs that you have in your next 10 encounters. Just have a small slip of paper and put a tiny line on it each time it occurs. Don't tell the other players and/or DMs what you are doing. And, keep your OAs separated from the OAs of other players (since you know about the experiment, we want to see how it plays out vs. people who do not know about it).

Just to be scientific about it. I'll do the same if you will.

Are you up to the challenge? Are you willing to see if your opinion matches reality?

Or do you think that you are exaggerating and that the challenge will illustrate that your POV is in error and you are unwilling to find out?

And, anyone else here can play along. Let's see if our opinions match reality.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

1. I am pretty sure, putting qa 16 into dex or strength is not getting out of their way

2. A sorcerer gets exta AC for circumstances by default

3. I won´t suggest using N+4 monsters on a regular basis. Again. Here the game indeed is flawed. +6 attack bonus for first level foes is really too much. The paladin who uses plate and a shield is still hit on a 14 and this is too easy. So if the game was designed to beeing hit on an 11, and average AC 15 (medium armor types), not 16/17 then having lower AC/using higher level foes would not be that terrible. (There are not a lot of ways for the paladin to increase his AC even further...)

4. This game uses HP to protect PCs from going down more than older editions, thus the focus on healing surges and healing up to full hp after a rest. You are xepected to be hit. Actually your AC may be so bad that leater armor is a wasted feat.

5. Combat it not static, but if it gets too chaotic, something seems to be wrong too...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So, I challenge you and keterys to keep track of how many DM OAs and PC OAs that you have in your next 10 encounters. Just have a small slip of paper and put a tiny line on it each time it occurs. Don't tell the other players and/or DMs what you are doing. And, keep your OAs separated from the OAs of other players (since you know about the experiment, we want to see how it plays out vs. people who do not know about it).

Just to be scientific about it. I'll do the same if you will.

Are you up to the challenge? Are you willing to see if your opinion matches reality?

Nope, you are right that opportunity attacks are rare, combat challenge a little bit less rare. Never said so. It the threat of an opportunity attack that controls more than the attack itself.

I don´t want to play in your world, because you think you are playing monsters quasi-intelligent when always going for the low AC target is the best option no matter what and in a way that never produces OAs. So I imagine all your encounters happen in a 10x10 room without any dressing. Boring.

 

[KarinsDad]

1. I am pretty sure, putting qa 16 into dex or strength is not getting out of their way

I have no idea what this means. A Dragonborn Sorcerer with Cha 18 and Dex 16 just spent 18 of 22 starting points and has only 4 left for the other 4 ability scores. That sounds like the player is going out of their way to get the best AC they can without going nuts over it.

2. A sorcerer gets exta AC for circumstances by default

Such as? We are talking Storm or Chaos Sorcerer here. Are you talking cover? There is no cover if an enemy walks up to the Sorcerer and smacks him.

3. I won´t suggest using N+4 monsters on a regular basis. Again. Here the game indeed is flawed. +6 attack bonus for first level foes is really too much. The paladin who uses plate and a shield is still hit on a 14 and this is too easy. So if the game was designed to beeing hit on an 11, and average AC 15 (medium armor types), not 16/17 then having lower AC/using higher level foes would not be that terrible. (There are not a lot of ways for the paladin to increase his AC even further...)

So, you make most of your encounters super easy?

An N+4 encounter should occur about once per level, maybe once per level and a half. As a rough rule of thumb, it should be about 2 N-2 encounters, 5 N encounters, 2 N+2 encounters, and 1 N+4 encounters per level. Obviously, there is a great deal of latitude here.

If you have too many easy N-2 through N+1 encounters, some players will get bored. Sure, it makes encounters go much quicker, but there is no challenge. There is no threat. N+2 is typically the lowest challenge encounter that actually creates a real challenge for players and even those are usually not that tough.


Getting back on subject, the greater the AC delta in a given group, the more likely the low AC PCs will minimally go unconscious in situations where either the PC's dice go cold and the DM's dice go hot, and/or more difficult encounters such as N+3 or N+4, and/or the chaos of combat results in the low AC PCs being suddenly caught in the middle of it.

The larger the variance in AC, the larger the variance in encounter outcome. Again, assuming the DM doesn't fudge things.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don´t want to play in your world, because you think you are playing monsters quasi-intelligent when always going for the low AC target is the best option no matter what and in a way that never produces OAs. So I imagine all your encounters happen in a 10x10 room without any dressing. Boring.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Over on LEB, I was the first player invited to a PBP game from one of my players that he is DMing because he enjoyed my PBP game over there so much.

People like you have no clue. Just because we discuss game elements here in a vacuum doesn't mean that our games are not fun and exciting. Every time someone posts that they wouldn't want to play in someone else's game, it just goes to show how immature and clueless they are. Most people's games are fun, otherwise, their players would stop playing. Duh!

What an idiotic thing to write dude. We discuss these things here so that people can cross pollinate ideas and come up with ideas for their games, regardless of whether we agree or disagree about some minor game aspect.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

people like you... wow thats mature...

You are defending your position against 4 people who told you that everything works fine in their games. So can´t you get over it that there are different playstyles and that the game works for them as written?

When you are told that terrain and such can be used as something to get around the limit imposed by game design (maybe on purpose?) you sismiss it easily. You say that you can always attack the sorcerer. The only scenario I can imagine is a room without features.
So how does it feel if someone assumes things about your game which is obviously not true? Bad, does it?

If you read the posts, i didn´t say anything about not using N+4 encounters. Just not too many N+4 monsters. So don´t assume i play easy mode on my players, never did. Actually my players told me that i tried to kill them because i am an evil DM.

Also a dragonborn spending 18 of 20 points for a 18/16/15 spread is going out of his way? there are people out there who spend 17 of 22 points just to get the 18.