Armor Specialization (Plate)

[jonshaft]

Let's just make a feat where fighters can use any other stat they want to add their modifier to their AC while not wearing heavy armor. Then everyone can wear hide armor and put the armorers out of business.

 

[KarinsDad]

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...?

Level 1:

Fighter with Scale Mail, AC 17
Staff Wizard with Int 20, AC 16 (in fact, my Staff Wizard had AC 18 at level one with Leather Armor)

Even if the Fighter has a 3 better AC, is it really worth it to risk a free attack by him to get a 5% better chance to hit? Sometimes. But, the game world environment is set up where those smart (but not necessarily agile) Wizards jump out of the way of attacks nearly as easily as those tanking Fighters glance an attack off of their armor. That's the physics of the game world.

So, NPCs should think that Wizards are not necessarily much easier to hit. Unless of course the DM is metagaming the exact numbers.

 

[frankthedm]

Whoever is is back is easier to hit is a reasonable assumption. Even animals make it a point to move the softer squishier young behind the more durable adults.

 

[KarinsDad]

Whoever is is back is easier to hit is a reasonable assumption. Even animals make it a point to move the softer squishier young behind the more durable adults.

Nobody is disputing that as a general rule of thumb, this basic assumption is reasonable.

The point is, is it worth a -2 to attack the squishier targets when there is also a fair chance that the Fighter is also going to get a free hit on you?

If it were just a matter of -2, it would be a squishier PC no brainer decision, even with the game world physics where a Wizard in the back can sometimes have one of the best ACs in the group. Enemies might not know that. Challenged enemies do know that they are both penalized for attacking squishies and the Fighter gets a free swing if they try.

An enemy should be disincentivized to ever attack the Wizard if the enemy is challenged and attackable by the Fighter unless there are extenuating circumstances. As an example, the Wizard is sustaining a Flaming Sphere (or the situation is one where the Wizard can easily attack multiple foes with area effects on multiple rounds). In that case, killing the Wizard might often be the best course of action for most of the NPCs, regardless of the Fighter getting in a free swing. But, this should be the exception instead of the rule unless the DM just feels like giving a lot of free swings to the Fighter in order to shorten the encounter. Some DMs are like that. They play the encounter not with the best tactical interests of the monster, but in the best interests of the players (note: players, not PCs).

 

[Goumindong]

Challenged enemies do know that they are both penalized for attacking squishies and the Fighter gets a free swing if they try

Only if they've observed the fighter before. The fighters mark is just a plain old mark. His combat challenge ability is a separate immediate interrupt ability that is not part of his mark. Its not until he uses it on someone [they then know the details of the CC attack] that they understand the extra consequences of ignoring a fighters mark. Not to be confused with the paladin's special mark which lets the enemies know.

Initially, marked enemies are only aware of the mark and not that they're going to get beat on for ignoring it.

 

[Saeviomagy]

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

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.

The wizard has ~68 hitpoints. The fighter has ~133 hitpoints. That carries over to how much they heal when they spend surges. All that adds up to mean that every point of damage that the foe does to the wizard effectively counts for twice as much as if he'd done it to the fighter, because it comes that much closer to downing a foe, and uses up that much more in terms of healing.

So, the monsters DPR adds 5 and then effectively doubles. That's a lot more than the 8.2 damage that he's taking back.

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.

The fighter using surges or not has little to no bearing on how much the leader heals: leader heals are restricted per encounter. The daily resource here is surges (with some powers being notable exceptions). If the fighter is ending on 8 surges while the rest of the party is on 0 to 2, then assuming each extra surge worth of damage he takes is equivalent to removing a surge worth of damage from another character (which isn't true: defender surges tend to be larger than those of others), the party could have gone another encounter before running out.

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?

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

The fighter's counterattack is usually only enough to make the decision between low-hp and high hp targets even, assuming close defenses. Once the defenses start to shift, you need to make up for that AS WELL.

As the fighter's damage dealing ability goes down, he not only becomes less effective at counterattacking: his value as a target goes down as well. So not only does the wizard have less hitpoints, but each hitpoint holds more value.

As a totally non-muddy example: we have two combatants. One has 5000 hitpoints and does 1 point of damage per attack. The other has 1 hitpoint and deals 5000 points of damage per attack. Which do you kill first to maximise your chances of winning?

Wizards jump out of the way of attacks nearly as easily as those tanking Fighters glance an attack off of their armor. That's the physics of the game world.

So, NPCs should think that Wizards are not necessarily much easier to hit. Unless of course the DM is metagaming the exact numbers.

Personally we and our DMs reveal defenses when you attack them. It just makes the game flow that much quicker.

Even if you don't do that though, defenses get pinned down pretty quickly. And if you're talking about large differences (ie - the sort that will result from prioritising defense on a fighter and giving him all the best defensive gear vs prioritising other roles) then is it really metagaming?

The point is, is it worth a -2 to attack the squishier targets when there is also a fair chance that the Fighter is also going to get a free hit on you?

Usually it comes pretty close, but a good deal depends on how hard the fighter actually hits.

 

[Elric]

The wizard has ~68 hitpoints. The fighter has ~133 hitpoints. That carries over to how much they heal when they spend surges. All that adds up to mean that every point of damage that the foe does to the wizard effectively counts for twice as much as if he'd done it to the fighter, because it comes that much closer to downing a foe, and uses up that much more in terms of healing.

So, the monsters DPR adds 5 and then effectively doubles. That's a lot more than the 8.2 damage that he's taking back.

The fighter will have much less than 133 hit points. A fighter who started with 18 Con and boosts it (so he now has 21 Con), and has taken Toughness has 112 HP at level 12.

If the wizard has 13 Con and doesn't take Toughness he's at 67 HP; with Toughness he's at 77 HP. If the percentage increase in HP is what matters for the worth of Toughness (as your reasoning assumes is true of damage; its value is based on the percent of HP it does) then the wizard should be at least as likely to have Toughness as the fighter, so let's give it to him. That's a difference of +45% HP for the Con-based fighter (+58% if the Con-fighter is a Dreadnought). +36% if the fighter has 14 Con instead. It's not even close to double- even a 21 Con Dreadnought with Toughness vs. a 13 Con wizard without Toughness, about as extreme of a comparison as you can get, is only +82%.

 

[KarinsDad]

Only if they've observed the fighter before. The fighters mark is just a plain old mark. His combat challenge ability is a separate immediate interrupt ability that is not part of his mark. Its not until he uses it on someone [they then know the details of the CC attack] that they understand the extra consequences of ignoring a fighters mark. Not to be confused with the paladin's special mark which lets the enemies know.

Initially, marked enemies are only aware of the mark and not that they're going to get beat on for ignoring it.

This is only true with one interpretation of the rules.

There is another interpretation that people might be unaware of.

Here is what Combat Challenge does:

Every time you attack an enemy, whether the attack hits or misses, you can choose to mark that target. The mark lasts until the end of your next turn. While a target is marked, it takes a –2 penalty to attack rolls for any attack that doesn’t include you as a target. A creature can be subject to only one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place. In addition, whenever a marked enemy that is adjacent to you shifts or makes an attack that does not include you, you can make a melee basic attack against that enemy as an immediate interrupt.

By definition, CC changes any attack power that is used with it to allow the Fighter to both Mark the creature AND to allow the Fighter an additional attack. The power itself effectively is modified to correspond to this effect.

This is no different than the Weapon Focus feat that adds +1 damage to any attack power used with it for the specific weapon group. The power is slightly modified to do more damage.

Combined with the rule:

Whenever you affect a creature with a power, that creature knows exactly what you’ve done to it and what conditions you’ve imposed. For example, when a paladin uses divine challenge against an enemy, the enemy knows that it has been marked and that it will therefore take a penalty to attack rolls and some damage if it attacks anyone aside from the paladin.

it allows a foe to know what will happen if he violates the CC mark.

In this case, the "exactly what you've done to it" clause is the kicker. The CC modification of the attack power used is known. Even a basic attack is a power. Even an Opportunity Attack uses a power.

Every attack in the game system (TMK) uses a power in some fashion. Therefore, CC must be used with a power and directly affects how the creature is affected.

If one were to go with your stricker more literal interpretation, then the creature should not even know that it is marked if CC is not part of the attack power. Can't have your cake and eat it too.


Side note: If a DM does not use this interpretation, then he has to have a special exception to the rule above for things like Combat Challenge, Warpriest's Challenge, and a bunch of other feats and abilities in the game system. This means that the DM also has the headache of figuring out not just what the creature should do, but also what the creature should accidently do and when the creature is able to figure out what is going on, etc. This appears to be against the intent of making life easier for the DM as per this rule in the first place.

 

[Goumindong]

Your second interpretation would make sense if fighters were not able to use combat challenge on marks they do not create[that still belong to them, ala bards "misdirected mark" at will] and on marks that are created by other powers.

fake edit: also, if you have access to the compendium, the Combat Challenge is clearly listed as a separate power[at will, immediate interrupt, with an effect of "Effect: Whenever an enemy marked by you is adjacent to you and shifts or makes an attack that does not include you, you can make a melee basic attack against that enemy."]

For fighters, its very clear they do not know until you hit them with it

 

[KarinsDad]

Your second interpretation would make sense if fighters were not able to use combat challenge on marks they do not create[that still belong to them, ala bards "misdirected mark" at will] and on marks that are created by other powers.

Nothing you said here invalidates my interpretation. A power is still being used on the foe.

fake edit: also, if you have access to the compendium, the Combat Challenge is clearly listed as a separate power[at will, immediate interrupt, with an effect of "Effect: Whenever an enemy marked by you is adjacent to you and shifts or makes an attack that does not include you, you can make a melee basic attack against that enemy."]

For fighters, its very clear they do not know until you hit them with it

You are not making sense.

WotC changed CC within the Compendium to a Combat Challenge POWER. Obviously, they want it to work via my interpretation and want the monsters to know how CC works once they are affected by it.