Checking assumptions

[Greenfield]

I'm currently running a level 16 Bard who tops that AC. Generically, the bare minimum AC for a character should be Level +14. At that point a melee creature of your hit dice will probably need an 11 or better to hit. A creature of your CR (which means higher hit dice) will pretty much eat that AC alive. 3 points above the bare minimum isn't even scratching the surface of Munchkinism.

The Sword of Shocking Grasp is an attempt to bypass the limits of Shock or Shocking Burst weapons by invoking the spell they base themselves on. I doubt that it's legal, at least by the book.

If you want to go with weapons of questionable legality, why not +1 Longbow with Shock, Fire, Acid, Cold, Sonic and Holy on it? Then have Greater Magic Weapon cast on it each day, bumping the total effective plus above 10, and back it with a quiver full of Arrows of Spell Storing? Then you really can add Shocking Grasp to your attacks. Or Scorching Ray. Or Acid Orb. Or <fill in targeted damage spell of choice>. in full Artillery mode, you'll top the output of that blade easily, and you'll do it to everything on the field in the same round.

And a Cape of Deflection? Don't you mean a Cape of Resistance? Or were you intentionally wasting money with a "Wrong Slot" item?

For your Death Ward effect, consider a Bone Ring from Magic Item Compendium. It blocks Negative Energy effects three times per day. They're cheap enough, get a couple and switch out when the charges on one run out.

And where's your Evasion? Oddly a slotless Hand of Glory is a relatively cheap way to make any ring effectively slotless, regardless of the ring's cost. That's where the Ring of Evasion should go. No true Munchkin is ever without Evasion in one form or another, and the slotless Hand has the right munchkiny flavor, vis a vis tiptoeing around the rules.

If you're venturing into Munchkin land, you'll need to try harder than that.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

What is your definition of "munchkin"? Usually it means a player who will bend and twist the rules in their favor and generally be malicious. I would hope you're not going there.

If you mean you want to optimize then you should say that instead. Clearly you want to optimize towards a certain goal of having high AC, but what else do you want to do? And what class is this going to be for? If you played a crusader or warblade from Tome of Battle then your melee would be much better thanks to various strikes and such instead of having to rely just on the damage of a 1h weapon that doesn't even look legal.

What books or sources are allowed?

By the way, you'll want to look at Lists of necessary magic items to get a feel for what really goes on in late game.

High level play usually comes down to rocket tag. He who wins initiative wins the encounter once the big guns come out, and often defenses won't do much.

Speaking of big guns, your offense is very much lacking. It is entirely possible to do over 1,000 damage a round at level 20 and many optimizers can get over 5,000, but neither is really necessary. This post shows one way to get over 5k damage per round.