D&D 5E Drawbacks to Increasing Monster AC Across the Board?

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

I think it works for the most part. As has been noted, whiffing over and over again is frustrating for people.

People tend to have stats that are too high but it doesn't sound like that is a problem for your game. The archery fighting style giving +2 to hit is a slight design flaw, I think it should be either +2 DMG or ignore partial cover.

If you increase ACs will you also increase saving throws?

No. There's no plan to increase saving throws, at this point. We did discuss restoring some niche protection for some classic rogue abilities that rogues should be better at than fighters in plate. Even with disadvantage, the fighter was still making her stealth checks through a combination of lucky rolls and the checks being too easy. Almost decided that if a rogue needs to roll when it comes to classic rogue skills, non-rogues will fail unless their class is also classically known for having that ability.

As to stats, no their not too high. I supervised the character creation and it was strictly by the book point buy. And, although there's a couple of +1 weapons and a +2 weapon, the game should be able to handle that. And, no one has the archery fighting style.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

This is one of the things I love about 5e and (to slightly lesser extent 4e) PCs dish it out, but they take it too.

I'm an unashamed disciple of the LBBs and MCM, but the abundance of "I miss ", is not something I miss.

Hi, Jeff,

I never had the opportunity to play by the Little Brown Books. AD&D1E and the Basic Red Player's book were my intro to D&D. Played AD&D for a long time, but we often skipped mid levels and played top end characters with the best equipement (we were kids and had fun, but it was by no means by the book raw).

More challenge modification is OK so long as it feels right in game. I may just need to allow our expectations for 5E to recalibrate, rather than trying to get more of a 1E feel. (I realize I could play 1E, but there's so much about 5E that I like that I wouldn't enjoy going back to 1E when I could play 5E, especially since I can most likely port anything from 1E into 5E that I want, but it seems harder to go the other way, for me).

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Biggest impact of bumping ACs across the board is that you'll have to rewrite the MM. If you bump it by +4 however you can just increase everything's CR by one without recomputing, since +4 to AC is always equal to +1 CR. If you leave CR unadjusted you'll be buffing summoning spells considerably.

Other impacts: Sharpshooter/GWM will become less valuable, and fighters in general will be less competitive with wizards (since saving throw spells will be stronger). PCs may feel a bit cheated if they need magical plate armor to have the same AC as a bog-standard goblin.

I wouldn't recommend tweaking numbers this way for the sake of tweaking numbers--it's generally contrary to the whole point of Bounded Accuracy, which is "the numbers mean something." If you want to give all your goblins splint mail and shields (AC 19), do so, but don't give them AC 19 instead of AC 15 just because you want them to be harder.

I agree, Hemlock. Re-writing the Monster Manual is out of the question.

If I go this route, I might not even change the ACs. Might just change the total required to hit an AC (so PCs would have the same effective AC increase). So, it would require a total of 14 to hit a 10 AC or 24 to hit a 20.

I'm OK w/Sharpshooter or GWM being less valuable.

And, if necessary, I might find a way to increase saves for non-casters. Though saving throws hasn't stood out like the bonuses v. AC, yet.

 

[Sunseeker]

I'm OK w/Sharpshooter or GWM being less valuable.

I think everyone is okay with that.

 

[Aribar]

So your players say it's easier to hit monsters than other editions. How do they feel about that? Do they like it? Or do they find it makes things too "easy"? Maybe you don't need an overall AC increase, but use this as an opportunity to make combat a bit more unique and give the opponents different moves. These fighters know how to fight in a phalanx formation with a heightened AC, so break them apart to increase your odds of hitting them! The beast cowers from your torch, its claws as deadly as ever but more wary against your strikes! Now that you've drawn blood on the swordmaster, she's switched to a defensive stance!

 

[Psikerlord#]

Interesting topic, and I think in hindsight this is something I don't like about 5e - the damage and hit point inflation that - it now strikes me - is a result of "make it easy to hit" approach. Yeah, I think the game runs better when hitting is a bit harder (maybe +2 AC?), but HP is less, and damage is flatter across the board. Good topic OP!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think everyone is okay with that.

I'm not, and polls say most other people on Enworld aren't either.

 

[Ganymede81]

I've found that the primary drawback of increasing the AC of monsters across the board is that monsters become more difficult to hit.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm not, and polls say most other people on Enworld aren't either.

Now you're justifying your opinion by the good old "if a billion chinese..." argument.

ENWorld is frequented by all sorts of players.

For the purpose of the following slightly ridiculous thought-experiment, I will consider that half are "carebears" and half are "minmaxers".

Furthermore, I will assume only "minmaxers" have actually stress-tested the GWM/SS feats, and therefore, for the purpose of this hypothetical, their opinion is the only one that counts.

With this I give you a scenario where even if only 26% of all ENWorld visitors find these feats overpowered, that is enough for me to state that they are indeed overpowered.

Since 26% is the majority of the players that have actually analyzed the feats:

50% carebears
24% minmaxers with a non-critical view of the feats
26% minmaxers with a critical view of the feats

Of the minmaxers, 52% are critical to the feats.

This concludes my hypothetical thought experiment.

Also see: how many percent of the total american population do you need to get elected President? (Hint: it's less than 51%)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Don't forget to increase saving thro bonuses by the same amount.