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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 464520" data-attributes="member: 3146">Two more comments: on power critical, blindfight, and dodge and other AC increasing feats.AC increasing feats are more effective the higher your AC is. For a character whose AC is unimpressive, they generally aren't worthwhile. As a 9th level character, you can probably expect that even weak enemies will probably have +9 to hit.Assuming that you have +2 studded leather, +1 amulet of natural armor, +1 ring of deflection, and an 18 dex (possibly innaccurate but good enough for the illustration), that would give you an AC of 22. Those weak opponents still hit you on a roll of a 13--40% of the time. Adding dodge makes them need a 14 in order to hit you. Adding armor focus as well would make them need a 16 to hit you. Both of those feats together would cut your damage taken from weak foes by about 36%. On the other hand, a melee BBEG (and some relatively "weak" creatures like dire bears) will probably have something like +22/+17/+12 to hit (26 str (from enhancement, rage, etc), +12 BAB, Weapon focus, +1 or masterwork weapon). So they'll hit your normal AC on a roll of 2, 5, and 10. On a full attack action, they'll hit with 77% of their attacks. Boosted by your feats, they'd need a 3, 8, and 13. Those two feats only reduce it to 65%. So in that case, the two feats mean you'll only reduce your damage taken by about 15%.If your AC were typically higher than that (say, a fighter 2/wizard 5/Spellsword 2 with 14 dex, +1 mithril chain shirt, +1 large shield, and the haste and  shield spells for AC 31) the weak foe will only hit on a 20. . . but with the feats, would need an 18 (rather than a 15), even if he stepped behind the shield spell. That's a 50% reduction in damage. The BBEG would normally hit on 9, 14, 19 but with the feats would need 12, 17, 20--a 33% reduction in damage taken. In both cases, the higher AC character gets much more milage out of a small increase in armor class.If your AC is normally lower than 22, the AC increasing feats will look even worse in comparison.Consequently, I wouldn't recommend AC increasing feats to you since you are not likely to extract enough benefit from them to make them worthwhile.Blindfight would be a great choice for a 9th level fighter but not a 9th level barbarian. Pick up your 10th level as a barbarian and you get uncanny dodge which will allow you to keep your dex bonus when flatfooted and when attacked by invisible opponents. That is far superior to blindfight as a defensive mechanism (because blindfight doesn't do anything for you when you're flatfooted or attacked by an invisible ranged combatant)and really vitiates the need for blindfight.Forget about power critical for the moment--its prerequisite is +12 BAB which you won't have for three levels.</blockquote>

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