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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gaiden" data-source="post: 465722" data-attributes="member: 103">Thanks Asheron - <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.Elder Basalisk - with regard to your post I want to make a couple of points.Statistically, the only reason AC boosting would not matter is if you would be hit automatically.  You are comparing percentages of being hit relative to previous percentages of being hit.  While this certainly helps in the analysis, it does not show a whole picture.  Really you need to look at percent damage - which is the end point of HP and AC.  Take the amount of hit points, normalize them, and then see approximately how much damage a BBEG or underling will do based on percent of successful attacks and subsequent average damage.  WHile it is true that if the BBEG has a +22 to hit and the PC had a 22 armor bonus that first hit is always going to hit, it skews the picture to say that a +1 AC doesn't matter because it is insignificant.  In fact increasing your AC at higher ACs is more statistically irrelevant than at low ACs because the percent total damage does not change as drastically.  The proper place to do percentages based on preexisting battles is battle DURATION.  If a battle only lasts half as long as before, that is half the amount of attacks that could have been made in effect halving the damage.The purpose of the AC pitch was that it will be much more worth while than a few extra hit points.  The way to increase his defense can be done one of two ways - offensively or defensively.  He has already fairly maxed out his offensive capabilities (at least against one opponent) - not completely so, but at least a lot.  He has not at all done anything for his defensive abilities - except to make them worse with raging and charging abilities.  Thus to limit the amount of damage taken, you have to focus not decreasing the amount of time your oppoonent has to dish out damage but rather increase your time to take it.  This is done with miss percentages, hit points and AC.  Miss percentages aren't accessable with feats (except for the blind fight in conjunction with darkness).  I already stated in my first post while AC is better than hit points.  Therefore AC, seems teh way to go.  Moreover, boosting his ACs against AoO might be very useful - keyword might - it depends on how he fights.  If he provokes them often, mobility is a great choice.This is all hypothetical though.  So lets take a concrete example.  Assume BBEG with 3 attacks at +22/+17/+12.  And assume AC of let's say of 25 - this seems fairly reasonable with access to magical items and spells from allies (it is actually on the low side, but forget that for right now).  Let's say BBEG deals on average 18 damage a hit.  This means that with a full attack the PC will take 18*.9+18*.65+18*.40 = 35.1 damage.  Let's say that the PC has 100 hit points.  That means that in 3 rounds the PC goes down (all else being equal).  Now let's say that the PC takes giant's toughness and now has 9 extra hit points.  It now takes an additional round.  Let's say he took dodge and armor focus for an additional +3 (I know that the armor focus is a moot point, but just for example).  Now the BBEG deals 18*(.75+.5+.25) = 27 per round also making the PC last for another round.  This at face value appears equal.  However, consider what happens when spells that give you damage reduction, additional levels of hit points, and higher AC's in the future will yield.  The lower total damage per round is far better than the extra 9 hit points.  Because at another level of hit points you will now last 5 rounds where as the guy who took the hit points will still only last 5 rounds.Blind fight certainly is not as useful if you get uncanny dodge - I don't know where the player intends to take his PC.  If he continues in fighter towards PrC (which is what I imaginied he was doing) and takes no other Barbarian levels, blind fight is a good choice.  Remeber he is a 8th level fighter 1st level barbarian.  He could always take another level of barbarian but does not have it yet.Sorry about the Power Critical bit - IDHMBWM - thanks for the clarification.</blockquote>

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