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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barolo" data-source="post: 7108247" data-attributes="member: 61932">High AC is not really the only way to go. A lot of temporary HPs can occasionally help almost as much, or in some cases even more. Consider for instance a warlock with armor of agathys and blade ward. Against enemies that hit hard this is may not be the best idea, but against soft hitters who have a lot of attacks, it can be decimating. I have seen in my table even creatures that have elemental resistance but multiple attacks (red slaads) having a really bad time against such strategy*. You can pair it up with warcaster (for booming blade) and sentinel feats, to provide a losing proposition for your enemies. You can go any pact and still do this, blade is somewhat simpler and can be beefed up by weapon selection, tome can keep CHA primary by using shillelagh.When fighting against masses in long battles, the subclass feature dark one's blessing can do a lot too. Another PC in another campaign was playing as an assassin bladelock multiclass, and in one session lost a lot of HPs by necrotic drain, that he could only replenish after removing a curse, which was not available immediately for the party. He managed to keep himself on his feet solely by managing a steady mob kill rate in the end of the dungeon, which was really tense for him, but impressive for everybody in the table, and ultimately quite fun.The other usual (full caster) suspect that does not (always) rely on good AC is the abjurer with their ward, which will be drained until they start using shield to avoid more hits and consequently replenish the ward for prolonged staying power.* In this game, the warlock in question had a bad AC, so he was being hit quite often. Nonetheless, he had a lot of HPs and temporary HP sources, and made constant use of blade ward, which meant his HPs/temp HPs were drained really slowly. It was a 7th level party against mobs of slaads. Casting 4th level armor of agathys gave him 20 extra HPs. Each attack from a red slaad would average to only 3 or 4 damage subtracted from the armor after blade ward, but retaliate 10 damage (already halved for resistance) back at the slaad. This was not even a good use of the spell, as the damn aberration was halving the damage too, but still, 30 damage back per round per slaad while avoiding all the damage, proved to be a good tanking for the rest of the party. And had the slaad decided to just move past to attack somebody else, it would have eaten up a booming blade, so a truly bad spot for it to be. Were these mobs of trolls instead, or xorns, gladiators, umber hulks, or vampire spawns, just to list a few monsters that could make nice mobs for that play level, the strategy would go even better.</blockquote>

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