HELP! Avenger issue

[Nail]

Level 6, right? So the "dragon cult" encounters you're thinking about might have a Greenscale Marsh Mystic. Some interesting Ref and Fort attacks there.

 

[BobTheNob]

Truthfully if there is that much of a difference between the defenders and the 'squishy' targets AC they deserve to be beat on. You want your defenders to have an ac not all that far from the softer targets to make it much more viable to attack the defender instead of ignoring them. As far as the Avenger having high ac, I find it interesting that people complain about Avengers but not Swordmages, who have their Primary stat boosting AC as well as a class feature providing the same boost to AC as the Avenger.

Other tanks use shields, swardmages dont (or if they do, loose 2 pts of AC, making it a pointless excercise). Look at these lvl 1 compares
Swordmage
Leather : 2
Int (assume18) : 4
Warding : 3
total = 9

Fighter
Scale = 7
Large Shield = 2
total = 9

Even as you go up, the swordmage only has 1 "up" on the fighter I have found, meaning he scales the same.

Point with this is that the swordmages +3 is well in line because it is limited against the armor they start with, the avengers however can just scale and scale and scale, up up up! More armor, more feats!! More AC. Let make all creature 4-5 levels higher than the avenger just so they have a chance of hitting him, and then watch the other party members just die off because they cant match one player!

Its like 3.5 all over again, very sad

 

[Herschel]

Your analysis is quite misguided and leaves out a number of facts, such as the Avenger's lack of accuracy for building straight defense and the abilities/feats available to defenders to0 boost their AC without having to spend a feat or two just to GET armor.

 

[Diirk]

If he's Censure of Retribution, doesn't that only kick in if he gets HIT, not just attacked? That makes his high AC hurt him even more (although honestly, not getting hit is better than 4 extra damage).

A point about his damage tho: not just his chance to hit is nerfed, he doesn't have any damage increasing feats. So he'll hit and do (compared to what he could be doing) very little damage. If he's no threat to the monsters, why would they even bother to attack him ?

 

[Ryujin]

Unless they're a deva in which case with 3 feats they get the +2 back from using a 2-hander, or +2 extra using a 1 hander, and it persists even if they drop, they also qualify for hide easier and as they have Intelligence as an attack stat they're likely to have a higher base AC before the warding is applied anyways.

As far as the Swordmage being a Defender and the Avenger a striker, the Avenger is a Striker/Defender who is based around going toe to toe with the big guy while the rest of the party deals with the rest of the enemies.

From the sounds of things he doesn't have those extra feats to spend, though he might later. Remember, he cashed in two feats just to get hide armour.

 

[LostSoul]

Here are my thoughts, assuming that this issue is spoiling the game in some amount for you:

1. Talk it over with the players. Bring up your concerns. Make sure they know that your job is to make the game fun and interesting. See if you can't come to some kind of compromise to make the game more fun. This may mean accepting the AC and using my next two solutions:

2. Add in creatures, traps, or terrain that target weak defenses.

3. Add in creatures, traps, or terrain that deal automatic damage.


Something like an ogre who bull-rushes the Avenger into a flaming pit is always a nice trick. Make sure that all your encounters have something like that in them and hopefully you'll get some more excitement back.

I can't think of many monsters that have zones, but an NPC wizard with Stinking Cloud (lvl 5 elite) will hurt the Avenger. Other class-based monsters might give you similar results.

 

[ArmoredSaint]

I am firmly in the camp that believes the Avenger's potential AC is far too high. I have house-ruled that the class's AC bonus feature works only with Cloth armour. IMO, this is the perfect fix for the problem, and I'd love to see WotC issue some official errata that amounts to the same thing.

 

[Nail]

It seems to me the biggest bang for the buck for an Avenger is just taking leather armor. +2 AC (at least), one less feat, and no stat pre-reqs. The OP's player missed a trick, methinks.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's the biggest "bang for buck" for anyone only proficient with Cloth Armor.

 

[Ryujin]

It seems to me the biggest bang for the buck for an Avenger is just taking leather armor. +2 AC (at least), one less feat, and no stat pre-reqs. The OP's player missed a trick, methinks.

I thought the same when I made us a Censure of Pursuit Avenger, as my "B" character in our current campaign. Going for that extra single point, at the cost of a feat that could have significantly more effect elsewhere, seemed counter productive.