HELP! Avenger issue

[BobTheNob]

Ahh yes, the Avenger AC again...now lets all sing the lines together
"The avenger is fine as it is"
"The designers meant it to be that way"
"The avenger needs a high AC to survive"
"So what if the avenger has a high AC"

yada yada. Best of luck fixing your problem, but I think your in the wrong forum. Try house rules, cause thats what you are going to need...that and a player who understands that it is more important that his characters abilities are correct and relative with everyone elses than his own personnel glory.

Best of luck

 

[Herschel]

Except his personal glory couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun.

 

[IanB]

Yeah unless the OP's game rolls stats instead of point buys them or something, what we're talking about is a striker with at best a +3 in his main attack stat, assuming he's playing a dex/wis or int/wis race, and almost nothing in the way of bonuses to other stats at all.

Things this means: he'll have a crappy amount of surges. His damage output will lag compared to other strikers. He has a large feat investment into a single defense, meaning he has very little to boost himself offensively. His Fort defense will be poor.

I think all of those things should conspire to make him relatively ineffective as a striker, especially with a minor amount of effort spent on getting monsters to stand next to him. Because of that his AC shouldn't really matter that much, because he shouldn't really be a priority target of reasonably intelligent monsters anyway.

 

[rainsinger]

Even with Oath of Emnity, he can't be a very effective Striker. Sure, he isn't going to get hit very often, but then again he isn't going to help the party much with his main attribute being a secondary/tertiary stat. And as you say, his NADs can't be all that great.

Did he take training with leather prior to taking hide proficiency, or did he jump straight to hide? That's a no-no.

Overall I could see him as being annoying, but not necessarily game killing. When the opposition finds that they can't hit him, they'll switch to squishier targets and ignore him. That means that those 19-21 AC characters are going to drop pretty fast.

Also when you have defenders with ACs that are that much higher than who they're defending, the enemy sees no benefit in attacking the defenders instead.

Well, take that a step further... he's basically given up EVERY feat he has to up his AC in one way or another, so he's not using a superior weapon or getting any other damage bonuses from feats or really ANY offensive usefulness from all those feats at all...

So while he is still technically a striker, really what he's done is convert his striker character over to a defender that can hop around a lot.

My second thought though is to look at this in a logical tactical way... Ex.: They go up against an encampment of goblins (or whatever). After a couple rounds of the minions and front-line warriors not being able to hit the guy, the magic users and/or artillery are going to view him as the "tank" or flat out highest threat, even though he might not be, and likely start pummeling him with ranged/magical attacks. In a real battle where there is no conventions or rules of conduct, you always go after supply lines first, and then you try to take out your biggest threats. In smaller battles that means take out the Leaders and then the people that appear to be the hardest to kill. Swarm tactics can be very useful here too... that avenger pisses off a few orc warriors and they start calling all the reinforcements on him, no amout of AC is going to outweigh the odds of getting hit at least once or twice per round when he's got 5 or 6 guys on him.

Though, you do have to give him credit for going for a really specific goal and hitting it.

 

[Lancelot]

As a player and DM of Avengers, I have to agree with the majority of posts here. Of all the "unbalanced" problems to have, a high AC is by far the least worrying to me. Wizard "orb locks", 4+ ranger attacks per round, and battlerage vigor "damage reduction" are all bigger headaches.

Given my experience is that PCs are a little too easy to hit, I'd be okay to see a build that is "only" hit on a 15 or better. As noted, the PC has sacrificed some of their offensive capability for some more defensive options. Seems a fair choice to me.

Their hit points and surges are going to be poor, so when they get hit - they will feel it. Much more so than the defenders.

...and Avengers are always going to be in the thick of the fighting. They can't stand off like most other strikers (warlock, sorcerer, bow ranger, shuriken rogue) and they don't have the resilience of a barbarian. From my own play experience, my avenger's AC is the highest in the party... and I still end up dropping to zero hp as much as the warden. His AC is lower, but his hp and surges are huge.

 

[Nail]

Ahh yes, the Avenger AC again...now lets all sing the lines together
"The avenger is fine as it is"
"The designers meant it to be that way"
"The avenger needs a high AC to survive"
"So what if the avenger has a high AC"...

Hmmmm.

The Avenger (the class, not this particular PC) might have a class AC bonus (+3) that's too high. We could discuss that angle, if you wish. Is that what you're positing here? Your sarcasm is making your point unclear.

 

[Jools]

This is probably the last thing the OP wants to hear but, I really do think the mass of voices in this thread have a point. The avenger has severely neutered his capacity to damage to get such a high AC. His ability to take down monsters will be substantially less than other melee strikers (eg. barbarian). I think the OP mentioned that none of his encounters pose any problems for his group. I think there is where the problem lies. The OP has been having difficulty balancing encounters for his PC group. Perhaps the noticeably hight AC of the avenger has been taking more of the blame than it should.

 

[mevers]

Yeah unless the OP's game rolls stats instead of point buys them or something, what we're talking about is a striker with at best a +3 in his main attack stat, assuming he's playing a dex/wis or int/wis race, and almost nothing in the way of bonuses to other stats at all.

Things this means: he'll have a crappy amount of surges. His damage output will lag compared to other strikers. He has a large feat investment into a single defense, meaning he has very little to boost himself offensively. His Fort defense will be poor.

I think all of those things should conspire to make him relatively ineffective as a striker, especially with a minor amount of effort spent on getting monsters to stand next to him. Because of that his AC shouldn't really matter that much, because he shouldn't really be a priority target of reasonably intelligent monsters anyway.

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

There are lots of good suggestions here for ways to damage the Avenger.

I think I would go the other way, and just ignore him. As soon as the monsters work out that they can't hit him very well, and he doesn't really bring the damage, why not just ignore him and go after other, more desireable targets (either squishier, or deal more damage). Render his high AC useless by just not attacking him.

Similar to how I would deal with a 'Tricked out' dwarven batterager who can't get hurt in melee.

 

[Flipguarder]

Ultimate Defense
at will ✦ Martial, Weapon
Requirement: Must be using a shield
Standard Action Personal
Effect: All your defenses are increased by 100 and you are stunned until the end of the encounter.

I would say this power pretty well exaggerates what the op did. I wouldn't call this power very broken either

 

[eriktheguy]

I would suggest that you just keep running the sessions as normal. He is a striker, so putting all that focus on AC is a sacrifice for him. If you penalize him by intentionally targeting his other defenses, or by otherwise metagaming, he probably will get angry, and would be right to. Don't discourage players from trying out new character builds by punishing them for it.
You said that the monsters seem to hit him on 16+ (thats about 25%). That's not so bad. If he has less damage output than an optimized striking avenger he isn't broken. This character obviously enjoys min-maxing and power gaming, and they will feel rewarded when their efforts help them to get through fights easier than you intended. If this is how they enjoy the game it is fine, so long as they are not far more powerful than the rest of the party.
Try playing normally for a few more sessions to see how it works out. Make sure that he is occasionally hit by higher level monsters, flankers, and non-AC defenses, but also make sure that he enjoys the benefits of his great AC score.
If he continues to enjoy combat and does not leave the rest of the party in the dust, then its ok. The only problem is if he is obviously more powerful than the other party members or if he makes challenging encounters too easy.

EDIT: Wait, something is wrong here. You say they need about 15-17 to hit the avenger. Yous say the defenders have 2 less AC. Then you need 13-15 to hit the defenders. Then you say that using higher level monsters makes the rest of the party get hit on 4+. This does not add up. If you increase the level of the monsters by 1 or 2 then they should start hitting the defenders on rolls of around 11-13, and the squishier party members on slightly lower rolls. If you did that the monsters would hit your avenger around 35%, your defenders around 45%, and the squishy party members just over 50%. No problems here.