Help: Gap between AC and defenses seems too large.

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I ran a session of Dark Sun today, and a specific complaint came up.

It started with the barbarian player complaining about his attack bonus vs enemy AC bonuses, but also some other players said monster attack bonuses vs defenses were too high. I countered by pointing out they could only hit half the time. Against AC.

Turns out both of us were right.

Here's how my group's PCs turn out, in terms of AC and defenses. They're all 4th-level, and they all have inherent bonuses, so that's like having +1 armor and +1 cloaks of resistance.

Telepath: AC 17; Fort 15, Ref 17, Will 19. General attack bonus: +7 vs Will.

Shaman: AC: 20 ; Fort 16 ; Ref 19 ; Will 17. General attack bonus: +5 or +8 vs non-AC defense. (He's an odd build. He boost Int instead of Wis, which makes one of his non-standard at-wills really strong.)

Barbarian: AC 20; Fort 19, Ref 17, Will 16. General attack bonus: +9 vs AC. (He's using an axe.) His Reflex defense used to be lower, but he traded his Dex and Con scores. A little non-standard, but not a real problem.

Bard: AC: 17; Fort: 11, Ref: 15, Will: 16 (these are his 3rd-level stats; I don't have an up-to-date character sheet but all defenses should increase by 2, so AC 19/Fort 13/Ref 17/Will 18 is probably right)

Psychic Warrior: AC 22; Fort 17, Ref 16, Will 18. General attack bonus +9 vs AC (broadsword), +7 vs anything else.

Rogue: AC: 22 Fort: 15 Reflex: 22 Will: 16. General attack bonus +11 vs AC, and also vs Ref as he has Piercing Strike. This character spent a feat on boosting AC and severely min-maxed their Dex score, leaving them with the greatest general gap between good AC and poor defense. In addition, being a halfling with the Artful Dodger trait, this character's AC against opportunity attacks is so high I've had to design psychic warrior NPCs who could reasonably hit them when they target someone other than said psychic warrior. However, his Fort and Will are so weak that any kind of controller (or Will-targeting artillery) is likely to leave his low hit-point-character moaning in pain.

The rogue and bard players couldn't make it last session (summer for university students).

They generally face opponents of 4th to 5th level, so you're looking at attacks vs AC of +9 or +10, and attacks vs other defenses of +7 to +9 (controllers tend to do a bit better here). Opponents tend to have AC 19 or 20 and other defenses of 17 to 18.

One of their opponents in the last encounter was a 5th-level controller with an attack bonus of +9 vs Will. Only one PC had any defenses high enough to make hitting it hard (and it wasn't Will).

On the other hand, another NPC was a 5th-level soldier, with an attack bonus of +10 (hits the barbarian half the time... aren't they supposed to be brutes?) but an AC of 21 (40-45% hit chance from most attacking PCs).

(The NPCs in question? There were two encounters. The first was deliberately "easy". The second came right after the first, so no restoring encounter powers. The second consisted of: An elf noble fighter [soldier, Monster Vault] leveled to 5th, a custom-made eladrin wizard [controller, using Essentials enchanter-flavored powers], a custom-made elf rogue [skirmisher, using Essentials Tactical Trick as a recharge rather than at-will] and an elf raid leader [artillery, Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium]).

The problem I'm running into? In order to come up with someone who can reliably hit the barbarian, psychic warrior or rogue (against their AC), I need to come up with an opponent of such high level their ACs become unhittable to the PCs. Paired with controllers they can support, and the controllers hit those non-AC defenses too reliably. (Even in the case of that enchanter, whose every attack was vs Will!) I see very few complaints (at least about hitting) from the spellcasters. Enemy non-AC defenses seem fine, maybe a point too high, but that's because I over-level them slightly.

I thought about lowering NPC levels and giving them leader support (the type that give out attack bonuses), but I'd have some of the same issues (hitting PC non-AC defenses would still be too easy, and hitting their ACs might be too hard). And I can't use high level soldiers and lower level controllers, as the monster AC problem would still be ... a problem.

So it seems to me the gap between AC and non-AC defenses is too high. I'm thinking about handing out the AC-boosting Essentials feats for free but not the other-defense boosting feats (I'll ban those), which would leave me free to use slightly higher-level NPCs.

The barbarian player suggested I come up with flavorful explanations for why, say, a half-giant's at-will attack is hitting Fortitude instead.

But I was wondering if other DMs had advice? Do you run into this issue?

 

[Mentat55]

Can you define how often you want to hit your higher AC players? Standard attack vs. AC for level 4 monsters is +9. That will hit the rogue or psychic warrior on a 13 and the barbarian and shaman on an 11. If they flank, or if the PCs are subjected to conditions that grant combat advantage, those become 11 and 9. If some monsters (I like to use minions) use the Aid Another action, you can give another +2 to hit. Honestly, I think everything looks pretty reasonable.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Good lord, how'd the bard shaft his Fort down that low?

You may want to use Level 3-4 monsters in Dark Sun; not only do they hit stinking hard to begin with, but without magic items showing up to help buff defenses they'll be more accurate at more levels, since the Inherent bonuses generally lag behind what you'd expect on loot.

Brad

 

[OnlineDM]

This ended up being a little hard to follow, but I think you're saying:

- Even-level monsters are having a hard time hitting the AC of some of your party
- If you use monsters that can reliably hit the high ACs in the party, those monsters themselves have ACs that are too high for a lot of the party to hit

For monsters, AC should be 2 points higher than the other defenses (on average). For PCs, it's expected to be roughly similar on average since monsters have level+5 to hit versus AC and level+3 to hit versus other defenses.

In looking at the numbers for your group, I think I'm failing to understand the problem. Average 5th-level monsters that attack AC are going to hit your Shaman and Barbarian on a 10 or better (typical) hit your Psychic Warrior Rogue on a 12 or better (so they have "soldier" AC - seems fine), and hit your Telepath and Bard on a 7-9 or better (they're a little squishy, which feels about right). Going against the other defenses, it will vary more (hitting your Rogue's Reflex is still really hard) even within a particular PC, but nothing looks too far out of line to me.

Your characters' defenses average out to be similar to expected monster defenses: AC about 2-3 points better than the average non-armor class defenses. If you're talking about the maximum spread within a PC (the Rogue's AC is 7 higher than his Fortitude), well, yes, that's a large number, but it averages out across the three NADs (because his Reflex is so high). Yes, the Rogue is a bit of an outlier because his AC is 22 and his average NAD is 17.7 (a gap of 4.3), but you said that he took feats specifically to boost AC. <shrug> Your Telepath, on the other hand, has average NADs equal to his AC.

The solution is to mix up your monsters. Make sure you don't have the vast majority going after AC. Attacks versus AC should be common, but attacks versus the other defenses shouldn't be rare.

It's okay for a character to have some strong and some weak defenses. It's only a problem if you solely go after their strong defenses. If you mix it up, things will average out.

 

[Dausuul]

Agree with OnlineDM, I don't really see the problem. Though you might want to consider handing out Expertise as a bonus feat; I'm guessing most of them don't have it, or their attack bonuses would be a shade higher--they mostly seem to have +7 versus NADs, where Expertise and a good attack stat would be giving them +8.

 

[S'mon]

Everything looks fine to me; players enjoy having monsters miss them sometimes!

 

[eamon]

Firstly: Don't balance monsters to be able to hit the artful dodger AC on OA's. It's his shtik; and it's perfectly OK to miss on a roll of a 19 here (there are lots of ways to move entirely without provoking, so this isn't as powerful as it may seem).

The bard's fort defense looks perfectly average. He probably started with no higher than a 10/11 in Strength and Constitutuion, and judging by his other stats, that makes him a cunning bard. In fact, the other PC's have unusually high non-AC defenses.

I can't imagine a Shaman that boosts Int instead of Wis to work except at the lowest of levels, and even there, poorly - so that's just plain wonky there (are you sure that character's on the level - or is it a hybrid?) Actually, perhaps he's a Wis/Int build - but even then, his reflex is absurdly high. There's no class bonus, and just +2 from level and +1 from inherent bonuses, which means he's getting +6 from elsewhere. Sounds like he has improved defenses (which is an unusual feat so early on), and and Int of 20-21 - crazy high for a shaman.

Typical of AC would generally be at least 2level+3armor+3stat+1inherent - AC19. There are a very few classes without any armor proficiency; but for such classes unarmored agility is a very powerful choice, and they generally have other AC boosts or a Dex/Int primary, so anything lower than AC19 means they're dumping AC; even a psion or wizard can easily have AC19. For a defender that's usually 22-23, perhaps even more if minmaxed (up to say +2level+5stat+3armor+1inherent+3warding == AC24 swordmage at the cost of a feat an odd stat spread if I'm not mistaken?)

By contrast, assuming a fairly optimistic post-racial 13/18/18 spread (or equivalently 13/15/20) and a secondary that's not overlapping the primary wrt NADs, then by fourth level that's a sum total of +9 stat modifiers, +2 from class, +1*3 from inherent bonuses, +2*3 from level +1 for the occasional shield == +21, or +7*3. So that's a NAD of 17 on average. Based on the defenses you've listed, It looks like this party is minmaxing on the non-AC defenses; probably by choosing improved defenses over expertise, and by choosing a stat distributions that penalizes the attack stat to boost the tertiary stat.

So, with AC ranging conservatily from 19-23 and non-ac defenses averaging at 17, I'd expect the difference between AC and average NADs to be at least 2, but up to 7(!) ; a difference of 3/4 before improved defenses is fairly reasonable. If the difference is lower, that means people are specifically optimizing NADs or have classes with unusally low AC and/or they don't yet have the eventually expected AC-boosts (e.g. armor proficiency or unarmored agility). A few low-AC non-defenders will have a lower difference, but a defender or a non-defender with Int/Dex primary will compensate, so if the difference is less that 3-4 after improved defenses, there's something weird going on.

In conclusion, since Monster attacks vs. NADs are just 2 lower than those vs. AC, expect them to hit much more frequently - after all it's not reasonable to assume everyone has improved defenses so early, nor is it odd for monsters to focus on those PC's whose defenses they can easily hit (so the average could be skewed to the lowest defense.)

Edit: Fixed math to account for the chance of a shield; I'm arbitrarily assigning that a +1 value, an to account for racial modifiers.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Can you define how often you want to hit your higher AC players? Standard attack vs. AC for level 4 monsters is +9. That will hit the rogue or psychic warrior on a 13 and the barbarian and shaman on an 11.

I'm not really sure how often I want to hit them. About half, but to be fair, some PCs will have higher ACs than others.

Good lord, how'd the bard shaft his Fort down that low?

You may want to use Level 3-4 monsters in Dark Sun; not only do they hit stinking hard to begin with, but without magic items showing up to help buff defenses they'll be more accurate at more levels, since the Inherent bonuses generally lag behind what you'd expect on loot.

Brad

The inherent bonuses to defenses seem to be about the same (now that they're 4th-level, they're all wearing the equivalent of +1 cloaks of resistance).

This ended up being a little hard to follow, but I think you're saying:

- Even-level monsters are having a hard time hitting the AC of some of your party
- If you use monsters that can reliably hit the high ACs in the party, those monsters themselves have ACs that are too high for a lot of the party to hit

And also, monsters that could reliably hit AC can hit other defenses too easily.

The solution is to mix up your monsters. Make sure you don't have the vast majority going after AC. Attacks versus AC should be common, but attacks versus the other defenses shouldn't be rare.

This one isn't easy to pull off. I guess I need more psychics.

The bard's fort defense looks perfectly average. He probably started with no higher than a 10/11 in Strength and Constitutuion, and judging by his other stats, that makes him a cunning bard. In fact, the other PC's have unusually high non-AC defenses.

I'm a little surprised to hear that last bit, actually. I'm not having trouble hitting those at all.

I can't imagine a Shaman that boosts Int instead of Wis to work except at the lowest of levels, and even there, poorly - so that's just plain wonky there (are you sure that character's on the level - or is it a hybrid?) Actually, perhaps he's a Wis/Int build - but even then, his reflex is absurdly high. There's no class bonus, and just +2 from level and +1 from inherent bonuses, which means he's getting +6 from elsewhere. Sounds like he has improved defenses (which is an unusual feat so early on), and and Int of 20-21 - crazy high for a shaman.

He's using Spirit Infusion, the Dark Sun at-will power. It's basically commander's strike; the target ally makes an attack at +2 to hit and + Int to damage. He's getting off +5 to damage that way, generally based on the barbarian's attack (the barbarian being the only PC in the party to have decent Strength; apparently you can pull off a psychic warrior with Strength 10 and the only issue is not qualifying for some of the armor feats).

He gets +5 from Int, and I'm not sure where the extra +1 is from; it's not a feat, and he says he refuses to wear armor.

His other spirits tend to have a nice rider (eg enemies next to them grant combat advantage, etc) but, not surprisingly, they usually miss when they attack! However, he's never complained about this, and seems willing to play an odd character.

Typical of AC would generally be at least 2level+3armor+3stat+1inherent - AC19. There are a very few classes without any armor proficiency; but for such classes unarmored agility is a very powerful choice, and they generally have other AC boosts or a Dex/Int primary, so anything lower than AC19 means they're dumping AC; even a psion or wizard can easily have AC19. For a defender that's usually 22-23, perhaps even more if minmaxed (up to say +2level+5stat+3armor+1inherent+3warding == AC24 swordmage at the cost of a feat an odd stat spread if I'm not mistaken?) By contrast, assuming a fairly optimistic 13/16/16 spread (or equivalently 13/13/18) and a secondary that's not overlapping the primary wrt NADs, then by fourth level that's a sum total of +7 stat modifiers, +2 from class, +1*3 from inherent bonuses, +2*3 from level == +18, or +6*3. So that's a NAD of 16 on average.

Isn't an NAD of 16 a bit low? A 4th-level monster, that isn't a controller or artillery, is aiming at a +7 vs non-AC defenses. Also, the gap makes targeting weak defenses kind of easy for some characters (a swift-moving small halfling won't get their Ref targeted, for instance).

Based on the defenses you've listed, It looks like this party is minmaxing on the non-AC defenses; probably by choosing improved defenses over expertise, and by choosing a stat distributions that penalizes the attack stat to boost the tertiary stat.

They don't have access to the expertise feats. No one has improved defenses either. (The rogue took a buckler feat, they didn't have any Essentials feats available.) Only the shaman penalized their attack stat; everyone else boosted their main stat (especially the rogue).

So, with AC ranging conservatily from 19-23 and non-ac defenses averaging at 16-17, I'd expect the difference between AC and average NADs to be at least 3, but up to 8(!) ; a difference of 3/4 after improved defenses is fairly reasonable.

If the difference is lower, that means people are specifically optimizing NADs or have classes with unusally low AC and/or they don't yet have the eventually expected AC-boosts (e.g. armor proficiency or unarmored agility). A few low-AC non-defenders will have a lower difference, but a defender or a non-defender with Int/Dex primary will compensate, so if the difference is less that 3-4 after improved defenses, there's something weird going on.

Is that reasonable? Is an average difference of greater than 2 or 3 reasonable, given what monster attack bonuses are like?

In conclusion, since Monster attacks vs. NADs are just 2 lower than those vs. AC, expect them to hit much more frequently - after all it's not reasonable to assume everyone has improved defenses so early, nor is it odd for monsters to focus on those PC's whose defenses they can easily hit (so the average could be skewed to the lowest defense.)

Seems like people are arguing the exact opposite from me. People are saying the PCs' NADs are too high and the gaps could be larger.

In any event, I'm thinking of handing out implement/weapon expertise and perhaps improved defenses (all for free), but not anything that would boost AC, but if the defenses are actually quite good on this party, I think I'll restrict that to just implement/weapon expertise instead.

I'm also going to have to find a flavorful way of giving non-magical/non-psionic opponents ways of targeting things other than AC. In the last battles, one of the fighter-types had Armor-Piercing Strike, letting him hit Ref, but it was an encounter power.

 

[eamon]

He gets +5 from Int, and I'm not sure where the extra +1 is from; it's not a feat, and he says he refuses to wear armor.

His other spirits tend to have a nice rider (eg enemies next to them grant combat advantage, etc) but, not surprisingly, they usually miss when they attack! However, he's never complained about this, and seems willing to play an odd character.

If the player's fine with it, that's cool - I just want to point out that if you're building encounters around his build, well, that's not a normal build ;-).

Isn't an NAD of 16 a bit low? A 4th-level monster, that isn't a controller or artillery, is aiming at a +7 vs non-AC defenses. Also, the gap makes targeting weak defenses kind of easy for some characters (a swift-moving small halfling won't get their Ref targeted, for instance).

Yes, sorry 'bout that, I forgot to account for the occasional shield and racial bonuses. Those raise the average non-AC defense to 17.

They don't have access to the expertise feats. No one has improved defenses either. (The rogue took a buckler feat, they didn't have any Essentials feats available.) Only the shaman penalized their attack stat; everyone else boosted their main stat (especially the rogue).

Wow, then they've really spread their stats around. Take the barbarian:

19/17/16 FRW. If you remove the class bonus, the level and inherent bonus that's +4/+4/+3 apparently based on stats and other feats. If it were only stats, that's an 18/18/16 stat spread, which at 1st level pre-racial might have been 15/15/16 - that makes for weak attacks, and it's still higher than point buy. So he's probably got something like Iron Will - leaving +4/+4/+1 to ability scores; possibly pre-racial 16/16/13. That's still fairly well spread; you've got to realize that such a PC spent one of just three feats improving a NAD by two and raised a tertiary stat (costing him attack bonus+damage, and for little other gain) to get those NADs. That's a steep price to pay.


On the topic of the difference between NADs and AC being greater that 2 on average:

Is that reasonable? Is an average difference of greater than 2 or 3 reasonable, given what monster attack bonuses are like?

Well, it's just the way the math works out.

Seems like people are arguing the exact opposite from me. People are saying the PCs' NADs are too high and the gaps could be larger.

In any event, I'm thinking of handing out implement/weapon expertise and perhaps improved defenses (all for free), but not anything that would boost AC, but if the defenses are actually quite good on this party, I think I'll restrict that to just implement/weapon expertise instead.

Have you read Stalker0's guide to anti-grind? In particular, beware of over-leveled monsters. It sounds like you're not using many of those at all, but the DMG recommendation of up to 7 levels over the party is very harsh and makes for poor play.

I'm also going to have to find a flavorful way of giving non-magical/non-psionic opponents ways of targeting things other than AC. In the last battles, one of the fighter-types had Armor-Piercing Strike, letting him hit Ref, but it was an encounter power.

I'm not sure this is such a good idea. Their AC's are around 20 (ignoring the defender for a moment), and a level 4 monster might have an attack of +9 - you'll hit them 45% of the time. That should be enough to challenge them; and realize that at level 4 their defenses are unusually high because it's an even level and they just got an inherent boost. At level 7, their defenses will be just 1 higher, and you'll hit 55% of the time - this is enough to remain challenging.

And of course, you can and should use the occasional slightly higher level moster, who will hit more frequently; so the average hit rate will probably be above 50%.

Most attacks are against AC - that makes it important. If you shift towards using NADs (and note that's not that easy since that's not typical heroic tier monster design), you'll be encouraging them to focus even more on NADs, and diminish the ability of the defender to do his job, and diminish the impact of the psion's choice to eshew armor.

Basically, it sounds like they've got attack-bonus issues; which, if they spread around stat points, isn't unexpected. Handing out expertise for free sounds very reasonable. They could probably optimize their attack bonus a lot better; but it's perfectly OK that they don't as long as you're aware of the fact that they might have more difficulty with overlevel monsters than usual.

 

[Obryn]

The PCs' attacks seem a tad low. By that level, most of my party had...

2 (1/2 level) + 4 or 5 (stat) + 1 (expertise) + 1 (enhancement) = +8 or +9 vs NAD, and +10 to +13 vs AC.

Still, your numbers are workable with good tactics.

As for your party's NADs ... well, everyone's going to have one low one. Almost everyone, anyway. It's just kinda how it is - you either accept it, or if you feel really naked in one category, you take the +2 to that defense feat, or you take Improved Defenses.

It looks like nobody's taken either Expertise or Improved Defenses, right?

-O