Help: Gap between AC and defenses seems too large.

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

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 ;-).

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

Okay, that seems to be fine then.

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.

He has a Strength of 19, and did not take Iron Will. His feats are Goliath Greatweapon Proficiency (Gain proficiency, +2 damage with two-handed simple or martial melee weapons), Markings of the Victor (Roll twice for first attack roll each encounter), Battle Awareness (MC: Fighter, Intimidate; immediate interrupt basic attack once per encounter)

I've run two 4e campaigns. The first was shortly after it came out. No one had the character builder. This one I started last year, and virtually every PC was built with it.

I'm wondering if the builder is accurate. I've only actually caught one error - the builder was nerfing the telepath's damage by one, but now it seems like the numbers aren't really making sense.

On the topic of the difference between NADs and AC being greater that 2 on average:
Well, it's just the way the math works out.

I have to wonder why WotC invented the AC-boosting feats then. If PC AC scores weren't too low, and the Armor Expertise feats are "fix-feats", why invent something to fix a problem that doesn't exist?

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 already learned that lesson in my first campaign. The final boss, Kalarel, was 4 levels above the party and a solo (which at the time gave him +2 AC). He also only had one encounter power. That wasn't fun. (That's what happens when a DM new to a system uses a monster "as-is".)

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.

The 4th-level "sweet spot" wasn't an issue I hadn't considered. But I think I'll have to sprinkle in more NAD-targeting monsters anyway, if only to challenge the rogue. (The last encounter he was in, he did drop, but that's only because one opponent had a damage-dealing aura, and another was able to do auto-damage in a small AoE every time he used an implement power.)

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.

With the exception of the shaman, their builds are actually pretty standard, and nobody is deliberately focused on boosting NADs. I don't think they've spread about stat points oddly. The math might be valid (or not, I'm going to take a closer look at the Character Builder, a program I've never used before and it's looking buggy to me) but even if their NADs are high, that's not causing me any encounter design problems at all.

I'm going to have to target NADs at least a little; I've got an odd situation where the rogue's AC is higher than the defender's. I could try to stick those extra vs NAD attacks onto soldier-punisher abilities, rather than making things like "Furious Bash" only a standard encounter attack power. (But not too often, given the rogue's very low Fort/Will defenses.)

I don't see how they can optimize their attack bonuses either. Everyone but the shaman put an 18 into their attack stat, although nobody has a "+3" weapon like a sword.

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.

As I hadn't wanted to make Essentials stuff available to PCs just yet, they didn't have access to Implement/Weapon Expertise. So they're looking at +2 (lvl) +4 (stat) +1 (inherent) = +7 vs NAD and +9 vs AC (since nobody but the rogue has a sword-like weapon). This puts them on the low end of acceptable attack bonuses. (I haven't seen any evidence of math errors on the attack bonuses, either.)

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

-O

Right, but I'm thinking of handing out the attack expertise feats for free now.

 

[Kinneus]

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a psychic warrior? A battlemind?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Pardon my ignorance, but what's a psychic warrior? A battlemind?

Yes. (I also use the term to describe psychic-flavored soldier NPCs.)

 

[mneme]

@(Psi)SeveredHead: Goliath barbarian: 19 Str, so lets assume 16/15/15 pre-racial (25 points). That gives 19/16/17 assuming a Str/Wis goliath. +3 for level/intrinisc, +1 to will for Goliath, +2 to fort and +1 to AC/Ref for barbarian . so Fort: 19,Ref 17, Will 17. Ok, so he didn't even max out his NADs (guessing he put the racial +2 into con instead, though that's a poor choice as he could easily be con 12/will 16 with the +2 in wisdom; the racial should always go in the higher stat); don't see a problem there.

Shaman: I hope he's an eagle shaman! I'm surprised his spirit attacks much at all; eagle shamans are very lazy. He stays near the rogue/Barbarian (or puts the spirit next to him), I take it? Curious what he's missing of Eagle Shaman/Great Watcher Spirit. I'd guess Great Watcher, as it's pretty terrible and the effect lines on other shaman level 1 dailies are worth it even if you always or nearly always miss. And, of course, his level 1 encounter has to have an attack line, as there aren't any that don't.

Bard: I'm not sure what the problem is; an 8 Con and 10 Str would do it nicely on a 4th level character (from a race without a Fort bonus).

Expertise: I assume you banned expertise in addition to not allowing Essentials? Expertise is PH3.

AC boosting feats: Er, there are no "math fix" AC boosting feats except leather armor proficiency and Unarmored Agility, which deal with the Cloth Gap. There -are- AC boosting feats in the epic tier, but that's a ways away.

The topic: I think as long as you have equal amounts of opponents that attack AC and that attack any of the three defenses (so 3/6 AC, 1/6 Ref, 1/6 Will, 1/6 Fort) things will generally work out. Sometimes PCs will get attacked on their strong defenses. The monster will miss a lot, but they'll get frustrated and change targets. Sometimes they'll get attacked on their weak defenses. But the monster has to figure out which PC has the weak defenses, and only 1/6 monsters will attack that defense anyway; those monsters will be dangerous and PCs will want to target them early, but that's -good-. I'd still probably houserule in Expertise and Improved Defenses, as they keep things smoother and let you use tougher monsters overall.

 

[eamon]

I have to wonder why WotC invented the AC-boosting feats then. If PC AC scores weren't too low, and the Armor Expertise feats are "fix-feats", why invent something to fix a problem that doesn't exist?

The armor expertise feats aren't problematic. Their paragon only, incidentally, and apply just a +1 feat bonus to AC.

I'm going to have to target NADs at least a little; I've got an odd situation where the rogue's AC is higher than the defender's. I could try to stick those extra vs NAD attacks onto soldier-punisher abilities, rather than making things like "Furious Bash" only a standard encounter attack power. (But not too often, given the rogue's very low Fort/Will defenses.)

They both have an AC of 22 right? And in any case, that means an even levelled opponent hits him 40% of the time vs. AC. That's not high, but hardly problematic; and that's at fourth level (which as discussed previously is a worst-case scenario) without any other bonuses nor overlevelled monsters coming into play. When they go up a level, somebodies flanking, and the monster is just 2 levels higher, then despite all his investments, you'll be hitting 65% of the time. So this sounds like a decent variability: easy monsters hit him regularly, but less than half the time, but strong monsters or good circumstances raise that, and a combination of the two makes his easy to hit.

Especially if the player spent a feat getting this AC, I'm thinking you should reward that - it's hardly unhittable. He's probably provoking OA's and revelling in obscene AC's against those, but that's a good thing - that's what he's good at! Even if you'd miss him on a 19 on an OA (and it doesn't sound like it's that extreme yet) that just permits some extra mobility - and part of the fun for the player is taunting the monsters.

And although the rogue may have defenses similar to the defender, he doesn't have the survivability.

So I think you should avoid using more attacks vs. NADs than usual. In particular you should not negate the artful dodger's key selling feature, that being his ability to virtually ignore OA's. There's nothing powerful nor problematic so far as I can tell now. Part of the coolness of a character is seeing it live up to its promise. Some characters are designed to make huge damage rolls. Others are unkillable damage soakers. Yet others are nimble and tricky; or monstrous know-it-alls with encyclopedic knowledge of the creatures roaming the sands of Dark Sun. If you can, let these character choices work.

Basically, if it's not gamebreaking, and a player spent effort getting his PC to be good at something, it's no fun if you take that away. And even things that are "game-breaking"... I've seen pre-errata battleragers, and minmaxed bloodclaw weapons - and they're definitely unbalanced, but it didn't actually make the game much worse if anything at all; and the PC still eventually died. As long as it's not making another character irrelevant, the game can take quite a lot of imbalance and just chug along fine.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

@(Psi)SeveredHead: Goliath barbarian: 19 Str, so lets assume 16/15/15 pre-racial (25 points). That gives 19/16/17 assuming a Str/Wis goliath. +3 for level/intrinisc, +1 to will for Goliath, +2 to fort and +1 to AC/Ref for barbarian . so Fort: 19,Ref 17, Will 17. Ok, so he didn't even max out his NADs (guessing he put the racial +2 into con instead, though that's a poor choice as he could easily be con 12/will 16 with the +2 in wisdom; the racial should always go in the higher stat); don't see a problem there.

Barbarians get a +1 AC bonus? Now that is strange.

Shaman: I hope he's an eagle shaman! I'm surprised his spirit attacks much at all; eagle shamans are very lazy. He stays near the rogue/Barbarian (or puts the spirit next to him), I take it? Curious what he's missing of Eagle Shaman/Great Watcher Spirit. I'd guess Great Watcher, as it's pretty terrible and the effect lines on other shaman level 1 dailies are worth it even if you always or nearly always miss. And, of course, his level 1 encounter has to have an attack line, as there aren't any that don't.

He's using a lot of Dark Sun stuff actually. I doubt he's an eagle shaman; I don't know what that build is, but he hasn't summoned anything eagle-flavored.

Expertise: I assume you banned expertise in addition to not allowing Essentials? Expertise is PH3.

First I heard of that. (The gap between the two campaigns was so large there have been two new PHs plus plenty of splatbooks, and I can't have read everything in them.)

AC boosting feats: Er, there are no "math fix" AC boosting feats except leather armor proficiency and Unarmored Agility, which deal with the Cloth Gap. There -are- AC boosting feats in the epic tier, but that's a ways away.

The barbarian player initially wanted to take "Hide Armor Expertise" but decided on boosting his Dex instead when creating his character.

The topic: I think as long as you have equal amounts of opponents that attack AC and that attack any of the three defenses (so 3/6 AC, 1/6 Ref, 1/6 Will, 1/6 Fort) things will generally work out. Sometimes PCs will get attacked on their strong defenses. The monster will miss a lot, but they'll get frustrated and change targets. Sometimes they'll get attacked on their weak defenses. But the monster has to figure out which PC has the weak defenses, and only 1/6 monsters will attack that defense anyway; those monsters will be dangerous and PCs will want to target them early, but that's -good-. I'd still probably houserule in Expertise and Improved Defenses, as they keep things smoother and let you use tougher monsters overall.

So that means more NAD-targeting non-magic guys. Well, I'll have to find a way to deal with that.

 

[eamon]

@(Psi)SeveredHead: Goliath barbarian: 19 Str, so lets assume 16/15/15 pre-racial (25 points). That gives 19/16/17 assuming a Str/Wis goliath. +3 for level/intrinisc, +1 to will for Goliath, +2 to fort and +1 to AC/Ref for barbarian . so Fort: 19,Ref 17, Will 17. Ok, so he didn't even max out his NADs (guessing he put the racial +2 into con instead, though that's a poor choice as he could easily be con 12/will 16 with the +2 in wisdom; the racial should always go in the higher stat); don't see a problem there.

The fact that he's a goliath makes a difference; when I did the original calculations I wasn't aware of that. However, 25 point buy is still more than by the book; he probably has Str 19/Dex 17/Wis 14 which is point-buy legal and woulld result in the 19/17/16 NADs.

Expertise: I assume you banned expertise in addition to not allowing Essentials? Expertise is PH3.

PH2 even .

 

[IanB]

Those gaps are only going to get bigger. I have an epic tier fighter with an AC of 48 (this goes up in a bunch of fairly common circumstances too) and a Will defense of 34 (at level 26). It is pretty messed up at the highest levels, I don't know how you balance a monster for something like that. He's essentially unhittable vs AC, and auto-hittable vs will. Even his good NAD, Fort, is 7 points lower.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Going through the responses I'm getting, I wanted to clarify something:

The possibility of math errors is, I think, pretty small. I can check those out, but I'm doubting those are the root of the problem.

The 4th-level issue is pretty small. Yes their defenses went up, but they all went up by the same amount (2 points).

PCs are not boosting their NADs. I'm a little mystified why people thought their NADs are too high. They're not. I'm hitting them with equal-leveled non-controller monsters too easily, if anything.

PC AC scores seem to be too high, NADs are too low, or (probably the real issue) the gap is too large. This makes picking monster levels difficult. My previous strategy of using monsters higher in level by 1 on average doesn't really work well; while they might be able to hit AC more regularly, they're also becoming unhittable, and it only makes the problem of targeting low NADs worse.

PC design gives bigger mathematical gaps than monster design. This leaves me wondering why WotC designed these expertise fix-feats. I'm also wondering; are there expertise AC-boosting feats? The barbarian player wanted to use one, but changes his mind, so I never really hunted that down. And if these feats exist, why? From what IanB is saying, this problem with overly-high ACs only becomes worse with levels. Making that type of feat doesn't seem like a problem solver to me.

I need to take a much closer look at the barbarian class. They seem to have too much AC. Why give them a free point of AC? They're not defenders.

"Classic" soldiers can't defend very well against a high-AC rogue (as they have no attacks that target anything other than AC; I think the only soldiers I've seen in combat that avoid that problem are custom-built, other than some MM3 monsters that I'm now ripping abilities off of). I've recently designed a cluster of psychic warrior NPCs to go around that problem. However, said soldiers might be too deadly, as the rogue's NADs (other than Reflex) are downright terrible.

Until I can get a better grip on the issue, this puts problems like monster selection and design "on hold". I probably will go with giving out free attack expertise feats, and maybe free NAD-boosting feats (depending on whether I go with higher-level monsters or not), and I might use more NAD-targeting monsters, but that all depends on whether that's a good idea.

 

[mneme]

Barbarians get a +1 AC bonus? Now that is strange.

Better; Barbarians get +1 AC per Tier! (and +1 ref per Tier). It's to give them decent AC even though they're light armor users who don't have Dex secondary -- but it does mean that Whirling Barbarians have ludicrous AC. Your guy can choose to bump AC or bump his riders (unless he's Whirling, but Whirling Barbs aren't that great), so pseudo-defender or better striker.

He's using a lot of Dark Sun stuff actually. I doubt he's an eagle shaman; I don't know what that build is, but he hasn't summoned anything eagle-flavored.

Eagle ("Watcher") shamans don't summon anything eagle-flavored unless they choose (they should) to flavor their spirit companion that way. But they give out basic attacks on both their spirit OA and with an at will; often RBAs that cause the target to grant combat advantage. Watcher shamans are actually mildly Dex-focused, and are the only Shaman build that can reasonably have a high dexterity and thus have a good stealth, but you could easily build one with Int instead.

(expertise)

First I heard of that. (The gap between the two campaigns was so large there have been two new PHs plus plenty of splatbooks, and I can't have read everything in them.)

Surveying them isn't a bad idea--not all the powers, but the feats and new classes are useful to know about if you're restricting material. But yes, Expertise showed up with PH2. PH3 introduced Versitile Expertise -- which gave you expertise with two weapons/implements; Essentials changed the scaling from 1/15/25 to 1/11/21 and made expertise feats grant another special rider like staff expertise granting reach 2 and immunity to OAs on attacks and Holy Symbol Expertise granting near immunity to combat advantage.

The barbarian player initially wanted to take "Hide Armor Expertise" but decided on boosting his Dex instead when creating his character.

*nod* If he's not planning on boosting his dex further, Hide Armor Expertise might be better, as stat > 1 feat (usually). If he is, he can trade his riders for AC and reflex.

Re NAD targetting:

Will in darksun, yeah, probably psychic stuff.

But reflex? That stuff is easy, just use liquids, firey breath or equivalent, defilers, bola-users, etc.