D&D 5E Highest Possible AC

[MakerCaker]

The absolute highest AC you can get, without any temporary spells, is 37. Want proof? Read my article about it here.

 

[jaelis]

The absolute highest AC you can get, without any temporary spells, is 37. Want proof? Read my article about it here.

That doesn't really count as proof I'm afraid It's just a record of your attempt.

For example, your barbarian could get another +1 to AC by boosting Dex using the Star card from the Deck of Many things. That gives them a final of 24. In theory you could even do that twice. Further, there's no stated limit on how high the manuals can go, so if you kept finding more of them there's no limit to the AC you could reach.

(Also, you could replace the wand of Orcus with a defender weapon, perhaps a little more straightforward.)

 

[FrogReaver]

While this is amusing (and a bit iffy - depending on rolling 12? Two shields? pfff), reading this thread made me realize something - armor has a strange return curve.

Going from AC 12 to AC 13 is almost insignificant. It's usually worth it for PCs to get *some* kind of AC so they don't have AC 10, but that's because the efforts needed to do so are pretty minor (cast a petty spell, spend a few dozens gp etc). However, increasing your AC by 1 or 2 at those AC and sacrificing something big for it is usually not worth it. If a foe hits you 50% of the time, and now they are hitting you 45% of the time... congrats, you just reduced incoming damage by 1/10th... not bad, but not great.

However, once your AC becomes pretty good, 1 AC makes a pretty big difference. If an enemy needs 18 or higher to hit you, one more AC means you've just cut incoming damage by a third!

*however*... if you have AC 30 and they must roll a 20 to hit you... getting AC 31 doesn't help you *at all*, you are still hit on a 20! So going overboard on defense is not the best way to go

I'm curious. I know that as AC increases the expected damage from a monster at a particular attack bonus greatly decreases. However, some monsters have a lower attack bonus than what we are looking at. Once you have gotten their chance to hit down to only hitting on a crit then adding more AC doesn't help. So if a character had 30 AC then bumping it up to 31 doesn't help on a very large portion of enemies the character may face. That's one consideration I never see get taken into account for absurdly high AC's. Almost everything in the low 20 range doesn't have that issue as most mosnters have a +3 attack minimum.

 

[Ancalagon]

I'm curious. I know that as AC increases the expected damage from a monster at a particular attack bonus greatly decreases. However, some monsters have a lower attack bonus than what we are looking at. Once you have gotten their chance to hit down to only hitting on a crit then adding more AC doesn't help. So if a character had 30 AC then bumping it up to 31 doesn't help on a very large portion of enemies the character may face. That's one consideration I never see get taken into account for absurdly high AC's. Almost everything in the low 20 range doesn't have that issue as most mosnters have a +3 attack minimum.

Oh definitely in the low 20s increasing your AC a tad is a good move. It's especially good when it's something you can turn on demand (shield leaps to mind) so it's "cheaper" than investing in permanent boost of AC.

 

[Ancalagon]

It's also worth noting that if the foe has multiple options on how to deal with the PCs, targeting the unkillable looking tank with some kind of mental magic is a pretty obvious solution. AC 30, -1 to wisdom save...

A single day after this post, the party drove away a giant slugman (stats hill giant, why make my life complicated) with a fear spell, turning it into a one round fight...