Alexander123
First Post
How important is AC compared to other things like miss chance, damage etc. etc. etc. in your opinion?
D&D 3E/3.5 How important is AC? (3.5)
- Thread starter Alexander123
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Dross
Explorer
A number of people here do say that after a certain point miss chances become more important than AC. This is because AC does not scale as well as Attack bonus as you gain levels. The better the AC the more likely the 2nd, 3rd, etc.... attacks will miss. At high levels the 1st attack is likely to hit so the miss chance comes more into play here.
A couple of factors includes DM style / campaign style.
If a DM usual method of attack is AoE spells then AC may not be as important (miss chance may not either),
Touch Attacks like, tripping, grappling, spells may make a miss chance more important.
A couple of factors includes DM style / campaign style.
If a DM usual method of attack is AoE spells then AC may not be as important (miss chance may not either),
Touch Attacks like, tripping, grappling, spells may make a miss chance more important.
Ahnehnois
First Post
AC is possibly the most important 'secondary statistic' IMC and is frequently referred to as an indication of character power. I'm generous with treasure (for PCs and NPCs) so it's quite plausible for characters to force misses even at high levels. Touch AC is extremely important. I rarely try to damage my PCs with AoE spells in favor of spells that require attack rolls.
Jack Simth
First Post
AC also functions as Power Attack Resistance at higher levels - which can be very important indeed.
But yes - it's one defense, which is effective against certain classes of attacks. Are there other defenses against those classes of attacks? Yes, quite a few. But like all things, it's situational. Mirror Image and Displacement don't help against those beasties with True Seeing or Blindsight. AC will (as will Blink, but that also has a chance of spoiling your attacks). AC won't help against that Fireball spell - Reflex will. And so on.
If AC is your only defense, you've got a problem when something comes along that ignores it. If mis chances are your only defenses, you've got a problem when something comes along that ignores that. If your saves are your only defenses... and so on. You can't safely neglect any of the assorted defense types. Which ones are specifically more important depends on the DM's style.
It also matters if you tend to fight NPC's or monsters. NPC's will tend to have attack routines like +25/+25/+20/+15/+10, while a monster will be more like +22/+22/+22. An AC of 25 is effective against the +15 and +10 attacks, but less so against the monsters attacks that are not taking iterative penalties.
Greenfield
Adventurer
AC is of no importance at all.
Unless, that is, your character gets into combat.
Unless, that is, your character gets into combat.
I would say it depends on what class you're playing. Generally for a tanky plate type you want to keep AC up. For the rogue types you'll want to pick your fights intelligently. For the caster, you can stop casting mage armor around level 6ish really, still smart to toss it on extended at the start of the day just in case, but you should be able to get far away and stay far away from any melee that's after you.
I personally rank saves as the most important as failing a save means being disabled and/or killed outright in certain cases (sword archons are the bane of my existance).
The rest i would just balance out. In my group we rarely have to choose AC over miss and often it's simple enough to get a constant 25-30 AC while having someone able to grant you a 50% miss rate (yay fog/blind). Usually I just end up stacking DR/- as much as possible for damage soaking, once you hit 10 - 15 DR things start getting good
I personally rank saves as the most important as failing a save means being disabled and/or killed outright in certain cases (sword archons are the bane of my existance).
The rest i would just balance out. In my group we rarely have to choose AC over miss and often it's simple enough to get a constant 25-30 AC while having someone able to grant you a 50% miss rate (yay fog/blind). Usually I just end up stacking DR/- as much as possible for damage soaking, once you hit 10 - 15 DR things start getting good
Celebrim
Legend
AC is probably the most important stat in the game because a good defense tends to trump offense in D&D (unless you cheat on your initiative rolls) and AC is probably the most often challenged defense.
Think of the outcome of each fight as being determined by how well you maximize the ratio of damage you inflict to damage you recieve.
Increasing damage output is generally much harder for a player to control than decreasing damage input. It's hard to double or triple your expected generated damage, but its fairly easy to half or third your expected damage recieved. The way to look at this is consider the damage you recieve if most monsters need about a 17 to hit you. If you can raise your AC by 2 points at that point, so that they need a 19 to hit you, you've about halfed your expected damage recieved. If you can raise it by another 1 point (total 3 points), so that you are only hit on a 20, then you've halfed it again.
Miss chance is to a certain extent equivalent to improving AC and may be superior in situations where the monster can work around AC, but upping AC is easier and probably the first thing you should target.
I would go so far as to suggest that relative AC is the second biggest advantage players generally have on monsters, just after taking more actions in a round.
A strategy that has usually worked for me as a player is to continually ask, "In what way can the DM kill me, and then work to the best of my ability to plug that hole - whether the answer be 'falling from great height', 'drowning', 'failed fort save', 'critical hit'. If you remove the DM's ability to kill you, chances are you will overcome pretty much anything that is thrown at you.
Think of the outcome of each fight as being determined by how well you maximize the ratio of damage you inflict to damage you recieve.
Increasing damage output is generally much harder for a player to control than decreasing damage input. It's hard to double or triple your expected generated damage, but its fairly easy to half or third your expected damage recieved. The way to look at this is consider the damage you recieve if most monsters need about a 17 to hit you. If you can raise your AC by 2 points at that point, so that they need a 19 to hit you, you've about halfed your expected damage recieved. If you can raise it by another 1 point (total 3 points), so that you are only hit on a 20, then you've halfed it again.
Miss chance is to a certain extent equivalent to improving AC and may be superior in situations where the monster can work around AC, but upping AC is easier and probably the first thing you should target.
I would go so far as to suggest that relative AC is the second biggest advantage players generally have on monsters, just after taking more actions in a round.
A strategy that has usually worked for me as a player is to continually ask, "In what way can the DM kill me, and then work to the best of my ability to plug that hole - whether the answer be 'falling from great height', 'drowning', 'failed fort save', 'critical hit'. If you remove the DM's ability to kill you, chances are you will overcome pretty much anything that is thrown at you.
Last edited:
Alexander123
First Post
I think you overestimate the importance of AC. It may have some importance but I would not place it as the second biggest advantage a player can have, things like miss chance, high saves, optimized classes are much more important than AC.
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