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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 4111758" data-attributes="member: 5435">I've been mulling over my Raider of Oakhurst playtest. As a DM, one of the things I liked about it was that my monsters were actually hitting the PCs. Their chance of hitting any given PC was typically in the range of 40% to 60%, so the combat naturally had a lot of ups and downs.What worries me a bit is that everyone has gotten a nice boost to their attack rolls, but no one has really gotten a boost to their defenses. We still see the same range we did before, only slightly inflated by using the best of two scores to calculate each one.In 3e, the fact that AC went up much more slowly than attack rolls really skewed mid-level play. As far as I experienced things, there were only two viable strategies for fighter types: pour every possible resource into boosting AC (which would typically reduce the number of hits on you from equivalent monsters down to the 20-30% range), or ignore AC and pour every possible resource into damage. The middle ground was a losing strategy.Ultimately, for almost all characters survivability was determined by HP rather than AC (or in the case of Wizards, magical spells such as Invisibility and Stoneskin).Take the dwarf warrior: she is justifiably proud of her AC20, but even the kobold minions were usually hitting her on a 13+ with flanking. The "real" opponents were getting through that armor even more often. Her HP were high, but at 1st level not enough to defend her against getting surrounded and beaten on.I'm not saying that's a bad thing... it was certainly fun (well, for everyone but the dwarf).What I am saying, is that it feels like ACs above 20 are still a lot more difficult to achieve than they should be. Dedicated defenders need to be able to shrug off minions, and know that their armor has a good chance of protecting them from opportunity attacks and such. If it can't do this, then fighters will still rely on HP more than armor--which I don't think is a good thing.</blockquote>

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