D&D 5E L&L: New Packet Hits This Wednesday

[TwoSix]

Says the guy not studying for his exam tomorrow

Procrastination, the habit I'm definitely going to kick. Starting tomorrow.

 

[jhunton]

do,s any one know when the in house one comes out?

 

[Blastin]

humm.....starting to not look good....3pm there now and still nada...

 

[Gorgoroth]

"Stay on target, Stay on tarrrrget."

 

[Ainamacar]

I just logged in anyway and it is there. 032013

Edit: It's OK Rune, I was ninja'd by an entire thread!

 

[Rune]

I'm downloading right now.

Edit--Ninja'd!

 

[Blue]

This varied dramatically between tables. This had a lot to do with the fact that at some tables you'd have fighters with 14 strength who took all roleplaying feats and their DM gave out almost no magic items. At other tables you'd have Strength 36 fighters with every magic item they could get a hold up.

Then you'd have the variation between enemies. One CR 16 monster might have an AC of 12 while another one would have 40(especially when your DM started applying templates and classes).

I just got finished running a seven year low magic campaign, and even there people were hitting way above foe's AC. At 16th most heroes had +1 or +2 weapons, there were a few +2 and +4 stat items but less then the number of party members, and still full BAB was much higher then AC for the majority of appropriate foes in the monster manuals.

Let's take your example. A 14 strength fighter, bring them up to 16th for +4 total so now it's an 18 strength. (Sorry, I can't believe in a strength based fighter starting with a 10 str and living to 16th, so I'm take 14 as base strength and adding the stat adjustments. Anyway, unless you're buildign an intentionally gimped character, if the best you could put was a 10 in your primary ability then you'd probably qualify for the reroll rules in the Player's Handbook.) Give them a masterwork weapon (again, I'm assuming they can afford that at 16th even in this "no-magic" campaign). Assume no feats that add to attack, again fairly odd for a fighter with 14 feats available, but let's run with the "low-end viable fighter" example.

That's a BAB of +16/+11/+6/+1, and a total attack bonus of +21/+16/+11/+6 (+4 for strength, +1 for masterwork). This also assumes that the 16th level character doesn't have any buff spells from other party members. A simple bless or haste would add +1, bull's strength will add +2 since they don't have a magic bonus to strength, and there's a lot more when you go up to 8th level spells available to 16th level pure casters. But again, let's not assume a party dynamic where they support each other.

Pulled out my MM, here's all the CR 16 creatures:
Hound Archon Hero: AC 27
Horned Devil: AC 35
Golem, Greater Stone: AC 27
Nightshade, Nightwalker: AC 32
Angel, Planetar: 32

40% of them have an AC of 27. The first attack hits on a 6 or higher (75%), the next on an 11 or higher (50%), the next on a 16 or higher (25%) and the last on a natural 20 (5%). So even for the 14 base strength no magic no feat no buff fighter it's until the 3rd swing where they have a less than 50% chance of hitting.

The other 60% our poor fighter has a harder time hitting, but frankly looking at the "worst" viable fighter with no magic, feats, or buffs vs. the 40% "worst" of the monsters, I'll take that as an equal comparison.

To take a more reasonable example to compare against all of them, how about a base 16 Str fighter (20 after level adjustments), with +1 from weapon focus, a +4 str item and +3 sword. Nothing extravagant for a 16th level character but a bit more realistic. Some items for his level, and 1 feat of 14 towards giving a bonus to hit. Add in a +2 morale bonus from spell or bard, +1 from some other buff spell like haste, and we're looking at +30/+25/+20/+15. At this point it's not until the third attack that there's a less than 50% chance to hit even against the best. Against the worst, even the second attack lands on a 2.

On the other hand I completely agree that the DM could skyrocket AC if he wanted. Armor on foes that already had natural armor was a big one, foes using items was another. Of course, the DM is supposed to be providing a challenge but not trying to always kill the PCs, so I hope things like that would be used sparingly if the party was optimized away from combat and low magic.