ZombieRoboNinja
First Post
And AC 26 is looking to be the max, the defensive ideal, reached only by wearing a one of a kind artifact armor and wielding a very rare magic greatsword while two magic stones (one rare and one legendary) float around your head and fighting in a defensive manner (dumping all of the weapon's bonuses into defense). Discounting the Defender (which has a trade off that in some ways make it the equivalent of a +2 magic weapon and a shield), AC 23 (and 24 with a shield) is looking to be the expected max AC for a fully kitted out heavy armor character something that should happen after level 10 and only rarely even then.
You could add in the shield spell for another +2 (depending on whether sorcerers can use greatswords and/or how multiclassing and extra weapon proficiencies work). And the Dodge action for another +4 when you're not going anywhere for a while. So that's 26-32 AC with a very silly build. But that's also with just the items from the playtest, which don't include any +AC shields, for example.
The only real problem I see is in the Ioun Stones which need to be modified to avoid having the effects of multiple of the same color stacking.
I think I'd probably just ban ioun stones from my game (i.e. not give them out). Too many fiddly little bonuses.