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<blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 6029821" data-attributes="member: 17077">I'm also concerned by the stacking of magic items that grant bonuses to AC. Let's take a fighter with a +1 plate, a shield, a defender sword and a dusty rose prism ioun stone (for another +1 AC). Such a character can have an AC of 25! That's insane. Most monsters would only be able to hit the character if they rolled a natural 20. As bad as that is, even higher ACs than that may become possible once we see +3 armor and +X shields.They really need to put keywords or even just a general rule that AC bonuses from magic items don't stack. The ring of protection, specifically, has this restriction, but none of the above items do. If they made all of these items give a &quot;magic bonus&quot; to AC, then they wouldn't stack with each other and we wouldn't see such abuse. It would also greatly reduce the christmas tree effect, as players wouldn't &quot;need&quot; so many different items to raise their AC. They'd only need one, and it'd be their choice of magic armor, an ioun stone, a ring of protection, etc.Some people keep saying that because of bounded accuracy and because magic items aren't an assumed part of the game's math, that it's okay for them to be so powerful. On the contrary, the fact that they aren't an assumed part of the game's math makes it MORE important that the numerical bonuses they grant be kept firmly in check, or else you will quickly run into the problem of invincible PCs.I think the people at WotC realize this, and that's why we've seen magic items that emphasize cool properties over numerical bonuses, and the bonuses items grant are much smaller than in past editions (going up to +3 for weapons and armor, for example). It's really just a few items and their ability to stack that are problematic.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Falling Icicle, post: 6029821, member: 17077"] I'm also concerned by the stacking of magic items that grant bonuses to AC. Let's take a fighter with a +1 plate, a shield, a defender sword and a dusty rose prism ioun stone (for another +1 AC). Such a character can have an AC of 25! That's insane. Most monsters would only be able to hit the character if they rolled a natural 20. As bad as that is, even higher ACs than that may become possible once we see +3 armor and +X shields. They really need to put keywords or even just a general rule that AC bonuses from magic items don't stack. The ring of protection, specifically, has this restriction, but none of the above items do. If they made all of these items give a "magic bonus" to AC, then they wouldn't stack with each other and we wouldn't see such abuse. It would also greatly reduce the christmas tree effect, as players wouldn't "need" so many different items to raise their AC. They'd only need one, and it'd be their choice of magic armor, an ioun stone, a ring of protection, etc. Some people keep saying that because of bounded accuracy and because magic items aren't an assumed part of the game's math, that it's okay for them to be so powerful. On the contrary, the fact that they aren't an assumed part of the game's math makes it MORE important that the numerical bonuses they grant be kept firmly in check, or else you will quickly run into the problem of invincible PCs. I think the people at WotC realize this, and that's why we've seen magic items that emphasize cool properties over numerical bonuses, and the bonuses items grant are much smaller than in past editions (going up to +3 for weapons and armor, for example). It's really just a few items and their ability to stack that are problematic. [/QUOTE]

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