Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Falling Icicle" data-source="post: 6030513" data-attributes="member: 17077">Rarity doesn't excuse the stacking problem. Rarity is entirely subjective and up to invidual DMs and campaigns. In one campaign, such items may be extremely rare, so you won't likely run into the stacking issue because PCs won't likely have more than one of those items, if they are lucky enough to even have one. But what about campaigns where PCs do have those items? It's important to balance the items around the assumption that people will have them, not around the assumption that they won't. That way, these items won't be a detriment to the games of people who want to include them in their games.You're right, my bad. The shield was only 1 point of that character's AC though, so it's still a problem. I was also assuming that the character was &quot;only&quot; wearing +1 plate, when armor can go as high as +3. And who knows what other miscellaneous AC boosting items may be published? Without a rule against them stacking with each other, the example I provided may even be on the low end of what's possible, and that's a terrifying thought.Because of bounded accuracy, we can expect that even high level monsters won't have an attack bonus that is too much higher than the monsters we have now. Even monsters with a +10 to attack will only be able to hit an AC 25 character on a roll of 15 or better (meaning that they will miss roughly 70% of the time, on average). For every point of AC the character adds, that miss chance increases by an additional 5%. It is very important for the game that both attack values and AC be kept in careful check, or else you can end up with fights where people almost always hit on one end, or whifflebat fights on the other. Neither extreme is acceptable.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Falling Icicle, post: 6030513, member: 17077"] Rarity doesn't excuse the stacking problem. Rarity is entirely subjective and up to invidual DMs and campaigns. In one campaign, such items may be extremely rare, so you won't likely run into the stacking issue because PCs won't likely have more than one of those items, if they are lucky enough to even have one. But what about campaigns where PCs do have those items? It's important to balance the items around the assumption that people will have them, not around the assumption that they won't. That way, these items won't be a detriment to the games of people who want to include them in their games. You're right, my bad. The shield was only 1 point of that character's AC though, so it's still a problem. I was also assuming that the character was "only" wearing +1 plate, when armor can go as high as +3. And who knows what other miscellaneous AC boosting items may be published? Without a rule against them stacking with each other, the example I provided may even be on the low end of what's possible, and that's a terrifying thought. Because of bounded accuracy, we can expect that even high level monsters won't have an attack bonus that is too much higher than the monsters we have now. Even monsters with a +10 to attack will only be able to hit an AC 25 character on a roll of 15 or better (meaning that they will miss roughly 70% of the time, on average). For every point of AC the character adds, that miss chance increases by an additional 5%. It is very important for the game that both attack values and AC be kept in careful check, or else you can end up with fights where people almost always hit on one end, or whifflebat fights on the other. Neither extreme is acceptable. [/QUOTE]

Verification