Party AC difference

[Herschel]

I'd say 3-4 on MELEE characters, backliners it isn't as important if you have a good front line or utilitiies/movement powers so 6, 7 maybe even 8.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I made this choice with my PC. My dwarven cleric has a 10 INT and a 10 Dex. His reflex defense is abysmal. Until I got a cloak it was the worst possible (using standard point buy) for his level. But I just sucked it up and made jokes about dwarf dodging skills. I sometimes get missed - and that's an event!

I've got enough good going for me that I can suck rocks on one defense.

For the OP, I put 3-4 is a good range. You can really feel that difference without it breaking the game.

PS

This is exactly what I am saying. If people decide to make such a PC you shouldn't expect the 'game designers' to have anticipated it and give you special bonuses to make up for your choices. I love the fact, Storminator, that you have actually made it a part of the character of your dwarf that he just can't dodge. That is what makes RPGs fun, imo.

 

[Kinneus]

I hate the nerf to swarm druids as now they're less useful as an off-tank and have much lower AC than a wizard

Sorry, but what nerf are you talking about? I just checked the errata, and didn't see anything about the swarm druids. The CB entry is identical to what was printed in Primal Power. Did they change another rule that effected them?

 

[CovertOps]

No it is a player choice to have dumped 2 of his stats to 10. That is pretty much the only way you can end up with a 10 in any defense.

Do game designers really need to handhold players this much so that any negative choices they make in chargen are instantly negated and the PC can then be all awesome all the time?

All I'm really trying to get at is that a 35% swing is huge in a d20 game. I would be perfectly fine with a 7 point range at first level IF their NAD defense scaling was perfect such that a 10 defense at level 1 is a 39 defense at level 30 (+1/level). You start at the bottom of a 7 point range (by choice) and by level 30 you've lost another 7 points (*Note: this applies only to one NAD defense - the other two losing only 4 points) making a 14 point swing. To allow this big a variation in their base system is just silly. Should player choices allow you to have a 14 point (70%) variation? What if they had allowed a 70% swing in your chance to hit? (I can hit on a 5, but my buddy needs a 19)

Level 1: 10-17
Level 30: 32-48 (their current system - I included the +4 epic feat and +2 Epic defenses for the 48 to show the raw min and max - a whopping 16 point difference)
Level 30: 39-46 (what it should be)

Should players have choices that mean something? Yes (20-30% is meaningful)
Should players have choices that can get them killed easily? No (70% is way too big)

They should have either tightened up the starting range (so they could have variation across levels) or they should have tightened up the scaling so the starting difference stays consistent.

Conclusion: Poor design.

 

[DracoSuave]

Sorry, but what nerf are you talking about? I just checked the errata, and didn't see anything about the swarm druids. The CB entry is identical to what was printed in Primal Power. Did they change another rule that effected them?

Hide Armor Expertise.

 

[KarinsDad]

No it is a player choice to have dumped 2 of his stats to 10. That is pretty much the only way you can end up with a 10 in any defense.

Do game designers really need to handhold players this much so that any negative choices they make in chargen are instantly negated and the PC can then be all awesome all the time?

I don't agree with this.

A PC with racial bonus +1, class bonus +2, and starting stat 18 +4 = 17 versus the 10 (let alone a 20 starting stat at 18).

Even if a player pushes the limit and puts a 14 stat in for the second lowest and lowest NAD (nearly half of starting points), that's still only a 12 and still a difference of 5 at level 1.

5. That's a huge difference at level one (let alone 7).

At level 30, not taking into account feats, we're often talking 17 +5 (stat improvement) +6 item +15 level vs. 10 +0 (stat improvement) +6 item +15 level or 43 vs. 31.

A difference of 12 on a D20 is so huge it isn't even funny. The fact that this can easily happen, especially with a player not that familiar with the math right out of the box makes it worse.

Sorry, but the game should not be designed so that people have to either be very math literate, or must visit the message boards to find out the weaknesses in the game system.

Yes, one can balance it out a bit. Instead of the 30th level Wizard with:

Fort 31
Reflex 37
Will 43

We can have:

Fort 34
Reflex 34
Will 43

Whoop dee fricking doo. The player did his best to balance out the NADs (shy of feats) and now has two sucky NADs instead of one really sucky NAD.

A sacrifice has to be made regardless by a player. Nobody is going to not pump up their number one ability score every single time, just to balance out the NADs. And very few people want to pay a feat tax either.

The game is just broken here.

 

[Runestar]

No it is a player choice to have dumped 2 of his stats to 10. That is pretty much the only way you can end up with a 10 in any defense.

Do game designers really need to handhold players this much so that any negative choices they make in chargen are instantly negated and the PC can then be all awesome all the time?

In all fairness, I do feel that the system does encourage players to at least dump one NAD, which is typically derived from a stat for which he has virtually no use for. It is not really a choice when you end up weighing the opportunity costs, IMO. It is expected and necessary.

For example, a half-orc brutal scoundrel rogue may start with 18 str/dex, then focus on boosting them every 4 lvs. He ends up having excellent fort and reflex defenses, but a downright abysmal will defense which all but auto-fails against any attack coming its way.

However, I do not think it is fair to blame the rogue for dumping wis, because he gets no benefits from a high wis whatsoever, and the next best alternative forgone would have been either str or dex, which grant so much more bonuses.

So it appears that the game pretty much assumes that you will have at least 1 weak defense which your foes (and the DM by extension) are able to exploit, regardless of how sky-high you can pump your AC and other NADs.

Feature or bug? I leave it to you to decide.

 

[Rachel]

Personally I find that if 1 PC has too high an AC (say defender) the monsters willl quickly realize it and attack the squishies (especially easy on wardens and paladins).

I feel I need to make a critical point in regards to this statement:

An intelligent monster may quickly realize they can't hit the defender and move on to clothies/squishies. Again, an intelligent one. That stupid brute wyvern will likely keep hounding the defender standing right in front of him whether he is hitting him or not, just because the defender is the most obvious threat and wyvern's aren't too bright (for example).

Thus, DMs should be aware of this point (I'm betting most are).

If a DM has every monster automatically skirting the harder to hit PCs, this is a major problem. Some monsters might, but many just swing away at whatever....

 

[Rachel]

In all fairness, I do feel that the system does encourage players to at least dump one NAD, which is typically derived from a stat for which he has virtually no use for. It is not really a choice when you end up weighing the opportunity costs, IMO. It is expected and necessary.

For example, a half-orc brutal scoundrel rogue may start with 18 str/dex, then focus on boosting them every 4 lvs. He ends up having excellent fort and reflex defenses, but a downright abysmal will defense which all but auto-fails against any attack coming its way.

However, I do not think it is fair to blame the rogue for dumping wis, because he gets no benefits from a high wis whatsoever, and the next best alternative forgone would have been either str or dex, which grant so much more bonuses.

So it appears that the game pretty much assumes that you will have at least 1 weak defense which your foes (and the DM by extension) are able to exploit, regardless of how sky-high you can pump your AC and other NADs.

Feature or bug? I leave it to you to decide.

All of this! It's obvious the minute you start to roll up your very first character that you're going to pump your most important stat and to do that, you will need to completely dump another stat. I sometimes go against this trend on purpose, b/c I am not a min/max sort of player and go against optimization often. Sometimes this results in a weaker build and a stern DM could punish me for doing that (mine doesn't).

Example: In our 3 person game, we have as our defender my cute little green-haired gnome, Myria, who is a fighter. Obviously not an optimal build stat-wise. She travels with a two-blade ranger and a wizard. Her AC at lvl 1 was not great (17), and she had 2 NADs (Ref, Will) both terrible (11). All of this stemming from a starting STR of (18). Now if I bump the STR 18 down to a 16 I could focus abit more on her NADs, but that might mean adding to non-essential/no benefit stats like the rogue/wisdom example (as quoted). It's hard to forego adding points to STR or stats that improve the "kickers" of her powers in favor of NADs but if I did it would make her more rounded vs. varying attack types.

RAW: The system doesn't encourage doing this, though.

 

[eamon]

When someone has too high of an AC, DM gets frustrated by missing them, DM increases monster levels or starts using lots of NAD attacking monsters, which hoses the whole party.

This is a strategy a good DM should avoid. It's tempting, but it's essentially unfair and unreasonable. The composition of encounters should not be excessively tailored to the PC's; if PC's have particular strong and/or weak points, let them feel the consequences. That means it's perfectly OK to have a PC that almost never gets hit on AC by level-appropriate opponents. Firstly, he will sometimes get hit, secondly, many opponents aren't level-appropriate (a critter a few levels higher isn't uncommon), and that holds in particular for difficult boss battles, and thirdly, it's simply not feasible to raise AC and NAD's so that means that the PC is likely to get high fairly commonly regardless: just that in some combats and for most attacks he'll be hard to hit.

Basically, do as renau1g says :

Personally I find that if 1 PC has too high an AC (say defender) the monsters willl quickly realize it and attack the squishies (especially easy on wardens and paladins). This is why I love shielding swordmages, they stop at least 7-8 damage from harming their ally. It's good and fighter has the way to stop the shift so they're nice and sticky.

When someone has too low of an AC, he becomes a door mat, the healer gets tired of healing that party member, and the party gets tired of stopping because that party member is out of surges again.

Again, this is the PC's responsibility. Quite a few builds can survive like this (in particular back-liners with extra defensive powers like fade-away, second chance, shield etc.) There are a few builds that have unbalancingly low AC; by RAW I'd suggest PC's simply avoid picking those traps, alternatively, you could use a house rule that reduces other ability-score related imbalances too.

Personally, I don't much mind a wide divergence so long as it doesn't represent an overall power imbalance, and as long as it's by choice, not by force. Having an overall power imbalance between party members just makes the game less fun (like 3.5 fighters when a perma-wildshaped druid was around...), and have the imbalance by force (i.e. the situation with NAD's right now) firstly lures the DM into unfun mitigation strategies that negate a PC's choices, and secondly means I feel obliged not to abuse that particular imbalance - which from an in-game point of view makes no sense whatsoever.

But if the PC's have a reasonable shot at acceptable defenses and choose to give that up in return for something else, that's their prerogative.