Party AC difference

[eamon]

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).

First off: I think this a perfectly reasonable way of playing things, so take the rest of this post not as criticism but as an explanation of an alternate view I personally prefer ...

How much intelligence is required to attack a good target? If you look at animals, they're obviously quite capable of picking an advantageous location (for offense and defense), and running when they can't win. I'd say most animal-level creatures should instinctively realize when an opponent doesn't look like a good target.

Adding strategically placed obstacles to shape the battlefield in your favor requires planning - attacking from a flanking position (or attacking the most attractive reachable target in sight) simply requires instinct. In my world(s), even a zombie has enough instinct to attack the juicy looking fat-guy over there in preference to the tin can in front of him (though not enough intelligence to judge the indirect risk involved in picking that target - say, by entering a flanked position or whatnot)

 

[eamon]

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.

That's an interesting example. It's a sign of the overall imbalance that you would call that PC's fort defence "excellent" - because although it is relative to other PC's and his own will defense, it is not in an absolute sense.

Based on actual statistics from MM1 and the monster-creation guidelines, you should expect attacks vs. NAD's to be 2 lower than those vs. AC (the MM1 statistics indicate an even lower difference, which is all the more surprising given that attacks vs. NAD's are probably more frequently area attacks which have another -2 according to the guidelines).

So that means a "decent" NAD should be at most 2 lower than a decent AC to remain competitive. At first level, I'd say AC 17 is fairly common; that's chain+light shield or hide+18dex. Of course it's easily possible to have a higher or lower AC. At first level, I'd call a NAD of 15 decent; higher NADs are good (say, a NAD of 18 is excellent - comparable to 20AC for a paladin). The lowest reasonable AC is 16; that's 18dex+leather. Exceptionally low AC might be as low a 14 for leather-less classes, but I'd expect that to rarely occur (In practice, I've never yet seen it) since the leather feat has no prereqs and specifically the wizard can often afford a 20 primary.

Summing that up, compared to monster attacks+AC the reasonable NAD range should be 12 to 18, with both extremes being rare. In particular, a NAD of 12 or 13 would correspond with a particularly extreme lack of attention, and a NAD of 15 should be commonly achievable. This is still a slightly low estimate - in practice the difference between NAD and non-NAD attacks isn't quite two, particularly when you account for area attacks.

So, if we look at the half-orc rogue, he'll have 16 Ref (+4 stat, +2 class) and 14 Fort. Those are both firmly in the "average" range, on an absolute scale (when compared to monster attacks). Sure, the 16 is pretty decent but on the other hand the 14 is pretty mediocre - those scores are simply pretty plain. On the other hand, that half-orc will have a will of just 11; that's off the scale compared to AC.

This makes the game boring. It's just not possible to actually achieve good NAD defenses; those PC's that try end up weaker by giving up things without actually achieving their goal. It also means the DM must either (A) unreasonably ignore a real weakness - something an real villain would never do, or (B) abuse a weakness not of the player's making that's a side effect of PC's being built on a different scale that their opponents.

There's a whole swath of possible balance and build choices being rendered irrelevant by this imbalance; it might actually matter for a monster to attack the right PC with a NAD attack, or it might actually choose to attack AC - but right now, there's just no give and take there, it's just a straightforwardly more powerful option; if you follow the monster creation guidelines or use monsters from either MM, then at identical XP values monsters that attack NADs are simply more powerful - and that's not a good thing; those guidelines are there to help balance, not harm it.

It's a bad design.

 

[Runestar]

I agree with a previous poster that it seems the designer's intent was that each PC has at least 1 exploitable flaw, be it low AC or at least 1 low defense (some classes, such as a rageblood barb, will have 2 poor defenses). So a fighter in plate may have good AC but poor reflex.

I will go one step further and posit that it seems expected that any monster "party" will include a mix of monsters which target different defenses, so they have incentive to target difference PCs (based on what their poor defenses are), rather than have everyone focus-fire on the same PC (such as all brutes targeting the PC with the lowest AC).

It really is no different from 3e, where just about every PC has at least one poor save worth exploiting. Though you could plug this gap using buffs granting immunities (such as mindblank mitigating a crap will save).

This makes the game boring. It's just not possible to actually achieve good NAD defenses

Which begs the question - what happens if they can? Say with enough splatbooks and some new class, it is possible to get a good AC and NADs. Is that desirable from a game balance standpoint?

 

[Storminator]

That's an interesting example. It's a sign of the overall imbalance that you would call that PC's fort defence "excellent" - because although it is relative to other PC's and his own will defense, it is not in an absolute sense.

I'm not sure I agree with all that. Perusing the compendium for 1st level monsters reveals that the maximum attack vs Reflex is +6, for a single named NPC. There are a number of +5s, but +4 and +2 are more common. A 16 Ref vs a +2 is solidly good, and you'll notice the difference between 16 and 12 vs the +4 right away (particularly if that +4 comes from a Fire Beetle. Yeesh!).

In contrast, a +8 vs AC is pretty common, and there's a +11 vs AC in the group. +6 and +7 vs AC is routine.

Looking at the actual monsters doesn't match up to your theory (at least for the tiny subset of monster I check... vs the single PC build discussed...)

*shrug*

PS

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm not sure I agree with all that. Perusing the compendium for 1st level monsters reveals that the maximum attack vs Reflex is +6, for a single named NPC. There are a number of +5s, but +4 and +2 are more common. A 16 Ref vs a +2 is solidly good, and you'll notice the difference between 16 and 12 vs the +4 right away (particularly if that +4 comes from a Fire Beetle. Yeesh!).

In contrast, a +8 vs AC is pretty common, and there's a +11 vs AC in the group. +6 and +7 vs AC is routine.

Looking at the actual monsters doesn't match up to your theory (at least for the tiny subset of monster I check... vs the single PC build discussed...)

I tend to agree. I think the 2 lower from design and 2 lower from area powers actually for the most part makes NADs 4 lower as acceptable.

First level PCs have AC in the range of 14 to 20 and should have NADs in the range of 10 to 16 as a general rule. This would make a 13 or 14 NAD fairly average, the problem is the third NAD which tends to be 10 or 11.

So on average, we tend to see AC 17, best NAD 15 or 16, second best NAD 13 or 14, and worst NAD 10 or 11.

Having all 3 NADs 2 lower is unrealistic. Having all 3 NADs average 4 lower than AC is possible though, at least at first level. Course, not all PCs have a high AC either.

 

[CovertOps]

I think they could have done away with class bonuses to defenses as the stat array gives a pretty good variance by itself. If they had done 11 + stat it would help to shave the rough edge off the large variation. For example I made a 1st level Halfling Rogue that wound up with these final stats/defenses.

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 11, Dex 20, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 16.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 11, Dex 18, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 14.

AC: 17 Fort: 10 Reflex: 17 Will: 13

If we get rid of the +2 Ref from the Rogue class (the 17 spike defense) and instead go with 11 + stats we get:

AC: 17 Fort: 11 Reflex: 16 Will: 14

I think that the 0-5 (stat mods) range is plenty of variation for PC's to feel/play differently and you don't really need that class bump to make that 0-7.

 

[MrMyth]

Which begs the question - what happens if they can? Say with enough splatbooks and some new class, it is possible to get a good AC and NADs. Is that desirable from a game balance standpoint?

I had my PCs send me their character sheets for a variety of reasons, but while I had then, it gave me some decent insight into the variations among them. I've only gotten three thus far, but here are what they look like:

Warden: AC 41, Fort 38, Ref 32, Will 33
Druid: AC 39, Fort 29, Ref 33, Will 33
Sorcerer: AC 35, Fort 37, Ref 32, Will 38

Of the others, we've got an Avenger (AC ~40), a Ranger (AC ~38) and a Warlock (AC ~36), all of whom have low Fort, and decent Ref and Will.

So among them, we do see the approximately 6 point spread of AC. The Sorcerer and Warlock are low, the Avenger and Warden are high - this all makes sense.

The other defenses, meanwhile, have a much bigger spread... 9 points for Fortitude, and around 5 or 6 for the rest. Of course, part of that is the existence of Robust Defences (the +2 to all NADs feat), which I know the Druid doesn't have (and is the person whose NADs are surprisingly low.) With that in place, our spread clicks at 7 points for Fort... a big stretch, but not completely unreasonable when comparing a low-con controller to a strength-based defender.

Now, how does this compare to monster attacks? This is at level 22, where the average attack against AC is +27. Which, indeed, puts AC 38 right in the middle of the 6 point spread - so looks like the numbers for that are right around where they should be!

Attacks vs other defences clock in at +25, meanwhile. 36 clocks in as our average - which is actually a bit at the high end compared to the defenses on hand. Only a few are really higher than that, and only by 1 or 2 points. Quite a few are 3-4 lower, if not more so.

Of course... what none of this takes into account are powers. The Warden has several powers that boost AC or create zones of cover. The Druid and Warlock regularly have concealment or are invisible. The Avenger and Ranger have lots of escape powers, and the Sorcerer, despite his default lower AC, has a couple of enormous defense boost powers. Now, some monsters have defense lowering abilities, or an easy time gaining combat advantage - does this all balance out? Hard to say.

As it is, I find that monsters will struggle against the AC in the party, but hit often against other defenses. I rarely feel like either end approaches the extremes, though - monsters are never really rolling for 20s nor hitting on 2s. Perhaps they could be if the party really coordinated things - but as it is, I find the spread of defenses perfectly fine in terms of actually gameplay.

I'm not really sure what conclusion I'm going for here - just figured I'd toss my player's numbers out and see whether that helped informed the discussion any. I think the system probably isn't perfect, and in an idealized world, non-AC defenses would be a point or two higher compared to AC... but I don't think the lack is the end of the world, by any means, and what we do have works remarkably well, even at the higher levels.

 

[CovertOps]

As long as I'm suggesting to change the base number we may as well go for the whole thing and do 13 + stats. Why? It would open up new design space by having NAD's high enough that implements could have proficiency bonuses and all attacks/defenses would be right around the same numbers.

AC: 17 Fort: 13 Reflex: 18 Will: 16

It might have been nice if there weren't two different systems (weapon/implement) side by side. Caster powers that do 1 (I = Implement) could have been pretty cool. I could also see things like:

Magic Missile
At-will
Attack: Int vs. Ref
Hit: 1 + Int modifier damage.
Wand: +1 to hit.
Staff: Push 2.
Orb: Slowed (save ends).

This would have discouraged casters from using weaplements, but would have required a way to have "Weapon Focus" apply to implements. Oh well...all the things that "could" have been...

 

[Turtlejay]

You don't have to gimp your third defense to have a good character, and most (if not all) characters have a need for a third good stat.

For example, my Assassin (AC-22, Fort-18, Ref-19, Will-17) has overall good defenses, and still has the highest Dex in the party (with a bow ranger and hybrid rogue). He has a bonus to Cha because he wants good Bluff skills. And getting a 14 to start is relatively cheap.

Now, for pumping stats, I will probably have my Will drop off by a point or two over 24 levels, but if I feel it is a weak spot, there is a great Epic level feat to shore it up.

I don't think the Brutal Rogue needs two 18's to start, necissarily. He can do so (and will be a damage powerhouse), but his defense will suffer. That is a tradeoff we all make in this game. Chosing the best options as we see them.

For defenses, they are fluid anyways. Just between marking and CA, two things that change many times over the course of a fight, your relative defense will fluctuate up to 4 points. That is a big difference, and if there is a leader on either team, buffing to hit or defense, that will grow even more.

As a number, and just a number, I don't think AC's differing by 4 or 5 points is out of line.

Jay

 

[KarinsDad]

You don't have to gimp your third defense to have a good character, and most (if not all) characters have a need for a third good stat.

For example, my Assassin (AC-22, Fort-18, Ref-19, Will-17) has overall good defenses, and still has the highest Dex in the party (with a bow ranger and hybrid rogue). He has a bonus to Cha because he wants good Bluff skills. And getting a 14 to start is relatively cheap.

This is a bit misleading. Sure, you put a 14 into your tertiary stat, presumably a 16 into your secondary and a 19 in your primary, but the Assassin class by definition bumps up the tertiary and secondary defenses, not the primary one.

With a different class (like Rogue) and the exact same items, feats, and starting ability scores, this PC would be: AC-22, Fort-17, Ref-21, Will-16.

Suddenly, Will is 5 lower than Reflex instead of 2, and Fort if 4 lower than Reflex, not 1.

Your PC here is not a typical one, even for a PC that tries to balance defenses. A player of a Rogue trying to do the same thing would be a lot less successful.