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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5123811" data-attributes="member: 51942">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.</blockquote>

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