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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5124248" data-attributes="member: 61155">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 33Druid: AC 39, Fort 29, Ref 33, Will 33Sorcerer: 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.</blockquote>

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