D&D General Reducing incoming damage: +1 =/= +5%

[FrogReaver]

It's the combination. The control spells matter because each time a foe enters or leaves PAM's reach for the first time in a round, they give the party some tempo. If no PC can close, the control spells become inefficient. When fear wears off, the foe attacks and now the wizard has one fewer spell slots. If the players would commit to all-warlock or all-CEX/SS fighters, they could probably find combinations more optimal. But generally - working together - three archers and a tank is flexible and strong.

I actually think that's the worst party imaginable. 3 ranged and 1 melee is just rough. The melee has to invest so much into defense that he has very limited offense and as such is much easier to ignore.

 

[FrogReaver]

To get back on topic....

I think defensive style is great to build the upfront tank. You could combine that with a race which gets a natural AC bonus to already be at +2 before equipment. Heck, maybe even go straight Dex after that so you can be good at ranged attacks until the enemy gets close and still have a high AC. In melee, switch over to a shield and a finesse weapon.

I don't think swapping to a shield mid combat is actually a feasible plan given that it takes an action to do so.

Are there situations where that might not work 100%? Probably, but that's true of virtually anything, so I don't see that as a particularly strong argument against it.

We originally were talking about taking archery style and just staying away from enemies. Did you shift our conversation to something else mid reply?

 

[clearstream]

I believe you are typically best off having a little less than half the party be melee (though with solid control or summons you can eliminate many if not all of those melee PC's). The ideal is to have a solid amount of focus fire and incentive damage being spread around your multiple melee characters.

For a typical party of four, isn't a little less than half, one?

^^

 

[clearstream]

I actually think that's the worst party imaginable. 3 ranged and 1 melee is just rough. The melee has to invest so much into defense that he has very limited offense and as such is much easier to ignore.

That's not really true though. Bearbarian has so much EHP and at the same time deals such ferocious single-target damage that they are hard to ignore. PAM paladin can establish a wide front line - more than sufficient on dungeon maps provided in official adventures - and again due to smite is hard to ignore. Tripping battle master deals less damage, but can take half of movement away from a foe. Armored life cleric has such efficiency that unless foes are focusing the cleric, spreading damage across the party has low impact. And that cleric might still turn on spirit guardians.

We've had all of these cases in play at our table (well, VTT mostly, these days!) None of them are a joy for foes to deal with. An unfortunate thing is it does narrow player choice because not very many strategies are well supported. I do see buffs and debuffs profoundly under-utilised.

 

[Argyle King]

I don't think swapping to a shield mid combat is actually a feasible plan given that it takes an action to do so.


We originally were talking about taking archery style and just staying away from enemies. Did you shift our conversation to something else mid reply?

You can interact with one object for free once per turn.

The strength of ranged attacks continue to be part of what I had been saying previously.

Looking at how that would work as part of a cohesive unit became part of my later responses, after the validity of the tactics was questioned.

 

[Staffan]

You can interact with one object for free once per turn.

But "donning" or "doffing" a shield specifically takes one action. It's in the equipment chapter, under how long it takes to don/doff armor. Drawing a weapon can be done as a free interaction, but donning a shield can't.

 

[Argyle King]

But "donning" or "doffing" a shield specifically takes one action. It's in the equipment chapter, under how long it takes to don/doff armor. Drawing a weapon can be done as a free interaction, but donning a shield can't.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Even so, that just means that maybe the "tank" of the party needs to approach what they're doing differently.

My point was that it's not exactly difficult to place a barrier between someone using ranged attacks and the enemy.

Before that, my view was that D&D 5E has very few drawbacks for ranged attacks, and even the few 5E has [for ranged attacks] are pretty easy to work around. So being able to hit multiple times before the enemy gets close enough to attack at all is pretty good.

But dungeons and small spaces without range...?

Fair point, but that means the spaces are small for whomever the enemy is too. Hence the discussion about a hypothetical situation in which the enemy is attempting to focus fire on one guy. In such a case, the enemy is still being hit by multiple attacks from range while the amount of attacks hitting the PCs are still limited.

 

[Stoutstien]

But "donning" or "doffing" a shield specifically takes one action. It's in the equipment chapter, under how long it takes to don/doff armor. Drawing a weapon can be done as a free interaction, but donning a shield can't.

Unless you are a thief that is.

On the topic at hand, AC is basically damage avoidance which is only 1/3 of the damage triangle with the other two sides of reduction and denial.

The easiest way to think about it is the stronger one side of the triangle gets it inadvertently reinforces the others. For example if you have 1 AC and get attacked 5 times with a +10 attack and 5 damage per hit you could expect to take ~24 damage. If your AC jumps to 17 it goes down to 17.5 or of you could avoid one of those attacks it drops down to 19. If you do both it drops to 14. Now finally you could have something like an ally with interception fighting style that reduces one attack to 0. With all three sides it's down to 10.5.

Some classes have very strong support to one side like barbarian's rage reduction and high(er) HP or artificer's high built in AC so it's a natural tendency to keep stacking in on but more often than not you get a bigger return with a little investment on the other sides.

 

[FrogReaver]

For a typical party of four, isn't a little less than half, one?

^^

Lol, it’s 1.87 and rounds to 2

 

[pogre]

I defer to others to work out the math - I teach social studies . However, as a DM who has run several campaigns from 1-20 I have learned to be more careful with magic items that grant an AC bonus.