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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4735970" data-attributes="member: 40961">If your bear shaman starts with a +1 bonus to intelligence or dexterity, he will begin the game with an AC of 13. If you subsequently improve his wisdom and constitution as he levels up, he will improve his AC only by 1/2 level, magical enhancement bonuses, and the scaling for light armor.  This means, over the course of his career, that his AC will scale by three fewer points than someone in heavy armor or someone in light armor who invests in dexterity or intelligence on a regular basis. To put it another way, imagine if your shaman started with an armor class of 10, and then scaled the same as everyone else. I guess whether a base AC of 10 is "unplayable" is subjective, particularly with a non front line fighter.  But its worth remembering that what we're talking about is a very, very low AC. And of course by epic tier you will have received +2 to your strength, and you undoubtedly have a very high constitution.  Which means that you only need to start with an 11 strength in order to qualify for chainmail armor.  Chainmail armor at that level will grant you a functional +6 to ac.  Three points to make up the initial disparity from 13 to 16, and three points of lost scaling bonuses from materials.The objections are: 1. Its unthematic for the bear shaman to be the only primal subclass in metal armor. 2. The fact that this is so incredibly good makes it essentially mandatory, which is kind of like saying that bear shamans start with chainmail armor and -1 feat.  Many people find this lame. 3. WOTC explicitly advises bear shamans to invest in intelligence to improve their AC, even though this won't grant you meaningful class abilities since you're a bear shaman, trades off with your constitution which DOES provide class bonuses, and ultimately costs far more for far fewer benefits than what you'd gain by taking chainmail armor as a feat. 4. The fact that WOTC did this means that lots of people will play bear shamans and be frustrated at high levels when their AC drops through the floor down to a functional base ac of 10 or 11.  They will think that the fault lies with the class, when really they just didn't know the secret key to playing a bear shaman.  They won't know this because WOTC didn't tell them.  You can tell people will do this because you can hear them in the forum insisting that a bear shaman doesn't need armor class (apparently at all) because he's not on the front line. Part of what's missing from this conversation is a sense of just how incredibly low a high level bear shaman's AC becomes.  Against equal level monsters, a bear shaman in the epic tier would be expected to be hit by attack rolls of between 1 and 5 depending on the monster.  Take the attack roll you expect a rogue to be hit on, and subtract six.  Or just crunch the numbers yourself, and compare to existing monsters.</blockquote>

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