The "I'm going to get hit no matter what my AC is" philosphy

[Elder-Basilisk]

I played in a game like that recently. My 7th level character would push his AC to 32 or 36 and the monsters were still hitting on a roll of 2. It was very dissatisifying--especially since I was passing up a lot of damage potential (wielding a dwarven waraxe one-handed with a shield instead of going for broke with a greataxe or greatsword) in order to get a good AC. Every now and then we'd run into a group of 8 fourth level orcs or something and we'd be able to take them but that was about it.

This is what I would do in your situation:
1. Get some protection. Even if your DM were using standard, by the book creatures, you'd be getting creamed with a 19-21 AC. My recommendations: 1. +2 armor. It's fairly cheap and will help a lot. 2. Either a +1 ring of protection (if you can rarely anticipate your combats or get the cleric to cast magic circle vs. evil (or law or whatever you tend to fight) on you if you can guess when you'll fight to +/- 1 hour. 3. Get +2 gloves of dex to max out your AC bonus from dex. The reflex saves and init bonus will occasionally help too. 4. Get the druid to cast Barkskin on you when he can (and if there's a druid) or start casting it yourself (if you've a fair number of ranger levels). 5. Get an amulet of health. You won't be able to stop all of the hits anyway (your goal should be getting the tough monsters to where they need to roll a 9+ or so to hit you. That way, they can't really afford to power attack and their secondary or iterative attacks will often miss. The amulet of health will help you absorb the hits more than an amulet of natural armor would help you stop them.

If you decide to drop big gp on defense, I'd get a minor cloak of displacement (and get a vest of resistance instead of a cloak then) instead of upgrading your fullplate to +5. For the same cost, the cloak will probably help more. Consider buying fortification on your armor too. (Or put it on a +1 buckler. It'll cost you one point of attack bonus when you use your greatsword, but that's often worth it). Crits are deadly and your low AC will mean that you will always be vulnerable to them.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

This is what I would do in your situation:
1. +2 armor. It's fairly cheap and will help a lot.

The cleric cohort that has craft arms and armor can do up to +3 armor, I believe. 1,500gp or 4,000gp isn't bad. Might be able to finagle this.

2. Either a +1 ring of protection (if you can rarely anticipate your combats or get the cleric to cast magic circle vs. evil (or law or whatever you tend to fight) on you if you can guess when you'll fight to +/- 1 hour.

No cleric in the party (the cohorts stay at the Manor because we have a large group). I do not have any rings though, so it is a possibility. Mostly depends on what comes up in the treasure.

3. Get +2 gloves of dex to max out your AC bonus from dex. The reflex saves and init bonus will occasionally help too.

My character is already wearing Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Not sure I want to reduce his chance of hitting even further or his damage.

4. Get the druid to cast Barkskin on you when he can (and if there's a druid) or start casting it yourself (if you've a fair number of ranger levels).

No druid in the party. We do have a ranger, but he's got so few spells he saves them for himself.

5. Get an amulet of health.

Just got one, actually. Wheee. First character I've had with over 100hp. Tis kinda weird.

 

[wolfen]

I agree that there's an intelligent design behind things. High CR monsters are like a black diamond ski trail: you either avoid them, run the other way, or smile joyfully. (It bothers me when I hear people gripe about the TPK that should have been avoided by RUNNING AWAY.)

That said, I agree with the original post. I never thought armor was giving a large enough bonus even in 2e.

I think DM's for low-magic worlds should give higher AC bonuses from Armor to compensate. A +2 shift to the base armor bonus would make a big difference for those tough middle levels. And for goodness sake, is it really such a big deal to let masterwork armor give a +1 AC bonus?

That's a reasonable start if you low-magic DM's want the Lvl 10 tank to be joyous about his super shiny +1 full plate.


wolfen

 

[CombatWombat51]

Oh yeah, I've definitely played a character by the "who cares what my AC is, I'm gonna get hit anyway" philosophy. However, it's just my character. He's the main fighter, and big stuff attacks him. Big stuff with insane attack bonuses. I honestly got hit so often that, without a mopey attitude, I gave my ring of protection to my fighter/rogue buddy and my bracers of armor to the monk. My character has an obcene amount of hit points for his level, especially considering that we only use the 3 core books. (He's a 14th level human fighter with 18 Con, and he has 183 hit points, all from levels and Con. All HP rolls were witnessed, too!) So now I'm the party tank with AC 13 (Dex)... +1 for Dodge! And ya know what? Since handing out my gear, the only change I've noticed is that the fighter/rogue and monk get hit less

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

No cleric in the party (the cohorts stay at the Manor because we have a large group). I do not have any rings though, so it is a possibility. Mostly depends on what comes up in the treasure.

Not having a cleric in the party makes it rather difficult to do the proper "I don't care if you hit me, I can do more damage/round than any monster I'll face" character. You won't be able to easily heal up for the next fight.

How does your group handle this? I've got a character that ended up like this and he took leadership so that he could always make sure there was a cleric around to heal him.

My character is already wearing Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Not sure I want to reduce his chance of hitting even further or his damage.

Look at it as an opportunity. Find a belt of giant strength, then get gloves of dexterity. Once your strength comes from the belt, you don't need the gloves.

No druid in the party. We do have a ranger, but he's got so few spells he saves them for himself.

True, but he's got spells so he would be able to use the odd scroll of barkskin when you know you're heading into a tough fight. A scroll or two of barkskin for contingencies might be very helpful.

 

[Whitey]

This character doesn't sound very optimal for melee combat.

Bard/Paladin has a lot of potential - and a lot of versatility. There's no reason brawling can't be part of that. The divine grace class ability gets saves up based on charisma, which is also the root ability for bardic casting. Use lay on hands to save yourself, as you're lacking a PC cleric. Bardic inspire class ability saves you the equivalent of a Weapon Focus feat, and the rest of the party, too. That's a start.

Junk the tank armor - bards incur arcane caster penalties in it, not to mention check penalties on some significant class skills. Junk the shield, for the same reason. Since your BAB ain't the greatest, switch out to the +2 sword and have a hand free for somatic casting requirements.
Now your AC is even worse. You can test your hypothesis.

Pick up (if you can) a chain shirt with as high an enchantment bonus as your cohort can craft. Drop all the skill levels you can into UMD for a wand of shield or mage armor. Wands with cure are another good pick - you've got those as fastcast bardic spells but there are times it's best to save a daily slot. Flashy evocations are easiest for you to get by wand/scroll if you want 'em. Consider Improved Disarm as a feat, since you can use nearly anything the hostiles drop. Bardic UMD is their shortcut to melee magnificence - or something close to it.

 

[Acid_crash]

I do hope that Unearthed Arcana will alleviate some of these problems with the options in it. I would really like to see how WotC does Defense advancement for the core classes.

 

[Darklone]

I call it the "My Hit Points Are My Armor" philosophy.

It depends a lot on what the DM like to throw at you. Some DMs prefer a single powerful creature at a time because it is easier to handle -- that bad boy is going to hit you almost every time unless you really optimize your AC. Some DMs like a number of weaker creatures -- these do miss but it hardly matters because a high offense PC can vaporize one of these singlehandedly in 1 1/2 rounds; with good tactical play your AC will not be all that important.

So true. I prefer humanocentric campaigns with lots of mooks. But still the level 8 players with ACs in the mid twenties are nearly untouchable.

Then they met two puny manticores ... and it looked baaaad.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I totally agree! At about 10th level you might as well expect most of the creatures you encounter to hit you every time. Of course I've found that in D&D most people forget about using cover and concealment when fighting which I think is funny. If the same players were playing Traveller, Star Wars, or any other modern game with guns they'd be using cover to the fullest (especially if they were playing Cyberpunk). Not only does cover give you an AC bonus but it also gives you a Saving Throw bonus. I'll play an archer or spellcaster and rain death down on my enemies while claiming 50% cover (or more). If you can get to the point where you have "Shot on the Run" that same archer can claim total cover since he can move out, take a shot, and then move back into total cover. When out in the wilderness trees & boulders make wonderful cover.

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Not having a cleric in the party makes it rather difficult to do the proper "I don't care if you hit me, I can do more damage/round than any monster I'll face" character. You won't be able to easily heal up for the next fight.

How does your group handle this? I've got a character that ended up like this and he took leadership so that he could always make sure there was a cleric around to heal him.

Cure sticks. LOTS and LOTS of cure sticks. This is where most of our cash goes. When we're on our property, there are two clerics (9th & 5th) and a paladin (3rd) around that can help heal us up, but they stay far out of combat, since we've already had 2 cohorts die in our combats (and because the DM doesn't want to slow down combat further with more combatants). The first one (my first cohort) was torched to -44hp from full by a Red Dragon's breath. We're waiting for spring (in game) to go on the "quest" needed to get him back. The second to die was the cleric cohort of our Fighter/Barbarian. She got crushed to death by a Sapphire dragon. Needless to say, the cleric didn't want to go into battle with us anymore and is much happier to stay on the property where it is safe. I use safe there in the loosest sense possible, because Ogre Mage Assassins regularly show up to try and kill us in our sleep.

So, we try and make sure the ranger and myself each have a cure stick, if we can. Over this winter, the crafting cohort is going to be using up a lot of our amassed xp to be stockpiling cure mod or cure serious wands (since cure lights don't work too well in combat anymore).

So the lay on hands is usually used in the heat of battle. After battle, we spend a fair amount of time draining the cure sticks to get eveyone feeling healthy again.

This character doesn't sound very optimal for melee combat.

He's not. He was built as more of a social character. His skills and feats are focused on things other then combat. I supposse you could consider his Extra Song and Improved Turning feats to be combat feats, but that's as close as he gets to them.

Bardic inspire class ability saves you the equivalent of a Weapon Focus feat, and the rest of the party, too. That's a start.

I usually try and hit for a couple of rounds, realize that's silly, then start singing. If we're going into a big combat and we know it, I start singing before we get in there. Sure, that cuts out any surprise, but we're not a very stealthy group out of habit.

Junk the tank armor - bards incur arcane caster penalties in it, not to mention check penalties on some significant class skills. Junk the shield, for the same reason. Since your BAB ain't the greatest, switch out to the +2 sword and have a hand free for somatic casting requirements.
Now your AC is even worse. You can test your hypothesis.

Oh. I've already tested that theory. When I was taking bard levels in the beginning, I wore no armor (which hurt a lot). My character now has a fear of housecats, since they beat him up very bad [First round of combat, he was dropped to 0hp. He drank a CLW potion and got max results out of it. Second round, they dropped him back to 0hp. He was 3rd level at the time and these were ordinary housecats (we had been damaged earlier in the day and hadn't been able to fully heal, though)]. He put on fullplate the second he became proficient in it. If he could get glamoured fullplate of ease, he'd never take his armor off. He rememebers fully what it was like to run around without armor. it hurt a lot (not that it doesn't still hurt even withb the fullplate, but he rarely drops nowadays, which he equates to the armor).

As for the armor, since I don't regularly use the shield, my arcane spell failure chance is only 35%. I usually make the check and have two of my bard spells with only verbal components. I don't worry about casting spells in combat much, since it is generally only Featherfall or Expeditous Retreat that get cast and I normally don't have to worry about having a hand free when I do cast ExP. Besides, he prefers the merciful greatsword because killing is generally not a good idea, in his opinion (especially if they're humanoid). It's also a difference of only 1 point of attack but 3d6+5 vs 1d8+6 damage.

Consider Improved Disarm as a feat, since you can use nearly anything the hostiles drop. Bardic UMD is their shortcut to melee magnificence - or something close to it.

Since he's a Paladin, taking more Bard levels would require him to become unlawful and lose his Paladinhood. So, no ranks of UMD for him. If I had known UMD was going to become a cross-class skill in 3.5, I might have built him differently in that regard, but it's a little late for that.

As for Improved Disarm, he's not quite smart enough to take the Combat Expertise tree (and it's a little late in the game to be starting a tree).