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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1185714" data-attributes="member: 10201">I was more thinking of the fact that armor limits dex, and you can get a higher AC with armor alone than Dex alone.  Speaking just of characters, not enchantments (because those can be applied to Dex or armor pretty much equally).  Best Dex: 18+elf+5increases=25, or +7--and that's pretty extreme; Best armor: full plate + large shield=+10--and that's fairly trivial to acquire, and still allows you to use one point of Dex bonus.  Given the relative availability of money vs. high stats and level-up stat increases, getting a +8 via armor is trivial, while doing so via Dex is nigh impossible, and involves much higher opportunity costs (all those other stats you didn't increase, or put the high score into).  So, i'm not trying to say that bonuses to AC from Dex are a non-issue, just that for those who most need them (the warriors) the game steers you towards armor as the more-optimal choice.  While it's true that every point helps, for every character, it seems to me that if someone decides to attack the wizard the difference between a high and average Dex is gonna be getting hit by 5 points and getting hit by 8--not beween not getting hit and getting hit.  In general--obviously on a given attack it could amke the difference.Correct me if i'm wrong, but can't you get significantly better dodge bonuses from magic and spells than from Dex at high levels, when the ranged-touch attacks become a real problem?This is absolutely true.  Over all, every bit helps.  But the die roll is flat, so you're just as likely to make it by 11 as by 2 (well, within the range of possibilities).  Which means a +3 is still only +15%--a measurable bonus, but hardly that significant in a game that considers +2 the standard "there's a modifier" modifier.  My point isn't that the Dex modifier to Ref saves doesn't matter at all--oviously it does--but that it is relatively small and can easily get lost in the various other modifiers.  Particularly the die roll itself.Partly, it's a matter of degrees.  I think the game is much more broken by making the swashbuckling archetype difficult-to-impossible (note the proliferation of classes/prestige classes, and particularly the Unfettered in AU, that are there primarily because you can't really create a character who trades off power for finesse in D&D3(.5)E, without getting a raw deal), than by making giving everyone this ability that happens to be classed as a feat in D&D.  From my perspective, i'm cutting the effectiveness of Str in half (maybe--i'd actually argue less-than-half, but that's another matter) because it's twice as powerful as the others.  The 3E designers seemed to think so, too, based on their guidelines for racial ability modifiers.  [Mind you, i'm not trying to invoke authority here--you're welcome to disagree with them, as i do on many matters, or point out flaws in their reasoning.  I'm just trying to point out that someone who is probably a bit more familiar with the nuances of the mechanics than i am has come to a similar conclusion.]  Oh, and btw, one of my biggest complaints with the feat system is the way it implicitly limits options, and not letting everyone have the equivalent of things like Combat Expertise and maybe Power Attack are exactly the sorts of things i have a problem with.  If it were up to me, simple tradeoffs between power and accuracy, or attack and defense, would be stock options (well, the latter even sort of is), just as much so as the choice between attack and full attack currently is.  And Spring Attack is another one that shouldn't be necessary, but is just an artifact of the freeze-frame effect of D&D3E combat.  Again, if it were up to me, the turn-order system would be such that everyone can do that.Would balance be altered?  Obviously.  Would it be broken, or lead to an imbalanced game?  IMHO, no, so long as everyone had it, and it wasn't a surprise (so no one was gipped couse they paid for the feat, or somesuch.  It'd still be balanced just in a different way--just as allowing charge to bend the general rules for movement and attacks makes the balance of strategies different than if it didn't.</blockquote>

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