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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 434885" data-attributes="member: 3051">I'm not dcollins, but I'd like to throw in a few things.  First of all, Pax, I really like your character; a Duellist 10 is expected to have a high AC, of course.  I just don't think the way you totalled things is good for these discussions.ALL armor bonusses, except the first 10, are situational.  Is your warrior even wearing his armor, or X magical doodad?  That's a situational issue too.  Did your wizard cast Mage Armor for the day yet?  I guess Mage Armor should also be considered situational."Situational", to me, means spells that last minutes or less, potions that need to be drunk, or something that either requires a large change in your combat strategy or that has a penalty you won't always want (like Expertise or Barbarian Rage).  Yes, it's a bit open-ended.Mage Armor isn't situational.  Any 20th-level caster casts it once when he wakes up, and it's up the entire day unless he gets dispelled.  You can reasonably expect a flat-footed mage to still have the spell up.  In fact, interrupt him in his sleep and he's still got a good chance of having it up.Shield, on the other hand, is situational.  Short duration, and you need to aim it.  You can reasonably expect that it'll only be up during combat.Expertise, similarly, does not require a melee attack; nothingin the wording of the feat requires your attack action or full attack action to be made with a melee weapon PHB, page 82, Expertise Feat:"When you use the attack action or full attack option IN MELEE, you can take a penalty..."Admittedly their grammar could use a little work, but it's there.Eliminating the potion of Shield would be the house rule. This has been covered in a few other threads.  Here's the reason it's been argued the other way:PHB, p.251, Shield spell: "Range: Personal, Target: You", and "You designate half the battlefield..."DMG, p.190, "Potions are like spells cast upon the imbiber.  The character taking the potion doesn't get to make any decisions about the effect..."PHB, p. 80, Brew Potion: "You can create a potion of any spell of 3rd level or lower that you know and that targets a creature or creatures"So, first, there's disagreement on whether "You" works as "a creature".  Someone can probably find the link, but I remember a Sage response saying that it doesn't count, that only spells that can be cast on someone else work.  Note the DMG part about "spells cast upon the imbiber".  As in, it only works if the person who makes the potion is capable of casting it on the person drinking.That's why there's not a single Personal spell on the list of potions.  Note that the official errata removed Clairvoyance and Detect Thoughts from the list, every spell remaining on the list has at least a range of Touch.As for designating "my front half", the spell says you designate half the battlefield, not half the person.   In 3E there is no facing; you have no inherent front or back.  You can declare "west half of the battlefield" or "east half", but not "my front" or "my back".  It wouldn't rotate with you.Since a potion doesn't allow the drinker to make decisions, this means you'd have to make it be a Potion of Shield (north) or something.  Not very useful, and I'd have to question how a potion even knows which way is north.  Maybe Potion of Shield (one particular direction when I drink it)?  Still not that useful.Either way, you shouldn't count it here due to the short duration, and the fact that as a potion it's a 1-shot item.  Fight 3 battles in one week, and the potion is only useful for one.  I could make a Rogue with 20 nearly-depleted wands, and claim the bonuses from tons of high-level spells, but that's not really a fair evaluation of the character. Perhaps the Buckler's AC bonus, but not the Haste bonus.You're right on this one.  The Haste effect stays, and that's what you get for paying for a +10 shield.  Of course, if you're not getting the AC you might as well go with Boots of Speed, but redundancy is nice too.For one, #1 is no more "extremely situational" than any other measue of AC.IMHO it is.  Unless you're going to be using Expertise/Fighting Defensively/Defending weapons on every turn (which pretty much guarantees you'll never hit anything ever again), it's not fair to count that AC.  If a spell is so short in duration that you have to spend an action during combat getting it up (Shield), it's not a good thing to count.  If it requires using a one-shot item, it's not a good thing to count because we're talking about characters over the long haul.Personally, I only keep track of 2 ACs: unbuffed (when you get hit by lots of Dispel Magics), and typical (Items and any spell lasting all day that I can cast on myself).</blockquote>

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