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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6781453" data-attributes="member: 996">I'm sure there are all sorts of possible rationalizations.&nbsp; Maybe iron or steel is harder to pass through than the stone or wood of walls, perhaps because the latter are more porous; maybe the metaphysical essence of armor as protection makes it effective, maybe even only because the ghost or the wearer believes it does; maybe 'phasing' works better against stationary objects than moving ones; etc...It was a cool idea, but it was still a little weird because AC has always been more than a little weird.&nbsp; GURPS, which gave each armor separate deflection and damage-absorption statistics went further in that direction.&nbsp; Touch attacks were also pretty broken in 3.5, and would have shattered 5e Bounded Accuracy.&nbsp; Plus, Touch AC and REF Saves were prettymuch doing the same thing in mechanically inverted ways, anyhow, so it was a tad redundant.If they'd really wanted to make things less complicated they wouldn't have gone back to saves, either.As suggested, above, using DEX saves (DC = 8 + attack bonus) to handle attacks that you think should bypass armor would be an obvious, not terribly complicated way to do it.&nbsp; At worst, you have to invert adv/dis and handle some mods differently (attack with advantage becomes force a save at disadvantage, etc).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6781453, member: 996"] I'm sure there are all sorts of possible rationalizations. Maybe iron or steel is harder to pass through than the stone or wood of walls, perhaps because the latter are more porous; maybe the metaphysical essence of armor as protection makes it effective, maybe even only because the ghost or the wearer believes it does; maybe 'phasing' works better against stationary objects than moving ones; etc... It was a cool idea, but it was still a little weird because AC has always been more than a little weird. GURPS, which gave each armor separate deflection and damage-absorption statistics went further in that direction. Touch attacks were also pretty broken in 3.5, and would have shattered 5e Bounded Accuracy. Plus, Touch AC and REF Saves were prettymuch doing the same thing in mechanically inverted ways, anyhow, so it was a tad redundant. If they'd really wanted to make things less complicated they wouldn't have gone back to saves, either. As suggested, above, using DEX saves (DC = 8 + attack bonus) to handle attacks that you think should bypass armor would be an obvious, not terribly complicated way to do it. At worst, you have to invert adv/dis and handle some mods differently (attack with advantage becomes force a save at disadvantage, etc). [/QUOTE]

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