How do y'all feel about the concept of rocket tag in 3.5?

[JaronK]

Well, not so much with DR.  But I guess my question is when you should just forget about AC (assuming you're doing a build where AC is easy to keep up).  So far, we really haven't seen that point (assuming the DM isn't throwing Bard buffed PC leveled optimized Minotaurs with class levels at you at level 6, of course).

JaronK

[Kethrian]

Well, they readjusted the CRs of a few creatures, plus the dragons, in it, all +1.  I'll most likely be doing the work on the MMs tonight, and I'll separate the results by book, so we can see if they really are off.  Creatures that don't rely on attacks will be ignored.

I'm not disagreeing that you'd still need a good AC to go with the cloak, but its bonus still makes a significant impact.  Might be costly for a level 10, though.  I'll let you or someone else handle figuring out a good AC defense for a level 10 PC, which probably shouldn't exceed... 65% of WBL?  I'd have said 50%, but Greater Magic Weapon can compensate for a large chunk of offensive cost.

[JaronK]

Well, spending too much on your AC means either losing out on weapon attacks or other defenses (such as saves).  Usually that's all you care about with pure fighty types.  I'd generally say 50% on AC is reasonable at low levels, but by the mid levels 33% is about as much as you can afford as you need to deal with saves and the like (assuming we're not using cheap tricks like +5 Spellstrike Shurikens).

JaronK

[Kethrian]

Sure, I'll let you figure it out for that.  Hopefully, by tomorrow morning I'll have the MMs done.

[Libertad]

Well, spending too much on your AC means either losing out on weapon attacks or other defenses (such as saves).  Usually that's all you care about with pure fighty types.  I'd generally say 50% on AC is reasonable at low levels, but by the mid levels 33% is about as much as you can afford as you need to deal with saves and the like (assuming we're not using cheap tricks like +5 Spellstrike Shurikens).

JaronK

Buffing up your armor at the expense of everything else can really gimp your character.  Fighting shadows?  Touch attack strength drain.  Wizard?  Color Spray, Dominate Person, Grease.  Giant cobra?  Grapple + constrict.

A high AC build is really good in low magic games, or when most encounters have NPC warriors or monsters whose main attacks need to bypass AC.  In such a game, it rocks, but Team Monster and Team Wizard are varied enough at mid-high levels that Armor Class becomes a minor setback.

[Mooncrow]

Well, spending too much on your AC means either losing out on weapon attacks or other defenses (such as saves).  Usually that's all you care about with pure fighty types.  I'd generally say 50% on AC is reasonable at low levels, but by the mid levels 33% is about as much as you can afford as you need to deal with saves and the like (assuming we're not using cheap tricks like +5 Spellstrike Shurikens).

JaronK

Buffing up your armor at the expense of everything else can really gimp your character.  Fighting shadows?  Touch attack strength drain.  Wizard?  Color Spray, Dominate Person, Grease.  Giant cobra?  Grapple + constrict.

A high AC build is really good in low magic games, or when most encounters have NPC warriors or monsters whose main attacks need to bypass AC.  In such a game, it rocks, but Team Monster and Team Wizard are varied enough at mid-high levels that Armor Class becomes a minor setback.

Thankfully, high AC can be turned into a touch attack save as well.  That's pretty much the only reason it's relevant at higher levels.  But I am curious to do an actual breakdown of how expensive it is to truly optimize physical defenses.  I'll be running some numbers later tonight. 

[Nachofan99]

Mooncrow I, too, wonder what it means to "Optimize Physical Defenses".

What is the point that determines "good enough" from "not good enough"?  I think I saw the MM being consulted for a guideline of average + to hit at each CR or some such.  Is being hit less than 50% good enough?  Less than 25%?  Or does it boil down to an average HP/round "burn", and what mitigates that best?

Far too often it feels like the concensus of these forums seems to be that if you're ever hit on anything other than a 20, after multiple instances of mirror image, concealment, flying in a portal in another plane with a simulacrum actually taking the hits then you somehow are failing at defense and simply wasting resources.

At every level you can afford to lose *some* hp and get hit *some* times.  Unless, of course, the ONLY things at the table are rockets - in which case you CAN'T afford to get hit.

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Really, it seems that as long as you can kill them before they can kill you, you *effectively* have optimized your defenses.  Of course, in 3.X, it appears that "Just freakin killing them" has resulted in, of course, Rocket Tag.

While it's pretty clear that everyone more or less agrees that "Rocket Tag" *is* 3.X, the fact is it's like that forever and it's not super difficult to deal with that in my experience at least. 

Bow criticals kill people all the time at low levels.  Greatsword average damage kills people too.  4e addressed this concept somewhat with the "minions" concept for Team Monster; cheap disposable minions that just get rocketed - and no one cares - 3.X has this too; just look at monsters who have less CR than what counts as a challenging encounter for a PC.  Mooks!  There are a lot of ways to make mooks whose only job is trying to make the party use 20% of their resources.  For PCs obviously it sucks to die from a random Greataxe crit - but please, cry more.  Being an adventurer is dicey, otherwise you would be playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.  No risk, no reward.  I digress.

[JaronK]

Defenses and offense is a balance.  Too much offense without defense leads to rocket tag, where failing to act means you die rather instantly.  Too much defense without offense means you just sit there doing nothing and not helping out your party.  The optimal balance is where you can absorb attacks in case your offense doesn't actually kill as quickly as you'd like, and can still get those kills quickly enough to support the party.

The exact balance point will depend on the exact campaign situation.  I've noticed most DMs prefer the monsters to last a few rounds (2 to 4) before going down.  That means they'll often set things up so it happens this way, regardless of what else you do... in which case you should have enough defense to stay alive for 5 rounds against the tough enemies (though this includes staying alive with party support).

JaronK

[Mooncrow]

Agreed - exact metrics are going to be hard to measure, but if we can look at various levels of defense, and the cost to attain, then we can at least be making informed decisions based on the marginal costs. 

That's a start, at any rate.   

[veekie]

Defenses and offense is a balance.  Too much offense without defense leads to rocket tag, where failing to act means you die rather instantly.  Too much defense without offense means you just sit there doing nothing and not helping out your party.  The optimal balance is where you can absorb attacks in case your offense doesn't actually kill as quickly as you'd like, and can still get those kills quickly enough to support the party.

The exact balance point will depend on the exact campaign situation.  I've noticed most DMs prefer the monsters to last a few rounds (2 to 4) before going down.  That means they'll often set things up so it happens this way, regardless of what else you do... in which case you should have enough defense to stay alive for 5 rounds against the tough enemies (though this includes staying alive with party support).

JaronK

Very definitely.
One handy thing is that while saves and other defenses are much more potent at higher levels, physical attacking monsters continue to proliferate, and they hit harder and harder, as well as more and more often. So you still need a good amount of phys counters. 

Damage absorption also measures highly in surprise scenarios, you can't count on reactives in those circumstances, so you need to be able to absorb a standard action.
Damage recovery now, matters more if as noted, encounters tend to last 3-4 rounds. You can't just give up battlefield recovery that easily.

The designers probably didn't think too much about it, but I'm fairly sure they meant high level combat to last long. Take base weapon damage dice(2d6 at the highest) + level appropriate strength + weapon enhancements * connecting iteratives, and you probably have what they thought was good damage for the level.

[Kethrian]

Okay, I've gone through all 5 MMs, and made a list of every CR 10 attack bonus.  Didn't bother writing down who gets what, but they nearly all fall into the same general range.  If a creature has significant spellcasting or notable offensive SLAs, I marked it as such.  True dragons have also been marked separately, because they are generally considered OP for their CR. 

MM1

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+25
+19
+12
+15
+20
+14
+16
+13
+13
+21
+12
+8 (spellcaster)
+23
+15 (SLA)
dragon +19 +24 +19 +23

MM2

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+10 (SLA)
+19
+17
+27
+16
+13
+30 (Legendary Shark)
+30 (Legendary Tiger)
+11 (SLA)
+18 (SLA)
+22 (vorpal)
+18
+9 (spellcaster)
+20
dragon +19

MM3

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+24
+19
+17
+15
+16
+15
+23
+16
+14
+16

MM4

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+18
+20
+15
+17
+19
+23
+14
+18

MM5

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+16
+18
+15
+5 (incorporeal touch)
+12 (SLA)
+16
+19
+16
+19 (SLA)

Interesting that the only creatures to get all the way up to a +30 are legendary animals, and the only +27 is the dire elephant.  Sure, they're from MM2, but it shouldn't be hard to keep out of their danger zone with a little flight or levitation or the like.  Nearly everything else is +13 to +25.

[JaronK]

An important thing to put in there is iterative attacks.  Some creatures have all their attacks at the same bonus, but most have attacks at -5.  This matters a great deal... an AC of 30 may seem to not be that great against a creature whose primary attack is +25, but if they also have a bunch of attacks at +20, it matters a good deal more.

It's a good start though.

Anyway, from this rough outline it looks like AC 25 is the minimum to really matter at all at level 10 (and still won't protect you from many creatures), while AC 35 is sufficient to be useful all the time (and completely protect you from some creatures).  AC 45 would be extremely protective, making you all but invincible to attacks against AC.

I'm surprised by how few creatures have significant attacks against things other than standard AC.

So, the question of whether AC can be a useful defense when fighting CR 10 creatures is a question of whether you can, keeping well within WBL, get to an AC of at least 35 (preferably 45).  Considering how few creatures attack anything other than standard AC, it seems that 50% of wealth spent on this would be acceptable, though not perfect.  Better still to get under that mark.  49kgp is WBL for level 10 by the way, but remember that you do fight CR 10 opponents as early as level 6 (those would be boss fights, of course).  Also note that party buffs can of course help in those boss fights, though we shouldn't need them for even CR encounters.

Just as a basic reasonable AC set up, we've got the basic idea of a Dwarf in Mithral Mechanicus Gear with Dex 14 (22 AC) and a Heavy Shield (24 AC).  Slap on +1s to both of those items (26 AC).  Add in Whirling Frenzy (28AC) and that was our level 6 dwarf from the other thread... evidently that's enough to be helpful against some CR 10s (but not NEARLY good enough for all, or even most).  But making his own mundane gear (I like dwarfs who craft their armor, it makes sense) that only cost us about 6kgp... REALLY cheap.  It gets a lot more costly past this point... a Dusty Rose Ioun Stone is +1 Insight to AC for 5kgp.  An Amulet of Natural Armor +1 is 2kgp. Upgrading the armor to +3 and shield to +2 will run us 11kgp.  So for a total of 24kgp (as high as I'm willing to go here) we can have an AC of 31 normally (33 when raging).  That's enough to be useful... but by no means amazing, and in some fights it's not good enough.  And we're spending as much as 5kgp for a single point of AC.  That Minor Cloak of Displacement (20% miss chance for 24kgp) is starting to look very attractive.

Note that there are ways to get this cheaper.  Chained Magic Vestment could easily be giving us +3 armor and shield at this point, if we had the casting to do something like that (or if a party mate did).  Craft Magic Arms and Armor could significantly lower the cost of that as well for the whole party.  Craft Wonderous Items would make Natural Armor boosts and the Ioun Stone a lot cheaper.  Shuriken cheese could give us +6 AC (and +1 to all saves, and +5 initiative) for just 4k gp (or even cheaper if the party crafts it).  Something as simple as being a Halfling (Supermount) would give +1 AC, and being a Kobold would give +2.  There's also a feat in Dragon magazine that lets you add modifications to mundane armor... one of them can give +1 AC generally to armor, another gives +1 AC vs critical confirmation.  If we switched over to a Mithral Chain Shirt, Dastanas, and a Chahar-Aina, that combination would give +9 AC (+12 vs critical hits) instead of the current +10, but with a MUCH higher max dex, allowing for much higher AC.

JaronK

[Mooncrow]

There are a quite a few fairly cheap ways to get the non-standard AC boosts; my list taking quite a while to do   But, assuming there's at least 1 person in the party that can UMD a wand, Wand of Barkskin CL12  is only 4500 to craft, and gives a +5 NA enhancement, Law Devotion (a great pick up for any melee) is +5 sacred at level 10, to give two easily obtainable examples. 

And what spells you have access to really changes the field, as is to be expected.  But even one full time caster in a party can add another +10 pretty easily.  And much more, if you have access to a few different lists. 

[veekie]

For AC, how about taking up Pearls of Power to feed the cleric for Greater Magic Vestments on shield and armor? That keeps that bit of cash free to reinvest into other wealth, like that cloak there.

[SneeR]

The Blurring Property is only a +1 Enhancement bonus for armor! If I'm not mistaken, the Blinking property is only a cash cost for armor.

[Seerow]

For AC, how about taking up Pearls of Power to feed the cleric for Greater Magic Vestments on shield and armor? That keeps that bit of cash free to reinvest into other wealth, like that cloak there.

A pearl of power costs about the same as a +3 armor, it isn't until +4 or +5 that you see savings unless you also want armor properties.

[Mooncrow]

If you can find a level 20 artificer that owes you a favor, a Wand of Magic Vestment CL20 can be made for 7500g.

[JaronK]

A +1 Defending Shortsword with a Tooth of Leraje can be a somewhat cheap +5 AC.   A series of +1 Defending hidden blades (2X Elbow, 2X Sleeve, 2X Knee, 2X Boot) with a Chained Greater Magic Weapon can produce an insanely high AC. 

Morphing Shuriken cheese can of course easily give +40AC for 15,680gp when combined with Defending hidden blades.  It's a bit silly of course, but you could easily end up with our Dwarf (+1 Mithral Mechanicus Gear, +1 Spiked Heavy Shield, 8 morphed shuriken defending hidden blades) having an AC of 66 for less than 20kgp (and Defending applies to all AC, so your touch AC would be 52).  Cheesy of course, but at that point any attack that targets your AC would simply fail.

JaronK

[Mooncrow]

So, looking at 10th level - WBL of 49,000, let's get started. 

(I'm still a long way from being done - just posting to get started.  I'll be continually updating this for a bit)

Assumptions:
All armor and shields are +1
All bonuses can be used fully (so, for example, mithril counts as an effective +2)
All spells and effects are listed at CL10
Items are being crafted, not bought

I'm not going to bother listing any item with a cost above 10k

For starters, let's start with armor by breaking it down into categories by bonus type:

Armor, Shield, Armor Enhancement, Shield Enhancement, Natural, Natural Enhancement, Deflection, Insight, Dodge, Sacred/Profane, Luck, Competence, Morale - any I'm forgetting? 

Armor:

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(The following assumes the cost of +1 armor, but does not include the +1 in the armor bonus listed, since I assume Magic Vestment will be used)
Padded(+1, +8) +9: 1155
Leather(+2, +6) +8: 1160
Studded Leather(+3, +5) +8: 1175
Chain Shirt(+4,+4) +8: 1250
Breastplate(+5, +3) +8: 1350
Banded Mail(+6, +1) +7: 1400
Half-Plate +7: 1750
Full Plate(+8, +1) +9: 2650
Dwarven Stone +9: 2900
Mechanus Gear +10: 2900
Battle Plate(+9, +1) +10: 3650

Mage Armor +4: spelll, hours/level
Wand of Mage Armor +4: 375
Wand of Mage Armor CL10 +4: 3750
Greater Mage Armor +6: spell, hours/level
Wand of Greater Mage Armor +6: 5625

Luminous Armor +5: spell, hours/level (also imposes a -4 on attack rolls against you)
Greater Luminous Armor +8: spell, hours/level (also imposes a -4 on attack rolls against you)

Armor Enhancement

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Magic Vestment +2: spell, hours/level
Wand of Magic Vestment CL12 +3: 4500
Wand of Magic Vestment CL16 +4: 6000
Wand of Magic Vestment CL20 +5: 7500

Shield

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(The following assumes the cost of +1 armor, but does not include the +1 in the armor bonus listed, since I assume Magic Vestment will be used)
Buckler +1: 1165
Light Shield +1: 1153
Heavy Shield +2: 1157
Tower Shield +4: 1180

Shield +4: spell, minutes/level, P

Shield Enhancement

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Magic Vestment +2: spell, hours/level
Wand of Magic Vestment CL12 +3: 4500
Wand of Magic Vestment CL16 +4: 6000
Wand of Magic Vestment CL20 +5: 7500

Natural Armor

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Cloak of the Manta Ray +3: 3600

Scales of the Sea Lord +3: spell, hours/level, P
Demonflesh +2: spell, minutes/level, P
Alter Self +variable: spell, 10 minutes/level, P
Polymorph  +variable: spell, minutes/level

Gleaming Scales Graft +1: 9000

Natural Armor Enhancement

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Amulet of Natural Armor +1: 1000
Amulet of Natural Armor +2: 4000
Amulet of Natural Armor +3: 9000

Barkskin +4: spell, 10 minutes/level
Wand of Barkskin CL12 +5: 4500

Dragonskin +5: spell, 10 minutes/level, P
Draconic Might +4: spell, minutes/level
Bite of the Wererat +2: spell, rounds/level, P
Bite of the Werewolf +4: spell, rounds/level, P
Bite of the Wereboar +8: spell, rounds/level, P

Deflection

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Ring of Protection +1: 1000
Ring of Protection +2: 4000
Ring of Protection +3: 9000
Ghost Shroud +1: 2500
Ring of Avoidance +20: 5000 (3/day)
Ring of the Four Winds +2: 1000 (4/day)

Shield of Faith +2: spell, minutes/level
Sirene's Grace +=Cha bonus: spell, rounds/level, P
Halo of Sand +3: spell, 10 minutes/level, P
Sonic Shield +4: spell, rounds/level, P
Deflect +1/2 CL: spell, 1 round, P
Deflect, Lesser +1/3 CL: spell, 1 round, P
Crown of Protection +1: spell, hours/level
Hell's Power +2: spell, 10 minutes/level, P

Morale

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Divine Protection +1: spell, min/level, P

Sacred/Profane

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Vambraces of Warding +2: 4000 (ranged only)

Shield of Warding +3: spell, minutes/level
Silverbeard +2: spell, minutes/level, P
Investiture of the Steel Devil +3 or more: spell, minutes/level

Protection Devotion +4: feat, 1 minute
Law Devotion +5: feat, 1 minute

Luck

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Nightstalker's Transformation +3: spell, rounds/level, P
Surge of Fortune +2: spell, rounds/level, P
Recitation +2-3: spell, rounds/level, P

Insight

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True Prayer of the Chosen +3: spell, rounds/level, P
Prescience +1/4BL: Vestige ability, all day

Dodge

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Chronocharm of the Grand Master +5: 500 (Ranged only, 1/day)
Panic Button, Dodging +2: 375
Desert Wind Cloak(novice) +4: 1500

Haste +1: spell, rounds/level
Swift Haste +1: spell, 1 round, P
Aeriel Alacrity +1: spell, minutes/level, P

Circumstance

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Motivate Care +2: aura

Divine

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Insignia of Warding +1: spell, minutes/level

Untyped

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Interfaith Blessing +1-2: spell, minutes/level, P (effect depends on deity worshiped, or random if none)

[Kethrian]

Sure thing, I'll edit my post tonight for full attacks, and double-check on SLA or spellcasting or other alternate sources for attacking.