Pathfinder 2E: Armor Class
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ค. 2024
- A look at armor class. Start off with a graph on average damage and armor class. Then, to make it easier to manage, we break armor class down into three categories--proficiency, armor and bonuses. There isn't much you can do about proficiency, but we look at it anyway because it is interesting. Then we look at armor and discuss ways to get more armor class with better armor. Then we look at bonuses and consider ways to add a circumstance bonus and a status bonuses. The end result, win the game with more armor class.
Thanks so much to everyone for being part of the Crunch McDabbles experience
00:00 Intro
00:37 Armor Class as a Comparison
02:13 Overview and Proficiency
04:57 Armor
08:08 Armor Tips
09:42 Bonuses
13:27 Status Bonuses
17:35 Conclusions - เกม
Since you appreciate shenanigans - I’ll point out the combo of the Dueling Parry (fighter or dualist dedication) plus the Clan Protector dwarf feat. Give your adjacent ally a full +2 circumstance bonus for no actions!
But dueling parry says "until your next turn" and how does a clan dagger come into this? DP already gives a +2 circumstance bonus and same bonuses do not stack.
Dear Crunch, I need more of you in my life. Please, let me pay you for your content. Whatever it takes. I need more. More! More!
Thank you so much! I've been working on this psychic show for a while now. I've rewritten it three or four times to get it right. It should be ready soon!! That definitely helps with the motivation.
Reaction Champion/Bard that has 1H Reach weapon and Tower shield is an Armor Snob with Heroic for the win. :)
Lvl 20 + Leg 8 + 10 Base + Plate/Runes 9 + TwrShld/Cover 4 + Heroic/InsDef 3 = 54
And they still have 3 Reactions per turn which they could potential attack with depending on what the enemy does.
yes!! i want one!
As a 5e player new to pf2e, this video was amazing. Everyone needs to subscribe to this channel!
Really good and accessible look at AC thanks. A simple bonus you have missed is the lesser cover circumstance bonus from mounted defenses, ie just being mounted. You may like to look at Tidal Shield too, but that is level 17 and not widely available.
That's new if I can my fighter has the mount when outdoors through beastmaster dedication so that's good to know thanks
Also, this video was funny.
There are a couple of more feats that give you a stance for a +2 circumstance bonus.
Dueling Dance from Fighter/Swashbuckler/Duelist
Twinned Defense from Fighter/Swashbuckler/Dual-Weapon Warrior
Buckler Dance from Swashbuckler
And then there's the lvl 20 Champion Feat where your shield is just always raised, period. (This is not a stance.)
Not sure why you would but buckler expertise makes bucklers a +2 instead of +1.
Why not just get a better shield?
@@dragonhearthx8369 Because a Buckler will leave your hand free which is quite relevant for a lot of things.
Really a great video.
Goes from the very basics to great details.
The comparison between the different groups of AC at 3:50 really put things into perspective.
And your point at 8:50 about Armor Proficiency is so sound. Before that, I always seen it as a crappy feat as it doesn't scale. I as it really doesn't matter until level 10 or 13, you have all the time of the world to upgrade your stats, or just retrain as you say.
Have an upvote and some engagement for the Glory of the Algorythm, my fine sir.
Superbly wonderful overview. Thank you, sir!
Beautifully done. Thanks for the upload!
Very thorough!
Delightful and informative!
Really well explained. Thank you.
The issue I have with most TTRPG treat Armor is that so many go to this DC method which makes dodging & tanking mechanically the same. Worst still they all seem to make the stat tied to dodging so versatile while restricting tanks. I'm not against restricting the Armor users but the dodge users not having any restrictions makes them the no duh choice most of the time.
Great video! Super easy to understand and a good analysis too. One thing that might have been worth mentioning is the other side of the equation though, ways to debuff the enemy's attack bonuses.
Amazing video! I'd love to see the same analysis on the "hit" part and comparison on classes, etc
Another awesome breakdown
Padded Armor has a good niche actually! It's the only armor that doesn't care about STR at all, as it does not have a Check Penalty. So a character with 8 STR and 16 DEX, like some Rogues, Alchemists or Investigators, can live comfortably (hehe) with 17 AC.
Other than that, there is another point to add: weapons with the Parry trait can let you use an action to get the +1 circ. bonus to AC, which is not that amazing but I used with a Dwarf Abj Wizard and their Clan Dagger and it's pretty cool.
Awesome Video however there was one thing that was forgotten. Bracers of Armour....Which can give a +8 to armour total, Made a monk at level 20 had base armour of 54 without buffs
Amazing video
Thank u for the video crunch! But I was expecting a quip about the drakeheart mutagen!
I think a new armor company just got added to my campaign... Serta Armor Co.
this channel is way too good
kineticist with acrobat staff and the feat that lets you turn you blasts into polearms at first level.
Really great! Would you consider covering how Class DC might be used....like at all really. Lol Thnx 😊
Great video as always! What's the highest AC at level 1? I'm thinking about a Monk with Mountain Stance and Towershield for already 23AC, maybe some status bonuses can increase this even further
Edit: Apparently, with a Drake heart mutagem and a buff from some spell like protecting ward you can get to 26AC at level 1!! You need a consumable and the help of an ally, but being a monk, even spending 2 actions to raise a shield and take cover you can still make two strikes!
It's pretty awesome considering that Boss level 4 have a +14 attack, so would hit you only on a 12
Would you consider clumsy or enfeebled or frightened circumstances bonuses to ac as well? My fighter has crushing rune and intimidating glare 🤔🤞
Make a comparison of how quick Class DC and Spell DC's scale with level and which is higher
When reactive shield triggers, does the shield stay up until the start of your next round?
I always thought it did...
Not correct. AC scales into higher numbers but it isn't linear.
If the enemy has a 50% chance to hit you a +1 AC reduces it to 45%, meaning about 10% less damage overall (5 x 10 = 50 so 5 is 10% of 50).
On the other hand if the enemy only hits you on a 19 or 20 a +1 AC cuts the damage in half, so 50% less damage (not really because critical hits hit harder).
Pathfinder 2E does fix the 5E problem where you stack AC on the highest AC character and leave everyone else to dry as that is most optimal. Here because of the critical hit rule upping lower ACs is just as important to prevent damage.
Hey, that is awesome math!!. I think you are right on the money there. You might be off in just a little tiny spot, let me explain.
Let's say I deal 100 damage (we use a nice big number to make the math easier). Now, let's say I need a 17 on the dice to hit. That means when I roll a 17 I hit, when I roll an 18 I hit, when I roll a 19 I hit and when I roll a 20 I critically hit. Everything less than 17 is a miss.
So, even though I deal a huge 100 damage on a hit, I don't deal that on every roll of the dice. In fact, it is quite infrequent that I even hit. This means, if I made that same attack roll over and over again and averaged the damage out over a large amount of rolls, I wouldn't have 100 average damage anymore. When I did hit I would deal 100 damage, but when I missed all the other times I would deal 0 damage. So the average damage is the average of those few hits with those many misses.
So in that situation, when rolling my d20 to attack, I would roll 1 to 16 80% of the time and miss. I would roll a 17, 18, or 19 on the dice 15% of the time and hit. And I would roll a 20 on the dice 5% of the time and critically hit.
So the average damage is 15% of 100 damage plus 5% of 200 damage (doubled for a critical), for an average damage of 25 damage. That is pretty good defense.
If I add +1 to my enemy's armor class, now I need to roll an 18 or 19 to hit, a 20 is still a critical hit, and everything from 1 to 17 is a miss. This works out to hitting 10% of the time and critical hitting 5% of the time but for double damage, for a total of 20 average damage.
If I continue on to another +1 armor class, now I only hit on a 19 and critically hit on 20. So I am hitting 5% and critting for double damage 5% which works out to 15 damage.
So we did 25 damage, then we did 20 damage, then we did 15 average damage. It is a line. It went 25, 20, 15. Here is the reason why it works out that way. It's one tiny detail in this and I really struggled to figure this out.
If I am understanding this correctly, we aren't getting 5% more damage when we get a +1 to our attack, in other words, if I have 100 average damage when I need a 6 on the die to hit a monster, and then I decrease that number to only needing a 5 on the die, I have a 5% better chance to hit, but my damage doesn't change 5%, not 5% from the average damage I was doing (in this case 100 + 5% of 100 would be 105). In actuality, you are getting 5% more of the AVERAGE DAMAGE (once you see that this all clicks into place). Each plus or minus moves you incrementally 5 or 10% of the AVERAGE DAMAGE for the attack NOT the average damage for the attack you just made.
For example, in the three attack examples I made earlier, when we needed a17 to hit and we dealt 25 damage, when we moved to needing an 18 to hit, our average damage moved down to 20. See how that is 5% of 100, not 5% of 25, which is a big difference. (5% of 25 is only 1.25 which is certainly not nearly as much of a benefit, definitely not worth the +1 AC)
I hope that seems interesting to you. Let me know what you think and if I'm off kilter on this stuff. Thanks!!!!!!!
Did you forget the Druid in your breakdown of armor rank progression?
Poor Druids, Warpriests literally sacrifice spellcasting progression to get their AC proficiency