The new AC thread

[Derakon]

Inability to kill stuff without taking physical damage will result in all characters will want a lot of AC. I would think off greatly (maybe five times) increasing normal melee damage of lategame monsters, so at least melee classes will want AC.

Lategame monsters already deal hundreds of damage per turn in melee if they get even moderately above-average rolls. Greater Titans can deal upwards of 576 damage (4x 12d12 confusion hits, which, because of the confusion effect, are not mitigated by AC) and on average deal 312 if all blows hit. How much more dangerous do they need to be? Do you want melee to be instadeath for a mage who gets an unlucky Phase Door?

The problem with AC is that its effects are subtle, not that it has no effect. To make the effects more evident, you make the difference between points more significant. Hence why I suggested compressing the scale.

[Patashu]

Or you could just display to the user, "With your current amount of AC, you reduce melee damage by x% on average." so they become informed about how AC works.

[Philip]

Or at least a shopkeeper telling us approximately how it works.

[Estie]

4x 12d12 confusion hits, which, because of the confusion effect, are not mitigated by AC

...
I wasnt aware of this, but "not mitigated by AC" means it falls under "magic" attack.

[Derakon]

I didn't explain myself clearly there either; I apologize. Basically any melee attack that is "physical" has its damaged reduced based on your AC (up to IIRC 60% reduction at 350 AC). This is in addition to AC reducing your chance to be hit, which is true for all attacks. "Physical" attacks are limited to certain verbs (e.g. hit, kick, butt, trample, etc.), and only if the attack has no associated special effect (i.e. it must be "<verb> to hurt" in the monster memory).

This makes titans really dangerous to melee, even if you have protection from confusion, as all of their successful attacks deal full damage.

[Mark]

AC is an attribute that I notice, if after I while I find myself thinking 'how come I'm finding orcs so difficult this time?' - the answer is usually an AC of 45 vs, say, 90.

But I agree with Patashu - if AC could somehow be communicated in a way similar to Saving Throw, or Weapon Damage, that would be great, either a Character screen stat (that gives a % damage reduction that reads similar to Saving Throw), or a handy line of info about damage avoidance/absorption, similar to the attack info you get when inspecting a weapon.

[Magnate]

This makes titans really dangerous to melee, even if you have protection from confusion, as all of their successful attacks deal full damage.

This is inconsistent with the 3.5 change to make elemental attacks deal a portion of their damage as physical (so that immunities are not quite so strong). All melee attacks ought to follow this principle - so instead of AC reducing only pure-melee-attack damage, it would also reduce half (or whatever proportion) of all other melee attack damage (confusion, life drain etc., just as with burn/freeze/et al.).

Interesting debate. I can see the argument for making AC have the same range of values as other stats, though that should also apply to +hit, +searching etc. and wouldn't really make sense until full linearisation is done (3-40 not 3-18/220). I don't think it would be necessary to lose too many base items to achieve this: the half-dozen hats and boots would range from base AC 0 to 5, and body armours from 1 to 15 or so.

But I wonder whether, given that this hasn't been necessary for hitting or searching, the other suggestion might be worth trying first. If people could see the change in damage absorption from a new piece of kit, that might make quite a bit of difference. We could even go so far as to add to monster memory "this creature has x% chance of hitting you at your current AC" so you could see the change to that too. [Prepares to blush with embarrassment if this has already been done.]

[Timo Pietilä]

I didn't explain myself clearly there either; I apologize. Basically any melee attack that is "physical" has its damaged reduced based on your AC (up to IIRC 60% reduction at 350 AC). This is in addition to AC reducing your chance to be hit, which is true for all attacks.

I have many times thought that it could be cool to have AC separated to evasion and absorbion. Evasion could be ability that increases with DEX and character class (warriors being best) and species and absorbion something that reduces damage if you get hit.

Some very high-value light armors could increase your evasion, but it would need to be special ego-ability, not standard for any garment. OTOH absorbion could reduce some fraction of basic element spell and breath damages as well, so you would want heavy high-absorbion stuff late in game. Heavy armor should reduce evasion (based on weight of the armor).

Big change to incorporate and balance, but could be worth thinking.

[Estie]

I didn't explain myself clearly there either; I apologize. Basically any melee attack that is "physical" has its damaged reduced based on your AC (up to IIRC 60% reduction at 350 AC). This is in addition to AC reducing your chance to be hit, which is true for all attacks. "Physical" attacks are limited to certain verbs (e.g. hit, kick, butt, trample, etc.), and only if the attack has no associated special effect (i.e. it must be "<verb> to hurt" in the monster memory).

This makes titans really dangerous to melee, even if you have protection from confusion, as all of their successful attacks deal full damage.

No need to apologize. I suspected it might work like that.
Titan attacks are then only partially affected by AC. The point remains though: "Its dangerous to melee because damage isnt diminished by AC" exactly describes why AC has little value. If the biggest melee threats (partially) ignore AC, why bother with it ?

Why not do the opposite: have AC reduce titan damage twice. Crank up the melee damage of Titans to compensate; "an unlucky phasedoor next to a titan" (or a summon to!) will certainly kill the low ac character, but so does the offscreen breath to the resist-less character.

That would change "hard to melee because they ignore AC" to "hard to melee without AC", creating a good reason to want AC.

[krazyhades]

I really just wish I could see on my [C]haracter sheet what my AC is doing for me.

[LostTemplar]

Greater Titans can deal upwards of 576 damage

Greater titans do not qualify, as well as Morgoth, etc. I only consider normal attacks; special attacks e.g. "to confuse" of shatter are already OK. But IMHO strong normal attacks will be nice.