Armor Class!!!!!
Two questions:
1-What is the lowest achievable (non moded) armorclass?
2-What dose having a significantly low armor class even do, what are the perks/advantages?
1-What is the lowest achievable (non moded) armorclass?
2-What dose having a significantly low armor class even do, what are the perks/advantages?
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I seem to remember that AC was capped at -25 but I might be wrong. It's definitely reachable without mods, though not exactly practical.
In bg1 and early bg2 very low ac protects you against most attacks from enemies. They can still roll a critical hit which always hits. So you also need to be lucky. Big bosses like demon princes, dragons, etc. and fire giants later in ToB have very low Thac0s like -10s so you really need -24 ac to get a %50 miss chance, otherwise theywill always hit. Damage resistance from items or HLAs like hardiness is more important in ToB. Or spells such as stoneskin, mirror image, protection from magical weapons etc. Also, mind flayers have lousy to hit rolls but they attack many times a round (so they can get criticals more often) and they don't care about your ac if you are stunned by their heinous psionic blast attacks.
If the enemy hit you with a 50% probability, and your AC become better by 1 point, he will now hit you 45% of the time. Which means you will take on average 9 hits while you were taking 10 hits previously, meaning this 1 AC point reduce damage taken in average by 10%
But if the enemy hit you with only a 10% probability because you have a really low AC, and that your AC become better by 1 point, he will now hit you only 5% of the time (on a critical hit), which means you will take on average 1 hit while you were previously taking 2 hits, meaning that this last point of AC reduce damage taken in average by a huge 50% !
So don't neglict AC ! It is a fantastic stat, even in late ToB. But you need to stack it. You can't go from -10 to -12 AC and say "oh this is such a loosy stat, it does practically nothing" you must go from let's say -26 to -28 and feel how these 2 last points are actually making you extremely resilient.
Don't forget that one excellent way of reducing the number of hits you take is killing the enemy before it makes those hits. Reaching exceedingly high amounts of AC will practically always come at the expense of dealing more damage - and that is a trade-off that very often is not worth making.
Of course, the usual caveat applies and you should always check these things against your individual setup when making decisions. Mileage may vary considerably.
Sometime the best way would be to split evenly the magical gear between your differents characters while sometime it would be best to put everything on a big tank. Both the type of the encounter you are facing and the difficulty of the encounter must be took into consideration. AC is of course useless against Mages for instance.
But if you're facing melee heavy foes, defensives stats will outshine offensives ones in most cases.
You can equip a shield -4 AC and take down the probability of being hit from 25% to 5%, resulting in an average 80% damage reduction. But you will never be able to equip another weapon, gauntlets or anything else that will give you 400% damage increase. Plus you can only attack one target at a time, but you can be attacked by multiple foes at once, multiplying the strength of AC and damage reduction as the number of opponents goes up.
AC makes mooks harmless, but bosses often have better THAC0. If you run a pure Kensai, you should find mooks much more tedius, but boss fights easier.
That's actually the core issue with the whole ToB thing: enemy THAC0s tend to progress more than player AC. That's really what devalues AC at that stage of the game. Doubly so because the enemies that actually hit hard also tend to have incredible THAC0s. Just for reference, I took a quick peek at my own .cre files (will probably differ from most other people's), and checked the base THAC0s of some of the ToB bosses. They go up to -12 base (on The Ravager; Abazigal is -10, Melissan is at -7, Balthazar -8...), which is ridiculously low. Even stacked AC is not going to reduce that to crit-only hit levels.
Plus, there's also alternative strategies to consider. Stacking damage resistance, for example, could provide you more of a benefit than AC (or at least at less of a damage cost). You could also use alternative strategies to take less hits, etc. That last one especially is probably the most effective. I don't think I've run an AC-based tank in literal years - either I move a lot and bounce enemies around, or I make sure that the NPC getting hit doesn't take any damage from it (usually with SS/PfMW etc.). It seems to be much more effective at reducing damage than AC.
Anyway, these things vary HUGELY depending on your game setup. If you're heavily modded towards difficulty, AC may lose a lot of value; if not, it may be a pretty decent stat even in ToB. And you can most definitely stack AC on certain class/kit combinations at fairly low cost. Always think about the details!
And I strongly agree about the 3 main ways to prevent physical damage, AC/Damage Reduction/Spells, the latter being the best one).
My point was only that AC is stronger the more you have, and that AC is often overlooked because most people (including me) prefer to maximise damage output with dualwielding / two handed weapons.
May I ask you what is the final THAC0 of these bosses you listed ? What isn't included in the base value ?
They also have class/kit set, which can matter. Balthazar e.g. is an actual Monk and should receive THAC0 bonuses to fist attacks etc.
1. Single Weapon Style: -1 or -2
2. Dexterity: -4 for 18 DEX, or -6 for 24 or 25 DEX
3. Protection from Evil: -2
4. Damage-specific modifiers:
Crushing: Girdle of Bluntness, Potions of Absorption
Piercing: Girdle of Piercing, Full Plate Mail and various others
Slashing: Golden Girdle, most plate armors
Missile: Girdle of Piercing, Boots of Avoidance, various armors
You can also effectively increase your AC by penalizing the enemy's THAC0. This can be done with the Slow spell, Called Shot, or the Unholy Reaver.
It's very easy to reach that cap with bard songs, and very hard to do it without. I forget who it was, but somebody also discovered that it's possible to make the Slayer change permanent by using Mirror Image to block the damage (it almost always works), and the Slayer trick is an excellent way of reaching that low AC. It also works with the improved Slayer forms and Ravager form from the Ascension mod.