Vanilla Damage Reduction

Glidderdust

I've read several posts about how armor class "doesn't matter" in ToB and that front liners without damage reduction or magical defense will be quickly killed.

In this case, Minsc would eventually be much more viable than Keldorn as a front line fighter since the former can cast AoF.

Is that statement true for vanilla or is that an SCS situation?

wubble

Armour class still matters, you just need it to be lower, minsc might get more damage resistance but keldorn gets carsomyr and inquisitor dispel which imho is far better, besides both of them get the damage resistance HLA so armour of faith doesn't matter that much.
carsomyr will also give keldorn 50% magic resistance

elminster

Its not that AC totally and completely doesn't matter. At least to a degree. Its that because enemies Thac0's get so low you really have to pump up your AC to make the same kind of difference that you can make if you have physical resistances.

Unless you are playing like Insane difficulty or using a mod like SCS I wouldn't worry about it. Play the characters you want to play.

Glidderdust

Thanks for the heads up. I wasn't debating between Minsc and Keldorn. It was just an example since one can cast AoF and one can't.

wubble

honestly they're both great front line fighters, what keldorn loses in durability he makes up with his effectiveness against mages. minsc is just awesome. however as front line characters they both lose to the new npc in throne of bhaal.(in case you don't know who it is i won't spoil it but he is ridiculously good

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Glidderdust

Let's take a step back and not discuss Keldorn vs Minsc's viability as a front line fighter in ToB.

Let's say I'm playing vanilla ToB in normal mode. My pc is a berserker with the best armor he can find with a few rings to help his armor class.

Is it just a matter of time before he's killed by monsters with low thac0?

wubble

that would depend on his AC, i had -17 at the end of ToB only the bosses gave me any real trouble. Then again i played ascension with the improved bosses

OlvynChuru

Armor Class does matter in TOB; it just doesn't matter that much. I mean, if you have like -14 AC, pretty much every enemy will miss you at least sometimes (and I don't just mean on a critical miss).

BleuCeleste

Glidderdust said:

Let's say I'm playing vanilla ToB in normal mode. My pc is a berserker with the best armor he can find with a few rings to help his armor class.

Then don't worry about AC or damage reduction. The difference becomes more important in insane level. Just use the good gear/artifacts and utilize your spells/abilities, and you'll do just fine.

Jarrakul

Armor class in ToB is extremely valuable for tanking swarms of weaker enemies, but is basically useless against bosses unless you pump it to an insane degree. In other words, you'll be glad to have the AC, but resistance is better because it'll protect you from everything. To that end, I heartily recommend the Hardiness warrior HLA. Armor of Faith is of course also nice to have, but Hardiness is enough on its own.

Darkcloud

If you don't get to extreme bad or good values each point of AC is still a 5% chance of evasion.

Jarrakul

That's theoretically true, @Darkcloud, but in practice it doesn't really work that way. Unless you have an AC in excess of -15 or so, boss enemies are going to hit you on the roll of a 2. Furthermore, due to numbers-weirdness, the first few points of AC beyond the "get hit on a 2" threshold don't really add as much as you'd think. To illustrate, enemies going from needing a 2 (95% chance to hit) to needing a 8 (65%) is still slightly less powerful than them going from needing an 18 (15%) to needing a 19 (10%). So if your AC isn't really, really good, you're not getting as much bang for your buck as you're probably used to.

Darkcloud

And there I would disagree at least with the last part. It is equally as good. Well mostly. The difference is that AC changes from, if its good you will go out of many encounters unharmed to if its good you will get hurt less.

Jarrakul

Certainly I'm not arguing that armor class does literally nothing (except when the enemy's THAC0 is so low that it does, which turns out to be distressingly often in TOB). I'm just arguing that you get a lot less out of it than at previous points in the saga. For example, in BG1, a 2-point AC difference might make a difficult enemy go from needing a 16 to needing an 18. In BG2, the same difference might shift the numbers from 8 to 10. In TOB, against anything that still matters, you're more likely to see a change from 3 to 5, or so. Obviously all of these numbers depend on a number of factors and are basically pulled out of my hat, but I think there's a general consensus as to that trend. Given that the 16 to 18 change is MASSIVELY more powerful than the 3 to 5 change, in terms of the average survival time of the character being attacked, it's pretty clear that AC is much weaker than it used to be. But it is more "unimportant" than "totally useless".