Honestly, if you're looking for the most survivable character possible the best option IMHO is either bladesinger (to crank your AC) or Moon druid (near limitless HP at high levels).
Honestly, if you're looking for the most survivable character possible the best option IMHO is either bladesinger (to crank your AC) or Moon druid (near limitless HP at high levels).
Much less effort and hoops to jump through.
I respectfully disagree. The Bladesinger will have good, but lower AC than what he has and only a d6 hit die, Bladesong is limited resource, and if you don’t win initiative you can be hit before you activate it. The Moon Druid is strongest at Tier 1 then falls off. That is until you reach (I forget what level) when you get unlimited shifts but that’s way high level.
Honestly, if you're looking for the most survivable character possible the best option IMHO is either bladesinger (to crank your AC) or Moon druid (near limitless HP at high levels).
Much less effort and hoops to jump through.
I respectfully disagree. The Bladesinger will have good, but lower AC than what he has and only a d6 hit die, Bladesong is limited resource, and if you don’t win initiative you can be hit before you activate it. The Moon Druid is strongest at Tier 1 then falls off. That is until you reach (I forget what level) when you get unlimited shifts but that’s way high level.
20th level, in fact.
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Despite the fact that the character is illegal according to what is discussed in the first posts, your DM should have realized that this character was going to disrupt the encounters before the campaign began. In any case, there are many ways to deal with players with excessive AC. Face him against hordes of minions, attack his saves, try to interrupt his long rest (you won't sleep in heavy armor), etc... What you should never do is use enemies with an exaggerated attack to compensate for the high AC. That just leads players to think you're playing dirty and being unfair. For me. as a DM, it's not a problem for a player to want to play a character who's overly good at something (as long as it's a character according to the rules). All characters have weaknesses, and there are always interesting challenges for them. By the way, a high AC does not make a good tank. If the monsters can ignore you, and attack your allies, you are not a good tank.
The "Tank" role is a video game based role, NOT a D&D TTRPG role... Enemies in D&D have intelligence and as a DM we are challenged to portray that in a more real and meaningful way, while providing encounters that are reasonably believable, exciting, fun, and at varying degrees of challenge. Not every encounter has to tax the party, so I disagree with Linklite's assertion above.
DM's can create encounters that vary in degree and challenge for your party and you at the same time, as well as encounters that may be a challenge for you and not so much for the party, or on the flip side, encounters that will be a challenge for the party but not for you. This is the job of the DM, and the more experience the DM has, the easier it is for them to navigate these hurdles, but for those DM's who lack experience in dealing with these particular mechanical gap hurdles, as I like to call them, the challenge in creating proper encounters becomes much more daunting. Just as not every encounter is a combat encounter, or social encounter, or puzzle encounter, or trap encounter, not every encounter has to be a challenge for every character or player. Some encounters are going to be easier for the wizard than the barbarian or fighter, some are going to be easier for the fighter than the bard, some easier for the bard than the ranger. This will never change as each class has their own strengths and weaknesses. The fighter in plate armor is going to have a much more difficult time, if not impossible time, sneaking into the guard bunkhouse to lift the key to the magical bindings his friend is confined in, as opposed to the stealth specialized rogue pickpocket and thief. The bard is going to have an easier time sweet-talking the lady aristocrat into becoming the party's patron than the orc barbarian. The high AC/HP fighter/barbarian is going to do better at holding the line at a doorway while the party deals with the puzzle/trap, than the wizard would... though at higher levels the wizard could most likely deal more damage, the situation is one where he is ill suited for the task.
I hope to have made clear that it is up to the DM to provide encounters suitable to the players and their characters, not the other way around.
That being said, if you have a DM that is less experienced with parties that have mechanical gaps, it would be nice for the DM and the player to have a discussion on how best to resolve the issue in a way that is suitable to both... maybe a build that isn't quite as high AC, but still impressive enough, and as the DM gains experience with mildly gapped party mechanics, you could start to increase the gap a little at a time to eventual have that "tank" that you were looking for and the DM can figure out how to create encounters and situations that are fun and challenging for each character individually, a portion of the group, or as the party whole, while providing fun for everyone.
I will disagree that the tank role is a video game role. I was playing TTRPGs long before online gaming and while the name might be new I often played a character with high AC and high health designed to take the brunt of attacks so my party members can then attack from range or hit and run.
Yeah I tried to make a similar character but my DM just gave all the enemies stupid modifiers the whole campaign they maybe missed 3 attacks out of 66 sessions. Not a fan of that BS. I almost quit so many times
Yeah I tried to make a similar character but my DM just gave all the enemies stupid modifiers the whole campaign they maybe missed 3 attacks out of 66 sessions. Not a fan of that BS. I almost quit so many times
Wow. So did they hit your teammates like 100% of the time?
Yeah I tried to make a similar character but my DM just gave all the enemies stupid modifiers the whole campaign they maybe missed 3 attacks out of 66 sessions. Not a fan of that BS. I almost quit so many times
That is bad DM practice. What he should have done is attack your saves, surround you with a lot of weak enemies, etc... A good DM should challenge you, so you don't feel invulnerable, but fairly. Making monsters have very high attack modifiers is unfair and boring. There are plenty of other ways to nullify a character with very high AC, and it doesn't seem unfair.
The thing is, when you play D&D, we're all working together to make things fun for everyone. I understand why you've made such a build and it is an interesting one. However, let's look at it from the point of view of the person charged with providing a challenging and fun encounter, ie the DM.
Your AC is/was so high that enemies had to roll a 20 to hit them... that's a 5% chance of hitting in a game that is designed and built around the presumption that characters will be hit around 60% of the time. If you manage to do what you want to do (attract the hits as a tank and rarely take the damage so your party doesn't), the combat encounters are going to get boring very quickly. The enemies are going to be bashing against your armour doing nothing while the party leisurely picks them off.
That's boring because there is little threat. The game is designed around the idea that there is a certain hit ratio. There is definitely room for variance from that, but stray too far and the game becomes boring.
What can the DM do? They have a few options. They can:
Have the enemies ignore you and attack the party. That renders your role pointless, the investment into that AC meaningless and you have what is a weak contribution to the party. How would you feel after putting all that investment into a high AC and the DM just runs around it?
Have extra enemies so you're doing the same as the previous point, except the extra enemies attack you to pretend that your high AC is doing something for the party. I'm not a fan of the treadmill attitude personally, you're not really helping your party...but it seems the best option if you changing your build isn't on the table. Still, you're probably intelligent enough to notice the half dozen enemies running straight past you and realise that the DM is negating your investment. How would you feel about that?
Lean into your weaknesses and go for enemies that use saving throw based attacks, attacks that ignore your AC. Now, these naturally occur, but you'll most likely notice that they're occurring all the time. Again, how would you feel to have invested so much into your AC only to have it ignored like that? Be honest now, in a few sessions' time, would we be reading an upset post about how you built this amazing tank, only to be subjected to saving throws all the time? It wouldn't be the first such thread.
Use higher CR enemies or buffed ones. That handles you...but your party is presumably not quite so tanky and will go down too easily. The instant one gets past you, and they will...they're in deep trouble. That's kind of the opposite of what your build as a tank is meant to be doing. This isn't a bad option if everyone is also heavily optimised, but really screws things up if they're more into narrative driven decisions. How will your teammates feel about that?
Use selectively buffed enemies. They get an additional +X to hit rolls against you. That will become obvious quite quickly when you're getting it at the same rate as your AC15 teammate. Again, your investment into AC is being negated, how would that make you feel?
I could go on with solutions, but you get the idea. The solutions basically go in one of four ways - let encounters become boring, let the rest of the party suffer from the increased difficulty so you can still be challenged, neuter your AC investment or ask players to rebuild their characters.
Yeah, there are ways around your high AC, but doing so generally makes the game worse for someone, the DM just has the unenviable job of choosing who gets the brunt of it. That's why rebuilding your character is probably the best option. You can widen your character a bit so he can be good at other things too and not just have that investment neutered, and everyone can have appropriately built encounters that are challenging but also not going to slaughter them if they make a mistake.
The DM should have been kind about it. Ideally, he would have seen this problem in the character creation process and headed it off before you became attached to the idea, but we all make mistakes. Still, he should be kind and amicable about it - however, "flak" is often used for a range of behaviours, so I'm not sure how that actually went down. On the other hand, your build put him in a bind, and none of the solutions are ideal. Asking you to diversify your build is probably the best option.
I got to say, I absolutely love all the points made in this post.
I really don't think that having an AC above 20 permanently (before spell casts that aren't permanent) should be a thing in general. Exactly as you said, I basically have to design all of my encounters around 1 out of seven players because I'm otherwise targeting him with his 24 AC only or I'm creating encounters that are too hard for the rest of the party. I'm glad that the 24 AC character will soon be put to rest after this campaign that we're on is about to be done because moving forward I'm going to inform my party that I do not want to see characters have permanent 21+ AC because it's so much work to get around.
EDIT: Also, the 24 AC (level 20) Character is also getting +18 INT save, +12 STR save, +9 DEX save, +17 CON save, +6 CHA save, and +13 WIS save. The normal saving throw for many of the enemies I'm using at this point is like 16 and maybe 20 for legendary creatures. It's the min maxiest thing I've ever seen.
I dunno, I've never had a high AC character just "break" my game, and most of my 20+ AC characters are rocking their ACs by level 10, so I don't know how folks running Lv20 games have issues with player AC.
Of course the high-magic setting of my homebrew worlds mean my PCs are significantly stronger than vanilla groups so throwing monsters several CR levels above them isn't such a big deal, even for the low AC ones. Heck, I've had someone with a non-buffed 24 AC tell me his AC didn't matter the way he got walloped around and he was a paladin with great saves as well... I just don't see it.
Though I will say that if it is an issue your DM has that is making his time running the game unpleasant, and others are also not enjoying themselves then you may want to come to an amenable solution. A game table can't stand with only 1 leg.
And someone mentioned using enemies with spells. High AC won't matter much against Spells that require saves.
Along those same lines, I'd been running a work game for like 3 years - and one of the sessions, the Ranger, who always hangs back (because of how far he can fire) remarked how he never gets hit. The Warlock, also who hangs back and just Eldritch Blasts all the time also remarked how they never got hit. Now they were in an area in my world called "The Shadow Realm" (very similar to the Underdark) and the main story was stopping a Drow Priestess from ascending and "awakening" her dead goddess - the Spider Queen (Lolth, essentially).
So the very next session - you know who was climbing on the ceiling and dropped on the back of the party? Driders. You know what they cast? Faerie Fire.
They proceeded to wreck the Ranger and Warlock, while the rest of the party was engaged in battle in the front.
Your DM isn't handling the game correctly (as others noted). There are always ways to create challenging encounters. Whether that requires using Homebrews or modifying monster stats and abilities - they're the DM. It's their world. Crying about it is the wrong way to go about it.
So that High AC fighter can still get challenged if he gets faerie fire dropped on him. Because despite hard hits, advantage is going to occasionally land hits. Add more encounters, cultists who have trained wolves - faerie fire (oh? you saved? this wolf pack has advantage by nature as long as they're next to each other).
I feel like a lot of people in this thread are putting everything on the DM here.
I saw a lot of posts about people saying it's the DM's "job" to build encounters to suit the players not the other way around, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that the vast majority of DM's are not paid for the time they have to put into preparing sessions, or the hard work of actually running it (and usually scheduling it as well, and then adjusting plans last minute because not everyone who said they'd be there bothered to turn up). Players comparatively have the easier job of just showing up and not wasting too much time (and most are bad at it 😝) so it's wrong to put everything on the DM who's already doing their group a favour by running the game for them at all.
Now obviously, yes, there are ways a DM can (and should) handle this better to deal with a high AC player (same as players might deal with high AC enemies) but unless you're paying your DM to do that extra legwork then it's unreasonable for players to expect them to have to do it. It's a collaborative game, meaning players are allowed to make concessions and compromises as well; players should listen to what the DM has in mind for a campaign rather than just building what they want and forcing the DM to try and shoe-horn it in somehow (no you can't play ghost rider in my low magic crime noir adventure 😉), and should consider whether build choices are benefiting the group or not.
Because if your DM is throwing encounters at you that would be perfectly reasonable for your current level, but those enemies straight up can't hit one of the players, then the DM is well within their right to have those enemies avoid that player entirely, because that's the logical thing for those creatures to do. In that sense having such a high AC is an impediment to the party rather than a benefit, so it's worth considering whether there's some compromise in a situation like that (and any similar situations).
Not saying it's how I'd deal with it, because I like to run mixed enemy groups where there will be at least one thing that can ruin each player's day, as for me at least part of the fun of a good combat is letting the players figure out which is which so they can "solve" the combat like a puzzle rather than it just being a hacking each to bits contest. You can also use other threats like time pressure and objectives where simply not being hit isn't helping you. But it can take a lot of work to balance properly, and to keep coming up with creative twists all the time (especially if it's on a weekly basis).
TL;DR DM could handle it better, but please have some sympathy for the work they do so that you can all (hopefully) have fun. 😝
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Now obviously, yes, there are ways a DM can (and should) handle this better to deal with a high AC player (same as players might deal with high AC enemies) but unless you're paying your DM to do that extra legwork then it's unreasonable for players them to do all the extra work. It's a collaborative game, meaning players are allowed to make concessions and compromises as well; players should listen to what the DM has in mind for a campaign rather than just building what they want and forcing the DM to try and shoe-horn it in somehow (no you can't play ghost rider in my low magic crime noir adventure), and should consider whether build choices are benefiting the group best or not.
I agree with most of everything else you had to say, I just needed to speak to this.
If someone had said to the DM "I want to play a heavy tank character. Someone who just soaks attacks." Chances are the DM would be fine with the question and say it's fine, until the player proves they're good at it and wind up with a 24 AC +10 to most saves monster. You are discussing game mechanics as though they are style choices, they are not.
My caveat is that a player doesn't just POOF into existence at 21+ AC. The DM made every choice that led to this character. They were not mindful of the power they handed out and that sucks, but it's on them to correct it at that point. If it's items, work at getting rid of them (and of course give the player something equivalent in return, don't just be a jerk), if it's buffs make sure to break concentration with enemies, etc.
The DM okayed the balance of the character when they handed out the items that made them that powerful. It's bad sportsmanship to give them stuff and take it away.
My caveat is that a player doesn't just POOF into existence at 21+ AC. The DM made every choice that led to this character. They were not mindful of the power they handed out and that sucks, but it's on them to correct it at that point. If it's items, work at getting rid of them (and of course give the player something equivalent in return, don't just be a jerk), if it's buffs make sure to break concentration with enemies, etc.
The DM okayed the balance of the character when they handed out the items that made them that powerful. It's bad sportsmanship to give them stuff and take it away.
Yea that's the thing: armorer artificer gets 24 AC and 10+ saves without DM intervention it's just in the character. The artificer can duplicate items like ring of protection create armor boosting buffers BEFORE adding in other magic items from the DM. This is BEFORE spells that also boost AC.
Don't forget Flash Of Genius which also gives+5 to a save if they roll low. So really those +10 saves are more like +15's
Artificers only get the saving throw bonus at 20th level. And to pump their AC up to 25 without using spell slots requires them to be a minimum of 14th level to use Replicate Magic Item to get a Ring of Protection and Cloak of Protection. But doing so uses 4 of their Infusions and three of their five attunement slots. At 14th level that's hardly game-breaking.
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Artificers only get the saving throw bonus at 20th level. And to pump their AC up to 25 without using spell slots requires them to be a minimum of 14th level to use Replicate Magic Item to get a Ring of Protection and Cloak of Protection. But doing so uses 4 of their Infusions and three of their five attunement slots. At 14th level that's hardly game-breaking.
And as it's already been pointed out like three times in this thread already, it is game breaking when six of the other party members only have ACs of between 15 to 18 and even at level 20 most of them only have a single or maybe two plus 10 saves.
I'm not going to repeat the same points that are already in this thread you can go read them yourself because if you actually read you'll learn why a single 24 AC character becomes an issue for balancing.
Artificers only get the saving throw bonus at 20th level. And to pump their AC up to 25 without using spell slots requires them to be a minimum of 14th level to use Replicate Magic Item to get a Ring of Protection and Cloak of Protection. But doing so uses 4 of their Infusions and three of their five attunement slots. At 14th level that's hardly game-breaking.
And as it's already been pointed out like three times in this thread already, it is game breaking when six of the other party members only have ACs of between 15 to 18 and even at level 20 most of them only have a single or maybe two plus 10 saves.
I'm not going to repeat the same points that are already in this thread you can go read them yourself because if you actually read you'll learn why a single 24 AC character becomes an issue for balancing.
What the heck are third and fourth tier characters doing walking around with 15-18AC? The lowest AC in my party of level 12 characters is 21. Admittedly, we play in a game where magic items are readily available through magic shops and we are rich AF but that’s the way my DM likes it. If a DM wants to run a low(er) magic setting where characters are not able to acquire the items needed to keep up with an artificer then maybe an artificer is not a suitable class to make available for play? The artificer is just making the most of the tools they were allowed.
more busywork ideas to keep your high AC player away the things challenging the other players...
someone has to grapple the awakened cactus, but who??
hail pushes back anyone who enters this long hallways of doors unless someone with high AC shields everyone else checking rooms.
of all the trinkets in the room, the one the high AC character picked up spawns a pleading ghost. would you please escort them through the spooky forest and keep their trinket safe?
someone has to stand with their finger in a hole in the wall to keep the room from flooding. you may need several holes before this player tries theirs and then miraculously all the other players holes fill in so they can go do other things.
an iron golem has become enamored with this thick-armored juggernaut and it's up to this player to distract them with a waltz and witty compliments.
the high AC character has stepped on a pressure plate. the rogue can jam the mechanism with some effort but it'd be much safer if everyone else would just move into the next room.
"hello, i am a burgeoning kobold bard. want to hear my new song 'heat metal,' as i skip and prance just out of reach as the rest of your party pacify that bar fight? LA LA LA!"
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AC does not grow with level unless the DM is purposely handing out +3 armors consecutively. A player's resource pool does grow with level which helps counter the higher hitting enemies. I don't know why you have a party of 21+ AC's but that's the way y'all run your game that's cool but from everything that I know and have looked up that is not the norm.
And I'm not saying the artificer class is at fault, but players choosing to spec into AC boosts *only* which unbalances the rest of the party. That class has a billion options at level 20 that doesn't have to be *only* AC. Again, I urge you to read the large post above that perfectly summarizes all the issues with a super high AC player in a party.
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Honestly, if you're looking for the most survivable character possible the best option IMHO is either bladesinger (to crank your AC) or Moon druid (near limitless HP at high levels).
Much less effort and hoops to jump through.
I respectfully disagree. The Bladesinger will have good, but lower AC than what he has and only a d6 hit die, Bladesong is limited resource, and if you don’t win initiative you can be hit before you activate it. The Moon Druid is strongest at Tier 1 then falls off. That is until you reach (I forget what level) when you get unlimited shifts but that’s way high level.
20th level, in fact.
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Despite the fact that the character is illegal according to what is discussed in the first posts, your DM should have realized that this character was going to disrupt the encounters before the campaign began.
In any case, there are many ways to deal with players with excessive AC. Face him against hordes of minions, attack his saves, try to interrupt his long rest (you won't sleep in heavy armor), etc... What you should never do is use enemies with an exaggerated attack to compensate for the high AC. That just leads players to think you're playing dirty and being unfair.
For me. as a DM, it's not a problem for a player to want to play a character who's overly good at something (as long as it's a character according to the rules). All characters have weaknesses, and there are always interesting challenges for them.
By the way, a high AC does not make a good tank. If the monsters can ignore you, and attack your allies, you are not a good tank.
I will disagree that the tank role is a video game role. I was playing TTRPGs long before online gaming and while the name might be new I often played a character with high AC and high health designed to take the brunt of attacks so my party members can then attack from range or hit and run.
Yeah I tried to make a similar character but my DM just gave all the enemies stupid modifiers the whole campaign they maybe missed 3 attacks out of 66 sessions. Not a fan of that BS. I almost quit so many times
Wow. So did they hit your teammates like 100% of the time?
That is bad DM practice. What he should have done is attack your saves, surround you with a lot of weak enemies, etc...
A good DM should challenge you, so you don't feel invulnerable, but fairly. Making monsters have very high attack modifiers is unfair and boring. There are plenty of other ways to nullify a character with very high AC, and it doesn't seem unfair.
I got to say, I absolutely love all the points made in this post.
I really don't think that having an AC above 20 permanently (before spell casts that aren't permanent) should be a thing in general. Exactly as you said, I basically have to design all of my encounters around 1 out of seven players because I'm otherwise targeting him with his 24 AC only or I'm creating encounters that are too hard for the rest of the party. I'm glad that the 24 AC character will soon be put to rest after this campaign that we're on is about to be done because moving forward I'm going to inform my party that I do not want to see characters have permanent 21+ AC because it's so much work to get around.
EDIT: Also, the 24 AC (level 20) Character is also getting +18 INT save, +12 STR save, +9 DEX save, +17 CON save, +6 CHA save, and +13 WIS save. The normal saving throw for many of the enemies I'm using at this point is like 16 and maybe 20 for legendary creatures. It's the min maxiest thing I've ever seen.
I dunno, I've never had a high AC character just "break" my game, and most of my 20+ AC characters are rocking their ACs by level 10, so I don't know how folks running Lv20 games have issues with player AC.
Of course the high-magic setting of my homebrew worlds mean my PCs are significantly stronger than vanilla groups so throwing monsters several CR levels above them isn't such a big deal, even for the low AC ones. Heck, I've had someone with a non-buffed 24 AC tell me his AC didn't matter the way he got walloped around and he was a paladin with great saves as well... I just don't see it.
Though I will say that if it is an issue your DM has that is making his time running the game unpleasant, and others are also not enjoying themselves then you may want to come to an amenable solution. A game table can't stand with only 1 leg.
Ton of good info here.
And someone mentioned using enemies with spells. High AC won't matter much against Spells that require saves.
Along those same lines, I'd been running a work game for like 3 years - and one of the sessions, the Ranger, who always hangs back (because of how far he can fire) remarked how he never gets hit. The Warlock, also who hangs back and just Eldritch Blasts all the time also remarked how they never got hit. Now they were in an area in my world called "The Shadow Realm" (very similar to the Underdark) and the main story was stopping a Drow Priestess from ascending and "awakening" her dead goddess - the Spider Queen (Lolth, essentially).
So the very next session - you know who was climbing on the ceiling and dropped on the back of the party? Driders. You know what they cast? Faerie Fire.
They proceeded to wreck the Ranger and Warlock, while the rest of the party was engaged in battle in the front.
Your DM isn't handling the game correctly (as others noted). There are always ways to create challenging encounters. Whether that requires using Homebrews or modifying monster stats and abilities - they're the DM. It's their world. Crying about it is the wrong way to go about it.
So that High AC fighter can still get challenged if he gets faerie fire dropped on him. Because despite hard hits, advantage is going to occasionally land hits. Add more encounters, cultists who have trained wolves - faerie fire (oh? you saved? this wolf pack has advantage by nature as long as they're next to each other).
Creativity is all it takes.
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I feel like a lot of people in this thread are putting everything on the DM here.
I saw a lot of posts about people saying it's the DM's "job" to build encounters to suit the players not the other way around, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that the vast majority of DM's are not paid for the time they have to put into preparing sessions, or the hard work of actually running it (and usually scheduling it as well, and then adjusting plans last minute because not everyone who said they'd be there bothered to turn up). Players comparatively have the easier job of just showing up and not wasting too much time (and most are bad at it 😝) so it's wrong to put everything on the DM who's already doing their group a favour by running the game for them at all.
Now obviously, yes, there are ways a DM can (and should) handle this better to deal with a high AC player (same as players might deal with high AC enemies) but unless you're paying your DM to do that extra legwork then it's unreasonable for players to expect them to have to do it. It's a collaborative game, meaning players are allowed to make concessions and compromises as well; players should listen to what the DM has in mind for a campaign rather than just building what they want and forcing the DM to try and shoe-horn it in somehow (no you can't play ghost rider in my low magic crime noir adventure 😉), and should consider whether build choices are benefiting the group or not.
Because if your DM is throwing encounters at you that would be perfectly reasonable for your current level, but those enemies straight up can't hit one of the players, then the DM is well within their right to have those enemies avoid that player entirely, because that's the logical thing for those creatures to do. In that sense having such a high AC is an impediment to the party rather than a benefit, so it's worth considering whether there's some compromise in a situation like that (and any similar situations).
Not saying it's how I'd deal with it, because I like to run mixed enemy groups where there will be at least one thing that can ruin each player's day, as for me at least part of the fun of a good combat is letting the players figure out which is which so they can "solve" the combat like a puzzle rather than it just being a hacking each to bits contest. You can also use other threats like time pressure and objectives where simply not being hit isn't helping you. But it can take a lot of work to balance properly, and to keep coming up with creative twists all the time (especially if it's on a weekly basis).
TL;DR
DM could handle it better, but please have some sympathy for the work they do so that you can all (hopefully) have fun. 😝
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Yeah - this post (#8) - puts those points in too.
It's one of the quirks I have when someone starts Cleric 1, then the rest Wizard. Just so they can be a Wizard with good armor.
There are people who build to be efficient. Which I understand. I tend to play flawed characters, myself.
But yes, as stated - definitely watch the table. If others aren't having fun, maybe adjust.
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I agree with most of everything else you had to say, I just needed to speak to this.
If someone had said to the DM "I want to play a heavy tank character. Someone who just soaks attacks." Chances are the DM would be fine with the question and say it's fine, until the player proves they're good at it and wind up with a 24 AC +10 to most saves monster. You are discussing game mechanics as though they are style choices, they are not.
My caveat is that a player doesn't just POOF into existence at 21+ AC. The DM made every choice that led to this character. They were not mindful of the power they handed out and that sucks, but it's on them to correct it at that point. If it's items, work at getting rid of them (and of course give the player something equivalent in return, don't just be a jerk), if it's buffs make sure to break concentration with enemies, etc.
The DM okayed the balance of the character when they handed out the items that made them that powerful. It's bad sportsmanship to give them stuff and take it away.
Yea that's the thing: armorer artificer gets 24 AC and 10+ saves without DM intervention it's just in the character. The artificer can duplicate items like ring of protection create armor boosting buffers BEFORE adding in other magic items from the DM. This is BEFORE spells that also boost AC.
Don't forget Flash Of Genius which also gives+5 to a save if they roll low. So really those +10 saves are more like +15's
Artificers only get the saving throw bonus at 20th level. And to pump their AC up to 25 without using spell slots requires them to be a minimum of 14th level to use Replicate Magic Item to get a Ring of Protection and Cloak of Protection. But doing so uses 4 of their Infusions and three of their five attunement slots. At 14th level that's hardly game-breaking.
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
And as it's already been pointed out like three times in this thread already, it is game breaking when six of the other party members only have ACs of between 15 to 18 and even at level 20 most of them only have a single or maybe two plus 10 saves.
I'm not going to repeat the same points that are already in this thread you can go read them yourself because if you actually read you'll learn why a single 24 AC character becomes an issue for balancing.
What the heck are third and fourth tier characters doing walking around with 15-18AC? The lowest AC in my party of level 12 characters is 21. Admittedly, we play in a game where magic items are readily available through magic shops and we are rich AF but that’s the way my DM likes it. If a DM wants to run a low(er) magic setting where characters are not able to acquire the items needed to keep up with an artificer then maybe an artificer is not a suitable class to make available for play? The artificer is just making the most of the tools they were allowed.
more busywork ideas to keep your high AC player away the things challenging the other players...
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AC does not grow with level unless the DM is purposely handing out +3 armors consecutively. A player's resource pool does grow with level which helps counter the higher hitting enemies. I don't know why you have a party of 21+ AC's but that's the way y'all run your game that's cool but from everything that I know and have looked up that is not the norm.
And I'm not saying the artificer class is at fault, but players choosing to spec into AC boosts *only* which unbalances the rest of the party. That class has a billion options at level 20 that doesn't have to be *only* AC. Again, I urge you to read the large post above that perfectly summarizes all the issues with a super high AC player in a party.