Is the Shadow Dragon cheating?

Remove all ads!

And he's still get hit by Abazigal on a roll of 2 or greater.

Although to me, that -40 AC is both temporary and theoretical, even if there was no cap. Sure you can equip a bard with armor, but he can't cast spells in anything other than elven or bladesinger chain. Not to mention that if you're playing the bard song, all you can do is just stand there and not cast spells anyway. Then there's the issue of defensive spin rooting you to the spot and being timered. Although you can probably get to the -24 AC cap without utilizing all the things I listed, so it's something worth considering.

 

Well yeah, I was just trying to get the best AC possible. A bard in full plate couldn't do anything except fight like a plain warrior. However, the bladesinger chain would only drop his AC by 3 points, so he could still have -37 AC using it.

Doing any action of course cancels bard song, so it is best to have another bard party member singing.

Abazigal will of course still have no trouble hitting you, but Abazigal is the only person in ToB with a THAC0 in the negative 30s. Everyone else is in the negatives 20s or worse. A -27 THAC0 would still miss the -37 AC about half the time, so tanking would still be possible if it wasn't for the lame -24 cap. Why Bioware decided to cap AC at -24 makes no sense.

 

Yeah the AC thing is pretty mental.

Your party gets AC way ahead of any enemy in the game which is just strange, then they cap it for no apparent reason, then they put in enemies who almost never miss and would still almost never miss even if they hadn't capped it. Absolutely senseless, shame it is hardcoded, I'd love to be able to play a proper AC tank.

One thing I've always wondered is: We know AC is capped at twenty four, but, what about AC modifiers versus weapon types? Girdle of Bluntness, the extra slashing and piercing armour bonus on full plate mail, the bonus versus missile weapons on large shields. Can these increase you beyond 24 or do they stop too?

*Sighs* I want an un-hittable character damnit.

 

You can regularly reach below -20 AC on fighter-caster characters by having a bard summon images, and by having more than one bard in the party. With the right gear/spells you can reach even better AC.
Not that it would do much good, even if the -24 AC cap was only a graphical bug. Considering the way numbers roll in BG a string of crits on anything is a sight not all that uncommon - better to go all out-offensive rather than to try and outlast/control your enemies as you would in games like IWD2 (HoF mode).

 

Does UAI remove the restriction on only one AC boosting magic item at a time or is this relying on the ease-of-use/G3 tweaks mod to remove that restriction?

I've always used it in BG2 (and BG1) and as such have no idea if UAI removes that restriction or not in an unmodded game.

 

The restriction applies only to rings/cloaks/amulets of protection and those items I listed don't actually count as a ring/cloak/amulet of protection. That's why I used the ring of Earth Control instead of a ring of protection +3. The ring of protection would actually be better but it cannot be used with the magical armor.

I also just realized that I forgot dexterity based AC. So an 18 dex blade could actually theoretically reach -44 AC if it wasn't for the lame AC cap.

 

No it does not. That restriction is based off the PnP rules which states that you do not get to stack the benefit of magic armor and rings/cloaks/amulets of protection. In PnP you can wear both and you get the highest bonus of the bunch and in the case of magic armor if it has the higher bonus then you still get the ring bonus on saving throws (since magic armor generally do not give you saving throw bonuses with a few exceptions).

The other AC boosting itms in the game are exempt since they are not technically an "item of protection".