Minimum HoF AC for melee chars: 65

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There's been some discussion lately around high-AC characters and the need for short-term buffs. One question that springs to mind is, how high does your AC have to be in HoF in order to not be pointless? Perhaps even more important, if you have a character who will be engaging in melee in HoF, what AC does that character need to have?

We often say "AC 72" as if this were some kind of cutoff to strive for, based on the Slayer Knights of Xvim, but in fact there are many, many enemies in the game with BABs less than +52, and a fair number with BABs greater than +52. (There's a Slayer Knight of Xvim at the entrance to the Fields of Slaughter who has +53, and there's a half-dragon with him who has +68.)

I think the highest BAB I see *frequently* is about +45 to +48, suggesting that AC 65 or so should be the AC to strive for. Even in the final battle, most of the allies cap out at +38 or so (except for the Chimera at +60 and Isair at +50). The rare cases which exceed +45 BAB should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, e.g. by Blink/Improved Invis or concentrated fire to take them down quickly. If you were capable of getting AC 80 or 90, well, that would be great, but since you probably can't you'll have to rely on other tactics to beat these guys anyway, so why strain your build trying to get to AC 72 just to avoid using those same tactics on Slayer Knights of Xvim?

Tip: try to avoid letting anyone cast Magic Circle Against Evil on the Slayer Knights. They are much easier while they can still be charmed or Dominated.

-Max

 

How many characters in a single party can get ACs over, say, 40?

I can't imagine an entire party of monk 1/illusionist 7/whatever X are particularly successful. There are only two sets of +5 bracers (one in normal mode, one in HoF mode), etc.

 

You probably could get a whole party to AC 60+, but why would you want to? Ranged attacks scale better than melee attacks. I could imagine having maybe three melee characters at most, but many of the best weapons in the game are ranged weapons anyway so you'd be gaining very little, and the oppotunity cost would be large. You'd be casting lots of buffs constantly and resting a lot.

A sketch of one such party with no level squatting:

1 Dreadmaster20/monk1/rogue1 with illusionist levels for whatever's left over -- uses Indomitable Bands and Crow's Nest/Sunfire Talisman. All stat points to WIS. Main healer/crowd control guy. AC 74 or so maximum.
1 Dreadmaster1/monk1/rogue1/Illusionist20+. Use Brazen Bands/Swing From the Masts, with Tenser's or Iron Body where needed. Is in charge of casting Spirit Armor/Ghost Armor/Cat's Grace/Mass Haste on the druids. All stat points to WIS.
4 druids in Air Elemental Form, with Monk1/Dreadmaster1 mixin. The last one to transform casts Barkskin on everyone else before transforming. All stat points to WIS, Every God's ring on each (I think there are enough). AC 29 base, +13 from WIS, +21-22 from spell buffs listed above, total AC = 63-64, except for one with AC 58-59 from no barkskin. That guy can have all the WIS potions, which will bring him up to AC 61-62.

However, this party would be a complete pain to play because every time you rest, you have to spend NINETEEN ROUNDS casting buffs, mostly from the illusionist. And then most of your damage will come from melee, which means you'll spend more time chasing after enemies than actually hitting them. Yech.

I'd rather optimize one or two characters for survivability, and optimize the rest for (ranged) firepower and/or spellcasting. Trying to build a party where everybody can engage in melee has too high of an opportunity cost to sound like fun to me.

-Max

 

Yep. Like in my case, since almost all of my characters are ranged anyway I just skip the AC problem and focus on summoning spells, haste and tactical invisibility. I rarely need high AC characters, I usually make one only when I want someone to use the holy avenger. For everyone else, there's throwing axes.

 

I find HoF mode difficult because I have the wrong mindset. The way games like Pool of Radiance (the original, not the one featured on this site, which is the 5th in the series. The original was written in 1988) and Curse of the Azure Bonds taught me to play AD&D, along with 2nd edition P&P was that you try to equip your fighters as best you can to survive normal encounters with mooks, and you save your limited buffs for the more difficult boss fights.
Having it be normal to need to keep buffs active all the time just to survive the mooks is a concept I find difficult to grasp. It usually means that it's a signal from the DM that you are entering an area too soon and you need to do some other quest first to level up and find some important artifact or piece of information crucial to completing the quest.

Then again, our DMs took a lot of inspiration from cRPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Crsytallis, Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Might and Magic, Magic Candle, Ultima, etc.

 

That's how I was "raised," too. Probably why I walk into the final fight with Isair/Madae with dozens and dozens of potions that are essentially useless to a 16th-level character, at least 120 enchanted arrows for each character, dozens of scrolls, and every single item slot filled on every single character. Suddenly that "big bad fight" has crept on me, and I've saved so much (since Targos!) that there is no way I could use it even if I wanted to.

I don't keep the buffs up during HoF. I just use a ton of summons, mostly undead (who don't expire with time limits), and keep my guys behind a shield wall of zombies and skeletons, mostly, while my guys shoot arrows, toss axes and hammers (there is a hammer in the LoS mod which is awesome for dwarves), and cast area-effect spells. And lots of Mass Haste spells--those undead are frickin' slow.

 

Heh. Maybe there's something to your logic, because I was also "raised" on the Gold Box games, and I play similarly to both of you. I do use some minimal buffs (Armor/Cat's Grace/Bull's Strength are the main ones) but I dislike using up resources and short-term buffs, and I also end the game with piles of powerful unused magical ammunition and potions. (Potion of Invulnerability is extremely powerful, but I have never used one, ever. I just hoard them. Edit: okay, after using one in a saved game for the first time ever, it turns out that it is not powerful, it is bugged and/or bogus. It just forces a Fortitude save, though since I never failed the save I don't know what happens when you fail.)

IIRC, the Gold Box didn't let you cast any spell buffs that lasted longer than a single combat, which made you very loath to use spell buffs instead of simply fireballing your enemies to end the combat sooner--since spell buffs wouldn't outlast a single combat anyway.

I also try to avoid resting, but I think I'm more influenced there by The Magic Candle's time limits than by the Gold Box, where you rest constantly to regain HP. (Ah, the joy of Fix!)

-Max

 

Technically you could cast some buffs outside of combat, but you lose one round of duration every time you move one square (or one turn if in search mode). Thus, a spell in CotAB would only last two fights at the most, unless you had scripted consecutive fights. In PoR, due to lower levels, you would be lucky if they lasted half way through a second fight.

On the other hand, it wasn't just with modern games that I'd horde magic stuff. I used to wind up at the final fight with Tyranthraxus with tons of unused potions, scrolls, and miscellaneous magic items. Every mage in the party already had the spells in the scrolls scribed.
Often as you said, those items were kinda obsolete for the level the characters were at by the end, and I would only use them if the fight took longer than usual and I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

As for the hesitating to rest, I concede that it was probably Magic Candle and Might and Magic II (did M&M1 have a time limit, I don't recall one) that taught me not to rest too much. Not to mention the limited food in Dungeon Master until you get to the Magenta Worms level or the Pain Rats level. Bard's Tale didn't really have resting, you just killed time in sunlight to regain spell points.

 

There are long duration buffs, and shorter ones. I prepare many castings of the simple ones. Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Bless, Magic Circle against Evil. With just those, my party can venture into hostile wilderness all day long.
Shorter lasting buffs are for areas with many battles successively.
And the shortest ones are barely used, unless there is a boss encounter.

One important thing I do, that I noticed people on YouTube completely neglect, is pausing while you consider choices. If my game is unpaused, the party is in battle, or moving to the next one. Certainly not standing still while I think things over, which wasted precious spell effect duration.

Similar to the above, using 'autopause:spell cast' in the game options saves you a lot of hassle and delay in battle: "Is this still the pre-casting animation? Did the spell cast already? Maybe I should wait a few moments more, because I want to make sure my spell was cast, otherwise it is wasted." that kind of nonsense. It even states which character cast a spell, so you can have all 6 party members casting simultaneously, and you'll know exactly when your units are free to do something else again. Take note that autopause doesn't work on items, but it does with innate abilities like Rage.