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[GiglameshDespair]

You could get a spike of 26AC on a level 1 Forge Cleric if you chose right.

Chainmail: base of 16
Blessing of the forge on it: +1
Shield: +2
Shield of Faith: +2 (while concentrating)
That only gives a base of mere 21.

If you're a variant human, however, take Magic Initiate for Shield to spike it into 26AC.

That'd be out of the box.

If you had a Dex of 16, took the scale mail instead and chose Medium Armour Master for your feat you'd get that 22AC for your combat, but no spike.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This only emboldens my belief that NA and UD should stack. Look at that and tell me stacking is what's OP.

[Criptfeind]

It's a little bit harder to do this sorta thing in actual use, since shield requires a somatic component which is hard to keep ready when you hold a shield unless you have warcaster. And even then it's a single use ability. Strong? Yeah. Op? Depends on your game, maybe. You can only block one attack after all (luck feats probably more op) I'm basically doing this in my current game (not quite, but same idea, heavy armor with shield and shield, same ac reached) and I get fucked up all the time still.

NA stacking with UD though is a +3 (or +7) all the time to monks or barbarians though, which I think is probably stronger over all, and also disproportionate as a racial class feature, vs this being class features and feats.

[GiglameshDespair]

This only emboldens my belief that NA and UD should stack. Look at that and tell me stacking is what's OP.

Because that 21/22 AC is with magic - there's a cost to it, and they won't gain Evasion or proficiency in all saves either.

Letting AC and UD stack would pretty much make lizardmen or 1-level dragonsorc dips the best monks, because an extra 3 AC for free all the time is pretty huge.

[Kadzar]

Yeah, I mean, that Cleric build is probably actually going to have only 19 AC most of the time, since shield of faith only last 10 minutes, and a level 1 cleric only has 2 spell slots. So, unless you only face 2 combats per day, or they're all spaced very close together, there's going to be times you'll have to go without them. Also, if you're spending your slots on shield of faith, that means you're able to use them for other uses, like healing or buffing your party.

Also, the shield spell, while providing a nice burst AC increase, only lasts until the start of your next turn, and, if you get it from Magic Initiate, you can only use it once per long rest. (Sage Advice says you can alternatively cast it with your spell slots if you picked your spell from a class list of a class you have. So, if you took a level in wizard or sorcerer, it would be cool.)

[Cruxador]

I went ahead and made an expansion to Dawn of Worlds* which I thought you guys might be interesting. The original is a narrative experience where you cooperatively create a fantasy world. It only took a few tweaks to turn into a tabletop strategy game about divinity, while retaining the narrative aspect, and also adding more of an RPG aspect.

Right now it's an early version and although the game has been tested, the most recently added elements have not. Nonetheless I thought I'd share it in case people are interested in such things. So here. Feedback is welcome.

_{*This is the official download on their site, for anyone who worries about piracy. It's there for your use.}

[Liber celi]

All Hit Point-based systems are a conscious departure from realism in favor of gameability. Sorry for the platitude but there are no hit points in real life.
Here is one defense of the basic idiosyncracies of (old school, BECMI) D&D combat on the basis of realism. Personally I think a simulation of reality is a Sisyphean task and not really why I play RPGs with dwarves and talking rats.
 
I played systems with damage reduction (Das Schwarze Auge 4th ed etc) and systems with AC and I don't think it influenced my characters' tactical behaviour much.

[Jimmy]

There's a Pathfinder alternate ruleset that introduce wound thresholds as an additional system to hit points, where you suffer penalties to future rolls based on how wounded (3/4, 1/2, 1/4) you are compared to your maximum hit points. Never really played those, since it's an extra layer of bookkeeping on top of an already complex combat system. I can understand the appeal to represent some kind of consequence for suffering near mortal injury, but honestly I'm happy to just accept that it's a game and lump it in the same box of weird that lets people shoot fire by wiggling their fingers properly.

[Trekkin]

Personally I think a simulation of reality is a Sisyphean task and not really why I play RPGs with dwarves and talking rats.

I can understand the appeal to represent some kind of consequence for suffering near mortal injury, but honestly I'm happy to just accept that it's a game and lump it in the same box of weird that lets people shoot fire by wiggling their fingers properly.

My question when this sort of reasoning comes up is this: how far can we let that go before we start breaking with players' understanding of how things work and crippling both immersion and their basic ability to act with intent in the game? Sure we put impossible things in RPGs, but there's a difference between adding a new thing and changing how something works with respect to reality in that the latter is counterintuitive in addition to being another thing to remember. "Wizards can shoot fire from their hands" doesn't conflict with my knowledge of the world the way "housecats are a lethal threat to peasants" does, since I (obviously) don't have any experience with wizards but I have had an angry cat on my hands before. Using the former to justify the latter kind of ignores the added stumbling block we've just added to players' ability to do things with the rules and an additional thing they must remember about the game, and enough problems of that sort can turn people away from the ruleset just as easily as slavish and overcomplicated devotion to realism.

And, of course, you can carry it to absurd lengths and excuse the moon being invisible and the peasant railgun and just about anything with "well what about wizards", and that feels like an invitation to design bad, silly rules.

[Telgin]

As a small aside on how HP represent a departure from reality, I can accept that, but since I'm having to accept an abstraction I prefer damage resistant armor to dodge armor.  It can change tactics sometimes though, since many systems with DR instead of AC will make low damage attacks useless instead of letting them have a small chance of doing minor damage.  There are ways around that, but it adds complexity.

Another small aside with level based scaling HP systems is that it makes healing magic weird.  Someone who is higher level is harder to heal now, for some reason.  The implication is that having more HP is at least partially a heroic ability to roll with hits or avoid the worst of them, but that has strange interactions with healing magic too.

GURPS is my go-to system, which uses DR instead of AC, and it also doesn't have scaling HP.  I like the way it appeals to realism on those fronts, but it's also definitely an example of a complicated game system as a result.

[Kagus]

No love for Dark Heresy/WFRP's wounds and armor system?

[Hanslanda]

No love for Dark Heresy/WFRP's wounds and armor system?

Roll to die or die really horribly!

(It's a great system actually. I wish I could play more of either)

[Sirus]

Same here. Maybe when my current game ends I'll try to run one of the 40k RPGs.

[Telgin]

No love for Dark Heresy/WFRP's wounds and armor system?

The critical hit system does stand out in my mind, but how did the normal damage and armor work?  If I remember, it had a damage threshold based on your toughness, right?

I don't remember how it scaled in those games explicitly, but I do know a few systems where that tends to end up making your body count for as much or more for damage reduction than armor.

[Trekkin]

The critical hit system does stand out in my mind, but how did the normal damage and armor work?  If I remember, it had a damage threshold based on your toughness, right?

It's mostly an HP system, with armor and toughness bonus as a damage threshold; normal damage doesn't have any effect until it exceeds a character's Wounds, at which point it becomes critical damage and has the effects listed on the crit tables.