Fist of the Forest CON AC bonus

[SneakWalker]

The AC bonus Fist of the Forest receives from CON should increase with the additions made to CON (bear's endurance spell, +CON items, standard rage bonus, ...). These bonuses should be excluded from bonus ACs from some classes such as Monks. Since Barbarian and Monk cannot be on the same character, I do not think it will be an OP situation.

[zhazz]

A character can have Fist of the Forest levels without being a Monk though. I do think it would be cool to allow FotF AC to scale with items/buffs, but when added to a Barbarian the AC bonus will be at least +6 with Epic Rage and items (12 total Con bonus). Considering that Barbarian already has easy access to Ice Troll Berserker, which grants +8 Natural Armor AC with Epic Rage it's quite a lot of AC for little investment.

Something like Barbarian 21 / Fighter 6 / Fist of the Forest 3 would be incredibly strong.
Base Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution at 21, 14, and 15 respectively, going to 34, 18, and 26 with items and Epic Rage.

That alone is already 10 Base + 4 Dexterity + 3 Acrobatics + 8 Ice Troll Berserker + 8 Fist of the Forest + 4 Armor Enhancement + 4 Deflection + 4 Dodge Boots = 45 AC without any modes or even a shield. Add in a Tower Shield (+8 total) and Combat Expertise (+5) the AC goes up to 58 AC.

58 AC while being able to rage 6 times per day for 16 rounds each, and also having both high Fortitude and Will saves, the latter with Indomitable Mind, makes it just too well-rounded of a build. Especially since it also gets Evasion and Expose Weakness.

The AB won't be terrible either, sitting at 30 BAB + 12 Strength + 4 Weapon EB - 2 Tower Shield - 5 Combat Expertise = 39 AB, which is enough to hit most things, even epic content. Especially once Expose Weakness kicks in.


All of these are numbers that a Barbarian can get anyway, though not with the same high Constitution and thus number of Hit Points and saves. That's the real kicker here, being able to triple-dip on Fortitude, Will saves and AC.

To balance it, Fist of the Forest would need to only get its AC when being both unarmored and unarmed.

[Ewe]

I have been working on a fix to make Fist of the Forest (as well as Phantom) AC work as innate AC (rather than dodge AC) to be more consistent with wisdom AC (from monk).

The rules are a bit complicated to fully explain in a short post. Dalo might have more details as Dalo rewrote the core algorithm that I am including. I don't know when/if this will go live.

[SneakWalker]

A character can have Fist of the Forest levels without being a Monk though. I do think it would be cool to allow FotF AC to scale with items/buffs, but when added to a Barbarian the AC bonus will be at least +6 with Epic Rage and items (12 total Con bonus). Considering that Barbarian already has easy access to Ice Troll Berserker, which grants +8 Natural Armor AC with Epic Rage it's quite a lot of AC for little investment.

Something like Barbarian 21 / Fighter 6 / Fist of the Forest 3 would be incredibly strong.
Base Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution at 21, 14, and 15 respectively, going to 34, 18, and 26 with items and Epic Rage.

That alone is already 10 Base + 4 Dexterity + 3 Acrobatics + 8 Ice Troll Berserker + 8 Fist of the Forest + 4 Armor Enhancement + 4 Deflection + 4 Dodge Boots = 45 AC without any modes or even a shield. Add in a Tower Shield (+8 total) and Combat Expertise (+5) the AC goes up to 58 AC.

58 AC while being able to rage 6 times per day for 16 rounds each, and also having both high Fortitude and Will saves, the latter with Indomitable Mind, makes it just too well-rounded of a build. Especially since it also gets Evasion and Expose Weakness.

The AB won't be terrible either, sitting at 30 BAB + 12 Strength + 4 Weapon EB - 2 Tower Shield - 5 Combat Expertise = 39 AB, which is enough to hit most things, even epic content. Especially once Expose Weakness kicks in.


All of these are numbers that a Barbarian can get anyway, though not with the same high Constitution and thus number of Hit Points and saves. That's the real kicker here, being able to triple-dip on Fortitude, Will saves and AC.

To balance it, Fist of the Forest would need to only get its AC when being both unarmored and unarmed.

First of all, thank you for your interest and answer.

There are a few errors in the AC calculation.

Barb 21+fighter 6+fotf 3 with 22 str, 12 dex, 22 con at lvl30
Base 10
Dodge boots 4
Deflection 4
Armor 4
Dex 3
Acro 3
CE 5
ITB 8
Fotf 12(item+rage[34 con])

If you wear any shield or armor, the FotF armor bonus will be disabled.

Then total AC can reach to 53 AC without buff (IMA etc.).

[DaloLorn]

I have been working on a fix to make Fist of the Forest (as well as Phantom) AC work as innate AC (rather than dodge AC) to be more consistent with wisdom AC (from monk).

The rules are a bit complicated to fully explain in a short post. Dalo might have more details as Dalo rewrote the core algorithm that I am including. I don't know when/if this will go live.

The rules are in flux (in the sense that they can still be amended, whether directly in the plugin or through scripted workarounds like the one we have for Canny/Unfettered Defense stacking with Bladesong Style), but the gist of it is as follows:

• FotF, Monk, Phantom, and Sacred Fist lose all class AC when polymorphed, holding a shield, or encumbered. (This is as it is today, just codified within the plugin.)
• Of the above, only Sacred Fist gets class AC when wearing armor, and only if it is light armor. (Ditto; we do currently have to explicitly remove WIS AC when a monk/SF is wearing light armor due to a vanilla bug, but this bug is being fixed.)
• Monk and Phantom receive their enhanced WIS modifier as innate AC, with the caveat that Phantom can only gain Wisdom AC up to their Phantom level. (This is as today, except Phantom's AC is now correctly the same type as Monk's.)
• Monk, Phantom, and Sacred Fist each receive 1 extra AC per 5 class levels. These levels are counted separately for each class: A Monk 3/Sacred Fist 2 would not be entitled to +1 class AC despite totalling 5 levels. (This is as today.)
• Only the greater of Monk and Phantom's AC buffs will apply. The other classes' AC buffs all stack with each other in their entirety, this is only about Monk and Phantom. (Currently, Phantom AC simply shuts off if you have Monk levels, regardless of which buff is stronger... which is usually a distinction without a difference, but it's still a distinction that is going away now.)
• FotF receives its enhanced CON modifier as innate AC. (This is as proposed in the OP, though the change predates this thread. I didn't know how to make it only scale with base CON directly in the plugin, but I'll be keeping an ear out for any issues that arise: I can easily add an AC penalty to compensate, and besides his own proposal of restricting FotF AC to requiring unarmed combat, I can think of three more ways - each of them more aggressive than the last - to put down the synergy Zhazz is worried about.)

The plugin also features a number of other AC fixes, but having neither seen nor tweaked their source code, I cannot describe them in detail. AFAIK, one of them will be a great boon to Men-at-Arms in particular (except against touch attacks ): Shield Block and Shield Specialization should now directly increase Shield AC - stacking with Shield enhancements, of course - instead of providing Dodge AC. Now that I mention it, I wonder if we should do the same for Divine Shield... I remember it being discussed once, but dismissed due to technical limitations.