D&D 3E/3.5 Appropriate AC, by level

[Greenfield]

This is a simple question: What do you consider a level appropriate Armor Class for the different roles in D&D 3.5?

Those roles being: Front line fighter
Secondary fighter/combat Cleric
Rogue
Ranged specialist (some call this the DPS)
Wizard

My own thought is that the minimum AC should be PC level + 14. That's the bare minimum to even be participating. Heavy fighters will three to five points higher, ideally.

But that's just me, and it presumes that a linear AC scale is right, which could be total white-noise.

What do you think appropriate?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Reasonable AC at level 1 is just 20. More than that is great, if you can get it, but anything less than that is a hindrance. Ranged/Casters can get away with an AC up to 4 points lower than that, but it's just a matter of time before someone sneaks gets past the front line and hits them hard.

Since attack bonus improves by +24 across 20 levels, your AC must improve by at least that much, or else you're falling behind the curve. That's not the rate of progression for a good AC, mind. That's the bare minimum to even be participating. If your level 10 melee combatant doesn't have an AC of at least 32, then it doesn't really matter what their AC is, because they'll go down within a few rounds regardless. Again, ranged/casters can get away with having an AC up to 4 points lower than that.

The obvious problem is that, while offense only requires a steady stream of ever-improving magical weapon to keep pace, defense requires magical armor and shield and ring and amulet and at least one other source of steady AC improvements. (Personally, I go for feats.) Since keeping up with AC requires so much work, most players just give up, and rely on other effects (like displacement, or just having a ton of HP) to protect them. Which is sad, that the system would fail them so badly, but I can't really blame them for making the most of a bad situation. AC isn't even that reliable of a defense, given how many things can bypass it.

 

[jgsugden]

There is no appropriate AC. If the PC can assemble it, it is fine.

A heavy armor PC can start at 17 to 19 at first level, and rise up to 28 or so. They pick up a point here or there as they go when upgrading armor, grabbing a class feature, etc...
Most PCs start around 15 or 16 and may rise up to 20 over the course of a campaign.
The unarmored classes, such as wizards, that do not focus on armor may never get above a 14 without spells, but may have defensive magics that bring them up much higher when necessary.

 

[NotAYakk]

3e's balance is sufficiently absent that, in practice, you get DMs buffing monster ATK values to match player AC. Because missing all the time as the DM doesn't tell a good story.

So an appropriate AC is 0-15 points higher than the monsters ATK value.

This is why "miss chance" is viewed as much better than AC. Unlike AC, there is no standard dial the DM can turn to bypass "miss chance", and it doesn't diverge into 100% invulnerable if the DM doesn't scale monsters along with it.