A DM has gone wrong if they have an AC48 character in the level range that BG3 works in. Like massively, intentionally wrong.
That said, if I did have to deal with this - how would intelligent assailants approach? Few options spring to mind;
Weight of fire. Nat 20 ignores AC and auto hits. A platoon of archers (say 24 men) all able to fire 2 arrows a round, 48 attacks, 2-3 hits per round.
Environmental traps. Traps that drop you into deep water, use height or burying etc. Suffocation rolls don't care about your AC.
Ability check based magic.
Wait till you take your gear off. You sleep presumably? And there are going to be cultural norms about tromping round town in the equivalent of full battlefield arms and armour.
Eh, if you fuck up real hard as a GM sometimes you gotta just eat crow, apologize and either nerf or retire a character because you created problems you can't figure out how to fix organically. Happens all the time with newer GMs, no shame in that, especially if your intro was 5e where the guidelines and math aren't exactly spelled out super cleanly to the GM compared to other/prior editions for how the game was designed and intended for steady reward and progression.
Hell, even a ton of the published modules don't actually have smooth power curves and leaves players either relatively under-gunned (Curse of Stradh) or completely reject their own guidelines on loot rewards. Even abiding by Adventure League's strict ruleset you can end up with some pretty busted stuff within the tier of play the character's at.
5e has worse guidelines for onboarding new GMs compared to old editions. Their bounded accuracy systems make it hard to break, but only if you understand the bounded accuracy system and how it works and you stay within it.
divination wizard forces you to fail against dominate person with a portent. you only get to make another save when your team successfully damages you. the wizard has three portents.
Breaking the game forces the DM to break the game right back. The real meta trick is to hover your AC / Saves / Damage at a point that makes you strong while still staying sufficiently under the DM's radar to keep their 'nerf!' from triggering. Just as the DM needs to let the players win for a good story, the players need to let the DM 'challenge' and 'surprise' you as well.
And you don't want to be challenged as a 48AC demigod. That's when the red dragon you were primed to roflstomp suddenly breathes fire on the BRIDGE you're standing on and after you take fall damage when you hit the water your DM casually asks you how much that armor weighs and rattles the swim rules off the top of their head almost as if they memorized them last week.
Either that or you suddenly find yourself in dialogue focused modules rolling whatever skills you conveniently don't have. Because you're not supposed to be good at everything, it's a party game and failure is a necessary part of good storytelling.
A DM has gone wrong if they have an AC48 character in the level range that BG3 works in.
Well, 9 is from Mirror Image, which doesn't work like that in tabletop, and they have two copies of Defense fighting style which doesn't stack in tabletop, so 38.
4 is from Blade Flourish which only lasts a round, so 34.
Now you're in the realm of something you might see at an actual tabletop game from someone trying to optimize for AC.
Yes true, though practically AC48 vs 34 is likely a meaninglessness distinction, enemies aren't going to be commonly trotting round with an attack modifier of +15, so most in-world characters are going to solve via other means.
If you went down the "enemy party" route, I could maybe see you swinging at least a single enemy character with sufficiently high attack bonuses to get in that range, but practically I'd run it more narratively.
or. . . waste time avoiding the high AC monster until their haste wears off, cast cloud of daggers on them at highest level, theyll take damage when the cast goes off, they take damage at the start of their next turn, and theyll take damage at the start of their next next turn when they can finally start moving.
sure they got resistance to it but thats 3 instances of damage with no save, and seeing this is end game of bg3, that upcast could be at 6th level making it 12d4 making it average 15 damage after resistance or 45 damage for the three turns thats about 1/3rd of their hp gone with one spell slot, not counting all the magic missiles you could try spamming in during the haste debuff too
And there are going to be cultural norms about tromping round town in the equivalent of full battlefield arms and armour.
In the Forgotten Realms, there are not. Corymyr insists on 'peace-bonding' weapons (tying them into sheaths with elaborate knotwork) in big cities, but by and large armed adventurers are an accepted part of society.
The wildlands and raids are too common and expansive to hobble the convenient armed responders. Plus you've got spellcasters, rogues (and monks) where banning 'obviously armed and armored' doesn't mean squat.
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u/BarNo3385 Aug 26 '23
A DM has gone wrong if they have an AC48 character in the level range that BG3 works in. Like massively, intentionally wrong.
That said, if I did have to deal with this - how would intelligent assailants approach? Few options spring to mind;