Guide to AC.

[kapruski]

This was written before a little incident that shall go further unmentioned, and since it's for the players, I'll add it.

Everything you need to know about AC.

This guide should explain what AC is, how it functions, and what you can gain from it.

The History of AC comes from D&D. The only thing that's relevant or important to know is that ,in D&D, AC provided the change to completely avoid damage. You either took a hit or were missed. This was based on a "dice roll", where in the game D&D real dice were used, and where in video games where random sets of numbers can be found for things like damage and healing and experience gains, virtual dice are used. The roll was "to hit", so whatever you rolled for the dice to hit an AC value of X, if you were at or above the requirement, you hit, and if below you missed. Modifiers to the "to hit" value also affected this either negatively or positively. For instance, if you were blind then you rolled, and took a penalty "to hit" of the amount blindness gave. If this modified number still reached the required threshold, you hit. As blindness usually gave a reasonably sized penalty, you require a much higher roll to hit.


Fast foward to MUDs and AR. In this, the trend of AC being futher into negative is still retained (D&D scored AC as better if further towards zero than infinity, and further towards -infinity than zero once you got below that point), however, the range of it was increased dramatically. You could say -10 AC in D&D would be like -100 AC in AR. basically, the whole scale was expanded to make numbers more reliable if you geared a certain way.
In AR, this AC grants you the ability to be completely missed. However, unlike D&D it also grants damage reduction.


Here's an example:

[kapruski]

Addendum: AC provides the ability to be missed completely with relative ease from rank 1-30. Beyond this the system is claimed to break down, as the original mud was designed for max of 30 levels. However, in the upper (or lower) numbers of AC, specifically 300-500 or more, you can still be missed completely.

[Davairus]

Hi kapruski!

Wow. That's a very nice post and I really appreciate you taking the time to write that up for everyone's benefit. You were spot on for a lot of stuff, and I will confirm that the damage reduction is percentage based. But you are incorrect about the slot multipliers being removed for regular armor, so I would like to clear that up for you and everybody else to extend my regards.

Example: Before and after wearing a platinum plate:

[Eloret]

I have found the invoker enchant armor to be relatively useless to higher ranked invokers. I just never saw the benefit in enchanting titanium fullplate armor or something of the sort that the Invoker would have some sort of struggle regaining. So the advantage of an extra few armor class was not worth the risk of losing the other attributes the armor would offer. A lower rank invoker I could see the need if one layer of enchant armor would offer them whatever the mulitplier is like -1 x 5 = -5 ac. That could get very beneficial to a low rank invoker who is trying to solo rank.

[kapruski]

Thanks for the shout out, but I really cant take any credit for it. It was Fireballer's study he wanted me to post for him when his forum account got banned.

[Davairus]

ok

[Fireballe2]

AC multipliers.

head *2
torso *4
arm *3
hand *1
leg *3
feet *1

body *2
waist *1