Are sword and board builds as useless in this as last game?

[Khamul]

Title. And what I mean by that, is for builds like AC and stuff, I really did not like the fact a robe wearing monk had higher AC than someone going sword and board. Absolutely killed any interest/immersion I had. Are they any better this time, or is the same deal where if you want that to be viable, you put on a goofy bath robe?

[Edstyles]

You can do good damage with elemental barrage . Equip kukri and U got some damage . Try fighter i guess for decent ac.

If you want higher ac U need to multiclass a Litle .
So far camellia has more ac than me . Using monk Oracle build . Lv ,10. Made her mutation warrior

[ExcaliburV]

If you build them right they should both be equally good, generally.

As far as immersion goes, that's easy. A monk's AC comes from them being really good at dodging, and a sword/board AC comes from being really good at bracing. AC doesn't just mean having really thicc armor.

[ayrtep]

My experience playing solo/core is that sword/shield builds are the best str based pure fighter builds and can be almost as good as dex based fighters.

Two handed builds can look impressive when they are cleaving though armies in one turn, but in the long run their low AC mean they lack staying power.

[mosspit]

Currently I am using a modified version of this sword and board build. It uses DR stacking instead of AC stacking which opens up opportunities to do decent dmg as well. So the build actually utilitises armour instead of the naked/robes variant.

Recently the build was able to hold the line against Playful Darkness on Core while companions debuffed PD with Dispels and Wrecking Rays. After being significantly debuffed, this build can just auto-attack PD to death.