Is targeting touch AC really better than going for the normal AC?

[Sagandur]

In order to avoid the high AC enemies in WOTR, we're instructed to aim for the Touch AC, but the problem is that, despite Touch AC being much lower, we still have to deal with Spell Resistance. Now we have two obstacles instead of one.

Is it really more advantageous to go for Touch AC then? Aren't there other ways to circumvent the high AC of those enemies that, apparently, you can only hit if you crit?

I'm curretly playing on Core difficulty with some adjustments (dead companions rise after combat and negative effects end with resting), but many enemies seem untouchable, like that red dragon.

[Royale]

Originally posted by Sagandur:

In order to avoid the high AC enemies in WOTR, we're instructed to aim for the Touch AC, but the problem is that, despite Touch AC being much lower, we still have to deal with Spell Resistance. Now we have two obstacles instead of one.

Is it really more advantageous to go for Touch AC then? Aren't there other ways to circumvent the high AC of those enemies that, apparently, you can only hit if you crit?

I'm curretly playing on Core difficulty with some adjustments (dead enemies rise after combat and negative effects end with resting), but many enemies seem untouchable, like that red dragon.

attack vs touch defense is almost always the easier way to hit the enemy. It is possible to overclock a normal attack to hit "untouchable" enemies (like a red dragon for you), but this will require more effort and deeper knowledge of the mechanics. Therefore, yes - AC by touch is most preferable

[fauxpas]

Also spell resistance can be rendered moot.

[MjKorz]

Spell resistance is a joke for any dedicated full arcane spellcaster starting from chapter 3.

Targeting touch AC is good, but you can also massively debuff enemy AC and make them easy to hit by making the enemy Flat-footed (dexterity bonus to AC is negated) or outright Helpless (eligible for Coup de Grace attempts which are automatic criticals and kill on a failed Fortitude save).

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Note some critters like say, a Fae, tend to have high touch AC due to them having high dexterity and special "shield abilities"

As Royale rightly says though, really big critters like dragons, tend to have very poor Touch AC because it's so easy to touch them

So one trick is to hit them with Enervation and Energy Drain will hammer the enemy's over all power, reducing their attack and saves by 1d4 and 2d4 respectively, which is huge

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Spell resistance is a joke for any dedicated full arcane spellcaster starting from chapter 3.

Targeting touch AC is good, but you can also massively debuff enemy AC and make them easy to hit by making the enemy Flat-footed (dexterity bonus to AC is negated) or outright Helpless (eligible for Coup de Grace attempts which are automatic criticals and kill on a failed Fortitude save).

Well said! :)

Making an enemy "Shaken" and then using "Shatter Defences", means all your attacks target "flat footed" which is a big difference on many enemies

[fox5s]

Spell Resistance becomes a non-issue by the end of Act 2. By then you should have Spell Penetration, probably Greater Spell Pen, and probably be picking up Mythic Spell Pen. And that's before you get other things that allow you to either roll Spell Pen twice or have an auto 20 for your first Spell Pen roll.

As an example, Ember comes by default already on the way to being an amazing Ray caster. By the time you can get to the dragon, if you want her to, you can have her firing three rays a round doing 4d6 + 9 + 50% extra random damage per ray via Bolstering and Empowering and at +12 Spell Pen on top of her level. You might be able to have it Maximized by then as well. And that's just off the top of my head with Scorching Ray. She gets much better rays and can push the damage MUCH higher later.

[Drake]

Most (if not all) conjuration attack spells bypass spell resistance. You target touch AC and don't need to go for spell penetration.
Conjuration is really a handy school in this campaign overall.
if you pick ascendant cold, you can pretty much fill your entire spellbook with snowball and spam it with various metamagic. With a white or silver dragon bloodline you can really make a killing with that spell alone.

[SIlverblade-T-E]

Originally posted by Drake:

Most (if not all) conjuration attack spells bypass spell resistance. You target touch AC and don't need to go for spell penetration.
Conjuration is really a handy school in this campaign overall.
if you pick ascendant cold, you can pretty much fill your entire spellbook with snowball and spam it with various metamagic. With a white or silver dragon bloodline you can really make a killing with that spell alone.

And, touch attacks that do damage allow crits AND sneak attacks
Thus "Sense Vitals" and similar boosts to damage will apply to touch or ranged touch attacks that do damage! ;)

so, with Sense Vitals acting as a sneak attack effect, especially if you have a character class that does sneak attack damage, it can all add up :)

[Soul]

Originally posted by SIlverblade-T-E:

Originally posted by Drake:

Most (if not all) conjuration attack spells bypass spell resistance. You target touch AC and don't need to go for spell penetration.
Conjuration is really a handy school in this campaign overall.
if you pick ascendant cold, you can pretty much fill your entire spellbook with snowball and spam it with various metamagic. With a white or silver dragon bloodline you can really make a killing with that spell alone.

And, touch attacks that do damage allow crits AND sneak attacks
Thus "Sense Vitals" and similar boosts to damage will apply to touch or ranged touch attacks that do damage! ;)

so, with Sense Vitals acting as a sneak attack effect, especially if you have a character class that does sneak attack damage, it can all add up :)

true... but it doesnt work with metamagic bolster... which can be pretty big damage increase if you stack it...

sense vitals goes up to 5d6... with other sources it can go higher im sure... but its limited with on what can do with ranged spells and sneak attack.... enemies have to have the right conditions for it to work... whereas going to town with say bolster, empowered, and maximize all favorited through mythic path can make a lot of damage regardless of conditions pretty much....

not to mention you can bolster things like fireball... which you'd need 10 levels in arcane trickster for that.... and by level 10 that would be a flat 20 extra damage with bolster alone.... add 1 draconic bloodline and the new amulet from last sarkorians and fireball deals 10d6 + 10 from bloodline + 20 from bolster + 20 from amulet = 10d6 + 50 damage

[Drake]

Originally posted by Soul:

Originally posted by SIlverblade-T-E:

And, touch attacks that do damage allow crits AND sneak attacks
Thus "Sense Vitals" and similar boosts to damage will apply to touch or ranged touch attacks that do damage! ;)

so, with Sense Vitals acting as a sneak attack effect, especially if you have a character class that does sneak attack damage, it can all add up :)

true... but it doesnt work with metamagic bolster... which can be pretty big damage increase if you stack it...

sense vitals goes up to 5d6... with other sources it can go higher im sure... but its limited with on what can do with ranged spells and sneak attack.... enemies have to have the right conditions for it to work... whereas going to town with say bolster, empowered, and maximize all favorited through mythic path can make a lot of damage regardless of conditions pretty much....

not to mention you can bolster things like fireball... which you'd need 10 levels in arcane trickster for that.... and by level 10 that would be a flat 20 extra damage with bolster alone.... add 1 draconic bloodline and the new amulet from last sarkorians and fireball deals 10d6 + 10 from bloodline + 20 from bolster + 20 from amulet = 10d6 + 50 damage

Yeah but this topic is about AC.

A DC caster is something else entirely. In that sense who cares about a fireball at lv 20 when you can just cast wierd with an illusion build and insta kill the room .

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Drake:

Yeah but this topic is about AC.

A DC caster is something else entirely. In that sense who cares about a fireball at lv 20 when you can just cast wierd with an illusion build and insta kill the room .

Illusion is just one school. You can make an enchanter, evoker or a conjurer who can inflict flat-footed or helpless status in an AoE, dumpstering the AC or enemy groups.

[Icedfate]

Core difficulty.
level 13, all my casters have spell pen, greater spell pen, mythic spell pen and our spell pen is between 21-22, depending on the character. mythic rank 3. nenio has 22 because i put a shirt on her gives +2

many enemies at this point have 30 spell resistance, which means we still have 40% chance of failing. .

although, we do succeed often. nenio especially because i gave her the magic missile dagger and i'm using magic missiles. they do 3-7 per missile. . .except when seelah uses mark of justice and suddenly nenio is doing 35 per missile and i'm like wtf, 175 damage with magic missiles is broken AF. ..

but still because of spell resistance, usually 1-2 of the missiles gets resisted.

i still have never managed to make phantasmal killer work, despite giving her both spell focus feats, as well as spell specialization so she casts it 2 levels higher and heighten spell to cast it out of her highest level slot and these enemies have such bloated high saving throws, they still need to roll a nat 1. . .twice, to get killed by it, because phantasmal killer has them make 2 saves, a fort and a will and if they succeed one of them, then the spell fails and i don't get it, how people say it's a good spell and claim they killed that level 25 dragon with it and i guess it's possible if they quicksaved and scummed it 400 times until it somehow breaks through the resistance AND the dragon rolls nat 1 on both saves, i guess it's possible that way. . .

i can't imagine playing this game without all 3 of those spell penetrate feats. those feats are mandatory for all casters. . .

some jokester in another thread claimed the the regular spell pen feats are worthless because you can just take the mythic version feat, but duh, you can't even take the mythic feat unless you have the regular one and the mythic feat doesn't have its full effect unless you take greater spell pen as well

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

Flat-Footed is an option. Either you need shrouded step or greater invis. If the enemy has uncanny dodge, you need dazzling display + shatter defenses to allow sneak attacks.

Touch AC is not much of a problem to target with a blaster caster. Scorching Ray / Battering Blast. You can use heighten MM to get more casts. Later you get Hellfire Ray. You can skill quicken meta magic and use it with True Strike.

[Icedfate]

i went a bit off topic there. .
the thing with touch AC is since casters have much lower BAB, they have no chance of breaking through the 40+ AC that some of these big mofos have, but then when that same mofo has only 25 touch AC, there's your solution. it's a way of letting the casters still be useful, but yeah, you need that spell penetration.

side question is when i have a caster using ranged touch attacks, choosing weapon focus, am i supposed to choose "touch" or "ray"? i'm gonna speculate that "touch" is referring only to the melee ranged touch attacks like shocking grasp and vampiric touch, while ray is ranged touch like scorching rays and hellfire rays, but what are the cantrips like acid splash considered rays or touch? i guess ray of frost is a ray,

it's just in the descriptions, every spell either says "ranged TOUCH attack" or "melee TOUCH attack", but then in weapon focus, they have either "touch" or "ray". and the description of touch says it works with all "touch" attacks and ray says "ray attacks"
does ray only work with spells with "ray" in their title or is ray referring to all ranged touch attacks?
or do i take touch for ranged touch attacks, but then rays are also ranged touch attacks, which would mean do those stack or is weapon focus touch only referring to the melee touch while ray is all the ranged touches?
so is it all rays are ranged touch attacks but not all ranged touch attacks are rays?

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

Core difficulty.
level 13, all my casters have spell pen, greater spell pen, mythic spell pen and our spell pen is between 21-22, depending on the character. mythic rank 3. nenio has 22 because i put a shirt on her gives +2

many enemies at this point have 30 spell resistance, which means we still have 40% chance of failing. .

although, we do succeed often. nenio especially because i gave her the magic missile dagger and i'm using magic missiles. they do 3-7 per missile. . .except when seelah uses mark of justice and suddenly nenio is doing 35 per missile and i'm like wtf, 175 damage with magic missiles is broken AF. ..

but still because of spell resistance, usually 1-2 of the missiles gets resisted.

i still have never managed to make phantasmal killer work, despite giving her both spell focus feats, as well as spell specialization so she casts it 2 levels higher and heighten spell to cast it out of her highest level slot and these enemies have such bloated high saving throws, they still need to roll a nat 1. . .twice, to get killed by it, because phantasmal killer has them make 2 saves, a fort and a will and if they succeed one of them, then the spell fails and i don't get it, how people say it's a good spell and claim they killed that level 25 dragon with it and i guess it's possible if they quicksaved and scummed it 400 times until it somehow breaks through the resistance AND the dragon rolls nat 1 on both saves, i guess it's possible that way. . .

i can't imagine playing this game without all 3 of those spell penetrate feats. those feats are mandatory for all casters. . .

some jokester in another thread claimed the the regular spell pen feats are worthless because you can just take the mythic version feat, but duh, you can't even take the mythic feat unless you have the regular one and the mythic feat doesn't have its full effect unless you take greater spell pen as well

Level 13 is a point in the game where Nenio can have MR4 and achieve the following spell penetration caster level check bonus of 32:
13 from CL13
+4 from Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration
+4 from Mythic Spell Penetration at MR4
+2 from Holy Symbol of Iomedae
+1 from Goggles of Pure Sight
+2 from Robe of Inevitability
+2 from Ring of Pyromania
+4 from Quarterstaff of the Warmage

However, in practice you don't even need Mythic Spell Penetration and I always delay it until MR6. When facing exceptionally high SR enemies in chapter 3 like Hal, use Sosiel to buff Nenio with either Touch of Law which forces Nenio to roll 11 on her d20 spellpen caster level check roll OR Bit of Luck just before the fight starts which forces Nenio to roll both her Initiative AND spellpen checks twice and take the better result.

The game gives you abundant tools to buff your spellpen in chapter 3 to such a degree that SR becomes a non-issue.

Nenio can never be a good illusionist due to her starting Spell Focus feat being Illusion which prevents her from using Expanded Arsenal Illusion. For this reason she will never be able to cast Illusion spells effectively against enemies with high saves on anything but the lowest difficulties. Since Nenio is a fox and gets the inherent Kitsune Magic ability granting her a +1 Enchantment spell DC, she is best suited to be an Enchantress. This is compounded by the fact that Enchantment is a school that has the highest spell DC boost from items out of all schools in the game. If you want to see how to make a proper Enchantress out of Nenio, look here:
https://pastebin.com/RbdQQSqx

Also, spell specialization does not increase the DC of a spell, it only increases its CL and is mostly useful for increasing the caster level check bonus of your Greater Dispel.

On certain builds ALL spell penetration feats can be completely worthless. I'm playing such a build right now as an Evoker Lich. Another example of such a build would be Azata due to a combination of Favorable Magic, Ode to Miraculous Magic, Songs of Steel and Allied Spellcaster shared between the entire party via Life-Bonding Friendship allowing the Azata caster to penetrate SR46 without failure.