What is the maximum AC I can get my pure fighter to? He has 10 DEX and is travelling with a Painbearer / Monk. What items does he need and what buffs should he receive from the Cleric to maximise his defences? At the moment, his AC is only about 19.

I can see that later in the game he is going to get slaughtered, despite his high HP, unless he can put up some shielding.

Do you have the ease-of-use component which adds forgotten items? In that case the list may be a bit different.

10 Base
10 Armour (Pit Fiend)
04 Sheild (Medium armour +1)
05 Generic (Brazen Bands)
03 Deflection (Ring of protection +2) or some spells
02 Dexterity (those Slippers in Seldarine)
05 Expertise (I dont think so :shake: )

By the time you get to the Underdark you should have an AC of 32.
In the Wandering village you might be at AC 28.

Good Luck surviving!

So, not much in the way of spell buffs recommended?

Most of the better buffs are arcane. Painbearer of Ilmater does not have any special spells to help your case much either.
Holy Aura, Greater Sheild of Lathander and Defensive Harmony are the only ones which we can even talk about here.
You can try Prayer, Recitation and Symbol of Pain to decrease the enemies attack bonus. But thats about it .

There are some caster only spells for your monk to use but Im not going there.

Hmmm, some of the later encounters will be interesting then......this no-arcane duo is hard work.

Clerical buffs don't really like AC. You can get offensive buffs or resistances, or better saving throws, but not better AC - the only clerical spell to raise AC that I can recall is Draw upon Holy Might and it only works on self. Maybe those highlevel ones have something castable on not only yourself, but I can't recall any such spell. Waitasec... there is one. Protection from evil, +2 deflection AC. But that would be it.

There's a Ring of Mage Armour and an Amulet of Shield. They're very helpful in the beginning.

Try Expertise, perhaps?

Might have to use his next stat increases into Dex and go the Expertise route. As a pure Fighter, his BAB is colossal so swapping some of that into AC would be very helpful.

This no-arcane duo is proving to be quite an interesting challenge (plus they just hack their way quickly through all the minions so it speeds up the game between big battles without having to keep stopping to learn / cast loads of spells).

I thought AC in IWD2 wasn't all that important, because enemies would eventually be so strong that they'd hit you anyway.

And doesn't Defensive Harmony give
+3 AC to the entire party?

Divine Shell gives a +6 deflection bonus, the best in the game. This is great news for your monk/cleric, but it does'nt help your fighter as Divine Shell is self-cast only. Greater Shield of Lathandar is the way to go. Too bad it has a terribly short duration.

Defensive Harmony gives +4 Deflection AC vis-a-vis +2 from Prot. from Evil. And I dont think they stack.

Greater Shield of Lathandar is great except for the fact that I dont think you will want your cleric tied up casting just one spell for so long which ends before it begins.

I really think that (Greater) Shield of Lathander sucks. You are busy casting it for an entire round, then you have some protections (I don't have the data here, but I thought it wasn't anything that great) and it only lasts for two stupid rounds.

Stupid spells...

Yeah, I thought the duration on Greater Shield of Lathander was ridiculous. Just not worth it.

@Harbourboy, you might want to check out Jukka Mikonnen's guide. He tell's you how to reach an AC of 72(!!).

Its hard, but well worth it apparently.

You might want to read it, just for ideas atleast.

Yeah, but i can't get close with only a fighter and a cleric. To get to 72, I think you need a deep gnome, barkskin and some arcane buffs.