Hello!

When you make a tank-y character for either game, do prefer AC over HP or vice versa? I've got a pure class dwarven fighter (IWD:EE) and I'm trying to do both. I'm also trying to get more resistances, but combining all three is hard to do because of the limited number of item slots.

I have not played IWD2 long enough to make a comment about it. On IWD, it depends on the enemy but HP almost has no value in my eyes. With low enough AC, you can survive anything easily.

I am playing Heart of Winter now, IWD's expansion as Enhanced Edition. My Sorcerer is my tank with her - 10 AC, Stoneskin, blur and mirror image, I do not even remember her getting injured. What's the point of having high HP when you can totally avoid damage :)

I prefer AC over HP since getting hit less means having to heal less often. The more levels and hitpoints a character gets, the more useful becomes an AC bonus compared to a fixed number of hitpoints.

The AC/THAC0 (or AC/Attack Bonus) mechanic doesn't scale well at high levels. You end up, eventually, in the situation where one of the following is usually the case:
1. Attacks almost never hit any target with decent AC. This makes physical attacks (basically anything requiring an attack roll) useless; hence, what you need to worry about are spells.
2. Attacks almost always hit. In this case, AC is useless unless it is *really* good, and therefore it is better to look for other ways of surviving attacks.

Hence, you may eventually be better off focusing on HP, damage reduction, damage negation (Mirror Image/Stoneskin), immunities, and other non-AC forms of protection when you reach higher levels. At high levels, when healing is done with spells like Heal, Mass Heal, and Resurrection, having more hit points means having to heal less offen, as the only healing spells worth using are full heals. This is especially true in IWD2, where Heal is instant-cast, Mass Heal is available (not instant-cast, but remember that attacks don't always cause a loss of concentration here unlike IWD1), and HP continues to increase significantly at higher levels.

Also, as I mentioned, AC is useless at this point unless you get it *really* high, whereas HP and damage reduction are valuable even in moderate amounts.

(Of course, at low levels the situation is different.) I would probably go with something like this:
First playthrough: Go with AC while it's still useful.
Heart of Fury mode: Focus on resistances and ignore AC.

Then again, the best tank is probably a Sorcerer, who can use various spells to negate damage or become immune to it, and who can cast lots of spells before having to rest.

It's an interesting dynamic, because at low levels AC is better than HP. At higher levels AC becomes a bit redundant because attacks will either almost always hit or always miss. This is why spell casters become essential at high levels. By that time, having a higher HP pool helps. If you can't much help taking damage, you're gonna need to be able to soak it up.

A high HP at the expense of AC might make the early game a bit tougher, but by the end you may find yourself wishing your party wasn't made of tissue.

There's another interesting alternative here; using summons as tanks. Doing this has a few advantages:

* You don't have to worry about resurrection; if a summon dies, you can just summon another.
* When playing on harder difficulties, summons, I believe, don't suffer increased damage the way your characters do.
* As an extension to the previous point, on Heart of Fury difficulty, summons get (in IWD1) the same bonuses that monsters get (in IWD2 the bonus summons get was toned down I believe). This means that, in IWD1, a summon will have 3x its normal HP plus an extra 80 HP; that's a lot! Suddenly those weak summon spells produce highly durable creatures, that you can have tank while the rest of your party attacks from a distance.

In the IWD1 Enhanced Edition, there's this spell called Limited Wish which can be quite fun. In particular, one of the effects will create a hoard of bunnies, which enemies will attack. If you are *not* playing Heart of Fury difficulty, there's a spell that damages nearby creatures and gives the caster a bonus for each one killed, as they don't have that many HP. But here's the fun part:

if you *are* playing Heart of Fury mode, *each* bunny gets the same HP bonus that enemies and other summons get. Just think about it; 20 (?) bunnies, each with over 80 HP each.

(By the way, in Baldur's Gate 2, there's the trick of casting Armor of Faith and turning into a rat with a certain item; I believe this boosts your physical resists past 100, causing physical attacks to heal you.)

Since the PCs who can wear the best armors aso have the highest hp, I don't understand the either/or nature of the question. Just do both. Gonzo AC (through magic armors and spells) or Gonzo resistance to magical damage (ie. not getting wounded) is obviously the best. There is also the option that when your fire resistance is higher than 100% (the different resistance spells stack), fire AoE damage actually heals you while wounding anyone else nearby.

There is however no single correct answer: you look at the abilities/weaknesses of the foes you are up against in a given tactical encounter, then you plan out your way to kill them and survive.

The logic of my question was rooted in prioritizing equipment slots and generating stats. A dwarf would start out with more HP than an elf, but the elf would have a higher AC than the dwarf.