I can think of five ways to increase the AC of a character with Rune Flesh: Swashbuckling, Bladedancing, Ring of Protection, Cloak of Protection, and Bracers of Armor. Three of those don't work with fighter armor (only the ring and cloak do). With amazing luck, a character could have AC 25, excluding any Dex bonus (7 from Bracers, 6 from Flesh Runes, and 3 each from Ring, Cloak, Swash, and Blade). A plate-and-shield fighter can get AC 20 (9 from plate +3, 4 from shield +3, 3 each from ring and cloak, 1 from fighting style). Both are unlikely (I, for one, would not allow bladedancing and swashbuckling on the same class), but theoretically a character with Rune Flesh can have a higher AC than anyone else in the game.
As a note, Thrassians gladiators get a free 4 AC; full Thrassian gets 5 AC, and has two levels of fighter built in. A custom Thrassian with flesh runes, and a d10 hd - pure cheese!
Are you creating a class or are you creating what your character does? Will your final runefleshed class have orders and guilds? Will it be the favored class of a particular clan of the race you made it for? If they are rare and nearly forgotten, will it be known where they came from and what, if any, tragedy befell that place?
I think many of the problems you are encountering is that these rules are probably best left out of the hands of players trying to min-max. In my opinion they are most useful for DMs who want to either recreate a class from another system they like or to make a new class that flavors their setting. To that end, the rules mean that you can, for the most part, pick most of the options and be reasonably assured you haven't made a strict upgrade to existing classes. However, it's not exhaustive and so there are surely ways to do exactly that if pored over for every advantage.
If I were the DM of this game (with the standard caveat that every campaign is a law unto itself), I would never just hand over the class creation rules. Absolutely, if I had a player that was really motivated to play a class from another system they liked, I would give them the opportunity to build that part of the world and declare that such a class exists in the world, but then I would do the first pass and let them give feedback.
That being said, letting players make their own classes isn't without merit because this whole thread gives a lot of insight into some of the things possible with custom class creation and what to watch out for and why certain things have a cost.
Yeah, that’s about what I’m doing (I haven’t gone back and recalculated Explorer XP because they don’t need the help, but I did for Barbarian, for example). I don’t think I’ve ever added an AC-boosting ability to a class which I’ve constructed, but have left Swashbuckling and FS:Shield available to players as normal. I don’t much mind Swashbuckling, because it requires surviving the low levels in Leather in order to eventually surpass chainmail in effectiveness. Swashbuckling does not tend to generate frontliner AC as far as my players are concerned (“If you don’t have at least AC8, you should probably hire a fighter henchman with AC8 (plate, shield, FS:shield) to hide behind.”). FS:Shield is extremely dominant in my local metagame, to the point where it is basically considered a mandatory 1st-level fighter class proficiency pick. We’ve only ever had one fightery-type who used a two-handed weapon consistently (a plate-wearing Thrassian whose natural armor made up for loss of shield), and we’ve only ever seen two-weapon fighting from assassins, thieves, and other classes who can’t use shields (and who do not see much play at all).
So… yeah. Getting my players to play a melee class without plate is a very hard sell, even without the XP cost associated with the tradeoff. We even had an assassin henchwoman who spent most of her (long and healthy) career in plate (couldn’t use a shield, but her dex made up for it, so they gave her two swords and plate and played her like a fast-leveling fighter with fewer HP). I’ve had a couple of players who play barbarians as a matter of course, and they considered Savage Resilience an acceptable substitute for plate (provided that they take FS:shield to get AC>=6), but it’s a divisive opinion.
[quote="The Dark"]
I can think of five ways to increase the AC of a character with Rune Flesh: Swashbuckling, Bladedancing, Ring of Protection, Cloak of Protection, and Bracers of Armor. Three of those don't work with fighter armor (only the ring and cloak do). With amazing luck, a character could have AC 25, excluding any Dex bonus (7 from Bracers, 6 from Flesh Runes, and 3 each from Ring, Cloak, Swash, and Blade). A plate-and-shield fighter can get AC 20 (9 from plate +3, 4 from shield +3, 3 each from ring and cloak, 1 from fighting style). Both are unlikely (I, for one, would not allow bladedancing and swashbuckling on the same class), but theoretically a character with Rune Flesh can have a higher AC than anyone else in the game.
[/quote]
Funny, because every one of those examples a fighter with full plate can use and to better effect so "theoretically" you have proven nothing...actually "literally" you have proven nothing. :P
I do find it comical though that you appear to be advocating for the rules to remain as written yet the rules as written state that Bladedancing and SwashBuckling do stack and thus can be used by the same character so your logic is just about everywhere...mine is to of course, but at least I keep an open mind. :P
[quote="BAMF"]
[quote=The Dark]
I can think of five ways to increase the AC of a character with Rune Flesh: Swashbuckling, Bladedancing, Ring of Protection, Cloak of Protection, and Bracers of Armor. Three of those don't work with fighter armor (only the ring and cloak do). With amazing luck, a character could have AC 25, excluding any Dex bonus (7 from Bracers, 6 from Flesh Runes, and 3 each from Ring, Cloak, Swash, and Blade). A plate-and-shield fighter can get AC 20 (9 from plate +3, 4 from shield +3, 3 each from ring and cloak, 1 from fighting style). Both are unlikely (I, for one, would not allow bladedancing and swashbuckling on the same class), but theoretically a character with Rune Flesh can have a higher AC than anyone else in the game.
[/quote]
Funny, because every one of those examples a fighter with full plate can use and to better effect so "theoretically" you have proven nothing...actually "literally" you have proven nothing. :P
I do find it comical though that you appear to be advocating for the rules to remain as written yet the rules as written state that Bladedancing and SwashBuckling do stack and thus can be used by the same character so your logic is just about everywhere...mine is to of course, but at least I keep an open mind. :P
[/quote]
You seem to have misunderstood The Dark's post. He stated (emphasis mine):
[quote="The Dark"] I can think of five ways to increase the AC of a character with Rune Flesh: Swashbuckling, Bladedancing, Ring of Protection, Cloak of Protection, and Bracers of Armor. Three of those don't work with fighter armor (only the ring and cloak do). [/quote]
The above statement is correct. Your statement:
[quote="BAMF"] Funny, because every one of those examples a fighter with full plate can use and to better effect... [/quote]
...is simply false. Swashbuckling and Bladedancing don't work with armor beyond leather, a Fighter doesn't even have Bladedancing as a class power, and Bracers of Armor don't work with any other armor. All of the above work with the Flesh Runes custom class power
Indeed, I've often told my players that my biggest critique of the Player's Companion is that it isn't called the Judge's Companion. Roughly 70% of the material contained within is best kept in the hands of the Judge, and doled out to players only when their characters are directly interacting with the relevant subsystems.
Titling it the Player's Companion seems to me to repeat the old 3.x edition error of giving players unfettered, transparent access to every aspect of the rules. One of the hallmarks of B/X or 0E is that a player barely needs to have even read the rules. They are expected to interact directly with the fictional world as presented by the DM; the interactions of the rules systems taking place behind the curtain can/should remain somewhat opaque. First edition AD&D continues that trend, if to a reduced degree given the rules-heavy nature of the Player's Handbook. Major rules-systems, however, are still the exclusive province of the DMG and MM.
By the time you get to 3.x, that trend has reversed almost completely, and while I can appreciate empowering the players, I find that it creates more problems in play than it solves. So it irks me a tad to see ACKS go down the same road.
I suggest be not irked, and don’t judge a book by its title. You might re-read “A Note For Judges”, PC p. 7.
I’m pretty sure nothing in ACKS was created to empower players over the Judge.
Also, when someday an ACKS Judge’s Companion is published (fingers crossed), I expect it will expand on aspects of ACKS in the latter parts of the core rulebook, what one might call Judge-facing rules, as well as “levers” to customize campaigns that don’t follow the core assumptions of worlds like the Auran Empire Campaign Setting. Axioms is exploring some of this now. All rules are the province of the Judge; the PC focuses on player-facing rules.
I know the "Note for Judges", just like I knew "Rule 0" from the 3.x days. To say that the Judge is free to ignore or change rules as she sees fit kind of goes without saying in any game that isn't organized for standardized league play.
Also, there's a difference between individual rules (such as the grappling mechanics) and broader statements of design. You say that the rules contained in the Player's Companion are "player-facing," which is the very core of my objection. I feel that the majority of the rules in it are more properly "Judge-facing," and that ACKS made a design decision here that embodies some of my least favorite things about 3.x.
When I say that I'm irked by it, I mean exactly that. It's an annoyance that rubs against my tastes in game design and creates certain tensions in play that I'd rather do without. On the whole, ACKS remains my favorite flavor of D&D, by a pretty wide margin.
Anyhow, this line of discussion is, at best, tangential to the topic of this thread. If anyone's interested, we can take this to another thread in the General Discussion forum. Otherwise, I'm sorry for the detour.
If I ever did a second edition of ACKS, I'd definitely re-name the book to something like "Rules Companion".
Reflecting on this further, I ended up writing a long blog post on what weapon and armor selections are worth a proficiency without an XP cost, at https://wanderinggamist.blogspot.com/2016/07/better-fighting-value-tradeoffs.html . Y’all may find it of interest.
[quote="Alex"]
If I ever did a second edition of ACKS, I'd definitely re-name the book to something like "Rules Companion".
[/quote] Alex, are you having a booth at Gen Con this year? If so please let me know. I'll have a booth in Authors' Avenue if you don't have a booth and will be attending. Please stop by to say hi and maybe I can buy you a coffee and pick your brain.
Sadly I won't be able to make it out this year. We'll have a booth with some volunteers from the ACKS community.
What booth number are you guys at? I didn’t see your company in the program guide.
I believe Autarch is in the Studio 2 Publishing booth, along with other Studio 2 clients like Pinnacle Entertainment.
Let us know how your GenCon is going! 
That helped, I found it. A little disappointed that they basically had everything I already had but it was great to see a presence. I am in Authors' Avenue now but my first year I was on the main floor. I understand how hard it can be to exhibit so I appreciate that I could talk face to face to someone.
As to my Gen Con, it was great. I brought the kids, played a ton of Pathfinder with them, a little true dungeon, my daughter dressed up as the cutest Boba Fett and got her picture taken with a 8 foot tall wookie. Pretty much awesomeness all around but you can check out pictures on our business facebook page Gen Con Missing Pieces Authors Avenue.