Allied Defense: Overpowered?

[Nail]

So if a pair of characters both have Allied Defense, by the RAW, do they provide each other with up to a +5 dodge bonus to AC, which stacks with the +5 dodge bonus to AC they're giving themselves from Combat Expertise?!? I'm getting a dodge bonus at the same time I'm providing a dodge bonus to my ally and he's doing the same thing.

Yup. Try with three adjacent allies, each with the feat. +15 AC!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Yup. Try with three adjacent allies, each with the feat. +15 AC!

There is potential for this getting out of hand. But honestly I think extremely synergistic team play is a problem most DMs wish they had.

 

[Nail]

True, RC.

As a player, I always work to make our PCs the leanest meanest group possible. (Can you guess my favorite PC class?) Teamwork can make short work of most bad guys.

 

[mikebr99]

Can you guess my favorite PC class?

Gotta be Cleric...

Mike

 

[Stalker0]

Question is, woudl the bonuses stack at all?

They are bonuses coming from the same feat, and normally 2 bonuses from the same source don't stack. Normally feats that grant dodge bonuses for example say they stack with other dodge bonuses.

 

[Korak]

Well, if the PCs want to get into nice tight fireball/flamestrike/entange/solid fog/evard's/etc formation... good for the DM. There are plenty of counters to this tactic. If multiple melee fighters in your party want to put points into int and spend two feats to have some very nice AC at the expense of hit mod, points that could have gone into str, dex, or con, and only get the benefit when they are bunched together in melee, I'm sure you can come up with tactics for your NPCs that occasionally reward their character creation choices and occasionally challenge them.

I don't think it is broken. It is very powerful, but also very specialized, and certainly defeatable.

hehe... just thought... toss a level 1 grease spell under them... unless they have 5 ranks in balance... all those dodge bonuses go bye-bye

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Question is, woudl the bonuses stack at all?

They are bonuses coming from the same feat, and normally 2 bonuses from the same source don't stack. Normally feats that grant dodge bonuses for example say they stack with other dodge bonuses.

The same question came up with respect to multiple PCs with Expert Tactician. Can you stack up the to hit and damage bonuses from different helper PCs onto the same target.

I said Yes. We could not come to a consensus.

 

[RangerWickett]

Ooh, new character idea. A marshal or bard who fights from behind his allies, using this feat with a whip and improved trip.

 

[pawsplay]

Dodge bonuses stack, period.

I could see this being a very handy feat if you were fighting creatures that used touch attacks or incorporeal touches. The feat seems over the top to me, but hey, it's a FR feat, so there you go. I think a more normal version of the feat would give your allies a +1 whenver you used Combat Expertise.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I think the feat should have one or more of the following changes made to it:

A) Making it work on only a single adjacent ally;

B) Making it work on all adjacent allies but the user loses the benefits;

C) Requiring the user of Allied Defense to threaten whatever opponent(s) his/her adjacent allies are making use of the AC bonus against (actually, I think that this should be a requirement for any rendition of this feat as it doesn't make sense that the Allied Defense user can threaten one opponent and grant an AC bonus to allies fighting completely different opponents who the Allied Defense user doesn't even threaten);

D) Either make this feat not stack or change the bonus type. It's absolutely ridiculous that you could get +10, +15, +20, +25, + whatever dodge bonus from multiple characters with the same feat.

The more I think about this feat, the more hideously broken I think it is. Or, at the very least, hideously operationalized. But yeah, it's the Forgotten Realms...