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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dagredhel" data-source="post: 3440431" data-attributes="member: 3421">I concede all of these points, and accept that the rules work just fine mechanically as written.On the other hand, the motivation to use some variant of Defense and Armor as DR is probably to downplay the reliance on magical items to boost AC, tie defensive ability to combat prowess in the interest of "realism", and make unarmored or lightly armored character concepts (swashbuckler types, martial artists, etc.) more viable.At the same time, you don't want to undercut the mechanical value of wearing armor.The suggestions I made were in keeping with my own idea of how best to accomplish these goals, in a way that is more in keeping with my own sensibilities.You'd only want to "tweak" these rules if something about them doesn't "feel" right to you.It's clear that for Remathilis, one of the things that didn't jive for him was the effect of multiclassing.  Another concern was the best way to combine the defense bonuses with armor bonuses.  (UA gives two options, but sort of leaves it up in the air.)Because the UA bonuses are aligned with armor proficiencies as a balance consideration, they end up being somewhat counterintuitive for a lot of us, I think.The issue I have with this is that the classes still get those armor proficiencies, so I figure that if armor is still worthwhile to wear, then you wouldn't need to compensate so heavily.The solution I'd prefer would be to make sure that wearing armor has enough appeal in terms of mechanical advantages to balance it against the defense bonus.Moving away from armor proficiencies as a primary consideration, I'm for linking the bonus to combat prowess as reflected by BAB.I understand that a lot of folks naturally feel that defense should equate to Reflex (as mmadsen suggests), and classes with good Reflex saves (Rogue, Monk, etc.) should have the best defense bonuses.But these types of characters will probably have good Dexterity scores anyways, and Monks will still have an extra bonus from Wisdom and their class feature.Tying it to Reflex also stiffs the Fighter, and I'm one of those folks who thinks that an unarmored or lightly armored Fighter should be viable.  It "makes sense" to me that a Fighter should have the best ability to defend himself.  And high Dexterity and class abilities (Monk, Scout, etc.) would bring several other classes up to that same level when unarmored or lightly armored.</blockquote>

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