Defense Bonuses

[Prince Atom]

Using my now-badly-outdated d20 Star Wars core book, I reverse-engineered the defense bonuses. Given that this was published by WotC, I presume a lot of people took them as canon Defense values and so they're widely used when Defense comes into play; so I hope I'm not wildly out of touch.

There appear to be three strata of Defense bonus, and which one you get is not tied to your BAB (since the Soldier gets BAB = HD and Poor Defense). I chose to call these Good, Average, and Poor; each is a fraction of Hit Die plus some constant.

Good Defense values are 1/2HD + 4. Thus, at 20th level, your Defense bonus is +14. These values increase by +1 every even level.

Poor Defense values are 1/3HD+2, and at 20th level your Defense bonus is +8. These values increase by +1 every 3 levels.

Average Defense values are odd. I had to intuit them, and it looks like the designers fiddled a bit to get them symmetrical. They appear to be 5/12HD+3, which is right in between the other two, so your Defense bonus is +11 at 20th level. These values increase by +2 every 5 levels, and the designers have tweaked them so that the even bonuses last for 3 levels, and the odd for 2. After the bonus is +6, this is true, but before then it's the other way around.

I was just struck by such an odd fraction. The whole trend of the new rules seemed to be away from complicated formulae and tables, and here you have to compute 5/12 of a number -- not something you can do in your head!

I'm not complaining, but I wonder why they didn't choose a simpler group of ratios, such as 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2.

Discussion?

The Whiner Knight
Slightly bewildered.

 

[Crothian]

In the orginal Star Wars the Defense was equal to the Base Reflex Save +2.

 

[Ranger REG]

I concur with Crothian. However, this formula is widely criticized with regards to combat-oriented Soldier class that do not a significant Reflex save bonus, which is crucial for such an individual who are going to be in the thick of battle.

 

[Skywalker]

Cothian is correct. However this foundation was dropped in Wheel of Time and Revised Star Wars for the reasons stated by Ranged REG.

 

[Jeph]

In the VP/WP game I'm gearing up to run, I've decided to make only two defense bonusses: Poor and Good. Poor is as the Wizard's BAB, and Good is as the Cleric's. The classes that get Good are Psychic Warrior, Monk, Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, and Ranger. The class that get's Poor is the Psion. The other's are non-existant.

(By the way, a more in-depth look at this setting is in House Rules [It had so many in them I thought it would go better there than here or PnP])

 

[Prince Atom]

Arg, another case of me complicating the brick. I didn't bother to compare the Defense bonus to any other level-dependent bonuses. I just presumed that they used the basic D&D save bonuses, which they didn't.

Still, the ending differences of 14, 11, and 8 are odd. Why not make them base Reflex +3? That way they'll end up 15, 12, and 9 (which are all factors of 3, while 14, 11, and 8 are not).

And I switched out the Defense bonuses of the Soldier and the Noble, which made more sense to me when I was running a d20 SW game.

So how do WoT and d20SW2 handle defense?

TWK

 

[Ranger REG]

If you can find it, check out Star Wars Gamer no. 10 (Count Dooku is on the cover).

It has an article showing the changes to your Original Core Rulebook to be more in-line with the Revised Core Rulebook, but only the class-level tables.