Fighting Defensively

[phindar]

Fair enough. I was not aware of that, I was just going by the Combat Expertise feat, which doesn't list that. Learn something new everyday.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Several of the new feats do allow you to substitute Combat Expertise of 2 in place of a Fighting Defensively requirement. In that respect, they're equivalent.

 

[Mr Vergee]

Deadly defense does not give +2 to AC, only +1d6 extra dmg with light weapons when fighting defensively OR when using combat expertise at at least +2 AC. So the +2 AC is simply the combat expertise bonus.

 

[hong]

Deadly Defense sounds pretty cool if you have Combat Expertise as well. In that case, it's effectively -2/+3.5 Power Attack with light weapons. The AC bonus from CE is just gravy.

 

[phindar]

That is a little weird about Fighting Def stacking with Expertise, if only because going Full Defense will give you a +4 Dodge bonus to your AC, whereas Expertise will give you (up to) +5, with another +2 on top of that. So, no attack at all, +4 AC. One or more attacks, +7. (The attacks you make won't have much of a chance of hitting, but then, they have more of a chance than no attack.)

Adding in Tumble and it gets weirder. With 5 Ranks you can get a Total Defense bonus of +6, but your Expertise is still +5 (assuming you have the BAB to back it up), and your Fighting Def bonus goes to +3, for a total of +8. With Two-Wpn Def, you add a Shield bonus of +2, so that makes it +8 for Total Def, and +10 for Expertise/Fighting Def.

I'm not sure I buy the logic of giving a character who attacks defensively more of an AC bonus than one who forfeits all attacks (including AoO's) in order to be completely defensive. For it to work out better, the Expertise character needs to be either a Fig3 or a Rog4, both fairly low level characters.

I would think it would make more sense for either Combat Expertise to not stack with Fighting Defensively, or for it to stack with Total Defense. Neither offends me. But having Fighting Defensively with Expertise be more of a bonus than Total Defense (with Expertise) seems odd, since the character would be getting less of a bonus when he's trying to be more defensive.

 

[Slaved]

going Full Defense will give you a +4 Dodge bonus to your AC

Full defense is pretty odd. But then so is combat expertise.

House rule territory but perhaps combat expertise should be useable at whim, not just while in melee and full defense should make it so that any attackers must roll their attack dice twice and hit with both in order to hit you.

The second would be pretty odd yes, and maybe too strong, but at least it would be more interesting that way and a real option for a guy who wants to be defensive

 

[Darklone]

Deadly Defense sounds pretty cool if you have Combat Expertise as well. In that case, it's effectively -2/+3.5 Power Attack with light weapons. The AC bonus from CE is just gravy.

Actually this feat is the first feat since 3.0 that I think brings TWF on par with twohanded weapons.

 

[IcyCool]

But he said he would be flanking, so +2 to hit for that.

Right, I didn't include any situational modifiers like that into the equation (I also didn't include BAB or ability mods).

Icycool, fighting defensively does not limit you to standard actions:

Yeesh, not sure how I missed that. Can you tell I don't use the fighting defensively option much?

 

[Darklone]

Yeesh, not sure how I missed that. Can you tell I don't use the fighting defensively option much?

Looks like your players do go by the "Kill them faster!" tactic approach... very good in D&D.