Hunter Fighting Style + Battle Caster Defense?

[Aikeoh]

Hunter Fighting Style (Class Fighting Style)
- gain a +4 bonus to AC against opportunity attacks you provoke by making a ranged attack. (Martial Power 2)

Battle Caster Defense (Feat)
- gain a +4 bonus to AC against opportunity attacks you provoke when using a ranged or area power. (Player Handbook 3)

Darkstrider (Ranger Paragon Path)
- Dark Action - When you spend an action point to take an extra action, you gain a +4 bonus to all defense until end of your next turn. (Martial Power 2)

My question is, ideally all 3 listed above will stack, correct? The bonuses are granted from different sources. i.e. Using the Ranger's twin strike at-will-power (ranged) will provoke an opportunity attack from the adjacent enemy. The ranger would gain a +8 AC. And if the ranger had spent an action point before, he would gain +12 AC.

 

[bganon]

Yup, they all stack. Though IMO it would be a bit of a wasted feat for a Hunter Ranger to take Battle Caster Defense.

 

[Starfox]

4E is very generous about letting conditional defense modifiers stack, which gets odd when several of them have the same trigger.

In this case, a ranger shooting away at an adjacent monster that is also adjacent to and marked by a fighter forces the DM to make a role-playing decision. The monster probably does not have a chance in hell to hit the ranger, and grants the fighter an AO - it is definitely a tactically unsound decision to attack the Ranger in this case. Yet, does the monster know this?

If you play 4E as a wargame, you don't let the monster do the AO. If you play it as a role-playing game, you probably make the attack - making the monster hamper itself.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Darkstrider (Ranger Paragon Path)
- Dark Action - When you spend an action point to take an extra action, you gain a +4 bonus to all defense until end of your next turn. (Martial Power 2)

You can get +5 AC vs OAs for the rest of the encounter if you use Battlefield Archer (PHB) and the L16 action point feature.

Giving you +13AC on OAs provoked by your ranged attacks.

To be honest +8/+9 should be enough sparing one feat slot in the process.

 

[Kingreaper]

If you play 4E as a wargame, you don't let the monster do the AO. If you play it as a role-playing game, you probably make the attack - making the monster hamper itself.

I disagree.

A character with +8 vs. your attack is going to be clearly better defended than one without, there's barely an opportunity there at all.

If you've seen the fighter's Combat Challenge before, you know it can make that hit, so you're not going to take the risk.
If you haven't; you may have seen someone else with similar, why take the risk?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I disagree.

A character with +8 vs. your attack is going to be clearly better defended than one without, there's barely an opportunity there at all.

If you've seen the fighter's Combat Challenge before, you know it can make that hit, so you're not going to take the risk.
If you haven't; you may have seen someone else with similar, why take the risk?

Yeah, I have to agree, at least for your more intelligent foes its hard to believe you can't get an estimate of what your chances to hit someone are. It should be pretty clear if the chance is somewhere around 50/50, more than 75%, or less than 25%. After all most monsters are fairly experienced at fighting. This might not always be the case and they might not realize the fighter has CC but most monsters are going to learn pretty quick.