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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Samuel Leming" data-source="post: 1979940" data-attributes="member: 16462">Well, I certainly intended to prevent that from happening. My philosophy is to prefer discouragement to heavy-handed rulism wherever I can.  A standard fighter would need to burn nine of his feats to do this by 20th level.  That's exactly half his feats for a non-human. I wouldn't do it.  A unarmed variant fighter would need seven feats.  The variant fighter could do this, if all his stats are 13+, but he's be giving up many damage increasing and tactical feats to do it.  I wouldn't go this route myself, particularly since it still doesn't boost your AC up as high as a standard fighter.  Now, in the case of a mega-stats game this would be a temptation for the variant fighter, which is why I warned about it in my original post.The best current ability similar to this is the monk. No surprise given our topic.  The monk is usually played as a hit and run combatant.  A good part of that is that his AC commonly lags behind the fighter's by over 10 points at higher levels. I'm trying to build a character that can be a front line fighter, at least in some situations.  I need to make up that AC lag somewhere.  This system is still falling short of the goal.  Any different ideas on how to make up the difference?As I said, taking all three mental defense feats is not what I want to see happen.  Since I can make the bonus type of all three of these feats the same and still get the effect I want, I'll do so.This reasoning is somewhat conservative, being based on a system that doesn't handle the character concept I'm trying to match.With the change I'm making it's now dex + maybe str + maybe one other mental bonus + 1/5(1/3 at high level*) class level as a bonus to AC.  Given standard access tp magic the variant fighter still doesn't match the core fighter.*I have an Improved Unarmored Defense feat I haven't posted because I'm not happy with it yet.By a core class, yes.  The Defender of Midnight gets Dex + 1/2 class level.  The reduced magic in that setting keeps a standard fighter from getting as far ahead of a defender in AC.Exceeding the special abilities of the monk class is what's needed for the character concepts I'm trying to address.  What I'm doing here is trying to figure out a good way to do it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I believe you may have missed that Unarmored Defense doesn't work while armored(The opposite from the monk, same as the Defender).  Since I'm intending Unarmored Defense to be an agility bonus, I had no problem restricting it by armor.  Mental bonuses to AC aren't reduced by armor, everything else(even unarmed attack damage for variant classes) is in various ways.Um, yeah. You're intending to help, right?Sam</blockquote>

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