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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mordhau" data-source="post: 8472332" data-attributes="member: 7032137">It also means by taking it, an attack that would have hit you does so 5% less often.   If I'm hit on 11+ then 50% of attacks will hit.  If I'm hit on 12+ then 45% will hit.If I'm hit on a 19 or 20 (10% of the time) then increasing AC +1 will mean I am hit 5% of the time.  However the range of numbers that I'm hit on will halve (2 to 1).  So from another perspective, I've improved my defence by 50%.It's a matter of perspective and it's worth keeping both in mind.  In the case above if I'm only being hit 10% of the time, then I get a massive improvement and manage to increase that, but that improvement only applies within the 10% of the time I would already actually get hit.  In fact raising your AC so you only get hit on a 20 is probably not worthwhile, as your AC is already so good that you're not getting hit most combats.So if you're only usually getting hit for one attack in a combat, reducing that by 50% isn't going to do much.  (You're party is still going to be resting because other people are taking damage and you won't run out of hit dice).  If the GM is regularly reducing you to 0 by peppering you with hordes of goblin archers a 50% reduction is going to be huge.I don't think defence style is bad per se, but it's probably best taken in lieu of Great Weapon Style.The issues are:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's not a lot of punishment potential for enemies who ignore you.  Having great defences doesn't help you a lot if the enemy just attack someone else instead.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The punishment you can get (say from Sentinel) is highly affected by your ability to put out damage. If your punishment attack is weak, it can be ignored (and single melee attacks get increasingly weak over the course of the game)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It's hard to get your AC so high that you can really feel confident of weathering a storm of attacks like you could in 4e.  (Defence style just doesn't get you there).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A fighting style generally affects almost all your damage.  +1 AC does nothing against things that affect saving throws.  At a certain point Resilient (Wisdom) becomes the best thing you can do for your defences.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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