D&D 3E/3.5 Wanted: Thoughts on Converting 3e's UA "Defense Bonus per Level" into 5e

[Herobizkit]

I rather enjoy the idea of granting characters a Defense Bonus per level as an alternative to wearing armor. Given 5e's bounded accuracy, might anyone take a stab at how the chart might advance in a 20-level game, or would the chart work "as-is"?

 

[kerleth]

I think that depends. First off, how would you have the 5E version interact with armor. Personally I thought a combination of Armor as Damage Reduction and Defense Bonus By Level would have been fun to try in 3E, but never did.

I think that I would try running it as half your proficiency bonus as a prototype. This bonus would just be added on top of your normal ac. Some example AC follows.

Armor	Normal AC	Variant level 1	Variant level 20
Plate, Shield, Defensive	21	22	24
Leather	17	18	20
Monk level 1	16	17	N/A
Monk level 20	20	N/A	23

That would let your defensive abilities grow with experience without making it easy to get maxed out, impossible to hit AC, and without requiring an extensive rewrite.

 

[Afrodyte]

I don't think using the chart as-is would be advisable, as that would probably scale AC far too high to stay within the +11 cap (+5 attribute bonus, +6 proficiency bonus), especially considering classes that augment AC with other attributes when wearing light armor or no armor.

A variant using half your proficiency bonus (as kerleth stated) would likely work just better. Or, if you prefer, figure out the maximum bonus you want to apply based on how high someone would have to roll to hit (don't forget to consider attribute and proficiency bonuses) then work it out fromt here.