The dwarven defender has always interested me because of its defensive focused rage-like ability. To me, that’s always just been really neat. However, it’s clearly designed around defending tunnels, which is very thematic, but useless pretty much anywhere else. You enter a defensive stance, and then enemies just walk past you outside of your threat range, leaving you helpless to do anything unless you forfeit your defensive stance.
First off, I changed the name and dropped the race requirement. In moving the design focus away from defending a narrow tunnel, I wanted it to be more open to other races. I leave most of the class features in place, but I tweaked most of them in some way and added a few more that I personally liked. I gave the class benefits for wearing armor, as the old design didn’t touch armor at all, and I made it a bit more mobile.
As originally written, the class worked equally well for low Dex heavy armor builds and high Dex light armor builds. While I did add some benefits from wearing armor, I tried to maintain the ability of the class to support both play styles.
| Base Attack Bonus | Fort Save | Ref Save | Will Save | Special | AC Bonus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | +1 | +1 | +0 | +0 | Defensive stance 1/day | +1 |
| 2nd | +2 | +1 | +0 | +0 | Improved stability +2, uncanny dodge | +1 |
| 3rd | +3 | +2 | +1 | +1 | Armor aptitude, defensive stance 2/day | +1 |
| 4th | +4 | +2 | +1 | +1 | Active guard, trap sense +1 | +2 |
| 5th | +5 | +3 | +1 | +1 | Defensive stance 3/day, improved stability +4 | +2 |
| 6th | +6 | +3 | +2 | +2 | Damage reduction 3/–, improved uncanny dodge | +2 |
| 7th | +7 | +4 | +2 | +2 | Defensive stance 4/day | +3 |
| 8th | +8 | +4 | +2 | +2 | Improved stability +6, trap sense +2 | +3 |
| 9th | +9 | +5 | +3 | +3 | Defensive stance 5/day, improved armor aptitude | +3 |
| 10th | +10 | +5 | +3 | +3 | Damage reduction 6/– | +4 |
Weapon and Armor Proficiency and AC Bonus
Neither of these has been meaningfully changed. I did explicitly add proficiency with tower shields, as that has always been slightly ambiguous. I actually like that this class grants all armor, shield, and simple and martial weapon proficiency. The AC Bonus being a Dodge bonus was good too.
Defensive Stance
This ability has seen two changes: You can now move 5 feet in a round without losing your stance, allowing you to adjust your position on your turn. Second, you are no longer winded after it ends. I thought about adding the tireless part at a higher level, but I decided to just fold it into the base ability. You’re not roided out charging around the battlefield here. You’re simply maintaining a defensive stance in a limited space. If a martial adept can maintain a martial stance all day without fatigue, then a steadfast defender can maintain a stance for a few rounds without penalty.
Improved Stability
I wanted this class to be able to resist attacks that move you or knock you down. So, I added the dwarf’s stability ability broken up across levels 2, 5, and 8. I also added protection against overrun and indicated that this stacks with the dwarf’s natural stability. A dwarf will end up with a +10 to stability, which is pretty nifty.
Uncanny Dodge / Improved Uncanny Dodge / Trap Sense
No changes here at all.
Armor Aptitude
This was designed to benefit characters wearing heavier armor by boosting the armor’s max Dex and lowering armor check penalties. It also removes fatigue from sleeping in armor. Nothing too crazy here, just a nod to wearing armor constantly.
Active Guard
This is probably my personal favorite ability of the class now. You gain +5 feet of reach but only for making Attacks of Opportunity. Your reach doesn’t actually improve though. Instead, you get a free 5-foot step towards any enemy that provokes in your extended threat range. This ability allows you to reposition when it’s not your turn without losing your defensive stance and is limited only to the number of AoOs you can make in a round. My thought is that if you’re moving to defend against an enemy attacker, you shouldn’t be punished for doing what your class is meant to do. This is meaningfully different from moving on your turn to initiate an attack.
Damage Reduction
I added the ability for this DR to stack with DR from armor. Now a character wearing adamantine full plate doesn’t lose out on the DR 3/– from his armor.