Defense 5e
While you are wearing armor, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.
Defense 5e: Fighting Style Review
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Defense is in name only a Fighting Style. Fighters, paladins, and rangers all can pick this, but +1 to your AC while armored is so unbearably boring I can’t fathom why anyone would take it. You don’t make any different decisions, nor are you pushed to any particular direction in how you actually go about fighting when you pick up Defense. I guess it encourages you slightly more to be a melee combatant, but that’s it.
If it's your first fighting style, you absolutely should pick basically any other style. All of them, even the worst of them like Unarmed Fighting, at least push you towards a specific fantasy. Archery isn’t a big new way to differentiate yourself from the ranged rogues or warlocks with a crossbow early, but at least it encourages you to attack with a bow. Defense just says “Make sure you’re wearing armor!” It doesn’t care if it's heavy, light, medium, it doesn’t care if you want to play defensively and guard people, it doesn’t even reward you for taking on multiple enemies at once in a defensive way. It's just a +1 AC.
With a shield and heavy armor, Defense is another additive that makes you a tiny but harder to hit, but when your AC is already sitting somewhere between around 18 with any medium or heavy armor and a shield, even at 1st level before plate and half-plate are accessible, you don’t need this. Going from an AC of 18 to 19 isn’t a huge upswing in defense. You get precious few abilities and resources on fighters and rangers; spending one of them for a +1 AC isn’t where you want to be, not even on paladins with a bit more going on.
Defense is a sham. It's a fighting style you pick up late when you get a bonus fighting style while you already have your default game plan locked in for most fights, and even then splashing into Archery, Protection, or Dueling all can also offer advantages in some situations you may want to be better in. Don’t take Defense. It's boring, unimpactful, and not contributing enough to any fantasy.
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