[MINUS FIVE]

I totally disagree with you. For the price of a feat and -2 to attack you get three attacks in a round rather than two. For another feat you can take a -5 penalty and attack four times instead of 2.

To me 2 wep fighting is suboptimal, especially 2 wep style; 2 feats and a MINUS FIVE to attack? Taking an average of 10 to hit you are going to miss 50% more often which means you hit... Ta Dah... the same number of times in a round as you would have anyway. For the cost of two feats. And more money spent on weapons. And a lower armour class. And less chance to hit on opportunity attacks.

Admittedly when you are fighting lots of mook types it will be a godsend (you can slot lots of low AC types in a round) but against the BBEG it is rubbish. So it gives you more flexibility but at a cost: feats/AC/etc.

Looks balanced to me and gives options to those that like the Drizzt look.

This is a great resource, a bunch of questions I had were already answered. I have one more though and this may seem like a dumb question but I couldn't figure it out so here goes...

A standard attack is a half action. Does this mean I can do two standard attacks during my turn?

Yeah same as if you are moving to 4E from 3E, you have to let go of a lot of pre-conceptions!

Well applying the rootwalker quality to the shields doesn't increase the weight and only cost 25% IIRC. So a 14 STR large PC can easily carry armour, 5 shields plus misc stuff. The weight is not a problem, and neither is the cost.

I'm not seeing a particular problem here myself -- yes your tree man is hard to hit. Theere are more than enough ways to counter that, the simplest being putting him up against enemies with damage resistance to blunt weapon damage or just a few simple trip attacks

Well I see what your saying but having every encounter have blunt resistance enemies is ridiculous... obviously trip won't worry him cos he will have many legged (or whatever it is called ) for the paltry cost of -2 CHA! Also he can attack with a weapon and has enough proficiencies to get forte blade by 3rd at the most as a back up to his SLAM 3.

Have been thinking about this and, IMO, a way to stop breakage is to limit your number of guard bonuses to the number of half actions you can take in a round. In the same way a multi-armed PC can still only attack twice (normally, 2 half actions). So no matter how many shields they carry or knives they have stashed on their person which grant guard when they have knife basics they still only get the benefit of the best 2 bonuses. If some effect or condition reduces them to only one half action per round then they get the best bonus only. This means you can equip yourself with a shield and guard weapon and stil get the defensive benefis of both ... which seems to work as the guard property is balanced by less damage or other things. But you cannot get the benefit of more than that, The Defendinator can carry 5 shields, only get the bonus from 2 but an opponent would have to disarm more than 3 to make a difference to his Def.

Hows that sound? This would apply to any situation where multi armed or highly skilled PCs can start to get ridiculous bonuses whether it is guard or another similar bonus.

correct

... and  make  a successful  Reflex  save  to  reduce damage, ...

It applies when a reflex save is already an option, like being on the receiving end of a fireball which offers "Saving Throw: Reflex half"

Yeah it will be interesting to see in action, although I don't think it will happen really soon.. we only game 2 or 3 times per month and have a ways to go on 4E. maybe I'll run a little scenario. But in my (untested unplayed) DMs head that is 'teh broken'; yes there are a lot of ways around it and yes he will be very combat focused (as he should be as a soldier) but it is going to be pretty hard to keep on coming up with challenging foes for The Defendinator that are not too hard for everyone else and don't appear contrived to defeat just him.

Still it is not a competitive game and there is more to RPGs than defeating bad guys toe-to-toe, so we shall see

Thanks for forking the thread.

haha yeah that is true!

Yeah that is why I said go for it! Pity that flanked doesn't stop guard, I see now I have checked. But he will be forte blunt and unarmed and seems to be choosing skills wisely. Still be fun to see how it goes.

Oh yeah, but you don't want to do encounters around beating a specific PC. But IIRC with the lumbering he is flanked with 2 enemies next to him, does that mean he looses guard then?

Well I gave the FC book to one of my more min/max players to peruse and he came back with a rootwalker 'defendinator'. Multi-armed, mist-branched soldier with shield Mastery at level three. So he is armed with 5 tower shield (giving a guard of 25) and using his slam III (2d8 damage, off the top of my head).

He was quite surprised when I said 'go for it'; I will run the game for a few goes before I start denying options. Be interesting to see if I can actually hit him when we play after finishing our 4E campaign....

Just DL'd from the ENWorld store (buy form there and ENW gets 10%, I think!), now to synchronise my eReader file and my iRex's SD card

If you buy through our store, we get a similar commission

Haha sorry didn't even know you had a store  

EDIT: I see that you mean buying through your links, I will next time... you just need to give me the opportunity to buy more!

Yeah that looks the business, YOINK!

Just DL'd from the ENWorld store (buy form there and ENW gets 10%, I think!), now to synchronise my eReader file and my iRex's SD card