Defender build (new player)

I’m new to the system and so far I’m been blown away by the flexibility of the rules. In an attempt to build more and more outlandish characters I’ve stumbled into the idea of a of a defensive character type that utilizes dual bucklers (small shields) for offense and defense. But I’m not sure how this build would work.

My current idea is (at level 1)
Agi: 2 Fort: 4 Might: 5 Logic: 2 Will: 2 Presence: 3
With feats:
Defensive Mastery, Combat Follow Through, Combat Momentum

Should I set aside the advantage +1 for wielding dual one handed weapons? Should I only count a single shield in my Guard stats? How would Defensive Mastery factor into Defensive actions? I’m not looking to be over powered, just balanced. Can I only count a single shield into Defensive Mastery but still take advantage +1 for dual wielding? What would be the best approach for dealing with this?

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong area.

So, if you are wielding a weapon/item with the Defensive property, then you can’t gain the benefits of dual-wielding or two-handed weapon.

If you are really wanting to make use of a Defensive build, typically people talk about the Interrupt Action that is Defend. This takes away your next Major action.

Grabbing Battlefield Retribution allows your defend interrupts to deal damage, and sentinel can allow you to do more than one.

Furthermore, things don’t stack. So you take the highest from Defensive (means you only get the bonus to guard once even if dual-wielding shields, and if you have a Defensive 2 weapon and a Defensive 1 weapon, you only get Defensive 2 [not 3 by adding them, you take the highest]).

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Here’s an example Defend build, if you wanted to read it, I go through and explain some stuff in it.

or on the wiki:
https://www.openlegendwiki.com/Ranged_Defender


obviously not the only way, or even the best way, but just a way. To help you understand.

conversly, you can build to just have a high guard and do lots of attacking of course.

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Ok, that’s what I was missing. The Defensive property would override the benefits of dual wielding with regard to advantage on attacks. I was thinking about using the Interrupt Action as needed but thought that dual shield might add an interesting flavor to standard combat. It seems like these limitations would hold true with the traditional sword and board style as well then. The lack of stacking on defense makes sense and I wasn’t looking to circumvent that with this build. Thanks for the quick responses, I guess I was letting my curiosity with the mechanics get ahead of my understanding. I’ll take a closer look at the Defender Gunslinger and see if I can incorporate some the ideas there into a melee build.

An interesting thing you can do is look at Two-Weapon brute. This allows you to wield a two-handed weapon in one hand.

This means you can have a two-handed in one hand, gain the advantage from two-handed weapon, and in your other hand have a shield (so you’d only get 1 advantage instead of the 2 advantage two weapon brute grants if you have a two-handed weapon in each hand [dual-wielding advantage plus two-handed advantage]).

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I must have miss read this feat or misunderstood it. I was looking for something like this but the way its worded it almost sounds like as long as you have ANY Defensive weapon you don’t get any advantage from dual wielding or having a two handed weapon.

Oh i guess the Two weapon Brute has the two handed weapon and shield right in the example. Alright than.

Indeed, the actual effects doesn’t reflect this well, the description reveals the overall intent though. The feat is allowing you to do something you normally couldn’t do, and thus allows you to work around the default nature of the Defensive property.

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