Base Defense Bonus

The Base Defense Bonus, also referred to as the "BDB," is the portion of a character's Combat Ability that gets applied towards defense. This value is added into the character's Armor Class.

The BDB effectively represents how focused a character is on protecting himself, allowing him to anticipate, dodge, and avoid attacks with more ease.

Characters retain their BDB to their AC so long as they are aware of an attack or prepared for an unknown attack. This represents their stance and awareness of possible danger. Effectively, all a character needs to do to gain his BDB to AC is to declare the breakdown of his Combat Ability. If you have not then you are Off Guard.

• In a non-combat situation, maintaining combat readiness takes up a Combat Thread. If the character is doing anything else (such as talking with others, crafting an item, or any other task, those tasks also take up a Combat Thread. In order to maintain constant combat awareness, a character must make an additional Concentration check every half-hour (DC 12). Every subsequent half hour, the DC goes up by 2.

• Once combat starts, maintaining combat readiness no longer takes up an additional Combat Thread