(Note: This system has been abandoned in favor of this one)
Characters in the Red Age use a modified version of the Defense system instead of the traditional Dark Sun armor class system. This is largely to simplify what potentially could be a complex array of hodge-podge factors that play into the old Dark Sun piecemeal armor rules.
The fact is, armor in Dark Sun is extremely cumbersome both in gameplay and in mechanics. You can go one of two ways. You can say the characters have terrible armor almost all the time, and make it so that even the most trivial conflicts can be ridiculously lethal. Or, you can install a stat that scales with character level and determines combat survivability.
Obviously, Red Age goes with the second option: Though there are armor options for characters, not having any armor on does not necessarily mean a character is defenseless, or "squishy".
| Barbarian | Bard | Cleric | Fighter |
| Poor | Medium | Good | Good |
| Psion | Psychic Warrior | Ranger | Rogue |
| Poor | Good | Medium | Poor |
Defense generally mirrors the three base attack bonus tables, with "Poor" scaling the slowest, "Good" the fastest, and "Medium" at the half-way point. Any bonus that would normally apply to Armor Class instead applies to Defense, most notably Dexterity and armor-boosting magics or psionics.
The Defense stat, like Armor Class, has a base value of 10.
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