Forcefielders actually get damage reduction, particularly if they have a big difference in charisma and constitution.

Take a faeling (these numbers are made up)

Say at level x they have only 3000 health, and 5000 ego. buffing up their ego with various sundry things, they get say, 3500 health, 7000 ego.

When an attack hits their forcefield, it, at least in the vast majority of damage sources, does x damage plus a % of victims max health. So say in most cases, this attack would do 500 +10% of 3000, or 300, for a total of 800 damage. What is not considered is that the mage has forcefield up, using ego instead of health. So while he takes 800 for such low health, he actually only takes a fraction of what he would if he had 7000 actual health. Because then the damage would be 500+10% of 7000, (700), for a total of 1200 damage, a full 400 damage in reduction.

That's not exact numbers or anything, but you get the idea. With a vast difference in con and charisma, as there is in faelings and some other races, you see a rather startling amount of damage reduction.

Bards don't.

mages I don't know, though I know psionics has that magic reduction they can do though it requires a locked channel. druids don't, bards don't, mages relatively don't since I seem to hurt them. i suppose it's about half that has a little to none and the other half seems to have relatively a lot. plus all have the option to get magic. I don't know the guardian defenses.

Elasticity is supposedly overall damage reduction (I think...), and Commune Ecologist Bards can fashion a Charm against magic damage. (I have no idea how effective it is, though..)

I think I remember hearing that it was up to a 50 point charm so 25% resistance against what they want. or maybe 50/50 so two 25 percentages. I might be really off there though, just something I remember being talked about around when it came out.

hrm charms are 20% i heard, and then depending how you make it that gets split in different ways. Well Kalodan had a 20% magic resist onne that he said was all magic resistance.

Ooooh, is charm really 20%?? AWESOME!!!

I really doubt it.

You can only fashion with up to 20 total minerals, but they can be of any number of any different types. (IE, 6 sulfur, 4 salt, 5 iron, 5 marble if you wanted)

I meant 20% of resists total, I always do max of one, since that only makes sense to me.. 20% cutting resists is insane if it's true, I haven't really tested.

I'm fairly certain that 'a fair number' translates to one or two. Most have taken up Ecology.

From the AB list: Muscles can be trained to reduce physical damage.

That's always struck me as kind of a stretch for flavor. It makes sense in the skillset, and maybe you can train yourself to tense muscles and such to better absorb a punch or kick, but a blow from a mace or axe? Good luck with that.

There are so many other abilities that make even less sense than that...

Most of them can be explained by some form of Magic. Acrobatics doesn't really have that same deus ex machina to use.

You have a subconscious control over the aether threads that nestle around your body, which now help resist physical attacks.

You can graft deadly fangs onto your fetish from the bones of an animal that produces IBULULU, DENDROXIN, ANATINE, ALEUTIAN or HAEMOTOX, after which your bone fetish can use those poisons.

Some love for bleeders here? I swear this is new.

that's a relatively new poison, but yep.

Or we train our muscles to be more elastic and help us take blows better, which is what it actually says.

I would assume it fits into the "dodging" thing. It's not that you can stand still and take a mace to the face and be hurt less (though things like that are common in wuxia), but that you learn to move fluidly, both on a gross motor scale (moving your whole body) and a smaller scale (moving small parts of your body) to "give" against blows (the whole "bend so you don't break" thing). Doesn't seem unreasonable to me at all.

I suppose I could just be biased against the name. Elasticity reminds me of Mr. Fantastic, not some defense I should be putting up all the time.