Defender

You work tirelessly producing arms and armour for the battle to come.  Your hammer strikes down with all your strength and sparks fly across the forge, the flickering embers showing the determination on your face to save this city.

You stride across the turmoil of the battlefield wrapped in protective heavy armour, tower shield strapped to your strong arm.  As the goblin arrows fly towards your companions, you hold up your tower shield and step forward to block them.  Your allies fall in behind you and you advance towards the creatures, ready to strike as one.

The Defender is a defensive fighter subclass who relies on their shield and heavy armour to protect their allies.  A bodyguard, a protector, a wall of steel.

Shield Wall

At level 3 you gain the ability to protect one ally within 5’ of you using your bonus action.  If this ally is willing and is not using a shield, they gain your shield bonus to their Armour Class until the start of your next turn.  They lose the protection of your shield wall if they move more than 5’ away from you during their turn.

This ability also works alongside the Protection Fighting Style and the Shield Master feat.

You can use this ability once per level per long rest.

Master Armourer

At level 7 you have mastered the arts of wearing, using and making armour and shields.  If you do not have the smith skill, you now gain it.  If you already have it your proficiency bonus when making weapons and armour is doubled.  It takes you half the time and cost for you to make armour and shields.

You are now able to make a Tower Shield and are proficient in using it.  A Tower Shield provides a +3 bonus to your Armour Class and has the same requirements to use as Plate Armour (Min Str 15, Disadvantage on stealth checks).  When using a Tower Shield, all attacks made with a weapon that does not have the light feature are made with disadvantage, due to the weight of the shield.

Steel Wrapped

At level 10 you can use your action to wrap yourself around an ally, literally becoming their 'human' shield.  The ally must be within, and remain within, 5’ of you and they must be willing to be protected.

Any attacks made your ally or you whilst Steel Wrapped are made at disadvantage.  Both you and the ally must stay together and can only move at half your normal speed.

Whilst Steel Wrapped, until your next turn, your ally can choose to use your Armour Class instead of their own for all attacks.  If they are hit with an attack, you can choose to use your reaction to take the damage instead of them.  You must decide to do this before the damage is rolled.

If you use Second Wind whilst using Steel Wrapped, your ally gains the benefits of the healing effect.

You can use Steel Wrapped once per short rest.

Forged in Fire

At level 15 you can shrug off damage that would floor a lesser warrior.  As a reaction, until the end of your next turn, you are resistant to all damage.

This ability can only be used once per long rest.

Bastion

At level 18 you can use your Shield Wall ability on all allies within 10’.  They now gain the following advantages whilst they remain within range of your protection:

• They gain your shield bonus to their Armour Class, if not already using a shield;
• They gain your shield bonus to any saving throws for spell or spell like abilities that a shield would help defend against i.e. Fireball;
• They are immune to fear whilst protected by you.