How the heck does Defensive Roll work?

[Duke Awesome]

Hey everybody I just have a question. How does the Defensive roll (pg 83) work? I just am having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. Could someone give me an example of how it would be used?

[Dragonblade]

Normally you cannot increase base Toughness without body armor or the Protection power representing some kind of superhuman durability. Defensive roll is a way to increase Toughness without super powers or body armor. It represents skill in turning your body to mitigate damage. It's how characters like Batman can have high Toughness without invulnerability or bulky body armor.

The drawback is its considered an active defense. That means that conditions that would affect your dodge or parry will also affect any ranks of your Toughness that comes from Defensive Roll. For example if you are tied up, then you cannot add your ranks in Defensive Roll to your Toughness. But otherwise, if you are not under any conditions affecting your ability to move in combat, your ranks in Defensive Roll add to your Toughness, subject to PL limits of course.

Does that help?

[Duke Awesome]

Yes it does, thank you! I was misunderstanding it that it could be used as an active defense which made no sense at all!