Camelot Grab Bag Q&A

Mythic's Sanya Thomas has once again posted up a Friday Grab Bag at Camelot Herald, answering some more of the questions she's had presented to her this week. Here's one of em:
    Q: Why is evade an ability that rises with level, as opposed to parry and shield which require points? All three are defensive maneuvers.

    A: Well, I don’t have a complete answer for you – but part of the answer is the placement of the element in the formula. (Refresher course from earlier this month – the order of resolution in combat is hit/miss, evade, parry, block.) Those elements are in descending order, more or less. Evade is a bigger part of each formula than the others, and each level of evade can be likened to a major improvement in armor class (in terms of damage taken). So while wide variations in the smaller elements like parry or block (within characters of the same level range) are acceptable in terms of game balance, the different levels of evade are relatively HUGE, and thus are doled out over the course of levels.