| Rofusco |
To my mind, you are all oversimplifying the problem.
1) A martial, front-line character should have a chance of being hit. It's unrealistic to expect enemies to miss every single time.
2) It's unrealistic to expect GMs to entirely rewrite encounters to deal with a single feat. It's also unrealistic to expect GMs to entirely ignore one type of fight - fights against humanoid fighters - until such a level as those humanoids get iterative attacks.
3) This was commonly been used as part of a Master of Many Styles build in which the monk would dance around the battlefield, intentionally provoking attacks of opportunity that would never hit so that the monk gets a ridiculous number of counterattacks. Turns with these characters tended to be much, much longer than other turns and generally were frustrating both to GMs and other players. The GMs only real defense was to stop taking attacks of opportunity; that led to butthurt from the player, who felt that the GM was trying to invalidate their build. The GM just can't win here - either he allows it, letting the monk trivialize the rest of the party and make them sit there bored while he provokes from every creature on the battlefield, or he shuts them down, causing them to be angry. Either way isn't good.
4) It's already easy to make yourself nearly unhittable. With a very high AC, the GM is presented with the problem of either designing an encounter to deal with your AC or the party's AC. Generally, they will design against the party rather than against the single character.
5) Crane Wing as it existed before was prescient. It only expended its use when a creature would actually hit. Given that these builds also had high AC, that meant that even multiple creatures with iterative attacks would often find the monk immune to every single thing they would do.
6) I find it laughable that the martial types of characters would call GMs immature for wanting to challenge the party. Most martial players that I have played with demand harder and...
1): Old crane wing could be used to deflect ONE melee attack per round. It didn't make martials immune to attacks.
2): It's really not that hard to deal with. Many monsters have more than one natural attack. If a GM is using humanoid enemies just throw in a two weapon fighter or an archer with many attacks.
3): Seriously? You have a problem with monks being strong? If the player is getting upset that enemies are adapting to his tactics that's more a problem with the player/GM relationship than with the class itself.
4): The crane style feat chain requires you to have one open hand and also take an attack penalty. Also the way fighting defensively works you only get it if you attacked that round. There are limitations to crane style. You may have really high AC but it comes with a cost. Same with other methods of getting AC like focusing your wealth on AC boosting items instead of other areas such as offensive power. You're giving up something to have a high AC. It's not as easy to attain high AC as you make it out to be.
5): And that's how it should be. Tanky characters should be tanky. Monks being strong is hardly a bad thing.
6): Another problem with the player/GM relationship rather than the feat itself. I have had experience with crane style as both a GM and a player. It's not as big of an issue as you're making it out to be. If pathfinder society has a problem with it then it's has more to do with the way their adventures are designed than with the feat itself. There was no need to disable crane style.