Bastion of Good

[Thomas Long 175]

Bastion of Good (Su)

At 1st level, a sacred shield can call upon the powers of good to defend her and her allies against evil. This ability functions as smite evil, except that the paladin gains no benefit on attack or damage rolls against her target. Instead, any attacks the target makes against allies within 10 feet of the paladin deal half damage. Attacks against the paladin deal full damage, but the paladin gains a deflection bonus to her AC equal to her Charisma bonus (if any) against attacks made by the target of the smite. This bonus increases by +1 for every four paladin levels (to a maximum of +6 at 20th level). As with smite evil, if the paladin targets a creature that is not evil, her bastion of good ability is wasted with no effect. Feats, abilities, and the like that increase a paladin’s number of uses of smite evil per day increase a sacred shield’s uses of bastion of good per day.

This ability replaces smite evil.

https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/classes/core-classes/paladin/ar chetypes/paizo---paladin-archetypes/sacred-shield

Basic Question: if your bonus increases at every 4 levels up to 20, why does it end at 6? 4,8,12,16,20=5 numbers. Do you start with an auto CHA+1? Or is it a typo?

[Troubleshooter]

Perhaps the relevant text is that the total bonus is capped at +6. A 10th level Paladin could already have Cha 24, but they may not want Deflection bonuses skyrocketing above normal parameters. You see a little bit of this, but not much, like the occasional +8 Enhancement bonus. Somewhere.

Especially because even with 'just' +6, this could make a great 1-level dip for an already high-level character with good Charisma.

[Weirdo]

I think it's a typo.

1st level you get your Cha bonus to AC.
4th level : Cha+1
8: Cha+2
12: Cha+3
16: Cha+4
20: Cha+5

It makes more sense to me that the +6 was a typo or math error than that the devs forgot to mention that you start with a deflection bonus equal to Cha+1 rather than Cha. I also don't think there's a cap - Troubleshooter has a point that it's pretty powerful, but it's similar in effect to the monk's AC bonus which would also be very nice as a dip for an unarmoured wis-based character, like a druid who doesn't want the Wild enhancement or an Empyreal sorcerer. The language is also similar to the language found in other abilities like the Gunslinger's Nimble below, and these are meant to indicate the total bonus attained by 20th level.

Nimble wrote:

Starting at 2nd level, a gunslinger gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC while wearing light or no armor. Anything that causes the gunslinger to lose her Dexterity bonus to AC also causes the gunslinger to lose this dodge bonus. This bonus increases by +1 for every four levels beyond 2nd level (to a maximum of +5 at 20th level).

If it were meant to limit the amount of Cha you could apply as a deflection bonus it would instead be worded as Canny Defense:

Canny Defense wrote:

When wearing light or no armor and not using a shield, a duelist adds 1 point of Intelligence bonus (if any) per duelist class level to her Dexterity bonus to modify Armor Class while wielding a melee weapon.