As far as I'm aware, there's only one dwarven defender in Forgotten Realms canon-- Harbromm of Adbar is ftr 10/DwD 7 (and he's a dwarfey dwarf)Blindhamsterman wrote:are there any canon examples to prove the exceptions? Usually the best way to go...
On the minus side, it doesn't give a very solid case for "Anyone should be able to take the class!" but it also doesn't make a very solid case for "Only dwarves should be able to take the class!" -- the RP and canon behind them doesn't seem to extend very far beyond "This is what happens when a tanky fighter tanks tankily tanky tank tank."
At the very least, defensive stance comes up in a few classes (Breachgnome and Defender of Sealtiel come to mind), and we quickly spiral into an unconquerable workload for very low yield (simply because so few ALFA PCs ever qualify for a PrC) if we try to implement everything as distinct classes-- unless we implement on an on-demand basis, but I'm not sure how efficient that would be.