So on pg. 105, right after explaining the important difference between "grants" and "increases" defense, the book states (bold emphasis mine) "If multiple sources that increase defense would increase a character's defense higher than 4, the rating remains at 4."
My main question is whether this rule applies to sources that grant defense. An example of this is the Additional Effect "Add Defense", which grants defense to the target of the spell equal to the caster's ranks in Knowledge. So, if a caster has 5 ranks in knowledge, would the granted defense remain 5? The wording of this rule makes me think that it would.
Another related question focuses more on the "multiple sources" bit. Read super literally, this seems to indicate that a granted defense with one source that increases defense beyond 4 is fine, because only one source increases the defense above 4, rather than "multiple". When I first read it, I thought that this went against the spirit of the rule and intended to reduce such cases to 4. Yet, thinking about it more, especially if sources that grant defense above 4 are ok, made it seem like the rule is intended to be more of a soft cap than a hard cap. You're not likely to find sources, it seems, that increase defense by more than a point or two, so the numbers would still remain pretty close to 4. For example, if the caster of the previously mentioned spell has 5 ranks in Knowledge and casts the spell on a character who has a Talent or something that increases their defense by 1, that character would have 6 defense and likely wouldn't ever get much higher because the caster can't gain any more ranks in Knowledge than 5. That doesn't seem too unreasonable to me and would explain a little bit as to why they didn't simply say "A character's defense may never exceed 4" or something like that.
Thanks in advance. Hopefully there's just some section of the rules that I glossed over a bit too quickly that could clear this all up.