I can’t find anywhere that says that defensive weapon quality does not stack. So, for instance if I had a riot shield and a parrying dagger I would have defensive 3?

What if I had a besalisk with a riot shield and three parrying vibrio daggers, would I have Defensive 5?

In the FAQ thread, the last answer from the developers on the matter is that multiple instances of Defensive do not stack, and that you instead simply take the best instance of Defensive (or Deflection if you've got multiple items with that quality) and apply it.

So in both your examples, the PC would have melee defense 2 from the riot shield, and the Defensive quality from the parrying daggers would be ignored.

It's also worth mentioning that per that last dev response, multiple sources of defense don't stack, and that the process is "under review" as of the most recent answer (which was close to if not over two years ago). So if your hypothetical PC was also wearing a set of armored clothing (defense 1), then they'd only have melee defense 2 (from the shield) and ranged defense 1 (from the armor.

If you do a bit of searching, you'll come across a slew of threads discussing the matter of defense in this game.

Thank you very much! I appreciate it!

Most people assume the genesys solution is our missing answer... Which is anything attacks up to 4

Actually Genesys has a distinction of things that do and don't stack. Anything that grants defense doesn't stack, such as armor and cover. Anything that adds to your defense stacks, such as swords, shields, talents, with a max of 4 defense total.

So in Genesys, you can either jump behind weak cover for a granted defense of 1, then your shield with the deflective item quality adds 1 ranged defense, making your total ranged defense 2 and your total melee defense 1.

Another example is having armor that grants defense 1, then your sword adds 2 melee defense, for a total of 3 melee defense and 1 ranged defense.

The unfortunate oversight in both Star Wars and Genesys is that both armor and cover grant defense, which means a character wearing armor that grants defense has no reason to get into cover unless the cover is especially good cover that grants more defense than your armor does. Even so, you are taking one over the other.

The solution to this is to house rule that cover doesn't grant defense but it adds to defense, making an armored character still want to jump behind a corner or flip a table over for cover.

Really? That's disappointing.

3 hours ago, TheShard said:

Really? That's disappointing.

By now you should know FFG well enough