Do monsters get active defenses, or is it already calculated into their stat blocks?

Active defences are basic actions and I read Creature Guide page 8 and saying creatures get all basic actions they qualify for (e.g., Ag 3 for Dodge). This is the same as getting basic melee actions etc.

But remember that all monsters of the same type share action cards, so if one of the 4 beastmen use an active defense, it is going to be unusable for all 4 of them until the recharge tokens are gone.

Per group though right? Otherwise if there were 3 groups of goblins, only one group could use melee attack per round.

Personally, I find having active defense for creatures too much to manage. I prefer for each creature to have its A/C/E pool (I dont even have them share the pool so it balances). I only give active defense to named NPCs, and sometimes not even… I just bump up the A/C/E.

Emirikol said:

I had to double check in the rules for this. It seems that I'm wrong, it's only special actions (as opposed to basic) with recharge that are shared between NPCs of the same type. So the active defenses, being basic actions, are thus available for each and every NPC (that fulfills the requirements).

I think that makes things way to messy though, I prefer to do what I have done so far. Treat the active defenses as special cards that NPC of a certain type share. And no, if there are three groups of goblin (I guess you mean henchmen groups?) they all share one set of cards and ACE budget. Makes for a lot less tracking and a happier GM

Melee Strike is a basic action without recharge, so the above rules won't apply to it however you choose to play it.