I had someone (2-handed longaxeman) get to level 11, and (although it didn’t make much sense strategically) I decided to give him Nimble and Brawny for his final two perks, just to see how they’d mix. With a total cost of 29 fatigue imposed by his weapons and armour, Nimble increased his melee defence from 35 to 44 – a decent increase (albeit not sexy enough for an end-of-the-tree perk). After giving him Brawny as well, his melee defence went up to 47 – so Brawny does reduce the penalty to the Nimble bonus imposed by armour. After I gave him a large helmet (normal fatigue cost of -15, as opposed to -4 for his old one), his melee defence dropped a bit, but only to 45. So, with the combination of Brawny and Nimble, he could wear meaningfully heavier armour and have +10 melee defence compared to before. Not too bad. So, Nimble is useless for shield-bearers, but it could be combined with Battle Forged + Brawny for 2-handers who already have a high melee defence.
