Defend

Defend is a battling option in both Golden Sun games. When used, the defending Adept will do nothing for that turn (as defend has no animation), but it cuts the amount of damage taken from a foe by exactly 50% of what you'd get otherwise. Defend will offer this protection for the whole turn, and thus works irrespective of the user's (or enemy's) agility rating.

When a character is going to attack an enemy that is already downed they will automatically defend. This was actually the cause of a lot of negative remarks in the reviewer community which called it a lack of "smart combat" as said by an IGN reviewer. Defending does not reduce your chances of being inflicted with a status affecting attack. However, it does also cut in half any damage done to your PP meter. Several monsters in both games have ability to defend. For a full list of these enemies, see here.

As a command, defend serves little practical purpose, as to defend means that the Adept cannot preform any other action, and thus will not be able to aid the party in actually finishing the battle. Furthermore, defensive Psynergy or Djinni (such as Flash), are much more effective in preserving HP anyway, as they are either stronger, last multiple turns and/or effect multiple Adepts simultaneously. While it is conceivable that the player may defend when there are no other options (for instance, if the Adept is out of PP, or all Djinn are reovering) and the Adept simply has to stall, it is far more likely that the player will not choose to defend and simply be assigned it by default due to the invalidation of a target (due to it being felled prior to the Adept's action).