"dodge" is just an in-game animation.
For heavy armor you can consider it as glancing blows / deflections when a sword goes "clink" without doing any harm or is straight up blocked by shield.
NWN 1 (2002) showed dodges and parries and shield blocks...
But then again, how do you animate all weapon types hitting your heavy armor in different spots and being deflected? Same for parries, shield deflects?
Much faster and easier to just animate it as a dodge, from developer POV.
