Yeah, I'm not like a genius game designer or anything so maybe it'll turn out to be a terrible idea that I'll have to dial back eventually, but basically the idea is if you're within jab range of an enemy and you're not attacking, you better be defending or getting out of range. I'm planning to have more reasonably timed attacks too, but that'll be for stuff like ranged or unblockable attacks.
I think a sufficiently experienced player probably can reaction block or dodge though, since the enemies' fastest attack has about 20 frames before it hits you.