Shield Master and dual wield penalties


Rules Questions


One of my player is considering going the shield master route, and we're having a disagreement on the penalties that should be applied when dual wielding his sword and his heavy shield.
With two weapon fighting alone, he should get -4/-4 as both arent light weapons.
With shield master, should that be dropped to -4/0 or 0/0 ?
Thanks for any answer :)

Sczarni

On the top right of this forum you'll see a little box labeled "Search".

Try entering some combinations of key terms like "shield master" and/or "two weapon fighting" and/or "penalties".

This is one of those ambiguous situations where some research is required. Too many people disagree on the matter to come to a consensus (last time I checked, at least)


Nefreet's right in that this is a hotly debated topic, but here's my take on it. Shield Master, even for a Sword and Board ranger, is an incredibly feat heavy path.

For not-a-ranger you need the following feats:
Improved Shield Bash
Two-Weapon Fighting
Shield Slam
Shield Master

This nets you 1 offhand attack with a 1d4 weapon with the worst crit stats possible (20 x2) AND it only adds half of your strength bonus.

And you want these feats too:
Double Slice
Improved Two Weapon Fighting
Two Weapon Rend
Bashing Finish

Plus you'll want the basics, like power attack, and maybe the bullrush line to beef up your Shield Slam maneuvers.

And this doesn't break anything. You'll have a lot more armor, but will likely be roughly on par with a raging, pouncing (beast totem), two-handed-weapon barbarian. I say give them the -0/-0 penalties, even if it's a heavy shield. I used this build on a half elf, sword-and-board ranger and had a lot of fun with it.

Shadow Lodge

This feat line almost makes me want to make a dwarf dual wielding a pair of steel shields (before someone points out the obvious, I am well aware that there would be no increase in AC for the second shield).


The Dwarf dual-shield terror is pretty unstoppable. You need high DEX and high STR to pull it off though, which is a hassle.


zerathule wrote:

One of my player is considering going the shield master route, and we're having a disagreement on the penalties that should be applied when dual wielding his sword and his heavy shield.

With two weapon fighting alone, he should get -4/-4 as both arent light weapons.
With shield master, should that be dropped to -4/0 or 0/0 ?
Thanks for any answer :)

If the shield is in the off hand the sheild has a penalty of 0, but the sword(main hand) will have a -4 because the feat only gets rid of the penalty for the shield attack, however he still has a one handed weapon in the off hand.

If the shield is in the main hand then the shield still has a penalty of 0, but the sword(ff hand) will have a -2 if it is a light weapon, and a -4 if it is a one handed weapon.


Rereading it, Wraithstrike's right. I guess only the shield attack gets the benefit of the feat. At my table we play with -0/-0 though.

Silver Crusade

Using two shields as weapons would mean that both attack at no penalty, and while only one could provide a shield bonus to AC, the feat means that their enhancement bonuses also become weapon bonuses, and shield bonuses are half the price of weapon bonuses.

The pre-reqs also mean that you get a free bull rush each time.

The existence of this feat means that twin shields are flat out the best TWF weapon combo, and this is why I hate its very existence with a passion.

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