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Can a shield be enchanted as a weapon directly? Or do I have to have a spike that is enchanted separately to swing it?
Shield Master actually makes me think that a shield can't be enchanted as a weapon directly.
The shield spike section says a shield can be enchanted as a weapon. What's unclear to me is whether it can be enchanted doubly as both a shield and a weapon. I'm sure the intention is no but not aware of a rule.
A shield can be enchanted as both magic armor and a magic weapon at the same time. (Magic item section, on Armor and Shields.)
A shield could be built that also acted as a magic weapon, but the cost of the enhancement bonus on attack rolls would need to be added into the cost of the shield and its enhancement bonus to AC.
You add the cost of enchanting it as a weapon to the cost of enchanting it as a magic shield, so it can be both at the same time.
So to be clear, could you have a +10/+10 shield counting specials for the price of a +10 magic weapon plus a +10 magic shield?
Cool. So an Agile light shield is legitimate then; thanks Jeraa.
So to be clear, could you have a +10/+10 shield counting specials for the price of a +10 magic weapon plus a +10 magic shield?
Yes.
Cool. So an Agile light shield is legitimate then; thanks Jeraa.
As long as your DM is cool with using a 3.5 enchantment.
Wow. Haven't ever really considered the dual enchanting of shields. That does make them quite a bit more powerful than I thought. Though expensive.
Not that expensive if you are able to get Shield Master though Melkiador. Shield enchantments are half the price of weapon enchantments, so a +1 Agile / +5 Bashing light shield is nearly 30K less than a +5 Agile weapon would be, while having the same exact benefit as a weapon.
But unless you are a ranger, shield master also feels pretty "expensive", since it has a lot of prereqs.
I was considering shield-trained, but it didn't feel like a great idea to try to justify putting Agile on an item that while being a light weapon for my character, isn't for anyone else.
I'm not really intending to dual-wield; I'm just messing around with a super-high dex Savage Urban barbarian who uses his shield as his weapon and sole defence.
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Cool. So an Agile light shield is legitimate then; thanks Jeraa.As long as your DM is cool with using a 3.5 enchantment.
He's referring to Agile, which is actually a part of the PFRPG rules.
He's referring to Agile, which is actually a part of the PFRPG rules.Cool. So an Agile light shield is legitimate then; thanks Jeraa.As long as your DM is cool with using a 3.5 enchantment.
Oh I'm aware it's a pathfinder enchantment but it's from the 3.5 pathfinder days and not from pathfinder as an independent game separate from 3.5. For some people, that makes a difference, as some don't allow 3.5 material that hasn't been updated/reprinted. I myself am unsure if 3.5 material from old pathfinder gets an official grandfather clause into new pathfinder.
Oh I'm aware it's a pathfinder enchantment but it's from the 3.5 pathfinder days and not from pathfinder as an independent game separate from 3.5. For some people, that makes a difference, as some don't allow 3.5 material that hasn't been updated/reprinted. I myself am unsure if 3.5 material from old pathfinder gets an official grandfather clause into new pathfinder.He's referring to Agile, which is actually a part of the PFRPG rules.Cool. So an Agile light shield is legitimate then; thanks Jeraa.As long as your DM is cool with using a 3.5 enchantment.
I think that Agile is from a Pathfinder supplement. It's just not a hardcover source. Guided, on the other hand, is from an older 3.5 era supplement. KuriKage is really good about clearly marking which stuff is from old 3.5 books.
Ah... Sorry everyone. ZanThrax has it right and I was thinking about guided. My bad. Ignore those posts and carry on.
I guess we could also think of it as a double weapon.
Thinking of it like a double weapon is the easiest way I think.
One "end" is the armor/defensive portion.
The other is the weapon portion.
They act completely normal otherwise, and are enhanced separately.
Shield Master can change this interaciton, but that is its own issue.
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My hangup with treating it as a double weapon was paying 300gp to make the "weapon" end masterwork, and paying 150gp to make the "shield" end masterwork.
The consensus when I voiced my frustrations seemed to be "just pay the 150gp for a masterwork shield", so the double weapon analogy isn't entirely accurate, either.
This is a bit of a grey area as they really don't go into the specifics. I'll agree with what Nefreet says, and just pay the 150gp for masterwork. Just think of it as a double weapon JUST for enchantments.
If you want multi-material shields, the best way to explain it is spiked shields. The main body is one material and the spike is another. The only issue is weight/cost. Again, an easy workaround is to just pay for the most expensive material + armor/weapon cost. That way, you should avoid table variance.
Wasn't there some kind of 200k price limit on an item somewhere ? Or was it 3.5 ? Because a +10/+10 shield would be around 300165 gp... ^^
3.0/3.5 had a 200,000gp limit before the item was considered an epic item. You could still go above that, it was just that certain things had a different pricing structure then.
That rule doesn't seem to exist in Pathfinder, so it doesn't apply.
And using the double weapon analogy, the price cap shouldn't be additive either. It would have a separate cap as a weapon and a shield.
According to Ultimate Equipment (pag 15),"Even though some types of armor and shields can be used as weapons, you can’t create a masterwork version of such an item that confers an enhancement bonus on attack rolls. However, you can create masterwork armor spikes and shield spikes, which do confer their enhancement bonus on attack rolls to attacks made with the spikes." So Now, if you want to enchant armors or shields as weapons, you must use the armor/shield spikes, which has some advantages: You can buy them from a different material so you can have adamantine spikes on a mithral armor/shield, theorically you can unscrew them from one armor/shield and apply them to another if you wanna switch armor/shields or spikes, and it get's clear that you now pay 150g to make the armor/shield masterwork and 300g to make the spikes masterwork. The only disavantage I see now is that, if you want to have an magic shield enchanted as a weapon, it will have to do Piercing damage by RAW. (Personally, I think spiked shields should do B & P damage with a shield bash. It's a BASH for crying out loud!)
Before, I think you could create/enchant an armor or shield with no spikes to also be enchanted as a magical weapon. They probably worked as double weapons, with a max +10 for the armor/shield enchants (abjuration aura, max 100,000g) and also a max +10 for the weapon enchants (envocation aura, max 200,000g). You'd have to pay the masterwork cost before you could start enchanting it, as usual (150 or the "defensive" armor/shiled part, 300g for the "offensive" weapon part, or 450g for both parts masterwork). The limitation I see would be if it were made some special material. Since there are no RAW rules for making the same item of multiple special materials, it would be best if it were made of only one. If you wanted an adamantine shield you'd have to pay 8,000g, 5,000g for the improvement on the shield's defense part and 3,000g for the improvement on the shield's weapon part.
Btw, if you use a Klar, you can make a shield that could cost 500k+. Make that an Maelstrom Shield that has something better than Great Trip (it uses only 1 AoO to both trip and do damage) and you could get an Epic Maelstrom Dracolich Heavy Klar "+30", Mithral Adamantine Animated Dancing Defensive Bashing Mirrowed Arrow Deflecting Light Fortification Frost Keen Corageous. Make that inteligent and you get yourself your Final Boss.
According to Ultimate Equipment (pag 15),"Even though some types of armor and shields can be used as weapons, you can’t create a masterwork version of such an item that confers an enhancement bonus on attack rolls. However, you can create masterwork armor spikes and shield spikes, which do confer their enhancement bonus on attack rolls to attacks made with the spikes." So Now, if you want to enchant armors or shields as weapons, you must use the armor/shield spikes
You quoted the MASTERWORK enhancement bonus to attack rolls.
If you check out the magic armor section of the Core Rulebook or PRD
Shields: Shield enhancement bonuses stack with armor enhancement bonuses. Shield enhancement bonuses do not act as attack or damage bonuses when the shield is used in a shield bash. The bashing special ability, however, does grant a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls (see the special ability description).A shield could be built that also acted as a magic weapon, but the cost of the enhancement bonus on attack rolls would need to be added into the cost of the shield and its enhancement bonus to AC.
And that's the ruling that everyone is referring to here when not caring about shield spikes.
Fine, if you wanna consider Shields as something like double weapons that works too for most things. It seems to me that the Ultimate Equipment was written to solve the problem on this thread in a nice manner.
Though it seems abundntly clear by the text that "you can’t create a masterwork version of such an item that confers an enhancement bonus on attack rolls", so you can't make magic shields enchanted as magical blunt weapons, but you can enchant the spikes as weapons.
What I get out of that is that you can make a masterwork shield as a weapon, but it still doesn't receive the attack bonus a masterwork weapon normally receives.
Fine, if you wanna consider Shields as something like double weapons that works too for most things. It seems to me that the Ultimate Equipment was written to solve the problem on this thread in a nice manner.
Though it seems abundntly clear by the text that "you can’t create a masterwork version of such an item that confers an enhancement bonus on attack rolls", so you can't make magic shields enchanted as magical blunt weapons, but you can enchant the spikes as weapons.
That masterwork ruling for shields not applying the masterwork bonus to attack rolls has been around since the core rulebook in the equipment chapter. It's just stating that a shield can only be masterwork for armor check penalty reduction for +150 gp, and can't be masterwork for weapons (+300 gp). The magic armor chapter section on magic shields I quoted above has a specific rule that allows one to enchant shields as weapons for shield bashing despite the non-magic shield being a masterwork item for armor/shield rather than a masterwork weapon. The pricing is simply weapon pricing in addition to armor pricing for magic shields. The Shield Master feat (from the core rulebook) was introduced to bypass needing to spend the money on weapon enhancements on shield unless one wanted magic weapon abilities on the shield.
The Ultimate Equipment book introduced no new rulings on the matter.
Ok then, so we go "back" to the shield being enchanted as something like a double weapon. I see now only 2 complications: Using darkwood for the shield part and adamantine for the weapon part, and what would happen if you apply shield spikes to a shield already enchanted as a weapon, to a maxium of a "+30" enchanted shield with spikes, and "+40" Klar (700,000g+).
I agree that a shield can be enchanted as a weapon directly without adding spikes. What I wonder is how a shield enchanted as both armor and a weapon would interact with the Shield Master feat. I'd assume that you'd apply the greater of the two enhancement bonuses to your attack and damage rolls and then apply any other qualities the shield might have a weapon.
For instance, if I had a shield enchanted as +4 armor and a +1 weapon and then got the Shield Master feat my bonus on attacks and damage would go from +1 to +4. If the shield also had the holy property I guess it would also count as good aligned for defeating DR and would cause 2d6 extra damage against evil creatures. Does that sound correct? If so it seems pretty powerful, but Shield Master is a pretty tough feat to acquire, so maybe that's intentional.
As an aside, I figure that this is how magic arrows fired from a magic bow would work too. If so I guess that +1 Bane arrows might not be a bad investment for high level PCs.
I agree that a shield can be enchanted as a weapon directly without adding spikes. What I wonder is how a shield enchanted as both armor and a weapon would interact with the Shield Master feat. I'd assume that you'd apply the greater of the two enhancement bonuses to your attack and damage rolls and then apply any other qualities the shield might have a weapon.
For instance, if I had a shield enchanted as +4 armor and a +1 weapon and then got the Shield Master feat my bonus on attacks and damage would go from +1 to +4. If the shield also had the holy property I guess it would also count as good aligned for defeating DR and would cause 2d6 extra damage against evil creatures. Does that sound correct? If so it seems pretty powerful, but Shield Master is a pretty tough feat to acquire, so maybe that's intentional.
As an aside, I figure that this is how magic arrows fired from a magic bow would work too. If so I guess that +1 Bane arrows might not be a bad investment for high level PCs.
Yes that's all correct.
Uber Shields for Defense are:
+5 Bashing Spiked Large Shield, +5 Defender. If you are using 3.5, you put an Augment Gem of Missile Deflection on it.
You 'lock' the weapon into Defender at all Times. Shield Master means it is still a +5 Weapon.
Your Large Shield is now providing you +12 AC, +17 Against ranged attacks.
For OFFENSIVE purposes, you build a +5 Bashing/+1 Holy Keen Ghost Touch +5 other enhancements. You can effectively make a +14 Weapon Equivalent Shield by stacking the Shield Master feat for +5 and adding +9 on the Weapon side, much like you can do with a bow and arrow.
==Aelryinth
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I have a build that might use that, though I've been focusing on feats adn abilities in the planning phase. I was thinking Thunder and Fang and putting the Bashing Enchantment on the Klar so that that both would do 2d6.
I did something similar with my Warpriest.
It's been a lot of fun.
I wouldn't expect many DMs to allow the Defending trick to give you +5 AC for no penalty. Taking the attack penalty to get the AC bonus seems fine to me though. I also believe there's a ruling that you need to attack with a Defending weapon to get the bonus (so no Defending Armor Spikes +5 which you get an AC bonus from despite the fact you never attack with them)
Oh, I'm aware of the 'must attack'. Except you never devote an action to 'undoing' the defense. So it's all defending, all the time.
You'd take no attack penalty, because you'd be using the Shield Enhancement for your attack, and the weapon enhancement for your defense. Effectively, you've just bought a permanent +5 Defender weapon you can use without taking a TH penalty. It's a form of AC a non-warrior can't use.
Plus, it's kind of pricey at 72k.
Note that if you have a +5 Shield, +1 Defender, you can only Defend for +1. You can only use the weapon enhancement to power Defender.
Shield Master is the key in this scenario. Without it, you don't have attack potential.
===Aelryinth
I understand your reasoning. I just don't think folks would like it much if I tried it. Heck, they might not like a +5 holy shield for 43k either, but at least it would be similar to some stacking rules for projectile weapons and ammunition which seem pretty well established.
Oh, I'm aware of the 'must attack'. Except you never devote an action to 'undoing' the defense. So it's all defending, all the time.
Defending weapon doesn't need an action to "undo" the defense though.
A defending weapon allows the wielder to transfer some or all of the weapon's enhancement bonus to his AC as a bonus that stacks with all others. As a free action, the wielder chooses how to allocate the weapon's enhancement bonus at the start of his turn before using the weapon, and the bonus to AC lasts until his next turn. This ability can only be placed on melee weapons.
and you set your free action to 'always defend.' Semantics :)
==Aelryinth
That's correct, as has already been mentioned above. Where have I disputed that?
YOu make the decision at the start of your round, and set it to 'constant' defending. If you attack with it, up pops the bonus.
==Aelryinth