Dueling Shields; How to do?

[Sacredless]

http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp279/Rorxiss/IMG%20Resources/erez2.jpg

So, Dueling Shields; how can you have those work in Pathfinder? Is it a Tower Shield that you can fight with? RAW, you cannot use a Tower Shield to shieldbash with or apply spikes to. Would Catch Off-Guard allow you to treat your Tower Shield as a Dueling Shield?

What do I do to make a character out of this and if I can, what would be the best way to write the character? Just a general thought experiment, I guess.

[Movin]

Catch off guard would let you use a tower shield as an improvised weapon. This would not make your feat selections easy to start but your trick would start to fall behind in viability as you level and your friends start picking up magic items. Ghosts and other incorporeal things would make your life miserable.

My advice would be to get the feat that lets you wield a heavy shield as a light weapon. Faith trait of gorrum? I think.
Use that and wield an oversized heavy shield. It counts as an actual weapon and can make a rather nasty combo with the Warpriest class.
With little effort you can get some very nasty dice increases attached to that weapon.
I can't think of the traits name but I imagine somebody else on will come by to correct me. Tis the internet after all.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

If we're going by straight RAW, then Dueling Shields are impossible if we use the Tower Shield paradigm. The most accurate way to represent this in Pathfinder is with the Spiked Heavy Shield. You could try Light Spiked Shields if you want, but it depends on what you look for in a build.

There are several classes that can handle shields well, but I find Rangers with their Weapon and Shield style pulls it off without much effort needed from the player, simply because of being able to ignore feat pre-requisites is a decent boon for the PC, getting access to certain feats faster than normal, as well as even possibly at all. If you're looking for more interesting/defensive concepts, Fighter is the way to go. If you're wanting to pump out as much damage as possible, Barbarian (or Paladin, depending on AP/campaign/encounter/wahtever) is the way to go.

But if you're just going to two-hand a shield, the only feats you really need are Power Attack and Improved Shield Bash. Any 1st level Human (or any-race Fighter) meets this stuff at character generation. Anything else would need to wait a level (Ranger) or two (Any Non-human, Non-fighter character). From there, the rest is open to whatever you want; some recommendations are Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Improved Critical, etc. This list will include class-specific feats also, depending on the class you pick.

[Davor]

Basically what everyone else has said. Power Attack, Spiked Heavy Shield, get the Bashing property ASAP to get that damage up. Otherwise, just build him like you would any normal two-handed power attacker, but with some of the shield feats thrown in. Ranger and Fighter are probably your best bets, but if you'd like some magical flair there's a Magus archetype built around Spell-striking with a shield as well.

[lemeres]

Yeah, spiked heavy shield, since it can be two handed. It seems fairly appropriate since those shields are practically spears and protective covers on them.

I think I will suggest brawler for this, since it can flurry with shields. They also get 2 handed power attack bonuses during their flurry and eventually apply some of their increases to unarmed strikes to the things- so tons of damage.

Brawlers have a small bit of conflict with actually using their shields for defense- they lose their class' bonus AC. Overall, this is a small concern. A heavy shield with a decent enhancement bonus gives you more than that ever will (particularly if you take shield focus and greater shield focus for more AC). The bonus AC's main advantage is that it adds to touch AC (and I am fairly sure you can abandon using the shield for AC if it ever becomes a problem).

Another kind of weird advantage in brawler is that it gives you an excuse to grab Shield Master. This feat requires you to have TWF, which is kind of useless for someone using the shield as a 2 handed weapon. But brawler's flurry gives you the TWF feats, so that is all fine. Anyway, shield master is great for this kind of build because it lets you use your shield's enhancement bonus to AC for its attacks as well. Considering the fact that AC bonuses are 1/2 the price of regular weapon bonuses....you can save a lot of money to use elsewhere.

So lets see- shield snag seems nice, since it gives you free disarms when you hit with the shield (I tried looking up videos of dueling shields after seeing that picture myself; many of them have a kind of hooked area for disarming it seems, so this is thematically good). Shield slam lets you get a free bullrush. Both of these can be nice on a brawler since they get bonuses to choice maneuvers.

[boring7]

Within existing rules it's two-handing a spiked shield, getting the bashing enchantment as soon as possible, and rocking on with (effectively) a greatsword that does piercing instead of slashing and gives a +3 to AC (assuming you took improved shield bash).

If you wanted to homebrew a dueling shield I'd go with size of a tower shield, 1d10, exotic weapon, gives AC like a tower shield but can't be given spikes or the bashing enchantment, does piercing or bludgeoning damage, and gives a -2 to hit because it's unwieldly and slow.