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Here is a pieced I worked out for my home campaign, and my players have loved it! What do you guys think?
Shields – overhauled!
What follows is a rework of the typical D20 pathfinder shield using the current d20 stats as a base line, and historical records for size, weight, etc. The objective is to re-envision shields to allow them to be more useful than the typical + 1 AC (and the loss of the off hand for more powerful swings).
Light Shield + 1 AC – mostly wooden – weight about 8 lbs – cost: 3 gold – arcane spell failure: 5%
Medium Shield + 2 AC – typically wood / metal reenforcements – weight about 15 lbs – cost: 12 gold – arcane spell failure: 10%
Heavy Shield + 3 AC – layered wood & leather with metal cover – Example Spartan hoplon / aspis 36 – 40" diameter – weight about 25 lbs – cost: 20 gold – arcane spell failure: 15%
Tower Shield + 4 AC – These are huge! – mostly used on open battle fields – offers Cover – mostly wood with metal cover – 3′ × 4 1/2’ – weight about 45 lbs – cost: 30 gold – arcane spell failure: 50%
Shields can be sacrificed to counter a critical hit. This option can be used once for each weight category for the shield, once it reaches the maximum crits absorbed wooden shields are destroyed and metals ones are considered broken and too damaged to use as a shield until repaired.
Additional augmentations could be used with these shields such as making them from a lighter wood (Darkwood) or a lighter metal (mithril), alternately adding reinforced metal bands would add both weight and additional durability.
A reinforced shield adds + 25% weight, and 50 gold to its cost, and adds one additional crit absorption (adds 2 additional crits for heavy and tower shields).
A light shield offers a 25% weight reduction, & still adds 50 gold to cost but the shield does not suffer from its ability to absorb critical hits due to its superior construction materials.
NOTE I: if a light shield is sacrificed this way it is still destroyed but does NOT stop the attack. Rather the attack is simply treated as a normal attack (as though the critical was never confirmed). This tactic is best used against a larger weapon whose critical hits can be deadly, especially when used with the optional massive damage rules. All other shields actually stop the attack at the cost of the durability of the shield.
NOTE II: When used with the Total Defense combat maneuver the AC bonus for shields doubles.
All other enhancements, augmentations, masterwork considerations, etc work normally.
Before anyone asks, no I did not forget about the other types of shields in RAW D20 (most of which were really just a different spin on the light shield) but rather opted to do something entirely different with shields for my home campaign. You might also notice I brought back the medium shield.
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Not bad. Having fought with shields and without, I've always felt that +1 or +2 was far too little for a shield, though it was somewhat mitigated by the way the game tends to ignore the sheer bulk of the things.
You might also give the bonus to some reflex saves (eg against fireball) though not others (eg create pit), though this could take some adjudication.
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I like the direction you're going, but I think a 100% crit negation is too strong, even if it means damaging the shield.
I had the idea to do four shield (+1 - +4) years ago but never pursued it, and you've taken it further than I ever intended. I agree with Cyrad about the auto-negate. Maybe it becomes an option depending on how close to your AC the confirmation roll is, and even then it could mitigates some damage - not neccessarily the entire crit. However, more advanced stuff could be accessible through feats. I don't like doubling the shield bonus with Total Defense. In general I'm not on board with anything simply being doubled.
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I like the direction you're going, but I think a 100% crit negation is too strong, even if it means damaging the shield.
I pretty much agree. You could go the route I did with a "resilience" attribute, which adds +X to the difficulty of critical hit confirmation rolls based on shield weight.
For example, a light shield might add +2 to the difficulty, while a heavy shield might add +4-6.
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I like the crit negation.
Well, if you're going to be overhauling shields, why not address their completely unrealistic weights? Estimating the weight of medieval arms and armor is difficult since iron tends not to preserve well so few authentic examples survive to modern day, and this does mean there's actually a fair bit of room for debate over what ranges were typical. However, it's still possible to give a general ballpark range and the Pathfinder weights (and by extension, your weights that are based on them) are quite unreasonable.
Most period shields would be 5-10 lbs, with very light shields going down to 3 lbs while very heavy ones could go up to 15 lbs. Any lighter and you're probably looking at a buckler, any heavier and you're probably looking at a tower shield. Tower Shields seem to get a bit more debate. Giving a wide range, I'd say you'd want to stick within 15-25 lbs. However, many people would regard the low and high end of that range to be unrealistic. Most reproduction Scuta (Roman tower shields) come in at 20 lbs, and the heaviest tower shield ever found is only 22 lbs, so probably 18-22 lbs is a more realistic range. There are also portable fortifications that could get much heavier than a tower shield. However, such portable fortifications would never be used one-handed in the way you would use a conventional shield. So although they might be called a "shield" they should not be modeled as one in Pathfinder rules.
Your "fortified" and "light" variants does give your shields some weight range to your individual shield types, so picking a middle-ground for each class of shield should give you a . Given that, I'd say light shields should be 4 lbs (3-5 lbs range), medium shields should be 8 lbs (6-10 lbs range), heavy shields should be 12 lbs (9-15 lbs range), and tower shields should be 20 lbs (15-25 lbs range).
The key to "fixing" shields is to add more interesting things you can do with them.
By adding qualities to them, similar to weapons? Or perhaps a couple new combat maneuvers? Or were you thinking feat trees/chains?
Not bad. Having fought with shields and without, I've always felt that +1 or +2 was far too little for a shield, though it was somewhat mitigated by the way the game tends to ignore the sheer bulk of the things.
You might also give the bonus to some reflex saves (eg against fireball) though not others (eg create pit), though this could take some adjudication.
Initially having the shield add to REF Saves was part of the shield overhaul, however I dropped it for comparability reasons, and the fact that the only classes it really helped were those who already had the largest HP pool in the game anyway (IE: core melee types with d10 + in HP).
You could go the route I did with a "resilience" attribute, which adds +X to the difficulty of critical hit confirmation rolls based on shield weight.
For example, a light shield might add +2 to the difficulty, while a heavy shield might add +4-6.
Actually this is a really good idea too, I wish I'd thought of it! :)
On the topic of the weight of the shield I somewhat agree about some of the values being off, however opted to stay close with the published material largely for compatibility reasons. You may find it interesting however that the stats i used the Spartan hoplon / aspis of 36 – 40" diameter & weight at 25 lbs were not ones I made up but were drawn from here http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com/wiki/Aspis How historically accurate this website is I can not speak to, but it seemed fairly reasonable given the materials used (layered wood and bronze), so I stayed with it and averaged the weight of a medium shield between it and the small shield. For the loose estimates I was looking for it seemed to work fairly well. Your mileage may vary of course and if you come up with something different I'd love to take a look. :)
I also agree that the crit negation may be a bit generous given some of the existing materials for things like armor fortification and what not. I drew this idea from the fact that shields could really take a beating depending on what they were guarding against (such as an attack against large pole arms and such) and wanted to incorporate that aspect into my home game. This is also off set by the fact that heavy and tower shields are relatively rare in my home game, and ones with the additional augmentations even more so. So while finding a replacement shield would not be a "big deal", finding one that would survive more that one or two crits while out in the field would be pretty rare.
Secondly, I tend to use the sunder maneuver a lot more frequently in my campaigns than in most. This combined with the "destroyed on crit" effects means that shields tend to not live long when you have multiple foes whaling on you every combat.
Anyway, just some of my thoughts on the matter. So far this change has worked really well in my home game. It may be worth mentioning also that my home game is using some pretty ugly optional rules for critical hits, and thus allowing for an option which gave a believable (if temporary) defense against them seemed to balance well.
By adding qualities to them, similar to weapons? Or perhaps a couple new combat maneuvers? Or were you thinking feat trees/chains?
Yes, I was thinking of a unique combat maneuver for shields or new feats that allow you to do interesting things with feats. The feat tree for shields is such a huge mess that it needs a major overhaul, anyway.
Sounds like a neat idea, I would be interested in seeing what you come up with.
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You may find it interesting however that the stats i used the Spartan hoplon / aspis of 36 – 40" diameter & weight at 25 lbs were not ones I made up but were drawn from here http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com/wiki/Aspis How historically accurate this website is I can not speak to, but it seemed fairly reasonable given the materials used (layered wood and bronze), so I stayed with it and averaged the weight of a medium shield between it and the small shield.
A 40" diameter would put this shield into the size category of tower shields. Roman Scuta were typically ~50x25". So although the Aspis lacked the distinctive tower shape, its overall size is almost identical to a tower shield. For the purposes of modeling it in Pathfinder, it should be treated as a tower shield. Also, it's worth noting that bronze is a heavier material than iron, so an iron shield of similar design would weigh less. So this actually supports the weight ranges I quoted earlier.
Having learned sword-n-board in the SCA, a shield is more effective than armor against a single opponent, as most 'kills' in Grand Melees and battles come from people you're just not paying attention to as much (EG: Polearms). I never got tapped by the guy in front of me unless he was real dang good (Knight or soon knighted). I saw a Crown List won decisively by a Knight with a buckler and short sword, and was in a wedge he led a year later, again so armed. My job was just to keep people off his ass and keep up...while walking backward. We...well, he...cut through Middle like a knife, and we in the back had serious footing problems.
Active defenses are not integral to most games, often being ignored. If you do go with the system you've started, remember to work on the balance so that it doesn't go 'Klog!'
Actually this is a really good idea too, I wish I'd thought of it! :)You could go the route I did with a "resilience" attribute, which adds +X to the difficulty of critical hit confirmation rolls based on shield weight.
For example, a light shield might add +2 to the difficulty, while a heavy shield might add +4-6.
Thanks. I actually use the stat in all my d20 games now, in one form or another.