BrendanP's page

Hey, Read through the argument and thought I would throw my 2 copper in, hope that's alright. While I am wording this in the affirmative, I'm not denying I could be wrong. This is just the way it works in my mind and you are free to agree/disagree and tell me so of course!

First speaking to the argument from realism:
I have a little experience using actual shields, it's totally doable to wear two shields, even putting them on and take them off. I've done it before, and it's not a big deal, would probably take maybe 3 tries to get practiced with the motion. For the record strapping your shield on tight is a good way to hurt or lose an arm or die when adventuring or fighting. Any situation where a shield gets caught or pinned makes it a liability you need to be able to just let go of.

Using both as weapons: If we are still talking about a standard heater shield this would be awkward as hell, but I wouldn't knock it till I tried it. A fantasy character that spent it's life training at it using shields built to also be fought with (such as spiked shields and round shields), yah that raises the likelihood of it working.

Realism aside, I like this game for the game, so I also want to talk about rules.

Lets break down what's been said so far:
MordredofFairy brought up the most important stuff so far in my opinion: Shields do count as weapons, explicitly, but not all the time. As much as CountofUndolpho would prefer otherwise, a shields classification as a weapon IS controlled by how you use it. If you bash with it, it IS a weapon, for the duration of the attack. That is clear just from reading the bolded text from Mordred's post.

From the FAQ brought up above, we have further learned that shield bashes are no-longer restricted to off-hand attacks and can be main handed.

While there is only one shield magic item slot, a shield occupies a hand, not some esoteric conceptual nether position on a paper doll. Rings are the best example, you can only have 2 functioning rings at a time but you can coat your fingers in magic rings until they don't bend anymore. The magic function of items ARE controlled by an esoteric paper doll thing, so it does stand to reason the magic effects of two shields couldn't be stacked as you just don't have the slots. Might not make sense, but it's magic. Maybe if they re-wrote the system today they would remove the slot for shields like they do for weapons, to bring it in line with their allowance of using them as both main handed and off handed.

I think the only argument that leaves, at least as far as I can remember, is that you can't use a main hand and an off hand shield at the same time because the game doesn't SAY you can. I think it's already been argued back and forth about 5 times but I just want to give it one more shot to try and make both side's arguments clear to myself and any readers that made it this far:

-Shields are sometimes weapons and always shields
-Shields can be wielded as main handed weapons and as off handed weapons.
-Assuming you are playing the same character for both the above possibilities, that means you are using a shield in both the left and right hand, but not explicitly at the same time.
-The only equipping requirements of shields is the ability to hold it in you hand and strap it to your arm.
-The only equipping requirements of weapons is holding them in your hand.
-It states you can use light weapons in one hand, and single-handed weapons in one hand. When used as a weapon, shields count as light or single-handed weapons.

I think right there we can slap a big THEREFORE, followed by: You can use as many shields as weapons as you have hands, so long as those hands have arms to also strap them to, as they are still shields.

So, is this soluble? Are we able to move on or is there something I didn't address?