Think of the ring as making you translucent, or see-through. If someone doesn't know your there it makes you harder to detect, but if they are looking right at you you're still not disappearing.
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Yes, the ability damage doubles and the attack does 2 negative levels.
1. Double Slice, yes. But, I can't see Two Weapon Rend working, because it states you attack with both weapons simultaneously. Virtually impossible to do with a shield. 2. I don't see why you would be compelled to use this feat if you didn't want to.3. Again, conceptually I think a shield bash would be an off hand attack, but I can see you using a shield bash as a single, primary attack. 4. Judging from the example under the Bashing enchantment a Heavy Shield goes from 1d4 to 1d8+1, and a spike goes from 1d4 to 1d6. So, I would just continue to follow the downward progression on table 6-5 on page 145 of the core book. That would put a Spiked Heavy Shield of Bashing at 1d10+1. 5. As the Shield Mastery feat reads, you add your shield's enhancement bonus to attacks and damage. A +1 spike on a +2 shield would yield two enhancement bonuses on an attack, but since they are both enhancement bonuses, they would not stack. You just get the better bonus. 6. Yes.
For me, there's no easy way to answer this. It depends on the setting, the character classes, the players, etc. My only general rule is that I'd rather have gear defficient characters than characters with too much money/gear. I'll tell you two stories. 1. I was running a campaign and let my players buy whatever they wanted with their money (starting level 10). I had planned out an intricate ordeal involving a rebel leader in an opressed village that was troubling some local officials. This rebel leader was in good standing with the local populace, but for various reasons was a bad person that needed to go away. So, I spent a week creating NPCs and guards and encounters with mobs and rolling on loot tables just to find out that my players had outwitted me. A half-orc sorc 3/rogue 8 with the assistance of an elf sorc flew, improved invisibled, silenced, into town during the night. He one-shotted the rebel leader (lvl 7 cleric, lvl 5 fighter) and threw his body into a bag of holding, with all his gear and bedroll. 1 hour after we started the job was done, payment accepted and my players were expecting more. They were so well geared, had so many scrolls and magic items that I couldn't give them a real challenge. 2. I had some characters that fought a rather nasty golem. They were level 5 and the golem was eating their lunch. I quickly sized up the fight and realized that they weren't going to be able to win this thing. So, I turned the tables a bit and gave them a perception check to notice some shoddy stonework on a ledge nearby. The player immediately took the hint and lured the golem to the ledge where it tumbled to its doom. The lesson is, starving your characters for gear and then throwing your punches builds moral. The other extreme is that you are left unprepared or that the game loses it's challenge. I hope this was informative. |