| CoDzilla |
Initially I assumed everyone capable of learning already knew this, as it was quite painfully obvious. Apparently not though, so here it is.
You can't hurt things.
It's that simple.
Anyone HP damage based already has to struggle immensely to do enough damage to make enemies care they exist. If enemies do not care they exist, they might as well not exist.
If you hold a shield in your hand, you immediately lose half your damage or more. So even if you could, otherwise do enough damage to matter, now you can't. Let's ignore the many flaws with PF martials here that would prevent them from meeting this criteria regardless here.
Not to mention you'll still be hit easily by anything that doesn't just ignore you because you are a non threat, and the things that do ignore you walk around, so it's not as if holding a shield grants any advantage.
In 3.5, the Animated property allowed martial characters to have a shield, and still do damage. This property was heavily nerfed in PF, so that is not an option. CoDzillas can still hold a shield, as it doesn't interfere with their spells. Wizards can hold shields too, without it interfering with their spells. In all cases the shields are there for special properties, and not AC as you will be hit anyways, but the point is that in PF, as a martial character you cannot use a shield without hopelessly gimping yourself.
The sole exception is at level 1. This is because 1d8+5 actually holds up decently against 13 HP enemies, and at this level the shield bonus to AC actually matters. But even at level 2, enemies have way too many HP to make a non two hander viable. As early as 5, you can forget about tickling the 56 HP to death. It gets far, far worse at 10, 15, and 20.