Timothy Toomey's page

Draco18s wrote:

duje wrote:

Real shields were not actually sturdy, because it was beneficial for the sword to bite in your shield because that way you trap the sword and disarm the other guy.

Shields were basically one-time use items, in battles if you had any action, you would probably need to replace parts of your shield afterwards, maybe even just boss would be all that is left.

[Citation Needed]

This guy, who wrote an entire book about shields, says otherwise.

well he is wrong, when shields were most used, i.e they were common armament. they were very thin, especially at the edges, as many survived shields of the era show, they were not made heavy.

Only later in full plate era, we see metal shields and heavy wooden shields with metal around the edges, those were also much smaller because added thickness and material made them heavy.
Those shields were made for minority of full plate guys fighting against hammers and polearms, they are vastly inferior against swords than those before, but because full plate makes you invulnerable to swords it doesn't matter how good they are against edged weapons.

What matters is context, now i dont think an RPG should be that complex to go that much into realism, because basically to kill someone in full plate you need to knock them out by hitting them in the head with high impact force weapon then finish them while they are out, or wrestle them to the ground, open visor and dagger to the face.
Chainmail makes you immune to slashing and resistant to piercing when worn with gambeson as it should be, but maces break bones through them...
Or successfully catching a sword with a large thin shield would give you disarm, and million other minutia

You are so completely and fundamentally wrong it's not even funny. If shields were even half as fragile as you're trying to claim, they would never have been as prevalent in battle as they were historically.

https://youtu.be/C54OIRhyEhI here, have a link to some empirical, physical evidence that shields were FAR tougher than your ridiculous assertions.

They needed to do something to make two-handed weapons more attractive.

No, they didn't. Two handed weapons were THE definitive melee choice in PF1. It's SHIELDS that needed to become more useful and attractive in 2E.

Lycar wrote:

Well, the whole Shield Block thing needs clarification anyway...

"You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield
prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—
the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or
broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items."

So... by the way this is worded, a shield only blocks damage up to its own hardness. Every point of damage exceeding the shield's hardness is still hurting you.

And apparently, the damage that the shield blocks is inflicted to it regardless of its innate hardness. If the shield with hardness 5 stops 5 points of damage, it also takes 5 point of damage.

So what about page 175 then?

"...If an item takes damage equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes a Dent. If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents. For instance, a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would take 2 Dents. ..."

Uhm... but the way Shield Block is worded, the shield never takes more then its own hardness in damage anyway. If the hardness 5 shield takes from 1 to 4 damage, it is unscathed. If it takes 5 points, it is dented 1. If it takes 6,023x10²³ damage, it still only blocks 5 of those and, upon taking its own hardness worth of damage, receives a single dent.

So, what is it then? Can a shield block more then its own hardness worth of damage, at the price of being reduced to splinters or scrap metal all the sooner? Or is the example on p. 175 for shields taking damage rubbish, and you can just use 2 Shield Blocks in a fight, after which your shield becomes Broken and useless?

My expectation of the intent behind these rules is that you use the full damage total to figure out how many dents the shield takes from an attack, and then subtract the shield's hardness from that amount and apply the rest to the character holding the shield's HP.

That way a hefty enough blow can destroy a shield in one go,...

That makes shields abysmally worthless.

You don't gain reach from a Large mount, you actually LOSE it. Your reach with weapons that have 10 feet or less of reach is a flat 5 five feet.

gigyas6 wrote:

DC scales 12(1), 14(2), 16(3), 18(4), 20(5), 22(6), 24(7), 26(8), 28(9), 30(10), and so on and so forth.

I see the DCs increasing, but don't see a problem. I thought DCs were rather easy and hope they get tougher.

One skill rank per level takes care of half the increase. Ability boosts every 5th level. Mark 1, 2 and 3 ability augmentation by 9th level. Computer improvements in the ship every third level. Items and boons. Class features improving skills. Feats.

Don't see the problem. Same for many of the skill checks built into the game. A Ghost Operative can take 10 on Trick Attacks from seventh level on.

Several people have carefully detailed out the math of how player bonuses do not grow at a rate that even comes close to keeping up with the DCs. How do you not see the problem?

Can someone please walk me through how the Vindicas Tyrant's gunners have a +33? Assuming that they have 16 BAB(or Piloting Ranks), I'm not figuring out the justification behind it. Was building custom NPC ships, and my Tier 16(ie, same exact Tier as the Tyrant) vessel has only a +21 in Gunnery. That's a modifier difference of 12 that I cannot account for, and would really like to see explained.