Moving quickly with a shield

[Endless Bunny]

The Fortress Shield introduced in Treasure Vault has a pretty hefty downside and I was wondering if there was any way to mitigate it. (this also applies to regular Tower Shields albeit to a lesser extent)

The Pathfinder Core Rulebook says (p.277):

Quote:

Shields have statistics that follow the same rules as armor: Price, Speed, Penalty, and Bulk.

Now, my interpretation of this is that, since shields don't have a Strength entry like armour does, there's no way to mitigate the speed penalty incurred by them. Is this correct, or is there something I'm missing? The Fortress Shield has the Hefty trait but that specifically only applies to the "Raise a Shield" action.

Presumably, the speed penalty from a big shield stacks with any armour, so somebody in Full Plate with a Fortress Shield would have a -20 ft. penalty to their movement speed (even with 18 Str., they're still crawling along with a -15 ft. penalty).

Does the speed penalty on a big shield apply only while it's being wielded? The rules for armour say (idem p.274):

Quote:

While wearing a suit of armor, you take the penalty listed in this entry to your Speed.

Suggesting that carrying, but not wearing, armour doesn't slow you down (unless its Bulk encumbers you).

Is the same true of a shield you're carrying, but not wielding (for example, strapped to your back)?

[breithauptclan]

The speed penalty probably shouldn't stack. You are right that it does currently because it is an untyped penalty. But it probably shouldn't stack with the speed penalty from Armor.

And having a Strength score to mitigate the penalty would be nice to have.

[The Raven Black]

breithauptclan wrote:

The speed penalty probably shouldn't stack. You are right that it does currently because it is an untyped penalty. But it probably shouldn't stack with the speed penalty from Armor.

And having a Strength score to mitigate the penalty would be nice to have.

Rather than a Strength score by itself, I would have the shield increase the Strength score of any worn armor by 2 to ignore the Shield's penalty.

[YuriP]

In these hours is where Unburdened Iron shines.

You basically removes the speed penalty from armors but also reduces the shield speed penalty too.

For heavy armored characters with Tower Shields this basically removes all the speed penalty. For Fortress Shield it reduces the speed penalty to -5 ft.