Say I have a character who wields a shield as their only weapon. Hypothetically, I’ll say it’s for a spellcaster who wants to keep one hand free all the time and still have a shield (I do know there are ways around that, but that’s not what I’m asking). Or maybe I just want a melee fighter who just doesn’t want to meet the dex prereqs for the TWF tree.
So my question is, you can enchant a shield as a weapon and armor separately, correct? As in, +X to attack and damage rolls and +X to armor? And would this work for both regular shields like it does shield spikes?
I realize the Shield Master feat is supposed to add the shield bonus to attack and damage rolls too, so I don’t want to assume it’s made less useful (aside from removing TWF penalties) just because you can already put a weapon bonus on your shield to improve shield bashes.
I’m a little worried that I might be missing something obvious here, so please let me know if the text I’ve bolded in the quote below is the straight answer I really want:
An enhancement bonus on a shield does not improve the effectiveness of a shield bash made with it, but the shield can be made into a magic weapon in its own right.
In other words, is it pretty much saying “you can place weapon enhancements on your shield”?
I have a +5(Animated)/+5 Impact Mithril Spiked Heavy Shield.
Costly but very effective & awesome. If you drop Impact & make it a Light Shield you can make it a Quickdraw Spiked Light Shield and IIRC use Weapon Finesse & Piranha Strike with it.
I haven't picked it up yet... I have no other gear besides Mundane Gear right now...
I only have that because of the group's previous Fighter being a d****** and wasting ALL HIS GOLD on it. We are going to be able to get the weapon enchantments separated out to go onto our Barbarians Maul(Earth Breaker).
A Shield is a martial weapon. It can be enchanted as one.
An Adamantine Shield costs an additional 3000gp.
Thanks!
I do not undestand. if you have that much money you are in the hihger levels, why you do not have shield master so you do not need to enchant the shield as a weapon?
I think he's going for what I mentioned in the intro of my post; a character who fights using a shield, but doesn't want TWF or other prereqs. That way you wouldn't need at least 15 dex.
You can put both offensive and defensive enchantments on your shield, but they are counted as two different items when it comes to cost. And the bonuses don't cross over.
So a +2 shield (defense) gives a boost to AC, but not to attack. A +2 shield (offense) give a bonus to hit and damage, but not AC.
This situation does create some weird scenarios. You can get ghost touch (defense, a +3 cost) so you can block attacks by ghosts, but you can't hit ghosts with it. Or you can get ghost tough (offense, a +1 cost) so you can hit ghosts with your shield, but you can't block them.
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You do not need to TWF to benefit from the shield master feat.
I do not undestand. if you have that much money you are in the hihger levels, why you do not have shield master so you do not need to enchant the shield as a weapon?I think he's going for what I mentioned in the intro of my post; a character who fights using a shield, but doesn't want TWF or other prereqs. That way you wouldn't need at least 15 dex.
Two Weapon Fighting is still a prerequisite feat.
You don't have to be two-weapon fighting to use it, but that's not the issue.