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Raving Dork,
I don't know what it is about your posts that send the usual suspects into their self righteous foaming at the mouth frenzies, or attempting to belittle your questions with useless sarcasm, but I usually enjoy reading them even if they are esoteric at times.
I think the easiest way to rationalize it for you, and maintain verisimilitude has already been pointed out.
In movies you often see shields being used to block straight on stabbing shots or two handed overhead chops as if they were a wall. The reality is you don't hold the shield and try to brace it against the blow. That's a quick way to wind up with a broken arm. You use it to deflect the blow by keeping it at an angle or twisting it just as the blow comes in so that the blade slides off the side.
The Ac bonus increases as the size of the shield goes up not because the shield is more durable or thicker (thought it usually is to a degree), but because it's covering a wider area and harder to get past.
I thought this rule would add some verisimilitude by making armor and shields not be indestructible, but all it did was ruin the AC of the non-mages and require lots of return trips to town or Mend spells or extra gear to be carried - extra bookkeeping to aggravate the players for no real benefit.
This. I once played with a DM who used a similar system, and "player aggravation" was the primary result. Like requiring magic users to locate, store and track every single bit of their spell components, a system like this can be fun if everyone is OK with it and with the additional time it's going to take away from game play to do the necessary record keeping, but if not it's just a pain in the rear. (We finally had a player revolt in our game, and the system was dropped.)
PF abstracts things like this for a reason. Of course Valeros spends time repairing his armor and polishing the nicks out of his sword edge in between battles, but the rules handwave that as "off-camera" action so as to not slow down the game.
How is it that it is not shattered every time it is pitted against the metal weapons of medium creatures?
It has to do with engineering, physics and lots of other things that don't come up in PF. Shields are designed to absorb and deflect blows, transferring the energy throughout the mass.
Medium sized weapons aren't all that much bigger, but asking about Large sized weapons vs small shields might get your point across.
Counter question: How are you not immediately splattered to tiny bits if a gargantuan/huge dragon swipes you? There's a certain amount of fantasy, it can't all be real.
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Not only does the shield not need to absorb the blow, but sometimes it prevents the blow from being attempted entirely. It's the abstraction again. If you never get an opening because the opponent always has his guard up, there's no point attacking. Watch a typical fencing or martial arts bout: there's a lot of probing and fudging going on without actual contact. D&D/PF abstracts all that into one roll.
Yep, in systems like lace and steel, which don't have a round based system but instead go through every attack and whether the defence stops, parries or fails to halt the attack, it can be quite invigorating. Some games have higher levels of abstraction, some go through each attack and work out what happens.
RD, is this any different than any medium humanoid taking a hit, or his armor or shield taking a hit from a huge or larger creature, and continuing to fight?
If dragons were real you, the armor, and the shield would be done with the first hit.
Depends on the size, but I do want to see someone in armour take on a komodo dragon now.
Have at thee!
Sometimes they don't.Make no mistake, I was wondering that as well.How does a human's wooden shield stand up to metal weapons of large creatures? Or Huge ones, for that matter?
...indeedSometimes they don't.Make no mistake, I was wondering that as well.How does a human's wooden shield stand up to metal weapons of large creatures? Or Huge ones, for that matter?
That's what Improved Sunder is for.