As I develop ideas for my house rules for an upcoming campaign, I wonder if I want to improve the bonus that shields give.
My campaign will be slow advancement, 5-people, using a 25 point (Epic) point buy (with a restriction that no stat can be reduced below 9 prior to racial mods). Characters will get maximum HP per level.
I think shields are under-utilized and under-protective in Pathfinder, but is it enough to warrant taking any action about it?
I'm not sure I know enough about Pathfinder to balance this kind of thing.
I also like simplicity, so I was thinking that whatever the AC bonus a shield gives, the shield also confers DR equal to the AC bonus.
But yeah, I hear someone out there in internet land saying "If you like simple, leave it as is..."
So maybe I should just listen to that, because honestly, I have a fair number of character gen house rules as it is (multi-class, as I said before).
Shields are already pretty spank'in good in my opinion for more defensive builds. You sacrifice some static damage that THF gives but you can get a lot of AC out of a shield. 8k gold is pretty cheap and gives a +4 AC bonus with a Heavy shield.
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I think it's an odd choice. Shields make you harder to hit, they don't really soften the blow.
I think it would make sense for armor to work as DR (but using better rules than those in UC...), while shields and BAB factor into how hard it is to hit you. A practiced warrior should be better at parrying blows after all.
I do agree that shields are a bit weaker than they ought to be; right now the AC bonus from shields is weirdly low compared to that provided by armor.
I do suppose there's some balance in there, since a lot of classes have difficulties using shields (due to hands already in use for something else). But I don't like it.
I wouldn't mind houseruling that shields gain +2 AC beyond their current values, but only to one foe at a time. Just seems like too much bookkeeping for most fighters.
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I've been thinking about having shield bonuses apply to touch AC and Reflex saves. After all, using a shield to protect yourself from... say, dragonfire is an iconic image, and I've seen a good few depictions of bouncing rays off of a shield.
Considering your other house rules and campaign settings - high point buy and maxed hit dice - characters will be rolling in hit points already. Seeing as how hit point damage is already considered a quite limited way of conflict resolution, and to some degree relegated to "clean up" after various magicks and other debuffs have settled who wins a combat, I wouldn't give shields an even better ability to prevent damage.
If anything, I'd rather let the shield bonus apply against touch attacks and reflex saves like Ipslore said, and potentially as a feat or similar allow it to apply a larger bonus against ranged attacks specifically.
I think you should also reconsider how combat will play out in your campaign, for the reasons mentioned above. You've essentially increased the amount of work needed to down an opponent with HP damage by about 20-30%, thus lessening the worth of damage as compared to, say, sleep, nausea and daze by an equal amount. Seeing as how those already tend towards dominating many people's games, consider if there aren't other ways to reinforce the heroic, tough style you're aiming for. I'm partial for hero points, which aid against both hit point damage and save-or-sucks, but YMMV.
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Well, you make it harder to down shield-using opponents. A vast amount of monsters don't use shields; it's mostly humanoids that use shields.
Conversely, "classic" shield-using warriors are suddenly a much more valid, perhaps even powerful choice.
However, it does indeed make SoS/SoD spells much more important, and that's not something we need more of.
I've been thinking about having shield bonuses apply to touch AC and Reflex saves. After all, using a shield to protect yourself from... say, dragonfire is an iconic image, and I've seen a good few depictions of bouncing rays off of a shield.
I do this and even have a feat tree for shield masters to partially block AoE attacks for teammates behind them. Gives shield users something fun to do to compensate for dealing less damage than others. Also I raise small shields to +2 and large to +3.