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The example provided (Divine Bond) includes a specific exception to the normal "does not stack" rule. The feat in question, Shield Master, has no such clause, so the rules stand.
Since you have still provided no counter to the "enhancement bonuses don't stack with other enhancement bonuses" rule, the rules of the game continue to function the way the rulebooks say they do, and these two enhancement bonuses continue to not stack with one another.
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Ok so if anyone disagrees say so but here is what i have gathered from the thread. IF you enchant the shield as a weapon and say make it +1 flaming and get it enchanted as a shield with +3 with this feat you get a +3 flaming shield. And there is some weird stuff where RAW you become immune to all penalties punpun style. Sum it up?
Ok so if anyone disagrees say so but here is what i have gathered from the thread. IF you enchant the shield as a weapon and say make it +1 flaming and get it enchanted as a shield with +3 with this feat you get a +3 flaming shield. And there is some weird stuff where RAW you become immune to all penalties punpun style. Sum it up?
Basically, yeah.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the RAW is "weird," more that it's inconsistent; that is, you have the table telling us it removes TWF penalties for shield attacks, and that the description tells us all penalties period, not just TWF.
Either way, there could be a FAQ/Errata made for it that clarifies which is correct (it's been done for other material before). Unfortunately, I have a feeling that, if a clarification becomes official, that the feat will be nerfed to the ground, as is how Paizo balances their feat options; that is, for every 1 good option, there are 4 or 5 bad ones that come with it, and perhaps Shield Master will transform from "good" option to "bad" option to fulfill that arbitrary quota that they apparently feel is necessary.
And no, I don't mean "bad" as in "niche," Shield Master is already fairly niche, since it only appears to a certain subset of characters, and have hefty requirements that either take a lot of time and effort to achieve, or can only be circumvented through specific channels. I mean "bad" as in "nobody will ever take this feat again."
@ Gallant Armor: If it doesn't specify as to what it actually influences, the assumption then becomes that it functions as such in all respects, because it's an inclusive precedent; it adds to attack and damage rolls, doesn't stack with itself unless it says, bypasses DR with a certain amount of bonus, and can't be modified higher than +5 in terms of attack and damage bonuses. There's also the matter of hardness and item HP adjustments that would be added because it has both an armor and a weapon enhancement (as superfluous as it is), but that's its own can of worms that couldn't be solved, even if Shield Master was FAQ/Errata'd.
With how much back and forth this thread has received, I have a solution for people who want an official answer:
Go to this thread right here and FAQ the OP. Hopefully the PDT will notice it, see how easy of a question it is, and send out a clarification/FAQ/Errata for it.
I'll bump the thread so that people can more easily see it and FAQ it.
**EDIT**
Fixed the link description, as it didn't link directly to the OP.
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... that is as helpful as the rest of this thread.upthread.The reality is that the feat was suppose to add the "base shield bonus" and that would cap it out at +2 for a heavy shield and which may explain why it seems poorly written.Source?Here you go: Link
Ah, Thankies.
Hmm, He said that was the intent, but they haven't updated it to reflect that stance in almost 8 years...
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... that is as helpful as the rest of this thread.upthread.The reality is that the feat was suppose to add the "base shield bonus" and that would cap it out at +2 for a heavy shield and which may explain why it seems poorly written.Source?Here you go: Link
Ah, Thankies.
Hmm, He said that was the intent, but they haven't updated it to reflect that stance in almost 8 years...
You know what the intent was now. What else do you need?
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You know what the intent was now. What else do you need?... that is as helpful as the rest of this thread.upthread.The reality is that the feat was suppose to add the "base shield bonus" and that would cap it out at +2 for a heavy shield and which may explain why it seems poorly written.Source?Here you go: Link
Ah, Thankies.
Hmm, He said that was the intent, but they haven't updated it to reflect that stance in almost 8 years...
The fact that through the various printings since then the Feat wasn't updated to reflect that intent, which means it's possible said intent has changed.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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The fact that through the various printings since then the Feat wasn't updated to reflect that intent, which means it's possible said intent has changed.
It's also possible (like 90% of the early posts like Overrun, tiny with Reach weapons) that it got forgotten in the years they worked out errata policy. Things get busy, errata gets dropped because most people can figure out how it works for them on their own.
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The fact that through the various printings since then the Feat wasn't updated to reflect that intent, which means it's possible said intent has changed.It's also possible (like 90% of the early posts like Overrun, tiny with Reach weapons) that it got forgotten in the years they worked out errata policy. Things get busy, errata gets dropped because most people can figure out how it works for them on their own.
*nods*
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Things get busy, errata gets dropped because most people can figure out how it works for them on their own.
Quite true... but not seemingly relevant to this case.
There really isn't any plausible way that people would 'figure out on their own' that;
"Add your shield’s enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls made with the shield as if it were a weapon enhancement bonus."
...should be read as, "Add your shield's unmodified AC bonus (i.e. 1 for light shields or 2 for heavy shields) as an untyped bonus to attack and damage rolls made with the shield."
There have also been several stat blocks published which apply the feat the way it has been published all this time, rather than what Jason said he wanted to change it to. Ergo, NOT something people are going to figure out on their own.
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There have also been several stat blocks published which apply the feat the way it has been published all this time, rather than what Jason said he wanted to change it to.Would welcome a link to any such publications.
Most of them are in various adventures and thus no links available, but there are a few in the NPC codex;
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Thank you for the links. It's interesting to note that none of these have dual enchanted shields. I don't know that I've ever seen an NPC with a shield that had both shield and weapon enhancements.
I have searched and only found ONE which kinda qualifies... Iomedae's Herald, Hand of the Inheritor, back in AP 26. He has a "+2 axiomatic holy spiked heavy steel shield".
This provides a +4 shield bonus to its AC, so the +2 is definitely a shield enhancement bonus... but then it has the 'axiomatic' and 'holy' weapon special abilities. Given that this is a divine herald, and one of the earliest stat blocks under the Pathfinder rules system, it may just be an anomaly. Otherwise, it would imply that you don't NEED a separate weapon enhancement bonus... you can put weapon special abilities on even if you only have a shield enhancement bonus.
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N N 959, yes that IS the implication.
However, as I said, this is the ONLY stat block I found which works that way AND it was released very early in the history of the Pathfinder game rules... only the second AP volume using them... AND the creature is a divine herald, which sometimes get special handling.
Thus, some might argue that it is an anomaly of some kind rather than an ironclad and unquestionable precedent. I've had people argue with me about how fighting with more than two arms works (i.e. one extra weapon attack per arm, at to hit penalties as per TWF), despite dozens of statblocks that all show the same rules in use.
If my copy of the Villain Codex ever ships I'm looking forward to reviewing the stat blocks in there to see if they provide any further evidence on how this and several other disputed rules are intended to work.
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Heh, when I went looking for other bashing shield builds to confirm that... I found one which contradicts it.
Utok Crow-Eater from Pathfinder Society season 2 has a "+1 bashing light steel shield" which only adds 1 to his AC... implying that the +1 is a weapon enhancement rather than an armor enhancement. His attack and damage are also increased by 1... though that could be from EITHER the +1 OR the bashing enchantment.
Given that the bashing ability grants the equivalent of a +1 weapon enhancement bonus, enchanting an actual +1 weapon enhancement bonus would seem to be redundant. Thus, it seems plausible to me that this stat block is just in error and should have a +2 shield bonus to AC.
This demonstrates the problem with basing conclusions on single stat blocks. Mistakes happen. Thus, when reviewing stat blocks I generally only accept multiple examples as good evidence.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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What you guys are missing, is that the stat blocks are often (always?) written by people who did not write the rules. So any mistakes they have in the stat blocks (like Scarred Warrier above) should never be taken to mean that is official rules interpretations. Despite this fact, I continually see threads using these stat blocks as "evidence" for a rules interpretation.
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What you guys are missing, is that the stat blocks are often (always?) written by people who did not write the rules. So any mistakes they have in the stat blocks (like Scarred Warrier above) should never be taken to mean that is official rules interpretations. Despite this fact, I continually see threads using these stat blocks as "evidence" for a rules interpretation.
When you've got dozens of stat blocks, many of which WERE written by the game's developers, that all show the same thing then it is entirely reasonable to take that as strong evidence of how the feature works.
Individual stat blocks, not so much. Maybe they provide an idea, but no more solid than different textual interpretations.
So... Shield Master adding the enhancement bonus rather than the base shield AC bonus? Strongly confirmed by numerous stat blocks. Being able to add magic weapon special abilities to a shield with only an armor (i.e. not weapon) enhancement bonus? One example which might be a special case.
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Because of the rules on enhancement bonuses stacking, one cannot add the enhancement bonuses together unless it says that they stack.
This doesn't mean that enchanting the shield as a weapon is fruitless though, as you could add various weapon enhancements which should still work. My favorite being (though expensive) Defending with a +5 should (weapon) on a +5 shield (armor) which is the only time in the game you can use a defending weapon and still have +5 to your AC.
Shenanigans achieved.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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many of which WERE written by the game's developers
I'm confident, that none of them were written by the game developers. At least that was my understanding of how things worked from previous conversations.
First off, Scarred Warrior does not have any mistakes in the statblock.
It had the weapon at 2d6, which wasn't correct at the time. It wasn't correct because ever developer and James Jacobs said it didn't work to stack to 2d6. That wasn't sufficiently clear in the case of spiked bashing and in the case of strong jaw with improved natural attack, so we got a stacking rule with real and virtual to help people understand when it shouldn't stack.
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I have to agree, you can't put a "weapon" enhancement on a shield. And it also means I'm 100% correct that "add means add" because the shield can't have any weapon enhancements on it. So as I suspected add is only used when the authors don't expect any stacking issues.
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If you can't put a weapon enhancement on a shield, then how do you explain this FAQ?
Yes. Merely holding a defending weapon is not sufficient. Unless otherwise specified, you have to use a magic item in the manner it is designed (use a weapon to make attacks, wear a shield on your arm so you can defend with it, and so on) to gain its benefits.
Therefore, if you don't make an attack roll with a defending weapon on your turn, you don't gain its defensive benefit.
Likewise, while you can give a shield the defending property (after you've given it a +1 enhancement bonus to attacks, of course), you wouldn't get the AC bonus from the defending property unless you used the shield to make a shield bash that round--unless you're using the shield as a weapon (to make a shield bash), the defending weapon property has no effect.
You already quoted the rule stating that shield enhancements don't grant bonuses to attacks, so the FAQ must be referring to a weapon enhancement bonus.
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I'm confident, that none of them were written by the game developers.
Something must have gotten lost along the way... because if you are confident that the Pathfinder developers have never written a single stat block well... then you are just obviously wrong.
If you are instead saying that you are confident that the developers didn't write any of the stat blocks in a particular book or of a particular kind then you were 'disputing' something different than what I was saying.
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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Something must have gotten lost along the way... because if you are confident that the Pathfinder developers have never written a single stat block well...
I'm saying it is my understanding that the PDT doesn't write many stat blocks. Freelancers, other staffers, etc have written many, if not all of them. My info come from my interpretation/understanding/questions of PDT members at various cons like Gencon over the years. Maybe I'm wrong. Do you have a way of knowing for certain I'm wrong, or are you just assuming they write all the stat blocks in all books?
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Something must have gotten lost along the way... because if you are confident that the Pathfinder developers have never written a single stat block well...I'm saying it is my understanding that the PDT doesn't write many stat blocks. Freelancers, other staffers, etc have written many, if not all of them. My info come from my interpretation/understanding/questions of PDT members at various cons like Gencon over the years. Maybe I'm wrong. Do you have a way of knowing for certain I'm wrong, or are you just assuming they write all the stat blocks in all books?
There is a huge huge gap between the Pathfinder developers writing NONE of the stat blocks and them writing ALL of the stat blocks.
I know that they have written SOME of them because of past instances where they have mentioned doing so. They also sometimes review and/or edit the books and are involved in errata.
Ergo, I stand by my earlier statement that if a particular game feature is found in numerous stat blocks (e.g. Shield Master adding the shield enhancement bonus, rather than base AC to attack and damage) then it is very likely the intended rule.
You could cite 2d6 spiked bashing shields as a counter example, but in that case they effectively changed the rule. Or rather, made up new unified rules to finally organize how size changes should work.
I always suspected that Bashing is supposed to increase the damage for non-spiked shields. I also guessed that when the description for the Bashing property used the phrase "bashing weapon" it actually meant "bludgeoning weapon" - it isn't terribly clear
For Shield Master I'd assume that you get the higher enhancement bonus between the weapon and shield enchantments without any stacking. Something I'm less sure about is whether Bane weapon enchantments would stack with the shield enhancement bonus. I'd guess so since stuff like Flaming seems like it would clearly still work. Some clarification would certainly be appreciated though.
One thing I don't think should work is getting +5(shield)/+4 defending(weapon) on the shield and then sacrificing the +4 weapon enhancement for +4 AC while still using +5 to attacks and damage based on the shield bonus. I think the spirit of the Defending weapon FAQ is that you need to give up attack and damage bonuses to get the AC bonus (notably attack and damage bonuses you're actually using that round)
Since Bane can treat +5 weapons as +7 weapons (which are normally impossible), and says it treats its weapon enhancement bonus as 2 higher against the listed enemy type, I'd say it'd stack with Shield Master.
I just did a search. About a dozen defending weapons, but no shields.CDB,
Have you found any Defending shields in the statblocks?
I CALL SHENANIGANS!!!!!!
(had to)