Do Shields Prevent Secondary Effects of Damage

[SuperSheep]

If something strikes your energy shield (mechanic or armor mod) that does ability damage as well as normal damage, but the normal damage is completely absorbed by that shield, do you still take the secondary effects like disease, poison or ability damage?

[quindraco]

What do you mean by shield or energy shield?

1) If you mean most of the force fields in the game, yes. They're only temporary hit points, which means that fundamentally speaking, they do not behave anything like a force field outside of your body - e.g. any damage reduction you have applies to them.
2) If you mean any source of energy or damage resistance, it depends. Diseases and Poisons that are injury vector need to injure, so completely resisting the damage suffices, but contact vector ones only need to hit. Ability damage would depend on the source. For example, you can apply the Wounding weapon fusion to a sword. The Wounding sword only needs to hit and crit, and to roll 18-19 on the Wounding table, and for you to fail a fortitude save, to make you take the ability damage - soaking the sword's actual damage is irrelevant. If the Ability damage was coming from a spell, it would depend on the wording of the spell.

[Metaphysician]

Of course, the GM is always free to Rule Zero stuff if it really makes sense, and won't imbalance the game. A simple house rule might be "If a significant status effect should, by rules, effect you, but by description should be blocked by the shield? You avoid the status effect but your shield gets knocked down." That way you still benefit, but you don't simply ignore the hazard.

[Shinigami02]

Oh boy, that creates some fun interactions. I thought the Wound and Severe Wound crit effects were bad enough, but now you don't even have to take any actual damage yourself for your arm to be on the ground.