So the Gear thread is already going in several different directions at once, but the Shield proficiency/Armor proficiency seems like it deserves its own space, especially since Mark made it clear that they are still entertaining suggestions about how this breakdown will work.
Some of the issues/possibilities:
1. If shield proficiency is separate from Armor, there is the wonky issue of which proficiency to use if they are different. If multi-classing into a martial class does not grant immediate proficiencies in Armor and shields (which I don't think it will) then a character's shield proficiency could lag enough, relatively quickly, that carrying a shield becomes a liability. With shields already taking up one hand that can't easily be freed up, shields are going to be relatively costly things to be good with.
2. If they are melded together, we no longer have that problem, but we might have another. If the fighter is the weapons character and the paladin/some other character is the Armor character, Sword and board fighters are going to lag behind paladins with access to shield feats if they are based on proficiency. If the fighter gets armor proficiency bonuses as fast as the armored character, then this distinction between being the "weapons" character, and the "armor" character feel pretty superficial.
One solution utilizing option 2, would be for a lot of the shield feats to be tied to using the shield as a weapon with strong parrying abilities and a bonus to AC. This keeps the shield in the camp of the fighter for all the tricky stuff, and would explain why magical shields don't boost AC, they are treated like weapons.
Thoughts, Ideas and civil discussion welcome.
It is currently impossible for shield proficiency to lag behind armour proficiency. With something that is so obvious I can't see them doing something to alter that status quo unless to give you a specific option to sacrifice one (probably shield) so you can be better at something else.
Like many things if you want to do something you won't choose those options that hinder that thing. If you don't want to use something, then you won't use resources to make that thing better.
Keeping them separate maintains that potential so 2) would be unnecessarily limiting.
All in all I'm not seeing this as a problem, not even potentially.
Just meld them together. Like I mentioned in the other threads, light armor can grant light shields, medium armor can grant heavy shields (or medium for consistency), and heavy armor can grant tower shields (or heavy for consistency).
I'm generally in favor of feats and proficiencies being more flexible to accommodate different styles, like as many combat feats as possible applying to both melee and ranged. If someone is high Dex, getting medium or heavy armor from their class isn't a waste, because they still get the shields out of it. Combining them also reduces clutter, and avoids any potential future math issues with which proficiency bonus to use.
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Mark specified if you were at least trained in both of these. That seems to mean it would be possible not to be, and seems like a situation a multiclass character might find them self in, and it is a bit awkward. If the fighter is going to be capable of being good with a shield, that proficiency will need to scale up as fast as possible, but it seems like the fighter’s armor proficiency is not supposed to be the best.
I didn't read the fighter blog and dev comments as meaning the fighter couldn't wear heavy armor, because that'd be a pretty big change in both game tradition and world lore. Just that they wouldn't get armor-focused class features.
So the fighter won't be the class that gets a lot of stuff to reduce armor check penalty and raise max Dex, or grant your armor bonus to people adjacent to you, or whatever else they come up with. That will probably be the paladin. But they can still be fully proficient in it.
Fuzzypaws, I think that could work, I am curious about how feats and proficiencies work, as far a prerequisites and how a "heavy armor character class" will be better with armor, if they advance in proficiency at the same time as the fighter. After all, the fighter gets weapon proficiencies much earlier, probably to make it so they can access weapon feats earlier. I am not sure that shields shouldn't just be their own weapon proficiency. Especially if they are being stripped of an enhancement bonus for AC, and their AC bonus will only be a +1 or +2 (who knows what will happen to the tower shield), it doesn't really seem like they will interact with the world in the same way that Armor will.
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Something I've been thinking about overnight in this regard, is that shields already have an opportunity cost associate with them in that they cost an action to use, and are going to break after a few uses. Armor doesn't have that same limitation, weapons are weapons.
So I say why not just drop shield proficiency altogether? Let anyone who wants to pick up a shield to defend themselves do so without worry. I think there are better areas of reward for effort spent than making sure only certain people can use this fundamental tactic without extra investment. They've already divorced the offensive and defensive side of shields. They could make it so that proficiency only matters when using a shield offensively.
There are also other ways to add disincentives to defensive shield use to people who "shouldn't" be using them. We've already seen one instance of a detrimental trait. Come up with a trait that is inconvenient to characters which aren't the target audience, but the target audience wouldn't care about. If it's really that important of a design goal. I, personally, think that making it active use is sufficient though.
Something I've been thinking about overnight in this regard, is that shields already have an opportunity cost associate with them in that they cost an action to use, and are going to break after a few uses. Armor doesn't have that same limitation, weapons are weapons.
So I say why not just drop shield proficiency altogether? Let anyone who wants to pick up a shield to defend themselves do so without worry. I think there are better areas of reward for effort spent than making sure only certain people can use this fundamental tactic without extra investment. They've already divorced the offensive and defensive side of shields. They could make it so that proficiency only matters when using a shield offensively.
There are also other ways to add disincentives to defensive shield use to people who "shouldn't" be using them. We've already seen one instance of a detrimental trait. Come up with a trait that is inconvenient to characters which aren't the target audience, but the target audience wouldn't care about. If it's really that important of a design goal. I, personally, think that making it active use is sufficient though.
I could dig this. Arcane spell failure would have been the most obvious solution, but that's not gonna be in the play test.
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Something I've been thinking about overnight in this regard, is that shields already have an opportunity cost associate with them in that they cost an action to use, and are going to break after a few uses. Armor doesn't have that same limitation, weapons are weapons.
So I say why not just drop shield proficiency altogether? Let anyone who wants to pick up a shield to defend themselves do so without worry. I think there are better areas of reward for effort spent than making sure only certain people can use this fundamental tactic without extra investment. They've already divorced the offensive and defensive side of shields. They could make it so that proficiency only matters when using a shield offensively.
There are also other ways to add disincentives to defensive shield use to people who "shouldn't" be using them. We've already seen one instance of a detrimental trait. Come up with a trait that is inconvenient to characters which aren't the target audience, but the target audience wouldn't care about. If it's really that important of a design goal. I, personally, think that making it active use is sufficient though.
I'm sympathetic to a lot of this, but here's a reason to want to keep shield proficiency. Namely, it provides with them with the ability to add interesting abilities to shield users who get to higher proficiency levels. For example:
- Allowing those who are Experts to sacrifice shields to prevent criticals, and throw their shields as weapons.
- Allowing those who are Masters to deflect attacks to adjacent opponents, break the weapons of those who critically miss, and throw shields at angles such that the shield will return to them at the end of the turn.
- Allowing those who are Legendary to reflect spells back at their casters, deflect attacks without using an action, use an action to deflect attacks against any ally within 30', throw shields and have them return immediately so they can be used again (offensively or defensively).
I'm sympathetic to a lot of this, but here's a reason to want to keep shield proficiency. Namely, it provides with them with the ability to add interesting abilities to shield users who get to higher proficiency levels. For example:
- Allowing those who are Experts to sacrifice shields to prevent criticals, and throw their shields as weapons.
- Allowing those who are Masters to deflect attacks to adjacent opponents, break the weapons of those who critically miss, and throw shields at angles such that the shield will return to them at the end of the turn.
- Allowing those who are Legendary to reflect spells back at their casters, deflect attacks without using an action, use an action to deflect attacks against any ally within 30', throw shields and have them return immediately so they can be used again (offensively or defensively).
I'd love to see shield users getting to do things like that. It would make shield-using distinctive and cool (in the exciting, get your blood pumping sort of way) in a way in which it's not in PF1.
Hrm. Some of those things would be easily handled by an offensive-only shield proficiency (and offensively oriented shields to go with it), but not all of them. And those defensive options seem cool enough to be definitely worth being able to incorporate.
I wonder if it would be balanced to add your shield proficiency to the amount of DR you get from the shield block reaction instead of having it interact with AC beyond of the +1/+2 for raising it. So there can still be proficiency existing to cover offensive shield uses and unconventional shield uses, and the amount of DR anyone gets for using a shield is slightly proportional to how good they are with the shield they raised in the first place while steadily growing over your career to stay relevant. It would naturally follow that your Fighters and Paladins would be much more commonly shield blocking than your wizards, because they're better at it, but it doesn't have the weird case where a wizard simply raises their shield and loses AC from doing so.
Feels like there might be a happy medium in there somewhere.
I'd have to see the full rules for everything before saying for certain, but right now I'm honestly not sure what benefits shield proficiency even provide. I'd maybe be okay with it if we took it out of AC altogether and just made it a tier-locking system, but right now, as presented so far, it seems almost like it's sole purpose for existing (or at least sole purpose as far as the AC mechanics) is to provide a penalty for not keeping both up to date, which ultimately just means that it will end up being a penalty if/when stuff does eventually slip in that boosts armor without shields, while boosting shields without armor is pretty well worthless unless it's to make up a gap. Keep Shield Proficiency for cool stuff, but maybe futureproof it against having to take two feats or whatever to get a single proficiency boost to AC.
EDIT: And before anyone says anything about trade-offs... while that might be a thing sometimes, it's just as (if not more) likely it will be an accidental oversight that just winds up hurting shield-users.
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If we can't put potency runes on Shields to improve their AC why not just treat them as weapons with the "Block" trait. The Block trait does everything Shields have been described as doing already defensively. Proficiency in Shields would then just work like proficiency in other weapons (and will probably be bundled in with some simple = light martial = heavy exotic = tower) increasing your ability to attack with them and opening the door to proficiency gated feats about using shields.
One: I hope that shields do get potency runes, not to stack with armor, but for those primitive-themed characters who don't wear armor. I think "armor potency runes" shouldn't necessarily require armor, so the good ol' Cloak of Protection is a thing, as well as whatever warding magic item suits the character.
Two: But if shields don't get potency runes, I like your idea, and some ramifications. Off the cuff, it seems pretty cool for weapons with the block ability to be able to have shield enhancements, like deflecting arrows. Breaking through a blocking weapon after repeated blows is a trope (or should be) just like with shields. Since shields work more like a weapon w/ a block action than they do armor, I think this deserves consideration, even playtesting.
Cheers
ETA: Shields also require action & interception. It seems the skills resemble weapon use more than how one wears armor.
Hmmm, do we know that Block weapons will provide DR or is it just the AC bump? Breaking through them is a cool trope, but players hate losing weapons.
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Its been stated above, but i think its worth having armour proficieny integral to AC calculation. Shield proficiency should be tied to the shields actions, if you use the action to raise your shield perhaps your AC increases by 1+proficiency. This makes the AC bones -1 up to +4. Adding it to the damage absorption as well depends on just how good a shield is at absorbing damage.
This way being untrained in shields wont affect your standard AC - your armour, dex, level and proficiency, but trying to use one untrained for instance is a liability rather than an asset, lowering your AC effectively by 1 but possibly absorbing some damage. having greater proficiency means your can better use a shield to defelect and block incoming attacks boosting your AC and possibly increasing the amount of damage absorbed. master proficincy and a +3 to AC would help reduce the hits taken and the potential critical by an amount that makes the action used seem a worthy sacrifice.
Im still out on the damage reduction/absorbtionn aspect since this really just looks like a battle prolonger. My pet peeve(?) with ethe curretn game are the loooong combats that take up anentire session of play even at the middle levels. Giving every fighter 1 less action to attacks and DR effectively means dealing less damage and recieving less, so combat times would seem to head in the taking longer direction, especially in light of the 40% increase in hp players will have.