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A shield takes a dent when its hardness is exceeded.
A shield with a hardness of 5 takes a dent when it blocks 5 or more damage. If it blocks 10 or more damage it takes 2 dents and now has the broken condition. I experienced this playing the demo with Valeros at PaizoCon.
This is why the Craft skill has become so important in the new version. You need to repair your gear.
Culach is right.
HOWEVER.
The way Shield Block is worded, on page309 of the Rulebook, states “Your shield
prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness — the shield takes this damage instead”.
The way this is worded, the shield only blocks part of the damage, and never takes more than one dent.
I KNOW from sample sheets and demos that his is not the case, but RAW that’s it. A correction is required, unless it’s an intended change.
Higher quality shields and shields made from materials such as adamantine have higher hardness. But still their stats don't seem to keep up with the damage scaling of more powerful monsters.
If Culach is right, at high level, why would anyone ever carry a shield? The very first encounter, you raise it, it blocks 5 hp, and is destroyed. So shields are basically one use, mundane items that for 10 sp or so give 5 temporary hp. Only at very low level do you get a few uses out of them.
Why would anyone spend the money to make a +1 shield? or a +5 shield? By the time you can afford it, monsters are doing enough damage to destroy it in one shot.
From the bestiary, this is (randomly) from the Harpy, a level 5 creature:
Melee morningstar +13 (versatile P), Damage 2d8+4 bludgeoning
Melee talon +13 (agile), Damage 2d6+4 slashingThose attacks average 13 and 11 damage.
Crafting: Seriously, I'm going to go into a dungeon and face a dozen encounters. After the first one, maybe two, I'm going to carry around this broken shield the rest of the way, including into the boss fight so I can repair it. Rather than just spending another 10-20 sp when I get back to town?
More annoying. Light shields have a bulk of L. I can just see some fighter saying he has 20 shields in his backpack that only take up 2 bulk. Each fight, he just keep swapping out shield after shield. (Not a first level, of course, but eventually 200 sp is not a lot of money.)
Actually, Hardness 5 means 13 damage only gives 1 dent.
13-5=8 damage. How many times does 5 go into 8, once (also, you the character take 8 but that isn't important to discussion).So one dent.
That is how simple it is.
Now if the creature Crits Shield is breaking but eh.
Shields are temp DR. +1 X increases Hardness by 2 I think. Type of Shield matters as well (Legendary Shield also increases Hardness by 3)
So a +5 Legendary Shield has around 30 DR.
There is also the weaker but never denting Living Shield with only DR 23 but never dents.
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If Culach is right, at high level, why would anyone ever carry a shield? The very first encounter, you raise it, it blocks 5 hp, and is destroyed. So shields are basically one use, mundane items that for 10 sp or so give 5 temporary hp. Only at very low level do you get a few uses out of them.
Why would anyone spend the money to make a +1 shield? or a +5 shield? By the time you can afford it, monsters are doing enough damage to destroy it in one shot.
From the bestiary, this is (randomly) from the Harpy, a level 5 creature:
Melee morningstar +13 (versatile P), Damage 2d8+4 bludgeoning
Melee talon +13 (agile), Damage 2d6+4 slashingThose attacks average 13 and 11 damage.
Crafting: Seriously, I'm going to go into a dungeon and face a dozen encounters. After the first one, maybe two, I'm going to carry around this broken shield the rest of the way, including into the boss fight so I can repair it. Rather than just spending another 10-20 sp when I get back to town?
More annoying. Light shields have a bulk of L. I can just see some fighter saying he has 20 shields in his backpack that only take up 2 bulk. Each fight, he just keep swapping out shield after shield. (Not a first level, of course, but eventually 200 sp is not a lot of money.)
Actually, Hardness 5 means 13 damage only gives 1 dent.
13-5=8 damage. How many times does 5 go into 8, once (also, you the character take 8 but that isn't important to discussion).
So one dent.That is how simple it is.
Now if the creature Crits Shield is breaking but eh.Shields are temp DR. +1 X increases Hardness by 2 I think. Type of Shield matters as well (Legendary Shield also increases Hardness by 3)
So a +5 Legendary Shield has around 30 DR.
There is also the weaker but never denting Living Shield with only DR 23 but never dents.
Actually you are wrong here.
Each multiple of 5 by which the Hardness is exceeded counts as another dent.
Example: incoming 13 damage, Shield has a hardness of 5, this means it takes 2 dents and is broken (2x5=10, 10<13=Broken shield).
From the book page 175:
ITEM DAMAGE
An item can be destroyed if it takes damage enough times.
An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its Hardness.
The Hardness of various materials is explained in the
Materials section on page 354. If an item takes damage
equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes
a Dent. If the item takes damage equal to or greater than
twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents. For instance,
a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would
take 2 Dents. A typical item can take only 1 Dent without
becoming broken. A second Dent causes it to become
broken, though it can still be repaired. An item that would
take a Dent or become broken while already broken is
destroyed beyond salvage. Some magical or especially
sturdy items can take more than 1 Dent before becoming
broken, as noted in their descriptions.
Same example with differing numbers but the same result.
It's pretty similar to the Shield cantrip, which can only be used to block damage once per minute. It has free and pretty high hardness scaling, but it also only has a +1 to AC. The intent seems to be that you repair shields between encounters and wait for your Shield cantrip to regenerate between encounters if you want to carry that bonus forward to the next fight. Warriors can at least have an extra shield.
The correct interpretation (from paizo) seems to be:
Shield takes part of the damage (D) from the hit, up to Hardness (H).
If D < H, shield is fine and character takes 0 damage.
If D = H, shield is dented (and possibly broken) and character takes 0 damage.
If D > H, shield is dented (and possibly broken) and character takes D-H damage.
If D >= 2H, shield takes two dents and is broken, and character takes D-H damage.
However, there is no reference for it as the Rulebook is not written this way, unlike the references in http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=99293&d=153156 2212 . Needs a fix.
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Based on:
If an item takes damage equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes a Dent.
and
Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness — the shield takes this damage instead.
I'd argue that RAW, when blocking, a shield at most takes damage exactly equal to its Hardness. This means that a shield can never receive more than one Dent from any one blocked blow (since the player, and not the shield, takes the excess damage).
If it was run differently, it wasn't RAW, though it may have been RAI.
It also should be noted that higher item quality increases Hardness, if someone didn't notice.
A wooden shield would have 5/6/8/11 hardness, a steel shield would have 9/10/12/15 hardness.
An adamantine shield would have 14 or 17 hardness, as it cannot be less than Master quality.
Shields cannot have potency runes. Some specific shields are magical, but have no potency.
Culach, in your example with the 13 damage and the shield breaking, would the character take 3 damage, 8 damage, or nothing?
And if the attack dealt 8 damage, would the character take 3 damage or would the shield absorb it since it is not enough to give a second Dent?
Just to clarify how much of the RAW is screwed up.
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When it happened to me I took no damage, which was good because I was at 1HP when the attack happened. The bad guy fell before it could attack again.
Sherlock1701, I would recommend you read the text I quoted directly from the book which shows exactly what happens when a shield with a hardness of 3 takes 10 points in a single hit.
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So, if there is a problem, how to fix it?
Historically, shields did break after a bit, especially the wooden ones. If fact, breakability with shields were used to good effect, to catch blades.
I see a few options
- increase the dents of shields. The number of dents could relate to the material.
- give the shields HP as per PF1
- increase the damage to dent a shield
- ignore the block option.
- learn to live with the changes
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So, if there is a problem, how to fix it?
Historically, shields did break after a bit, especially the wooden ones. If fact, breakability with shields were used to good effect, to catch blades.
I see a few options
- increase the dents of shields. The number of dents could relate to the material.
- give the shields HP as per PF1
- increase the damage to dent a shield
- ignore the block option.
- learn to live with the changes
I would go with the "Increase the dents of shields. The number of dents could relate to the material."
Adamantine and Orichalcum shields in particular should have higher dent numbers in addition to their hardness in order to show how strong they are.
I also question the sanity of making legendary, special material shields. The master adamantine shield is 600 or 700 gp with 10 hardness. For 3 more hardness, you can pay 13,000 or 15,000 gp. Aren't there better ways to spend 13,000 gp than temporary DR 3?
There certainly are, but there's an even better way to spend 23,000 gp:
From page 394
INDESTRUCTIBLE SHIELD - ITEM 18 (Rare)
Price 23,000 gp
Method of Use held, 1 hand; Bulk 1
An indestructible shield is a legendary heavy adamantine shield (Hardness 13) that can’t be dented or broken. It can be destroyed only by a disintegrate spell dealing at least 90 damage to it, or by an artifact tied to destruction, such as a sphere of annihilation
When it happened to me I took no damage, which was good because I was at 1HP when the attack happened. The bad guy fell before it could attack again.
Sherlock1701, I would recommend you read the text I quoted directly from the book which shows exactly what happens when a shield with a hardness of 3 takes 10 points in a single hit.
The shield doesn't take 10 points in damage. The text explicitly states that a shield used for blocking takes damage "up to its hardness". The remaining damage is dealt to the player, not the shield. Hence, the shield in that scenario would take 3 points, denting it once, and the player would take 7 points.
Check the text on the shield specifically (quoted in my post). It makes it clear that the shield isn't taking the full force of the attack-only an amount equal to or less than its hardness.
-10 point attack comes in
-Shield takes 3 (its hardness), Denting it
-Player takes 7
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When it happened to me I took no damage, which was good because I was at 1HP when the attack happened. The bad guy fell before it could attack again.
Sherlock1701, I would recommend you read the text I quoted directly from the book which shows exactly what happens when a shield with a hardness of 3 takes 10 points in a single hit.
The shield doesn't take 10 points in damage. The text explicitly states that a shield used for blocking takes damage "up to its hardness". The remaining damage is dealt to the player, not the shield. Hence, the shield in that scenario would take 3 points, denting it once, and the player would take 7 points.
Check the text on the shield specifically (quoted in my post). It makes it clear that the shield isn't taking the full force of the attack-only an amount equal to or less than its hardness.
-10 point attack comes in
-Shield takes 3 (its hardness), Denting it
-Player takes 7
I agree this is what the rules are, but it's reportedly not how it has been run at a lot of the cons. Whether this is because the devs don't realize what they published or (much more likely) some of the quickly trained GMs are fudging or understandably making up quick rules judgments under a time crunch is not yet clear.
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The shield doesn't take 10 points in damage. The text explicitly states that a shield used for blocking takes damage "up to its hardness". The remaining damage is dealt to the player, not the shield. Hence, the shield in that scenario would take 3 points, denting it once, and the player would take 7 points.Check the text on the shield specifically (quoted in my post). It makes it clear that the shield isn't taking the full force of the attack-only an amount equal to or less than its hardness.
-10 point attack comes in
-Shield takes 3 (its hardness), Denting it
-Player takes 7This seems to conflict with page 175 which specifically uses this scenario.
For instance, a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would take 2 Dents.That seems to be (10-3)/3 = 2 Dents. I concede that it is odd for the shield to take Dents for damage that got passed on to the player.
I would assume this is a scenario where the shield is attacked directly, rather than being used to block - in blocking, it's pretty clear from the RAW that the shield itself only takes 3 points. If you attacked it directly and did 10 though, it could take 2 Dents.
Kinda seems from what I've seen that 3 points of damage is RAW, but 10 points is either RAI or a missed call. If it is supposed to be a situation where a shield entirely blocks the hit but takes the full damage, it actually makes the shield better in some scenarios, such as fighting a monster who deals more than twice the shield's Hardness per attack, or letting you hold off on blocking until you're at death's door and entirely negating hits.
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I have a concern related to shields, figured it would be better putting it in this thread rather than starting a new one. In summary, shields have strange prices and mechanics and I think they should be adjusted.
1) On page 190, why do +3 Shields only cost twice as much as a +2 Shield, while +3 Weapons cost eighteen times as much as a +2 Weapon? Was the price intended to be 60,000 sp instead? If not, why are +1 Shields valued at the same price as +1 Weapons?
2) On page 355, an Expert-quality Light Cold Iron Shield costs 500 sp and has 5 Hardness, which (from what I can tell) is cheaper and equally effective to its Iron equivalent. I've spend 45+ minutes scouring this section so if I am wrong, it's not for lack of reading.
3) An Indestructible Shield (page 394) costs 230,000 sp, while a regular Legendary Heavy Adamantine Shield (page 354) costs 150,000 sp. Yes, the regular Adamantine shield is available at level 15, three levels earlier than the Indestructible shield, but for a measly 53% cost hike the Indestructible one is, well, indestructible. Usable infinitely, whereas the Adamantine shield can take at most two Dents before being broken. No need to spend an hour repairing it, and you can use it an infinite number of times per battle.
3a) The DC to repair an item appears arbitrary. One assumes that Adamantine would be notoriously hard to work with. This makes a regular Adamantine Shield even worse since there's a chance you might destroy the item since it's likely not magical.
4) All of this seems very pricey when you consider that Shields are, basically, a semi-consumable item. Yes you can simply use them for the AC boost, but only at the cost of one Action per round which can really hinder... well, whatever it is your character is trying to do. The Shield Block action is great... until you realize that it breaks your (possibly quite valuable) item. In that sense, Shield are -basically- like magical items with ~1d3 charges per day. Like so:
Talisman of Protection: You may spend an Action and hold aloft this Talisman to gain +1 AC and ATC until the start of your next turn (or +2 if your Talisman has Bulk 1). While doing so, when you taken damage from a physical attack you may React to reduce the damage by 3 (or 5 for a Bulky Talisman). If the damage exceeds your Talisman's protection, it loses 1 charge and you take the rest. Your Talisman starts the day with 2 charges. Higher-quality Talismans add their Hardness to the damage prevented.
That's not a bad item... but would you rather have that over a bow, or a two-handed weapon, or dual-wielding? The benefits those combat styles give don't require Action investment just to get rolling, they provide it by improving the Action you're already going to take pretty much every round: Attack. The opportunity cost you pay to use Shields just seems to outweigh the benefits you might get out of another combat style.
So, constructive criticism time. I think that Shields could either be (1) more effective, (2) cheaper, or (3) more durable. Examples of these solution would look like:
1) Shields grant +2 AC for Light and +3 AC for Heavy when you Raise your Shield, plus their Quality bonus. They have the Hardness of a Standard item, not a Thin one.
2) Shields cost 25% as much as a weapon of the same Quality, but aren't available until level 2 / 7 / 15 like other such weapons, since they're still difficult to craft.
3) Shields are meant to absorb blows without Denting, unlike other items. Each time they take a Dent, their Hardness goes down by 1. When you Repair a Shield, for each Dent you remove you instead restore half of its maximum Hardness.
Any of those changes would probably make Shields more useful. Personally, I think the third option is the best of the bunch.
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Things they could do, probably all at once:
* Since a Block only prevents damage to you up to Hardness, your shield can only take ONE dent on a block, except on a crit, which always deals 1 extra dent even if all the damage is prevented.
* It takes as many dents to go from Broken to Destroyed as from intact to Broken, instead of only 1 more.
* Each tier up in quality (Expert etc) adds a dent.
* Even a destroyed shield can be repaired, just at half purchase price instead of the lesser cost of a normal repair.
* Magic shields always automatically restore at least 1 dent per day as long as they are not destroyed.
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Things they could do, probably all at once:
* Since a Block only prevents damage to you up to Hardness, your shield can only take ONE dent on a block, except on a crit, which always deals 1 extra dent even if all the damage is prevented.
* It takes as many dents to go from Broken to Destroyed as from intact to Broken, instead of only 1 more.
* Each tier up in quality (Expert etc) adds a dent.
* Even a destroyed shield can be repaired, just at half purchase price instead of the lesser cost of a normal repair.
* Magic shields always automatically restore at least 1 dent per day as long as they are not destroyed.
I like all of your suggestions. If I had to choose, and had the power to implement those choices, I'd go with 1, 3, and 5 (1 dent per Block or 2 with a crit, +1 Dent per Quality, and magic shields restoring dents over time). You definitely seem to be in Camp #3 like me, i.e. shields should be more durable, not more effective or cheaper.
As a side note, I LOVE the Dents mechanic for Shields but I'm also perplexed at the lack of a similar mechanic for weapons. If I Raise Shield against a rapier, the weapon doesn't suffer any Dents, which is weird because you'd think a slim rod of metal hitting a large, heavy piece of steel might inflict some wear-and-tear on the weapon. Heck, it seems like you can stab an Orichalchum shield with an iron dagger and the blade won't so much as crack. That seems like a bit of an oversight to me.
Now I understand WHY weapons don't Dent - it's because you don't want the Rogue's cool finesse weapon to break in the first encounter with an Earth Elemental. Because ranged weapons would probably be a lot stronger (unless you make bowstrings snap sometimes as well). Because weapon breakage is, unfortunately, not a very fun mechanic for most people unless your game is centred around scarce resource management.
The biggest change I would suggest is to have the hardness reduction stated as reducing damage dealt to an item, then calculate dents based on damage taken, to reduce the complication some people are having understanding. At least, I think that is a better way to clarify how I read that working.
That said, until I see official word posted about this, I'm praying to Pharasma that my players just don't use shields. I'm pretty sure the intent is the multiple dents version, but the RAW is straight up no dents, which makes shields super-powerful.
* It takes as many dents to go from Broken to Destroyed as from intact to Broken, instead of only 1 more.
This is functionally a null change. You can't Raise Shield if your shield is Broken. The only thing this stops is if you're 1 dent away from Broken and take a crit (your shield is Broken rather than Destroyed). Which is only a problem if your first change goes in OR if shield damage works as the way Paizo's tried to say it does on stream and on the forums.
* Magic shields always automatically restore at least 1 dent per day as long as they are not destroyed.
That'd be nice.
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Honestly, there needs to be some errata or a very clear developer statement (in writing) about how shield block is supposed to work. Apparently, the devs have, through various verbal means (and sometimes in weird ways) said that blocking shields can take multiple dents from damage (or from the attack being a critical hit or even be outright destroyed). However, these statements directly contradicts the wording in the current rulebook (and often contradict each other). It may harken back to ongoing disagreements with developers, be an accident, or be a holdover from some of the versions of Shield Block used in other internal version of the playtest rules.
Whatever the reason for the disconnect, it needs to be harmonized. Otherwise, there's not much point in playtesting them.
Our prayers to the devs have been answered \o/
We’ve recently made an update to shields, so here’s how they currently work. The shield takes a Dent if the damage
it blocks equals or exceeds its Hardness, but can’t take more
than 1 Dent at a time. So if you had a Hardness 3 shield and
blocked a 6-damage attack, you would take 3 damage and
the shield would take 1 Dent because 6 damage is equal to or
greater than its Hardness. Note that it no longer gets broken
due to the update.