Should shields block damage as written?

[Meowvelous]

I've seen a lot of discussion about shields being flimsy, but by the playtest rules as written unless an attack ignores hardness and gets blocked by one they will never take damage themselves as the hardness reduces their damage taken to 0, and they never take more damage from an attack than their hardness.
I've heard that some devs have provided feedback saying they are meant to take 1 or more dents from many attacks(even though the rules as written do not reflect this), but what about just letting them go as currently written? It would allow you to trade actions for limited damage reduction and there wouldn't be the fear of constant breakage.

[Zwordsman]

Dot~

1 action + 1 reaction every turn is pretty strong action cost for potential DR/temp hp effect.

[Fuzzypaws]

There's some precedent for it, since there are already feats in PF2 (eg for the Barbarian) that let you just use an action every turn to get temporary HP every turn. It's just a different opportunity cost: rage / feat / 1 action per turn for the Barbarian, vs money / giving up a hand / 1 action and reaction per turn for everyone else.

[sherlock1701]

I think the biggest issue is that those only cost actions. If you have a very expensive shield, it could cost you a lot of money to make repairs or replace it. Maybe if a player could choose whether the shield takes all the damage, or some amount that wouldn't hurt it, with the rest transferred to the character.

I'd be OK with the action economy cost, if they made the following changes:

1:Make access to both the free action shield raise (+ to AC) and the extra block action into lower-level feats.

2: Make these easily accessible to all classes. Whether they did it by making them into 1st/2nd level Fighter feats so they could be picked up via multiclassing, or turned them into general feats, I don't much care - it just needs to be more available and come online sooner.

[Lycar]

Well, the whole Shield Block thing needs clarification anyway...

"You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield
prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—
the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or
broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items."

So... by the way this is worded, a shield only blocks damage up to its own hardness. Every point of damage exceeding the shield's hardness is still hurting you.

And apparently, the damage that the shield blocks is inflicted to it regardless of its innate hardness. If the shield with hardness 5 stops 5 points of damage, it also takes 5 point of damage.

So what about page 175 then?

"...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. ..."

Uhm... but the way Shield Block is worded, the shield never takes more then its own hardness in damage anyway. If the hardness 5 shield takes from 1 to 4 damage, it is unscathed. If it takes 5 points, it is dented 1. If it takes 6,023x10²³ damage, it still only blocks 5 of those and, upon taking its own hardness worth of damage, receives a single dent.

So, what is it then? Can a shield block more then its own hardness worth of damage, at the price of being reduced to splinters or scrap metal all the sooner? Or is the example on p. 175 for shields taking damage rubbish, and you can just use 2 Shield Blocks in a fight, after which your shield becomes Broken and useless?

[Zwordsman]

sherlock1701 wrote:

I think the biggest issue is that those only cost actions. If you have a very expensive shield, it could cost you a lot of money to make repairs or replace it.

2: Make these easily accessible to all classes. Whether they did it by making them into 1st/2nd level Fighter feats so they could be picked up via multiclassing, or turned them into general feats, I don't much care - it just needs to be more available and come online sooner.

Assuming I understand correctly. You mean make the shield availble to all?

Untrained is -2 penalty to ac. so while walking around you would have a penalty to AC. but if you use the shield raise action, with a heavy shield, you get the +2 circ bonus to AC. Which results in a net 0 AC.
Which then allows you to use the Shield Block Reaction.

Not ideal mind you.. but i still might be doing this for my Alchemist on principle. I want to try the shield stuff out.
======================
So.. I know what you mean by costing to replace it.
but.. Isn't repairing free? I see no mention of supplying matrials in the action for repair under craft.
Or did I miss a note somewhere?

===================================================

Lycar wrote:

So, what is it then? Can a shield block more then its own hardness worth of damage, at the price of being reduced to splinters or scrap metal all the sooner? Or is the example on p. 175 for shields taking damage rubbish, and you can just use 2 Shield Blocks in a fight, after which your shield becomes Broken and useless?

Yup. this whole bit is a concern. but there are like.. 8? other threads purely discussing which interpretations are correct and why.

I feel like this one is discussing the cost/risk/level of power of if they didn't take dents because of the wording. or if they only took 1 dent no matter what.

as a sidenote. I dont' think I've seen a sunder move in the pdf yet.. is there?
Originally I read it as taking no dents, unless someone specifically targetted the shield (with an attack or with a sunder) but then realized I couldn't find a sunder.. except for sundering spells.

[thenobledrake]

Lycar wrote:

Well, the whole Shield Block thing needs clarification anyway...

"You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield
prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—
the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or
broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items."

So... by the way this is worded, a shield only blocks damage up to its own hardness. Every point of damage exceeding the shield's hardness is still hurting you.

And apparently, the damage that the shield blocks is inflicted to it regardless of its innate hardness. If the shield with hardness 5 stops 5 points of damage, it also takes 5 point of damage.

So what about page 175 then?

"...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. ..."

Uhm... but the way Shield Block is worded, the shield never takes more then its own hardness in damage anyway. If the hardness 5 shield takes from 1 to 4 damage, it is unscathed. If it takes 5 points, it is dented 1. If it takes 6,023x10²³ damage, it still only blocks 5 of those and, upon taking its own hardness worth of damage, receives a single dent.

So, what is it then? Can a shield block more then its own hardness worth of damage, at the price of being reduced to splinters or scrap metal all the sooner? Or is the example on p. 175 for shields taking damage rubbish, and you can just use 2 Shield Blocks in a fight, after which your shield becomes Broken and useless?

My expectation of the intent behind these rules is that you use the full damage total to figure out how many dents the shield takes from an attack, and then subtract the shield's hardness from that amount and apply the rest to the character holding the shield's HP.

That way a hefty enough blow can destroy a shield in one go, and the effective damage reduction of a shield wouldn't ever end up being higher than its hardness against any particular blow.

[Timothy Toomey]

thenobledrake wrote:

Lycar wrote:

Well, the whole Shield Block thing needs clarification anyway...

"You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield
prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—
the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or
broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items."

So... by the way this is worded, a shield only blocks damage up to its own hardness. Every point of damage exceeding the shield's hardness is still hurting you.

And apparently, the damage that the shield blocks is inflicted to it regardless of its innate hardness. If the shield with hardness 5 stops 5 points of damage, it also takes 5 point of damage.

So what about page 175 then?

"...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. ..."

Uhm... but the way Shield Block is worded, the shield never takes more then its own hardness in damage anyway. If the hardness 5 shield takes from 1 to 4 damage, it is unscathed. If it takes 5 points, it is dented 1. If it takes 6,023x10²³ damage, it still only blocks 5 of those and, upon taking its own hardness worth of damage, receives a single dent.

So, what is it then? Can a shield block more then its own hardness worth of damage, at the price of being reduced to splinters or scrap metal all the sooner? Or is the example on p. 175 for shields taking damage rubbish, and you can just use 2 Shield Blocks in a fight, after which your shield becomes Broken and useless?

My expectation of the intent behind these rules is that you use the full damage total to figure out how many dents the shield takes from an attack, and then subtract the shield's hardness from that amount and apply the rest to the character holding the shield's HP.

That way a hefty enough blow can destroy a shield in one go,...

That makes shields abysmally worthless.

[shroudb]

The rules have been debated to death, and an actual gameplay scenario with Jason (I think) running it has proven what seemed to be the most RAW but simultaneously most convulted path to take with shield block:

Subtract hardness from damage
THEN
Both shield and player take REMAINING damage
If remaining damage is more than hardness (so you basically count hardness twice) then it gets a dent.

Effectively:
Hardness is DR
And tgen
Hardness is Durability

Dent is not "damage" it is state of being (1 dent is like half broken)

So, a typical starting shield with hardness 5,blocking a 9 damage strike reduces damage to player to 4 and is 100%fine after that. If it takes up to 14 damage it gets 1 dent. If it takes 15+ it gets 2 dents.

Easy rule to follow is:
2x+ is 1 dent
3x+ is 2 dents
Where x is initial damage

Later on, you get special properties and materials and etc increasing hardness to reasonable amounts, not enough to make it completely immune, but enough for it to be like 50+ temp HP before needing repairs.

[Malthraz]

shroudb

That is exactly my interpretation of the rules from reading every possible applicable rule about 3 times, and trying to inject common sense and guessing at what Paizo are trying to covey.

Good to see it might be correct.

More thinking: If your shield received an 42 dents at once, can it go from undented to destroyed?
Or is there always an intermediate broken step. So, the shield can only be destroyed when actually broken before a denting attack.

I think I am going with you cannot 1 shot a shield to destroyed. Who knows?

[Zman0]

Meowvelous wrote:

I've seen a lot of discussion about shields being flimsy, but by the playtest rules as written unless an attack ignores hardness and gets blocked by one they will never take damage themselves as the hardness reduces their damage taken to 0, and they never take more damage from an attack than their hardness.

I've heard that some devs have provided feedback saying they are meant to take 1 or more dents from many attacks(even though the rules as written do not reflect this), but what about just letting them go as currently written? It would allow you to trade actions for limited damage reduction and there wouldn't be the fear of constant breakage.

I saw somewhere on the forums where a dev responded with that interpretation, that the shield could only ever take a single dent at a time, and the rest of the damage passed through.

They then responded again and said that was old information, that if the attack was strong enough the shield could take multiple dents etc. So, what we have is a situation where the rulebook is unclear because of a shift in how they were treating it. But, the current way, according to a dev at least, is that the shield can take multiple dents or be destroyed from a sufficiently strong attack.

[shroudb]

Zman0 wrote:

Meowvelous wrote:

I've seen a lot of discussion about shields being flimsy, but by the playtest rules as written unless an attack ignores hardness and gets blocked by one they will never take damage themselves as the hardness reduces their damage taken to 0, and they never take more damage from an attack than their hardness.

I've heard that some devs have provided feedback saying they are meant to take 1 or more dents from many attacks(even though the rules as written do not reflect this), but what about just letting them go as currently written? It would allow you to trade actions for limited damage reduction and there wouldn't be the fear of constant breakage.

I saw somewhere on the forums where a dev responded with that interpretation, that the shield could only ever take a single dent at a time, and the rest of the damage passed through.

They then responded again and said that was old information, that if the attack was strong enough the shield could take multiple dents etc. So, what we have is a situation where the rulebook is unclear because of a shift in how they were treating it. But, the current way, according to a dev at least, is that the shield can take multiple dents or be destroyed from a sufficiently strong attack.

bolded part: The rules as written DO support this. It all comes to the word THIS in that specific section (this damage). It can simultaneously refer to damage blocked (your interpetation) or total damage (what is actually used). The bad thing to not use it as RAW (where RAW is that you calculate from total damage after hardness reduction) is that at later level it basically gives 15+ temp hp/round, and that's quite a lot.

rest quoted parts:nah, that dev messed up every part of his answer due to tiredness and old info.

but we have an actual footage of a dev DMing a group and it happenned to have an encounter where after subrtacting damage it was more than hardness but less than 2x hardness and it resulted in 1 dent.

so 2x = Dent and 3x = 2 Dents (where x is hardness) is all but confirmed.

As for multiple dents, i think it's pretty clear that an item can get either 1 or 2 dents in a single strike.

the only vague point is if an already dented item gets 2 dents if it's destroyed, and I would personally say yes, but the rules don't cover that at all, so at this point it's purely speculation.

[Ghilteras]

I think an item can get multiple dents with a single strike, but not shields under shield block usage as the extra damage past hardness goes to the PC. The shield only takes up to hardness damage, which means only 1 dent per shield block. With the current RAW breaking a shield with a single shield block seems not possible.

They should really post an errata if it's not like that