Apparently, shields really are worthless, according to Paizo's clarification

[Ikusias]

I've got a clear impression that the developers severely undervalued the benefits of a shield, with damages around like what has been discussed so far, shields should stop hardness damage from reaching the user on the reaction, but be dented only if the damage is double their hardness.

Why? The shield itself helps intercepting the attacks, but the arm of the wielder underneath gets beaten progressively to a pulp, historical shields were quite strudy but couldn't prevent trauma perfectly.
What's the end result? a sword and board combatant can last longer on the frontlines agains lesser opponent, btu their numbers and attrition will still logorate him/her, while the shield would remain usable except for unlucky strikes.
Against important foes instead the shield wouldn't become useles at the first solid hit but will become a tactical decision between mitigating as much damage as possible, at the cost of a character reaction every trun against one attack, or preserving the shield for the extra AC as long as possible.

[Tridus]

I don't really understand where the fun is in this system. Armor can take seemingly infinte numbers of attacks and be perfectly fine, but a shield explodes if it does its job a couple of times, so I should be carrying 9 shields to go adventuring?

Just, why? What is this contributing to the game? I'm already spending two actions (an action and a reaction) to use it, and it occupies a hand. What is having them be so fragile get me? Even magic ones?

It's not at all hard to take multiple dents in a fight, so if you don't want to lose your shield, you either stop using the reaction entirely or you stop and make repairs, which just further contributes to the idea that adventure days should be really short.

I just don't understand how any of this extra bookkeeping and work is making the game more fun. If it's not adding any fun, why does it exist?

[houser2112]

Vylatka wrote:

houser2112 wrote:

They needed to do something to make two-handed weapons more attractive.

It is called enchantment. On a recent playtest we gave our only +1 weapon to a fighter with a greatsword. 2d12+4 dmg is no joke at level 4 and the couple of criticals he got absolutely devastated some tough foes.

Apparently I really do need to explain the joke.

In PF1, due to many factors (chief of which, I believe, that 2H weapons added 1.5xSTR instead of STR, and Power Attack further exaggerated the benefit 2H weapons got from STR over 1H weapons), 2H weapons were the kings of the battlefield. Through my own observation and overwhelming supporting evidence from the community at large, I consider this to be axiomatic. YMMV, but most people I've read think that something needs to be done to correct this imbalance. A new edition of the game is the perfect time to address it.

PF2 comes out, and not only do they not improve the situation, they make it worse. Being able to use a shield in combat in the first place requires sacrificing a precious action. The one interesting thing they added, Shield Block, allowing your shield to take some damage for you, they tied to reactions (a resource shared with AOOs, which are going to be rare now), and shields seem remarkably flimsy to justify wanting to throw them in harm's away.

So, to summarize: PF1 2H weapons were overwhelmingly popular and "needed" to be reined in. I made a joke by asserting the opposite is true, in a thread that is discussing how much shields actually suck even more in PF2.

That's the humor. You're welcome, gamers.

[Captain Morgan]

Sigh. Again, shields can't be destroyed through shield blocks as currently written. And they certainly start out plenty strong-- the vast majority of enemies in the first part of the playtest hit for somewhere between 1d4-1 and 1d6. That means most of the attacks fail to harm a steel shield or its bearer, which is especially significant given how many of those 1d4-1 attacks have poison riders that now don't work.

I haven't run the higher level parts to have solid data on how they scale later, but a Shield ally paladin with a sturdy shield can take 5 dents before their shield is broken, and with only a level 4 shield that translates to 50 temporary hit points. Quick repair can potentially let you repair that at a rate of 10 hit points for 10 minutes work. Even assuming every hit you take despite raised AC does dent level damage (and given variations of monster damage, they probably won't) that's still really excellent to have.

[swordchucks]

Even without Shield Block, which is the only confusing bit, shields are worth using. The +2 AC might not seem like a lot, but the tuning is such that an of-level monster often gets pushed to a 5% crit rate by it.

[Draco18s]

Captain Morgan wrote:

I haven't run the higher level parts to have solid data on how they scale later, but a Shield ally paladin with a sturdy shield can take 5 dents before their shield is broken, and with only a level 4 shield that translates to 50 temporary hit points.

It scales worse.

The most durable shield in existence has a hardness of 21 (a level 18 item). Setting aside the literally indestructible one.

Some examples of monsters, their damage on different attacks (and the probability of denting this shield at least once)

Level 11 spider: 3d10+8 (78.000%), 3d8+8 (59.375%)
Level 15 dragon: 4d8+14 (99.634%), 5d6+14 (99.923%), 5d6+7 (84.799%)
Level 19 dragon: 2d12+18 (99.306%), 5d6+18 (100%), 3d10+18 (100%), 5d6+9 (94.123%)

[GRuzom]

Timothy Toomey wrote:

duje wrote:

Draco18s wrote:

duje wrote:

Real shields were not actually sturdy, because it was beneficial for the sword to bite in your shield because that way you trap the sword and disarm the other guy.

Shields were basically one-time use items, in battles if you had any action, you would probably need to replace parts of your shield afterwards, maybe even just boss would be all that is left.

[Citation Needed]

This guy, who wrote an entire book about shields, says otherwise.

well he is wrong, when shields were most used, i.e they were common armament. they were very thin, especially at the edges, as many survived shields of the era show, they were not made heavy.

Only later in full plate era, we see metal shields and heavy wooden shields with metal around the edges, those were also much smaller because added thickness and material made them heavy.
Those shields were made for minority of full plate guys fighting against hammers and polearms, they are vastly inferior against swords than those before, but because full plate makes you invulnerable to swords it doesn't matter how good they are against edged weapons.

What matters is context, now i dont think an RPG should be that complex to go that much into realism, because basically to kill someone in full plate you need to knock them out by hitting them in the head with high impact force weapon then finish them while they are out, or wrestle them to the ground, open visor and dagger to the face.
Chainmail makes you immune to slashing and resistant to piercing when worn with gambeson as it should be, but maces break bones through them...
Or successfully catching a sword with a large thin shield would give you disarm, and million other minutia

You are so completely and fundamentally wrong it's not even funny. If shields were even half as fragile as you're trying to claim, they would never have been as prevalent in battle as they were...

Shields in Scandinavia's iron age were often one-battle-items, but that was about it - in other periodes and places they were a lot sturdier. duje, who apperently, is very intelligent, may be generalizing just a wee bit ...