So I just sat down to watch the livestream of the Lost Star playtest with Jason Buhlman and realized we've been running shields in our game off of the same rules, but doing it totally wrong.
The thing is our way seems to fix what a lot of people have issues with about how shields work and conceptually I just like it better than the current RAW. I sort of want to put it out there to see what folks think. Maybe it's a low impact rules fix?
You have a shield with a hardness of 3 let's say. The RAW says that if you take a hit for 5, your shield takes a dent and absorbs 3 of those damage points and you take the other 2. If this were to happen again, your shield would be broken and no longer usable. This seems unsatisfying for two reasons: it makes the rules in the book that talk about shields taking damage from a single heavy hit and being instantly destroyed not make sense (ie. say you take 9 damage with your shield...according to the RAW your shield would take three dents and be destroyed, but according to the example in the livestream it would seem to take 3, be dented and 6 would go through to your HP). It also doesn't really model how you would want a shield to work in the narrative: if you get hit with an axe in the shield and it hits hard enough that it blows through the shield and does you damage--it feels like the shield is destroyed, or at least has a big axe-blade sized gash in it. That it's only dented, and yet you're taking damage paints an oddly inconsistent image.
So here's how we read it:
You raise a shield, it negates damage up to it's toughness. A 2 point hit would just go away, completely absorbed by the shield and doing no damage.
For every amount equal to it's toughness, it takes a dent. A hit doing 4 damage would dent the shield by one and the final point of damage wouldn't be enough to dent the shield again, and would thus be absorbed. Six points would break the shield so it wouldn't be able to be used to block subsequent attacks (though if an attack did say 8 points, the remainder of that attack still wouldn't go through because it doesn't bypass the hardness of the shield's destroyed level).
If a single hit would be enough to destroy the shield (10 or more damage in the case of a 3 toughness shield) the remaining damage would transfer to the character and the shield explodes in wooden splinters.
I like that interpretation. It makes shields feel better narratively and makes them more worthwhile mechanically.
What do you folks think? Does this fix it for you?
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I like the way it is in the book. The shield takes damage up to its hardness. If the damage equals the hardness, it takes a dent. Any damage in excess of hardness hits you. By a strict reading of Shield Block, this is how it works. There have been some "clarifications" that have muddied the waters a bit, but unless there's errata, it should work as above. By the wording of the trigger, you should also know how much the damage is before you choose to block. If you use it carefully, you can potentially get a lot of damage reduction out of it.
It also makes Quick Repair and Crafting very important to invest in as those short downtimes to use healing skills, etc., can also be used to get your dents back.
Soooo... here's the thing... I think all this is wrong and shields shouldn't be taking dents from shield block.
From the Shield Block description (pg. 309): "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."
So I have a shield with 5 hardness. I get attacked for 10 damage. I use shield block, the shield takes up to its hardness (5) and I take the rest (also 5).
From Item damage description (pg. 175): "An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its hardness."
So the 5 damage dealt to my shield is reduced by its hardness (also 5). The shield doesn't take any damage.
The example on page 175 even says that a shield with 3 hardness takes only 2 dents if it takes 10 damage. So hardness shouldn't be ignored unless stated otherwise.
I think that last 5 words of Shield block can be wholly ignored. It could/should instead be read as "...the shield can be dented or broken by an effect or enhancement that dents or breaks things."
Thematically, this can still make sense... after all, your shield isn't sitting on a hard surface getting hammered with full force. You and your arm give way to the impact, the attack is angled at you instead of your shield, and force has a tendency to deflect. I think some reality show could prove it incredibly difficult to break a shield on a proficient fighter's arm.
I like the way it is in the book. The shield takes damage up to its hardness. If the damage equals the hardness, it takes a dent.
Sooo...only ever one dent?
From Item damage description (pg. 175): "An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its hardness."
Errata update 1.1 (two weeks ago) removed that sentence.
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I like the way it is in the book. The shield takes damage up to its hardness. If the damage equals the hardness, it takes a dent.Sooo...only ever one dent?
Yep. The shield only ever takes damage equal to or less than its hardness.
Consider this case:
You have a 5 hardness shield raised and use it to Block an attack for 10 damage.
Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to the shield’s Hardness—the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or broken.
and
If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents.
Obviously, your Shield Block reduces the damage by 5 and the shield takes 5. What happens next is where the confusion/debate comes in.
I say that, exactly as written above, your shield takes the damage it prevents and nothing more. This has a built in limit of one dent.
The other case is that the shield takes all ten damage and that you also take the damage in excess of hardness. This leads to a weird case where both you and the shield are taking the same damage points. If that is the actual intention of the rules, they need to add a lot of text to clarify it because that's not how anything works anywhere else.
Having it be one-dent-per-block makes shield block actually worthwhile. Your base shield can be used to block once per combat without worry. Your magic shield can block twice (or more for the higher level ones). Paladins can get three or four before it breaks, which is really potent and makes that Ally equivalent to the other two.
Just so you're aware, that directly contradicts the various things the designers have said in various places.
Errata update 1.1 (two weeks ago) removed that sentence.
Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't noticed it. Hopefully in the release next year an example will be included that illustrates the rule as it applies to a shield (the single most common occurrence of item damage as far as PCs are concerned).
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Just so you're aware, that directly contradicts the various things the designers have said in various places.
People keep saying that, but most of the statements I've seen on the matter contradict each other, too. In the absence of something clear and (preferably) written down as errata, I'm going to go with what's actually in the book.
Just so you're aware, that directly contradicts the various things the designers have said in various places.People keep saying that, but most of the statements I've seen on the matter contradict each other, too.
You are not wrong on that. It's why we've been clamoring every week for a fix.