Just balance, but it’s a huge one. If shields could have runes it would blow up their math and make them mandatory.
Shields are just a very different entity. Even if you could put runes on them, they probably wouldn't stack with armor runes anyway.
It is for balance reasons.
The houserule I that I am using outside of official playtest is that you can inscribe shields with armor potency runes. But, instead of an item bonus to AC, each +X of Potency increases the number of Dents the shield can take before being broken and also increases its hardness by 1. This can be added to existing magic shields. Remove the Sturdy Shield from the game.
This opens up a lot of more fun and useful shields to use, and allows for fun with shields made out special materials. It overall maintains existing balance while simultaneously increasing viable options. All good things.
It along with the other changes I'm looking at are located here. It is essentiall "Bound" P2, Magic Weapon Damage Dice change, and Magical Shield Potency change. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EOv33DQjk5Zf0rTgS73xyGitX5mTjpW8
That seems like a good plan if you want runes on shield. The important thing is that shields aren't just armor you put on your arm anymore.
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
math balance aside with shields what really makes no sense is the arbitrary ban on magical barding or animals not being able to benefit from any item bonuses at all...it seems like it's a byproduct of the resonance system since they don't get any...but that's more a problem with the resonance system that needs to be fixed rather than something we should just get used to...limits on what can and can't become magical is the only real part of the resonance system that blatantly fails the in-world continuity test since those things plainly existed before and now are just gone...
Also shields are fragile when used to block, and I doubt it would be very satisfying to have to choose between using a blinged out shield or not and risk losing it.
Also shields are fragile when used to block, and I doubt it would be very satisfying to have to choose between using a blinged out shield or not and risk losing it.
To be fair, while a shield can get broken easily enough, I still don't think you can have a shield be destroyed on a block by RAW, which is pretty important to keeping them around.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
|
Also shields are fragile when used to block, and I doubt it would be very satisfying to have to choose between using a blinged out shield or not and risk losing it.To be fair, while a shield can get broken easily enough, I still don't think you can have a shield be destroyed on a block by RAW, which is pretty important to keeping them around.
I thought if your shield takes 3 dents (for a standard shield) it's destroyed. This means that if your shield has 1 dent already and you block with it, and the attacker gets a critical hit, bye bye shield.
I thought if your shield takes 3 dents (for a standard shield) it's destroyed. This means that if your shield has 1 dent already and you block with it, and the attacker gets a critical hit, bye bye shield.Also shields are fragile when used to block, and I doubt it would be very satisfying to have to choose between using a blinged out shield or not and risk losing it.To be fair, while a shield can get broken easily enough, I still don't think you can have a shield be destroyed on a block by RAW, which is pretty important to keeping them around.
There are two interpretations. One relies exclusively on the general rules given on damaging things, which you are relying on and which unhelpfully uses a shield as the example. The other interpretation relies exclusively on the rules given in the shield block action, which explicitly limit the damage a shield can take as part of the action to its hardness.
In this latter interpretation, the general rule only applies to unattended objects (or subject to a future or deleted sunder rule that doesn't currently exist) and does not apply to a shield used as a block, which has different and more specific rules.
Also shields are fragile when used to block, and I doubt it would be very satisfying to have to choose between using a blinged out shield or not and risk losing it.To be fair, while a shield can get broken easily enough, I still don't think you can have a shield be destroyed on a block by RAW, which is pretty important to keeping them around.
A dev speculated about a 100 damage hit recently (in a twitch stream) in a way that made it seem possible.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
IIRC, said dev was also speaking from the perspective of himself as GM. I am given to understand that he did not reference a copy of the rules before answering, so gods only know whether or not he answered correctly, or even understood why the question was asked. I get the feeling most of the devs are working from their knowledge of the internal design documents; and aren't actually familiar with the playtest rulebook.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
IIRC, said dev was also speaking from the perspective of himself as GM. I am given to understand that he did not reference a copy of the rules before answering, so gods only know whether or not he answered correctly, or even understood why the question was asked. I get the feeling most of the devs are working from their knowledge of the internal design documents; and aren't actually familiar with the playtest rulebook.
That's why I said "speculated". Really though, if the devs aren't even sure how things work, we certainly can't be.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
IIRC, said dev was also speaking from the perspective of himself as GM. I am given to understand that he did not reference a copy of the rules before answering, so gods only know whether or not he answered correctly, or even understood why the question was asked. I get the feeling most of the devs are working from their knowledge of the internal design documents; and aren't actually familiar with the playtest rulebook.That's why I said "speculated". Really though, if the devs aren't even sure how things work, we certainly can't be.
Is not like they have been working on it for months (if not years). Or like playtested a few times before putting out a beta.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's not that a critical hit automatically does an extra dent. But that if the damage is more than double the hardness of the shield, it gets an extra dent - so critical hits are pretty likely to do that.
This is also wrong, according to the text of shield block, which says you the shield takes damage up to its hardness. The rest is dealt to the holder.
On the stream, I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote before.
All right, finally listened to the stream. (At about the 46 minute mark.) Gonna sum it up. (Also going to post it in more than one place because I really don't want more misinformation spreading.)
Question: A fighter uses a wooden shield and blocks a 100 point hit. How much damage does the fighter take and how many dents does the shield take?
1) Stephen decisively says the fighter takes 97 damage; this is consistent with the common reading of the rules.
2) "Now the shield is gonna take AT LEAST one dent, and if I were the GM, though this isn't really codified, it would just shatter." Slight paraphrasing there.
3) He justifies this by saying the point is moot; if you are using such a low level shield you probably don't have 97 hit points and are just dead anyway.
4) "But yeah, you'd take AT LEAST one dent."
5) Dan asks Stephen if that would be dependent on the GM. At this point Stephen is clearly thinking through it out loud but again that would be him as the GM.
6) Stephen says "if it was a critical hit it would be two dents." There is nothing in the rulebook that supports this AFAIK.
7) He says "I think there's also a thing where if you hit double that damage threshold you're gonna take 2 dents as well." He's almost certainly referencing page 175, but as discussed page 175 doesn't gel (or technically contradict) with what the shield block reaction says. Also he's expressed enough uncertainty by now that taking this as gospel seems rather shaky.
8) "So the shield would be destroyed, you would be dead... Just don't take that much damage at that level with a wooden shield." That's his final point. It seems clear that he's too hung up on the extreme amount of damage and is dropping into "What is the most cinematic for me as GM" rather than actually answering the question.
9) In conclusion: This is completely inconclusive. Next time we get Paizo answering questions, let's use a more realistic example, like a fighter with a light wooden shield (hardness 3) blocking 10 damage.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Since the Sturdy Shield has already different power levels, I really wonder why they didn't just let its effect be the effect for shield Potency Runes. Because what Sturdy Shield does is exactly this generic Better-Shield effect. Oo
This would do away with that strange special rule for shields.
Potency runes for shields don't work because the math is too tight to allow for other bonuses to AC. But there is no reason that there could not be some armor property runes on shields or even shield specific property runes.
Because reasons.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Potency runes for shields don't work because the math is too tight to allow for other bonuses to AC. But there is no reason that there could not be some armor property runes on shields or even shield specific property runes.Instead of boosting AC, just let the Potency Rune increase both Hardness and the number of Dents the shield has. It replaces the Sturdy shield, gives players more shield options, and a way to make the other special shields useful.
Yeah, I'd like a bit more versatility with shields. And the Sturdy property being a rune instead of a particular item would be quite nice. At the highest levels you could do things like put that on an Orichalcum shield. Orichalcum is amazing for shields, but as is you can have it or sturdy, not both. Arrow Catching, floating, reflecting and spellguard could all be Property Runes instead of specific items.
|
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
|
To add to what Shroudb said, I got the interpretation that a crit to a shield block gave 2 dents from the PaizoCon PF2 playtest. I don't recall who was running the session, but they seemed pretty confident that since the crit did more than double the hardness, that was 2 dents. So more evidence that at least some of the devs believe that to be how it works (I'm pretty sure the Beta was pretty final at that time).