Hello all,
I was reading another thread that was talking about how using an action each turn to raise the shield can be boring, along with the fact that it can be tiresome to announce it each turn. It got me thinking about the possibility of letting a shield stay raised after using an action to raise it, but have it affect your to-hit when attacking.
The same way that dropping a weapon is a free action, you could un-rause your shield for free in order to attack (or for whatever other reason).
So imagine that raising your shield still offers the bonus to AC, but now offers a matching penalty to land with an attack (maybe attributes like agile could mitigate this penalty?). This way, you are still using action economy effectively by raising your shield at the end of a turn, but there now exists an avenue for you to figure defensively and raise a shield as needed.
Additionally, using the shield block reaction could reset the shield, requiring you to use an action to raise it again.
The short and sweet mechanics in TL:DR format are as follows
Action to raise shield
Free action to lower shield
Shield stays raised until lowered as a free action or using the shield block reaction
AC increased and to-hit decreased by equal amounts while shield is raised
Tell me what you think!