Shield Rules:

[mavbor]

I have a few questions most of which relate to shield. I have searched the books and as much info as I can find but do not see it printed anywhere.

Question 1: Shield boss and shield spikes are listed in the melee martial weapons table. Weapon runes can be attached to them and they scale based on martial weapon proficiency from what I have read. They have weapon critical specialization and a few other places mention its a weapon attack.

This to me means they can be considered melee weapons.

Wouldn't this imply that a sword and shield user is wielding two weapons. So feats like Double Slice should apply and I can attack with both and gain the benefit of the feat.

Wouldn't this also imply that you can use parry feats. Example Dueling Parry or Twin Parry depending on if you are wielding a shield and unarmed or sword and shield. (sword is an example and could be any one handed melee weapon). This means you can add another +2 to AC.

Am I missing something?

Reason being is this: Raise Shield +2 AC, Dueling Parry +2 AC for 4 AC. Normally this would require 1 feat and 2 actions. Take Dueling Dance or Paragon Guard to offset it at level 12 (fighter) by making one of the actions include a strike or make it free.

Questions 2: Crafting confuses me, but since I plan on investing in shields I will want to be able to repair the shield to the best of my ability. How heavily depends on the DM and hopefully answers i find here before the game.

Lets take a simple Steel Shield. Its item level is 0. From reading the book to craft or repair the shield the normal DC should be 14

Lets assume I have a 12 Int (+1), Trained in Crafting at level 1 (+3), and Specialty Crafting (blacksmithing) (+1) for a total of +5.

With a 14 DC and a +5 i would need to roll a 9 or better to succeed. A Nat 1 would cause a critical failure and deal 2d6 damage and may destroy the shield. At level 3 I take expert in crafting so I will have +9. This means I need 5 or higher to succeed but it is still a critical fail on a nat 1.

Now lets assume I have the Assurance feat. Still a DC of 14 but now I should only have a +3 as I can't add specialty crafting or the int bonus. At level 1 there should be no point as it will be an auto fail. At level 2 and beyond it should be an auto succeed with no risk of a critical failure.

From the above the Assurance feat seems worth it.

Now I do not plan on having a steel shield long. I plan on upgrading to a sturdy shield (minor) as soon as I can afford it. Sturdy Shield (minor) is a level 4 common magic item. If I read the book right the DC should be 19 to repair this shield.

Lets assume I have 12 Int (+1), Expert in Crafting at level 4 (+8), and Specialty Crafting (blacksmithing) (+1) for a total of +10.

With a DC of 19 I would again need to roll a 9 or better to craft or repair it with a nat 1 a critical failure. At level 5 with the Assurance feat it will succeed every time.

With just a quick check it seems when I upgrade to Sturdy shield (lessor) at level 7 I should auto succeed with the Assurance feat. The other upgrades are the same.

Question 3: Tower shields seems to have little information about them. Tower shields are more expensive, have a movement speed reduction and have a much higher bulk. Overall not worth it. I want them to be worth it though but can not figure out how. I can remove the speed reduction with the dwarf feat Unburdened Iron and increase my bulk limit with feats but that would require 3 feats just to increase my AC and Reflex saves by 2 which also requires an action. (the action is take cover which is where the +2 ac comes from as well as the reflex save)

There are also no Specific tower shields. Sturdy Shields are by far the best IMO and those are just normal magical steel shields. Is it even possible to make a Sturdy Tower Shield and if so what should be the increase in cost. As I do not think there are rules for this I assume it would be one of those where a DM has to decide. Rather not even bother at that point.

Am I missing something?

[Blave]

mavbor wrote:

Question 1: Shield boss and shield spikes are listed in the melee martial weapons table.

This to me means they can be considered melee weapons.

Wouldn't this imply that a sword and shield user is wielding two weapons. So feats like Double Slice should apply and I can attack with both and gain the benefit of the feat.

Correct.

Quote:

Wouldn't this also imply that you can use parry feats. Example Dueling Parry or Twin Parry depending on if you are wielding a shield and unarmed or sword and shield. (sword is an example and could be any one handed melee weapon). This means you can add another +2 to AC.

The Parry feats grant a circumstance bonus to AC, just like raising a shield does. So they don't stack.

Quote:

Questions 2

I see no question in question 2. If you want someone to check your math, it seems correct at a glance.

Quote:

Question 3: Tower shields [...] Am I missing something?

No, you're not. Tower shields simply aren't meant to carry around and use for blocking. If anything, you can use them to set up a defensive position which probably allows at least one additional chacter to take cover behind it. But for all-day adventuring, a tower shield is pretty terrible.

[Bidmaron]

Tower shield seems I’ll conceived. If you actually have it equipped, it would seem it should auto-raise. Just think about it a minute: if you have it equipped how could you not have it raised? If you didn’t it would be dragging the ground. To make them even viable I would probably rule they are always raised when equipped. Then you have to spend an action to gain the additional benefit.

[mavbor]

Thanks for the replies. The second question is more about if I did the math correct and if it actually works that way. If so the Assurance feat is really worth it for shield repair as there will be only two levels (1 and 4) where you wont succeed if you use a steel shield then sturdy shield. This means I can drop a few crafting feats I was going to take to increase my chance of success to repair.

For the tower shield I think im just going to give up until they add future feats and specific tower shield.

[graystone]

The thing to remember with the tower shield is take cover: you can gain +4 AC and ref saves so if you know that dragon is going to breathe on you, it's a substantial bonus.

[shroudb]

mavbor wrote:

Thanks for the replies. The second question is more about if I did the math correct and if it actually works that way. If so the Assurance feat is really worth it for shield repair as there will be only two levels (1 and 4) where you wont succeed if you use a steel shield then sturdy shield. This means I can drop a few crafting feats I was going to take to increase my chance of success to repair.

For the tower shield I think im just going to give up until they add future feats and specific tower shield.

keep in mind, that Assurance will only ever grant you success though.

as an example, the sturdy shield you meantioned has a BT of 32 and 64 HP in total.

A success on a a repair, at expert level, is just 10 hp. So you'd need like 30 minutes to fix it.

The DC is low enough that with some investment you can easily crit it, especially later on when bonuses from items are bigger than the +1 that the tools give, or that specialty becomes +2, and etc

as an example, let's say that you're now level 7, and you're still using this level 4 shield, you just have expert tools, specialty crafting, and a 12 int. That's already +17 on the check, with a 12 or more you crit.

[Blave]

You could also try to get your hands on Ageless Patience somehow (level 5 elf ancestry feat). If you take twice the time to repair your shield (should be no issue with Quick Repair) you get a +2 bonus to your crafting check AND no longer crit fail on a natural 1! You still crit fail if you miss teh DC by 10 or more, but that seems to be rather unlikely.

[shroudb]

Blave wrote:

You could also try to get your hands on Ageless Patience somehow (level 5 elf ancestry feat). If you take twice the time to repair your shield (should be no issue with Quick Repair) you get a +2 bonus to your crafting check AND no longer crit fail on a natural 1! You still crit fail if you miss teh DC by 10 or more, but that seems to be rather unlikely.

ageless patience is circumstance, so it won't stack with either Specialty or Aid (from a familiar as an example)

[mavbor]

shroudb wrote:

keep in mind, that Assurance will only ever grant you success though.

as an example, the sturdy shield you meantioned has a BT of 32 and 64 HP in total.

A success on a a repair, at expert level, is just 10 hp. So you'd need like 30 minutes to fix it.

The DC is low enough that with some investment you can easily crit it, especially later on when bonuses from items are bigger than the +1 that the tools give, or that specialty becomes +2, and etc

as an example, let's say that you're now level 7, and you're still using this level 4 shield, you just have expert tools, specialty crafting, and a 12 int. That's already +17 on the check, with a 12 or more you crit.

Repair success is 5 + 5 per rank in crafting. Also Quick Repair should be a given but i guess I did not mention that. This means it will take 1 minute to repair for with training/expert. 3 actions for Master and 1 action for Legendary.

Level 1-2: Training in Crafting: 10hp per repair. Steel shield has a max of 20 hps. So 2 minutes to repair a shield max.

Level 3-6: Expert in Crafting: 15hp per repair. Sturdy Shield (Minor) has 64 hps. So 4 minutes to repair a shield unless it has less than 4 hps remaining.

Level 7- : Master in Crafting: 20hp per repair. Takes 3 actions which is 6 seconds. In 1 minute that is 100hp healed.

Only two levels I can not get auto succeed is level 1 (steel shield) and level 4 (Sturdy Shield minor). If I keep upgrading crafting skill and get the higher rank Sturdy shields I will never fail with Assurance beyond those two levels.

[Staffan Johansson]

Bidmaron wrote:

Tower shield seems I’ll conceived. If you actually have it equipped, it would seem it should auto-raise. Just think about it a minute: if you have it equipped how could you not have it raised? If you didn’t it would be dragging the ground. To make them even viable I would probably rule they are always raised when equipped. Then you have to spend an action to gain the additional benefit.

The way I see it, the action "Raise a Shield" is poorly named. It should be something like "Defend yourself with a shield", but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

Raising a shield means actively using it. It's not like you physically raise your arm as an action and then your arm falls back down after six seconds and you have to raise it again. It just means that actively using and benefiting from a shield requires some effort that you could otherwise use to move, hit people, or whatever.

Similarly, even though a tower shield is big, if you don't actively use it your opponents can just hit you where your shield isn't.

[Blave]

shroudb wrote:

Blave wrote:

You could also try to get your hands on Ageless Patience somehow (level 5 elf ancestry feat). If you take twice the time to repair your shield (should be no issue with Quick Repair) you get a +2 bonus to your crafting check AND no longer crit fail on a natural 1! You still crit fail if you miss teh DC by 10 or more, but that seems to be rather unlikely.

ageless patience is circumstance, so it won't stack with either Specialty or Aid (from a familiar as an example)

It's more about avoiding critical failures on easier checks than the bonus.