Since shield fighting requires specialization on the side of the character, in general only thusly specialised characters will use shields and those will know and want to use Shield Block, locking them into sturdy shields and mostly leaving the other kinds of shields without potential users.
Yeah special materials are a great (and upgrade friendly) way to improve magical shield durability. It doesn't solve all the issues of something like an arrow catching shield, but it makes it more flexible for a large number of levels.
Aren't special shields' hardness and HP getting looked at in the errata coming out soon?
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Past a certain level, I have trouble envisioning a pure caster that still casts the Shield spell over a Spellguard Shield.
Staff and Shield style forever.
My biggest confusion is why they mentioned sturdy shields are the only ones really meant to be used with shield block, then turn around and give druids the shield block feat but no way to wield sturdy shields without breaking anathema.
Or shields that let you use Shield Block in other situations (arrow catching, anyone?) without also giving durability to those shields.
Could the druid thing be fixed if there were some non-metal hard material to create shields from?
The hide and scales of a dragon can be used to Craft any item normally made of ordinary leather or hide. Dragonhide varies in color from blue to glittering gold, depending on the dragon it came from. Due to the scales’ resiliency, it can also be used to Craft armor usually made out of metal plates (such as a breastplate, half plate, and full plate), allowing such armor to be made without metal. Dragonhide objects are immune to one damage type, depending on the type of dragon (see the table below).
Any Steel Shield can reasonably be made out of Dragonhide, so Druids would be able to use 90% of the shields by level 8 at the soonest; which includes Sturdy Shield. Though they’re kind of out of luck for the beginning levels.
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Aren't special shields' hardness and HP getting looked at in the errata coming out soon?They said that sturdy shields are intended to be the ones meant to use the Shield Block reaction.
They also said that they are looking at hardness/hp of other shields, to see what could be done ( it is still not Clear if they are specifically referring to all other magic shields or just the 2 with issues ).
Rather than redoing a bunch of stats for various shields, I still think my solution is the best option: change the shield rules.
Shields prevent damage up to their Hardness. If the damage is greater than that, any excess is passed to the protected character and the shield's hit points are reduced by 1.
By reducing shield hit points by 1 at a time per damage breach rather than having to track both your own HP and your shield HP just seems so much easier. But that may just be the way I handle HP's... I don't just mark down -12 HP if I'm hit for 12 damage, I subtract the 12 from my current HP and write down my current total. Having to do that for both my shield and myself is a pain! Maybe the devs do HP tracking differently and just write the damage they suffered and then add it all up later, but then you don't really know how badly hurt you are until you do that. You could easily take more damage than you have HP's and not realize it until you calculate it all up. At early levels that is not as likely, but in my current PF1e game I'm 13th level with 114 HP and we are fighting giants.
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Maybe the devs do HP tracking differently and just write the damage they suffered and then add it all up later, but then you don't really know how badly hurt you are until you do that. You could easily take more damage than you have HP's and not realize it until you calculate it all up. At early levels that is not as likely, but in my current PF1e game I'm 13th level with 114 HP and we are fighting giants.
More likely they'd be adding it up as it's inflicted. It wouldn't be written down as "114 hp - 15 dmg, 18 dmg, 7 dmg, 24 dmg (I wonder where I'm at?)", but rather as "114 hp - 15 dmg, 33 dmg, 40 dmg, 64 dmg (and I know exactly where I'm at)".
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They essentially had this in the play test. Rather than a bunch of hp items took dents, take 4 and you break. I found it a lot easier to track and made shields consistently usable across levels. But it was apparently disliked for some reason.
I don't know either, maybe for some reason they thought peopled were confused by dents vs hit points, or maybe they wanted to expand the shield design space to allow for shields with more hit points/dent points (not sure what they were called?), but you can still do the same kind of thing with hit points.
That and some odd cases with items and dents (such as the possibility to have a dented rope).
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...they did, however, leave some of the language that was creating confusion in the first place so some people were still asking basically the same question because it seemed to them that a shield used to block would save the character its hardness in HP but then also reduce the damage to its own HP total by its hardness.
Quite. And as a result, things that were Fine became Not Fine. It was Fine that most shields had only 1 or 2 dents available and Sturdy and Indestructible had 4. Because any one attack couldn't do more than 1 dent at a time.
But now that level 15 shields have 6 hp and go from "fully repaired" to "turned into dust that is then ground into a fine powder" from one hit, it no longer works.
I believe I saw a post, or watched some feed that a developer indicated the movement away from dents was due to already having a 'method' for dealing with damage, and so dents was being perceived, based on feedback as an extra, different method to do the same thing, and made it lose its original 'simplification' goal.
As to trying to address letting shields live a little longer, I've contemplated a relatively simple rule. Damage above the hardness of the shield gets applied to the original target. One-half of that value also gets applied to the shield as incidental damage. [min 1pt]
Some creatures, or characters however may have an ability (something like shield smasher) that is a free action, with a requirement that allow an attacker who attacks someone who uses a shield block, can switch the target of the attack to the shield instead of the wearer. In such a case you switch and full damage over the hardness gets applied to the shield. I have yet to decide if I'd allow half damage to apply to the original target, or perhaps only allow that option if the original hit were a critical hit.
This would boost the general durability of shields, but leave instances where it can be more dangerous.
I've also simply considered limiting how much a shield can take in one blow to its BT unless some special ability is used to actually target the shield.
There are also a couple other things that could adjust damage to shield. Make precision damage not apply to the shield (unless somehow it became the target).
So if you have a shield with 5 hardness, and you take 10hp damage from a hit +12hp precision damage, the target takes a total of 17hp damage, but the shield would then only takes 5hp.
One-half of that value also gets applied to the shield as incidental damage.
This doesn't actually change the underlying, fundamental problem, that it is impossible to make shields-that-aren't-the-sturdy-shield viable. Yes, it doubles their effective HP, but twice basically-zero is still basically-zero (and on the other end of the spectrum, sturdy shields get a prodigious boost).
You'd actually be better off by just increasing the HP of all shields by 30 (or other, arbitrary, value).
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I believe I saw a post, or watched some feed that a developer indicated the movement away from dents was due to already having a 'method' for dealing with damage, and so dents was being perceived, based on feedback as an extra, different method to do the same thing, and made it lose its original 'simplification' goal.
As to trying to address letting shields live a little longer, I've contemplated a relatively simple rule. Damage above the hardness of the shield gets applied to the original target. One-half of that value also gets applied to the shield as incidental damage. [min 1pt]
Some creatures, or characters however may have an ability (something like shield smasher) that is a free action, with a requirement that allow an attacker who attacks someone who uses a shield block, can switch the target of the attack to the shield instead of the wearer. In such a case you switch and full damage over the hardness gets applied to the shield. I have yet to decide if I'd allow half damage to apply to the original target, or perhaps only allow that option if the original hit were a critical hit.
This would boost the general durability of shields, but leave instances where it can be more dangerous.
I've also simply considered limiting how much a shield can take in one blow to its BT unless some special ability is used to actually target the shield.
There are also a couple other things that could adjust damage to shield. Make precision damage not apply to the shield (unless somehow it became the target).
So if you have a shield with 5 hardness, and you take 10hp damage from a hit +12hp precision damage, the target takes a total of 17hp damage, but the shield would then only takes 5hp.
The devs being flooded with complicated ideas like this are probably why they dropped it. I would NOT allow monsters or enemies to be "shield smashers" unless it were a very special case, and probably not even then. That kind of thinking is what led to the feared Rust Monster back in 1e, who could turn the Fighter's prized Plate Armor into dust with a single touch. Should we bring them back too? Or the Disenchanter, who ate magic items?
If you wanted to create a barrier smashing effect, at most I would say this: "If this monster's attack hits the shield and at least twice the Hardness value in damage gets through the shield, reduce it by 2 hit points instead of just 1" but that should be extremely rare and, IMO, it should be kept as simple and easy to use as possible, without a lot of extra stuff to memorize.
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I really don't get the reason they have to keep things as they are, because the solution is really not that hard.
If a sturdy shield of a given level has hardness 12 and 60 HP, give the special shield of the same level hardness 8 and 50 HP (or some different stats that make sense). You don't have quite the same blocking power, but it's not like the shield explodes as soon as you use one of the options it gives you.
Also, you can fine-tune cases like the arrow-catching shield: maybe keep its hardness lowish, but give it decent enough HP to survive.
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I wonder how it would work out if Shields had a special rule that, due to their innate sturdy construction and design for repair, they cannot be destroyed in the normal way.
It breaks at the broken threshold, but is only destroyed if it takes an attack while it's at 0 HP.
It just seems like it'd make things easier if shields break all the time, but are rarely destroyed.
I feel like 2E, as a system, is not at all built around magic items frequently being destroyed. If it happens once or twice as kind of a “cinematic moment” that’s fine, but if it happens frequently it starts to seriously hurt PC magic item economy.
My personal fix would probably be similar to Waterslethe. I don’t mind high level shields with low hp (unless they have mechanics that support shield blocking, the arrow-catching shield seems like an oversight) but I don’t believe they should get destroyed.
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If you want to block some damage, you will go with a sturdy shield ( or at high lvls with an indestructible or auto repair one ).
In you want instead some other perks, you will simply go for a specific one.
OK, great. Now explain why the arrow blocking shield (a block some damage type of shield) has such low HP and hardness.
Of the shield that triggers 1d6 of fire damage when you block with it.
(Ie you've stated nothing that helps the argument that everything is fine. Everything is not fine. The things that are not fine have not in any way been addressed by your post, which this thread had already mentioned four times)
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I already stated in this thread that those 2 are the ones which needs some changes. Feel free to check my previous posts.
In which case, your post has added nothing to the discussion except to reiterate a thing no one is arguing against.
should there be a distinction between study and non-sturdy shields?
Yes.
Should a 40,000gp item explode into dust from a single attack?
No.
Is there room for a middle ground?
Yes. So let's talk about the middle ground.
No compromise then, got it.
I'm out.
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I’d like to see more actual exploding shield options. Like shields that blow up into an alchemist bomb when they are destroyed, automatically targeting the attacker.
I’d like to see more actual exploding shield options. Like shields that blow up into an alchemist bomb when they are destroyed, automatically targeting the attacker.
This reminds me of the Bomb Mask in Majora’s mask
I’d like to see more actual exploding shield options. Like shields that blow up into an alchemist bomb when they are destroyed, automatically targeting the attacker.This reminds me of the Bomb Mask in Majora’s mask
Makes me think of Tediore weapons from Borderlands.
You don't read at all.
The compromise is being able to make them out of a specific material
I don't see any way, RAW, to apply a special material to a specific magical shield.
As you can see, and you would have been able to get it if you had read my orevious posts, there is room for middle ground.The room for middle ground is that, according to the Devs in their errata video, Sturdy Shields should have 2x the HP of non-sturdy shields, when in fact, they have many times that. Either Sturdy shields are far stronger than they should be, or other shields are far weaker.
You’re correct that the book doesn’t seem to mention what the stat difference is, between say, a Cold Iron Forge Warden and an Adamantine Forge Warden; aside from price.
Though two methods can be deduced; Replacement or Compounding. Either replace the shields stats with the special material used to make it, or add the stats together to make a new total. Both have their pros and cons, but either way one of these methods will most likely be the intended way to deal with shields.