When my DM read the shield rules, he thought that it meant you reduce the damage by the Hardness and then split what remained between the shield and the character being protected, 50% to each. This has been working for us so far, and is similar to your thought to reduce the damage by half, except both the shield and the target both get the half deduction (they share the total damage after Hardness.)
One benefit of doing things this way is that it helps reduce the common idea of taking strong hits yourself to save the shield, since both of you get to take only half damage each.
I like that this approach reduces the incentive to take hits to avoid your shield taking them (which seems ridiculous and unlikely for any person in combat to ever do), but I do worry that it would give shields too much DR in terms of damage mitigation for the wielder. This would make Shield Block much more powerful, and I wonder if it would overshadow other options. I'm not sure I want shields to be more powerful, just not to break so easily.
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Since I was really interested I did a quick graph.
The fact that all the materials scale at the same rate speaks volumes.
The first thing it tells me is that it was done in a hurry and not a lot of thought was given over to what it means to have an item made out of various materials. They just slapped some numbers on it, following a basic formula, and called it a day. Every single material being 1.5x+C reeks of this.
The second thing it tells me is that no one looked at it after it was written, giving it a game designer balance eye. Especially when Sturdy Shield scales so so much faster than everything else (this is probably the only one that had some actual analysis about how many hits it could take from a monster at a given level).
Adding in the plots for monster damage (1.333x+3 for Low and 2.5x+7 for Extreme) really gives you an idea of how the shields keep up (or...don't; for reference nearly every monster in the Bestiary scales along High (2x+4)).
Based off the statement from the GMG that sturdy shields are the standard for best shield blocking ability it raises the question. What is the purpose of the special materials and how would they fit into that idea of being based off of Sturdy shield’s ability to block damage?
To interpret their additional abilities it’s hard to understand why you would use special materials. Since as a weapon they offer some additional benefits but if you have a shield that is made of the material wouldn’t it be better to have it as a weapon if the idea is to use it as a weapon consistently. Albeit the idea of using the shield as a weapon is a common idea and offering them a choice of material is good. The choice for players that want to focus solely on shield blocks is moot really. You can pick up a special material shield and it genuinely doesn’t help since the loss of ability to block damage isn’t balanced out with adequate bonuses. As for the choice the materials that we have so far:
Cold Iron- no added effect but counts as cold iron when used as a weapon.
Silver- same as above
Adamantine- “particularly sturdy, and when used for a shield bash, they are adamantine weapons.” Rather vague on how that applies given that they are not the standard for damage blocking.
Darkwood- lighter and nonmetal.
Dragon hide- immunity to a type of damage and non metal.
Mithral- Lighter and counts as silver when used as a weapon.
Orichalcum- resets your 1 hp once a day when it would be destroyed.
The only viable one for a charachter that wants to shield block damage is possibly Orichalcum, and that is correspondingly rare. As well as uncommon for Adamantine but that offers no specific bonuses when based on the fact that they don’t have a standard level shield that isn’t sturdy to be based off of.
If we take the difference in blocking ability from Temperans‘ graph and applied it to the blocking shield I’d be interested in opinion on how they should be lined up. Would reworks of their affects be in order to justify the lack of blocking ability or does the benefit of weapon for shield blocking characters? And where would they line up? Putting Adamantine above sturdy makes sense considering the materials history of being extremely hard and durable.
I understand that, I’m just basing my point off of the GM guide which says that the when building shields to base them off of a sturdy shield when adding magic effects.
I think there was an error in the CRB concerning shields. Which is what caused a lot of the problems, and going with the direction provided in the GM guide: “Use the sturdy shields as benchmarks for the best possible shield Hardness, HP, and BT for a shield of that level. Your new shield should have less than those benchmarks since it also does something else, and you can use the magnitude of the reduction to build room for creative defensive abilities.“
What would be a way of correctly building shields. As right now Adamantine is pointless as a property for anything besides weapons. So would that mean that you would maybe add to the baseline of the shield maybe boosting Hardness but decreasing HP?
The idea being maybe material properties need to be reworked to actually mean something and be a choice, because at the moment they are a non choice offering 0 to the player besides flavor. Which is the not the goal of 2e it seems.
The idea being maybe material properties need to be reworked to actually mean something and be a choice, because at the moment they are a non choice offering 0 to the player besides flavor. Which is the not the goal of 2e it seems.
So true. Looking at the prices and checking the benefits, they're simply terrible. And they could've been so much more. I wonder why they're just HP and hardness increases when the system barely interacts with item damage at all. There's no Sunder anymore, only Rogue's Sabotage, Corrosive runes and some creature's attacks, which all in all, are pretty rare occasions.
I understand that, I’m just basing my point off of the GM guide which says that the when building shields to base them off of a sturdy shield when adding magic effects.
I think there was an error in the CRB concerning shields. Which is what caused a lot of the problems, and going with the direction provided in the GM guide: “Use the sturdy shields as benchmarks for the best possible shield Hardness, HP, and BT for a shield of that level. Your new shield should have less than those benchmarks since it also does something else, and you can use the magnitude of the reduction to build room for creative defensive abilities.“
What would be a way of correctly building shields. As right now Adamantine is pointless as a property for anything besides weapons. So would that mean that you would maybe add to the baseline of the shield maybe boosting Hardness but decreasing HP?
The idea being maybe material properties need to be reworked to actually mean something and be a choice, because at the moment they are a non choice offering 0 to the player besides flavor. Which is the not the goal of 2e it seems.
I would hope they would make it so that Adamantine shields and armor were more meaningful. As far a shields, I'd even suggest that standard quality Adamantine ones should have a minimum BT of 3x their given hardness, and High Quality Adamantine perhaps boost that up to minimum BT of 4x hardness. (Min HP would be 2x Min BT of course) But doing so would be hombrew unless the Dev's chose to do it. I hope they do something to make the cost be meaningful, so there would be reason for them to exist, so there would be reason for people to find them. (even if the PCs don't typically commission them) Each special material should have a benefit that makes it useful as long as there is a reason to make something out of it. Armor and Weapons seem like they should have an absolute reason to be made out of Adamantine, so there should be a benefit somehow. (especially with how expensive it is)
I'm hoping they clarify how special materials and specific shields are supposed to interact with one another, and I certainly hope that they encourage that interaction. And honest, I hope they find a way to incorporate some runes to shields to help them scale. But hope doing so they don't the specialty of specific shields, nor push the envelope of sturdy shield from being the 'best' general blocking shield.
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The thing that really bothers me about most of the special material armors and shields is that they end up being really pricey while, for the most part not doing anything. Heck, I'm not even sold that the weapons, vulnerabilies not withstanding, justify those sorts of costs, and with armor and shields the only ones that seem to do anything at all are mithril and adamantine, and the benefits don't seem to be in sync with the costs to any notable degree.
Then it sounds like you should check out my house rules for some ideas. I'm not saying my fixes exactly make them "worth the cost", but I've tried to at least make them do SOMETHING. They could be a good starting point for your own house rules, at least.
Here is an excerpt from my rules on special material weapons and armor:
Precious Material Armor (pg 578) and Shields (pg 586):
Adamantine: Wearing Adamantine armor provides Resistance to all physical damage attacks (Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing). The Resistance value is 1 for Light armor, 2 for Medium armor, and 3 for Heavy armor. High-grade adamantine doubles these values (to 2, 4, 6). For shields, add +3 Hardness to the listed ratings for Standard adamantine shields (to 11 and 13), and +6 Hardness for High grade (to 17 and 19).
Cold Iron: The Sickened 1 effects are for the Low-grade cold iron armor. For Standard-grade it is Sickened 2, and for High-grade it is Sickened 3. For shields, creatures hurt by Cold Iron suffer the Sickness effect each time their melee attack is shield blocked.
Dragonhide Armor: While the armor itself is immune to damage from a corresponding energy-type, it only provides the wearer with the listed a +1 circumstance bonus to AC and saving throws against that energy type as it says on pg 579 . It can also be used to craft heavier armors than Light. If it is used to make Medium armor, the bonus increases to +2, and for Heavy armor it is +3.
Elven Chain: The listed bonuses are for Standard-grade. For High-grade it doubles to +4.
Silver: The listed Sickened 1 effect is for Low-grade silver armor. For Standard-grade it is Sickened 2, and for High-grade it is Sickened 3. For shields, creatures hurt by Silver suffer the Sickness effect each time their melee attack is shield blocked with the silver shield.
Mithral Shields (pg 586): All of them are Light bulk.
Oricalcum Shield (pg 586): Instead of saying it has the ability to resist the 1st time it is destroyed, Oricalcum shields now get double the listed HP’s, but their BT remains as listed, so an Oricalcum bucker has 112 HP, 28 BT, while the shield gets 128 HP, 32 BT. This means the shield last much longer at full capabilities instead of dropping to Broken
Precious Material Weapons (pg 599):
Adamantine Weapons: The listed halving of Hardness is for a Standard-grade weapon. With High-grade adamantine, the object’s Hardness only counts for half it’s value and it also reduces the object’s Hardness by 2/hit each time it exceeds a shield’s adjusted Harness. To non-shields items, it inflicts double damage
Cold Iron Weapons: The Low-grade weapons gain up to the listed Weakness as bonus damage in the monster stat. Standard-grade deals up to double the listed Weakness bonus damage, and High-grade deals up to 3 times the Weakness in bonus damage.
Darkwood Weapon: High-grade reduces the Bulk by 2 steps.
Mithral Weapon: High-grade reduces the Bulk by 2 steps.
Silver Weapons: The Low-grade weapons gain up to the listed Weakness in the monster stats as bonus damage and does full normal damage to Devils. Standard-grade deals up to double the listed Weakness as bonus damage and +5 damage to Devils, and High-grade deals up to 3 times the Weakness as bonus damage and +10 damage to Devils.