Paragon's stance and shields

[HumbleGamer]

Given a character with 2 shields:

- will the paragon's guard allow the character to have both shields raised?

- what about using the shield raise action instead? Will you have to expend 1 action x shield or just the "raise shield" Action once?

[Asethe]

Why would you want to have two shields raised? Raise a Shield provides the shield AC bonus as a circumstance bonus. Two circumstance bonuses don't stack. Regardless of whether you have one shield raised, two shields raised, or 15 shields raised, you will still only get a single instance of the AC bonus.

As an academic argument, both Raise a Shield and Paragon's Guard mention shield in the singular, so if I had to rule it, RAW it would allow one shield to be raised by Paragon's or by a single action of RaS.

[HumbleGamer]

Asethe wrote:

Why would you want to have two shields raised? Raise a Shield provides the shield AC bonus as a circumstance bonus. Two circumstance bonuses don't stack.

The reason is that you could make use of a sturdy shield to perform shieldblock and an utility one to get bonuses ( or even 2 utility shields if you want ).

It would be like having two 1d6 weapons with no traits but shield raise ( + something else, depends the shield ).

To make a concrete example, imagine having a spellguard shield and dragonslayer shield.

Assuming that by lvl 12 you'd be able to have your shields raised because of the guard, you'll have

+2 circ ac
+2 circ reflex bonus ( against aoe stuff )
+2 circ will bonus against a dragon’s frightful presence
+2 Circ bonus against single target spells

by default.
It's not that much ( considering that circ bonuses don't overlap ), but that was only meant to show the intent.

[Asethe]

Fair enough. There are martial arts that employ two shields together, after all

There is nothing in the rules to prevent you raising two shields, but as I mentioned, the actions raise a single shield, so each has to be raised separately to gain a Raise benefit.

[Aratorin]

Yes, I would say that Paragon's Guard Stance would count as having both Shields Raised.

The Raise a Shield Action on its own would need to be used twice if not using Paragon's Guard Stance.

Asethe wrote:

Why would you want to have two shields raised? Raise a Shield provides the shield AC bonus as a circumstance bonus. Two circumstance bonuses don't stack. Regardless of whether you have one shield raised, two shields raised, or 15 shields raised, you will still only get a single instance of the AC bonus.

So if you somehow got multiple Shield Block Reactions (Quick Shield Block), you could still use them even if one Shield breaks.