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Blocking crits comes at a price, and that keeps crits special and makes you think about if you really want to do it or not. I really don't think that shields ignoring crits is a good thing, especially since it makes the math of what is going on more complicated to run at the table.
Shields are in general only meant to block a handful of hits as a balance thing. They don't want people blocking 15 hits a fight due to the sheer amount of damage being negated.
But if you do want that, give your players access to Mending Lattice, and homebrew up a lesser version for lower level play.
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Directly adding hit points might work, but those other two sound like convoluted solutions that'd slow down play; as you've noted they require extra tracking. But to better examine solutions, let's rewind and examine the problem: "it seems to me shields are too fragile." I've GMed a Champion who'd effectively doubled their h.p. fighting minions in a tight corridor, minions who could only chip past the shield's hardness. So my seeming of shields feels they're strong. So let's strive for objectivity: Too fragile for what? Seems so in comparison to what? To other hit point boosts? Other ways to reduce damage?
The largest benefit from a shield is from the +2 to AC which makes at-level monsters do about 75% of damage. That's significant enough that many PCs w/o Shield Block use a shield if it doesn't hinder their offense (i.e. Monks, Animal Barbarians, casters). That defense is worth the action and the hand.
Whether having a shield w/o Shield Block and other improvements is worth the opportunity cost of using a smaller-die weapon is harder to diagnose. But maybe that trade-off factors into your feelings?
Okay, so no shield is too fragile to give that +2, and as Dr. FF pointed out, one can avoid blocking w/ one's shield just so you can still get that +2. Heck, even way back in the playtest I had players realize they didn't want to block until necessary w/ their Shield spell because of that +1. (With Free-Hand Parry weapons nowadays that's less important).
So we're talking about Shield Block soaking up damage. How much damage should a shield absorb, keeping in mind its Hardness? If Raising a Shield is already valuable, how many hit points should Shield Block help on top of that? It's a cheap feat that comes w/ several classes so that alone doesn't warrant too many hit points (we're talking comparable to Toughness). And the costs mentioned above seem balanced vs. the +2 AC alone, so then there's spending one's Reaction. The price of a Reaction is hard to measure vs. say an at-level False Vitality (whose slot cannot be replenished unlike shields which can be repaired). For some classes (namely Fighter & Champion who get Shield Block for free), there's a definite cost in using one's Reaction for Shield Block, but both of those classes can upgrade it to do amazing things. So how do we factor in what a generic PC is doing w/ Shield Block vs. a PC who's invested in a string of feats? Oy.
Back in the early days of PF2 when TPKs were more common, posts would often lament how their tank PCs would fall too fast. Funnily enough it became easy to predict that those tanks were seldom if ever Fighters or Champions, the actual tank classes. Those modest differences in AC makes a difference, as do shields already.
So yeah, as I've repeated perhaps too much, what metrics should we use to establish how much damage shields & Shield Block should prevent and absorb vs. the build and action costs? If we can determine said metric, finding a solution would be simple. As it is, I'm unsure there is any objective issue that requires dealing with.
So we're talking about Shield Block soaking up damage. How much damage should a shield absorb, keeping in mind its Hardness? If Raising a Shield is already valuable, how many hit points should Shield Block help on top of that? It's a cheap feat that comes w/ several classes so that alone doesn't warrant too many hit points (we're talking comparable to Toughness). And the costs mentioned above seem balanced vs. the +2 AC alone, so then there's spending one's Reaction. The price of a Reaction is hard to measure vs. say an at-level False Vitality (whose...
The cost Is the exorbitant amount of Gold you're forced to spend.
Like, i don't understand what you're trying to Say, using shields It's not cheap, hell, to keep up you Need at least TWO fully upgraded shields and that only lasts for a fairly short fight.
I have a character based around shield usage and other than carrying multiple shields (shield runes where, overall, quite useless. Except three shields i've Always used and Always Will use sturdy ones) i've also planned to take second shield, but gave up on It since the Viking archetype would be otherwise useless
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It's a bit more expensive in terms of feat slots but I made some characters with Shield and Glass Shield cantrips as alternatives to broken shields working pretty well once the we have virtually 3 shield blocks to be broken.
Alternatively a Metal Kineticist Archetype also works in order to make new restored shields with Metal Carapace.
Anyway, it's rare to have a shield broken if you choose to not block critical hits. Also it's a bit harder to hit a champion AC in most cases. And when a critical hit happens, I prefer to heal myself instead.
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We modified the shield block rules some. It seems to have worked.
When a player successfully shield blocks and enough damage is done to bypass the hardness, half the damage goes to the PC and half the damage goes to the shield divided equally with the higher number going to the PC.
This seems to have made shields last longer and make them more valuable than all the damage that gets past hardness going to the shield and the PC.
It also seems more reasonable to my group because we didn't think both the shield and the PC should take the full damage past the hardness since there should be no reason a blow that damages the shield and the PC should be full damage to both.
This small change seems to make shields last longer and makes the weapon and shield style more attractive to play.
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I noticed in the interim since I posted that many Constructs, particularly animated objects, have a similar mechanic to shields: +2 AC + Hardness. And this goes away when the creature's at half hit points or gets struck by a critical hit. I sense that in Paizo's estimation that's about about how long shields are meant to last; half your health or to a critical hit. Except as said above, a PC can choose to not lose their shield to the critical hit so they can keep reducing other blows that hit despite that +2 AC.
Even if that's not an explicit connection Paizo's made, perhaps there's a matter of expectations. Would we be more accepting of shield's lasting only half a battle if we knew beforehand they'd last only half a battle? (This is one reason I like bastard swords BTW.)
And what "forces" some to pay an "exorbitant amount of Gold" swapping in a set of shields while others thrive with one shield under the current paradigm (however they do so). Heck, much like with Consumables, maybe one isn't presumed to purchase at-level shields unless it's your main investment because yeah, sometimes at-level items get too pricey. I find it funny that recently someone complained that Blessed Shield didn't really do anything except save them money while here we have a complaint about the costs of shields. Different tables I'm thinking.
This all seems to circle back to what I feel remains the core question: how much damage is a shield meant to prevent (on top of the misses from the AC)? And is that balanced vs the investment (including yes, gold)?
What might we compare it to? And if there's no reasonable comparison in the game, then isn't "how shields are" simply the norm for what they do?
(I'm reminded of 13th Warrior where shields were quite disposable albeit invaluable for survival.)
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Seeing just how much work a shield put in from 1-20 for a sword and board fighter in my Age of Ashes campaign, I really never had a feeling like shields were too fragile and needed to be buffed to be good at any level.
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I do think it's both frustrating and unintuitive that blocking a huge crit could outright destroy your shield, thus costing you a good chunk of change. It's not like the shield blocks more damage on a crit than a normal hit, anyways, so the additional penalty stings.
I understand not wanting to bog things down with "shields take non-crit damage even when players take crit damage" by default. But it's a pretty quick houserule fix to the problem, and might be worth implementing at some tables.
I do think shield block is incredibly strong as-is, though. Shields generally offer everyone a ton of survivability, especially at low levels, and shield block is the icing on the cake.
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Seeing just how much work a shield put in from 1-20 for a sword and board fighter in my Age of Ashes campaign, I really never had a feeling like shields were too fragile and needed to be buffed to be good at any level.
I agree. The same happened in my 1-20 AoA too. The Shields doesn't look so fragile like they appear to look in white room. Also, the becomes more and more stronger as characters levels up due to how PF2e monster's progression goes. The damage doesn't rise in the same rate that hardness and shield HP. Also as higher the enemies becomes more they use non-physical damages like spells, breaths, or even some energy additional damage instead of physical.
Also, things like Quick Repair, Mending Lattice[url], and the [url=https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2822]Indestructible Shield turns the shield durability way higher.
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Just to be clear - does dfinan know that you first hear how much damage you would take, then decide if you want to use Shield Block? Because that's how most (maybe all) people here on the forum understand the rule. However, the rulebook isn't quite so explicit, and you could have understood the rule differently.
If you think you have to decide on using Shield Block before hearing how much damage the enemy rolled, then yeah shields probably break faster.
For example, you have a basic steel shield (hardness 5, 20hp, bt 10). And there's an incoming hit for 8 damage. Okay, block that one, your shield only takes 3 damage, and you've protected yourself from 5 damage. Good deal.
Next round the monster is gonna attack you three times. First hit is for 12 damage. You realize if you block that one, your shield will break. So you don't block. Second attack is for 11 damage and by now you're pretty beat up, so you block. But your shield still has 11 HP so it still works. Third attack the monster is at -10 from multiple attack penalty, and the +2 from your shield helps prevent a hit.
The third round, you can still block one more time.
So by deciding not to block that 12 HP hit, you end up being able to block a total of 15 damage this combat, instead of only 10 damage.
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I do agree with Witch of Miracles that it feels weird that blocking big hits with a shield is a bad tactic, while blocking smaller hits is a good tactic.
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So we're talking about Shield Block soaking up damage. How much damage should a shield absorb, keeping in mind its Hardness? If Raising a Shield is already valuable, how many hit points should Shield Block help on top of that? It's a cheap feat that comes w/ several classes so that alone doesn't warrant too many hit points (we're talking comparable to Toughness). And the costs mentioned above seem balanced vs. the +2 AC alone, so then there's spending one's Reaction. The price of a Reaction is hard to measure vs. say an at-level False Vitality (whose...
The cost Is the exorbitant amount of Gold you're forced to spend.
Like, i don't understand what you're trying to Say, using shields It's not cheap, hell, to keep up you Need at least TWO fully upgraded shields and that only lasts for a fairly short fight.
I have a character based around shield usage and other than carrying multiple shields (shield runes where, overall, quite useless. Except three shields i've Always used and Always Will use sturdy ones) i've also planned to take second shield, but gave up on It since the Viking archetype would be otherwise useless
I've been playing this game since playtest and GMing it since release, and I have literally never seen anyone carry two fully upgraded shields. Never. Someone who intends on doing frequent shield blocking is probably using a sturdy shield (or a reinforcing rune these days). Not even the Shield Champion for whom that was his primary thing.
I think I've destroyed one shield, ever, in five years of GMing. And that block kept the character standing from a boss crit, so it was worth it to them. In any other case, the shield takes several hits, gets to broken (or they stop using shield block before that to keep the AC bonus), and someone repairs it after the fight.
This is not a problem unless you just want shields that can block absolutely massive amounts of damage every fight (since they already block huge amounts of damage against mooks where they don't take much per hit), in which case shield block becomes so good that it starts to become a must-take ability.
I do like shields to block huge amounts of damage. You get one, maybe two shield blocks a turn. If you take a shield, you usually do less damage. It's expensive to keep a shield up and a weapon and armor. Even mooks can ruin a shield due to aggregate damage with the occasional crit. Hardness I'm finally convinced is based on aggregate damage and doesn't operate like Resist All. If you run it like resist all, then the shield will work much better. If you run it as hardness, it can get ripped apart quite often, especially against the most devastating hits.
It is fairly easy to repair a shield with quick repair and a built up crafting. With the way we run battles, you don't get much time between fights. So it is important the shield last through multiple successive battles against a lot of enemies.
If you run fights one at a time with plenty of time between battles, probably not as noticeable.
I suggest you modify the shield rules as we have to suit the group playstyle as a one size fits all doesn't work if your group has a very fast, nonstop playtyle whereas the shield rules work fine as is if you have plenty of time to repair it between battles.
I think that no matter how balanced shields truly are, the number of "little fees" you pay to use them is going to feel flat out bad for some groups. Regardless of how small those "fees" actually are, it's still kinda undeniably a 6-7 step process to use a shield, and that's going to be felt. Especially by a new player at low levels, picking one up and trying to block for the first time on their shiny new fighter/champion, unaware of all the little potential nuances.
That last step, of tracking shield HP/BT, is definitely the one that frustrates new (and even some veteran) players in my usual circles the hardest. I'd wish there was a "hard" and "soft" block to compromise, where soft blocking just means less resistance and no damage to the shield, but that just adds another step and complicates the process further.
In lieu of any actual rules changes, I just have to keep suggesting to new players that, if they have party members who want to seriously use shields and everyone isn't rocking Exemplar's Mirrored Aegis which occasionally makes me wish Champion's Shield blessing had that same 10 minute auto-repair clause, even if it's ALREADY likely the best blessing, they need SOMEONE speccing into crafting and quick repair.
I agree, and up to last playtest before the release it was even less than this.
The original proposed shield block used a system where you can block only once because when any item got a damage higher than its hardness it got a dent and when an item got 2 dents this item breaks.
So in practice unless the damage was lower than the hardness a shield could block twice but the last one you also broke the shield and becomes unable to use it to rise.
And sturdy shields were in practice a shield that only breaks with 3 dents and have a higher hardness and a shield ally gives 2 extra dents to the shields (what was pretty strong and was nerfed to 50% HP increase and completely removed in remaster in place to make any shield an auto-reinforced shield).
The main impression that we have was that when the designers abandoned the dent system closer the final version we got some current Shield Block idiosyncrasies due lack of time to do more bold adjustments, like to know the damage before choose to block, the shield block hardness reduction being applied after resistance (effectively applying character resistance to shield too), and the fact that non-sturdy magical shields was too fragile before remaster. All these things were way more intuitive when the shields simply dents than are now.
So the general idea of shields was to block no more than 1–2 times, or 2–4 times for champions, per encounter before the shield becomes too damaged and the character stops to block to avoid breaking the shield and lose its AC bonus. IMO this idea was kept into the system when they change the dent system to HP/BT except for indestructible shields. Also, currently it becomes even stronger with magical shield getting reinforcing runes, allowing them to block more than once before breaks in most situations and champions being able to swap to any cheap shield making the Shield Block lasting longer at cost of actions and some extra bulk.
The limit of Shield and Glass Shield cantrips to block only once per 10 minutes also reflects all this.
The idea was never to make shields to endure too much, specially vs stronger enemies. It was to give specially for high AC characters an opportunity to not become too damaged when the AC was not good enough a few times, but usually enough to deal with most encounters without worries but becoming a worry specially vs severe and extreme encounters.
I think that for some reason some people think that shielded frontliners typically called as tanks needs to be unbeatable. If they risk being defeated, they think there is something wrong with the game, instead of thinking that they are just some frontliners that sacrificed some of its offensive power to have a higher defensive power and just endure more.
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I hear what everyone is saying, and to be clear, I agree shields are pretty strong as is. I have just noticed at higher levels 8+ that even ignoring cirts most shields are three hits away from broken on normal hits. My champion level 10, has a sturdy shield and the blessed shield. It currently has a 14 hardness 102 hit points. Assuming a dps monster is hitting for 40 points 1 a round, the hield is almost broken after 2 blocks on those normal hits. That seems to be a little fragile, again just my opinion. I am just not sure how to solve the issue with out skewing things to far the other way. Keep in mind I have a marty shield upgraded to a sturdy shield, invested in the shield path so can potentially do three blocks a round.
I have in multiple fights noticed my shield is out of action by the second or third round, forget the fact that twice I had to block a crit or I would have gone down in one shot (though that was kind of an outlier 8th level playing up in a 7-10).
Thanks for all the feedback though Ill take a look at the mending latice I hadnt heard of that before.
But why assume a dps monster is hitting for 40 damage in 1 action? That's the High damage for a level 18 creature, which you definitely shouldn't be fighting. A level+2 boss with High damage would be averaging 30/hit, which means your shield would break after the 4th block it makes against a martially-oriented boss' hit on average, or after the 5th hit from an on-level martially oriented enemy's hit, or after the 6th hit from a level-2 martially oriented mook's hit. If you intentionally block low damage rolls, it's even more than that - I'll fully admit that it's a little strange narratively to prioritize blocking those weaker hits, but the shields do work well when you do it.
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I admit I remain pleasantly confused why people believe it is correct narratively to block the big hits, because that's always, in fiction accompanied with 'and then the shield breaks and the shield user dramatically discards the broken shield'
Oooorrr you block the small hits for all eternity.
Admittedly, the gameplay effect of those two narratives of shield use (dramatically breaking to show the big, nasty hit, or essentially shutting down any number of small hits) combine to be 'you block small hits, facetank big hits until it would kill you' but the individual narratives are correct.
(Te alternative, I guess, is that shields keep blocking automatically until they break, resulting in anyone with a shield ending every fight with it broken with zero choice which is very realistic but will cause people to complain even more than the current situation)
I think because the current situation - hearing the damage before deciding to block - is weird.
You never read about a hero deciding not to block the big hit because that would break their shield, preferring to just take it in the face to keep their shield around.
Of course that's because most people in stories don't act like they have a quantifiable number of hit points and that it's okay to gamble that taking one really big hit that would break your shield on your face instead, is something you could handle.
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Certainly puts a new spin on being the party “face”. Might make me more accepting of bards, that’s for sure.
Now I’m imagining a Face class that takes hits directly to the head with an ability called Facetank.
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Certainly puts a new spin on being the party “face”. Might make me more accepting of bards, that’s for sure.
Now I’m imagining a Face class that takes hits directly to the head with an ability called Facetank.
Hopefully we'll be getting Face Runes in Battlecry. :)