Shield Block Feat - Your Thoughts?

Well bruiser, I have used an almost identical mechanic for years in my games, and I haven't found it slows down play much. The main thing is that it encourages the weapon + shield style among warriors, which is more historically accurate. Not only does a shield make you harder to hit (the attacker has to swing around it), but the shield can also be used by the defender to absorb much of the blow. We allow a character with a shield one block per round in his forward facing, and he can devote additional blocks per round by giving up extra iterative attacks. We also allow weapon parries, but these are not automatic per round- the fighter has to devote an attack to parry a blow. The Block and Parry feats give a +2 bonus to the roll, and are available to anyone. As a result, combat is a little more tactical and less swing till they drop, with only a slight increase in round time. I'd stick with what you have- it works well for us.

Historically acurate sword & shield... ehem. Considering how easy shieldarms break... looks like shields were more useful against archers, not for melee.

I think the feat is bad. A similar change to combat mechanics might work out well, but less specialised to shields.

I like it. In concept, sort of similar to Mounted Combat and Deflect Arrows.

To satisfy the naysayers, maybe give it some prereqs. Or other limitations like having to fight defensively to use it. Or maybe sacrificing an attack to use it (maybe an offhand attack)

Darklone said:

Historically acurate sword & shield... ehem. Considering how easy shieldarms break... looks like shields were more useful against archers, not for melee.

I think the feat is bad. A similar change to combat mechanics might work out well, but less specialised to shields.

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True, but then again, weapons also broke like nobody's business in actual combat. D&D having weapons being pretty much indestructible barring a sunder is very historically inaccurate, so I don't see how this feat would really be a problem game-logic wise. And the blow that shattered a shield was MUCH preferable to the same blow that would have finished the warrior without the shield- better to sacrifice the shield than your skull!

My suggestions:

Change expertise to give +2 ac for each -1 to attack while dual wielding or a weapon and sheild (only if sheild is held, not animated.. hey, if they make animated shields still cause spell failure then I'm not going to let those useing animated shields gain any beanies either)

Expert sheild use (feat): give up one point of ac from your shield bonus (carried/equiped shields only) to gain +1 to attack for the round. Max of 3 points transfered per round.


The first one parallels power attack nicely, although perhaps not quite as useful it is still very nice. Plus, with sword and board the character is probably mainly going for ac anyway. Maybe it will fix most of the problem?

As always, thanks for your comments.

Nifft said:

Yay! I feared I was the only one on these boards acquainted with them. The world presented is 1/3 of the basis for my homebrew world.

Anyway, my final thoughts:

1) D&D already has a mechanic for avoiding damage -- high AC. Don't add a new roll to combat, tie Blocking into AC somehow.

2) Make sure that the Block mechanic is limited to a few times per round, or only against a single opponent per round (like Dodge). It should NOT be an effective tactic against multiple foes.

N

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Re 1), I’ve mentioned above the difficulty in creating a “balanced” AC adjustment – it’s not as easy / accurate / precise as you might think. Check up the page a little bit - if you don't understand or disagree with my reasoning in that post, let's discuss!

Re 2), I hate to endanger the good feelings we have regarding the Nifft stories , but the feat is explicitly limited to once per round, in order to make it not effective against multiple foes, per my original post.

Final thoughts? Are you abandoning me now, Nifft?

Spyritwind said:

1) The discrepancy is more evident at low levels where most campaigns and npc's live, but at higher levels the one with a weapon and a magic shield will start to break even, or even surpass the two handed weapon fighter.

2) If you want to implement a new game mechanic requiring a die roll because you think it adds some thing strategicly to the game that is one thing, but if you are just looking to balance things out more between party members I would just add +1 AC to shields making them slightly more effective.

3) The other consideration is that not all people of the world have a strength of 16-20. Take two 1st or 2nd level fighters with strengths between 10-14 and see if the discrepancy is as great.

Granted, A level 4 fighter with weapon spec., an 18 str and power attack with a gs can unleash hell ... if they hit.

4) Also consider the dodge feat. Any one can take it and it doesn't require a shield to use. In fact ... the great sword wielding character can take it. This thought is off the cuff, but if you want a feat 'shield blocking' perhaps it could allow you to have a +2 AC vs. a single target. It is better than dodge in one respect, but it has draw backs. One, it forces you to use a shield and it doesn't help you climb the feat tree to mobility, spring attack, etc. Just a thought.

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A few thoughts here, Spyritwind. I’ve numbered your main points for easy reference.

Re 1), Is that really your experience? In my experience, as a party increases in levels, the attack bonuses of enemies advance faster than the party’s AC. As such, the party gets easier and easier to hit (though they have more HP), and AC matters less. As such, the damage that characters deal while taking the damage becomes more important, making GS even more superior comparatively. Interesting that you’ve had different experiences!

Re 2), a straight AC bump doesn’t capture what I really want to get at. All an AC bonus does is make the LSS against numerous weak foes, where it is already an okay choice, but does little to address the broader concern, which is LSS greater inferiority vs. stronger foes.

Re 3), Believe it or not, lower strength shifts the balance MORE in the GS favor. Why? At baseline (no STR bonus), the GS does 2d6=7+2x power attack. The LSS does d8=4.5(ish)+1x power attack. So, with 0 PA, comparison is 7 to 4.5, and with 5 PA, comparison is 17 to 9.5 – ratios of 1.6x and 1.8x. At an 18 strength with specialization, however, the numbers increase to 2d6+4*1.5+2 = 15 for GS vs. d8+4+2 = 10.5 for LSS. With 5 PA, comparison is 25 to 15.5. These ratios are 1.4x and 1.6x. So, believe it or not, the damage ratio goes MORE in favor of the GS at 10 str vs. 18 str by 0.2x.

Re 4), don’t you have to have a 13 dex to take dodge? If so, not everybody can take it, right?

Wow, thanks for the thoughtfulness in your reply! I appreciate it.

Scion said:

My suggestions:

Change expertise to give +2 ac for each -1 to attack while dual wielding or a weapon and sheild (only if sheild is held, not animated.. hey, if they make animated shields still cause spell failure then I'm not going to let those useing animated shields gain any beanies either)

Expert sheild use (feat): give up one point of ac from your shield bonus (carried/equiped shields only) to gain +1 to attack for the round. Max of 3 points transfered per round.


The first one parallels power attack nicely, although perhaps not quite as useful it is still very nice. Plus, with sword and board the character is probably mainly going for ac anyway. Maybe it will fix most of the problem?

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Well, this is like the dodge thing above – doesn’t expertise require a 13 INT? I’m looking to make the STYLE comparatively better – not just make characters with a 13 dex or 13 int better able to use the style. Is this a failure on my part?

Thanks again for the feedback, guys. Keep it coming!

Well, you were comparing power attacking and the sword and boarder

You could also give a bonus to fighting defensively. Possibly along the same lines as tumble does. That way there is a bonus with expertise as above, there is a bonus with fighting defensively (isnt that what they are trying to do?) and if they spend points in tumble and pick up this feat then they can become ac gods. Well.. at a huge price of skill points, a feat, and some hefty attack penalties, but his ac will skyrocket

Scion said:

Well, you were comparing power attacking and the sword and boarder

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Well, now, that's a fair point .

In my defense, I wanted to be complete, and showed both styles with and without power attack for completeness. And in my campaigns, I've never seen yet a non-rogue melee fighter that didn't have at least a 13 str, so I may be biased by experiences that differ from yours. People in my group have tried high-dex rapier fighters, but in practice it's not been fun for them - you end up hitting about as often as the high-str GS tank, but you just don't do the damage. You'll have the rapier dude say "I hit twice, including one critical, for 21 damage." Then the GS says, "Ah, I rolled bad, only hit once, for 29 damage." The rapier-man rolls his eyes and wonders where he went wrong.

Again, not to over-stress this point (and nobody has accused me of this, I just want to get it off my chest), my party is not made up of vicious min-maxers. But none of them want to be the guy who's clearly inferior by another, either. We actually role-play a fair bit, sometimes with whole game sessions that feature no combat at all, but WITHIN combat they all want to feel they can pull their weight.

But, yeah, you're right, there's certainly no law that you'd have a 13 str, much less that feat.

most fighter types do have a str 13+ that is true

No worries though, I was just trying to toss out the parallel to thf. In order to do as well in another area as it does you pretty much have to go for what will help you. Expertise helps sword and boarder more than thf (in the above example at least)

I dont like the 'blocking' mechanic though. For a lot of reasons unfortunately

There are some houserules floating around about helmets granting a bonus vs critical hits, you could probably add on something like that for shields as well.

Failing that, how about a combat option that when you are hit the combatant has to roll a percentage chance (either 20 or 50%), if they fail then you get to have all of the damage you would have taken from that hit go to the shield instead.

This will probably wind up killing the shield eventually, but it might have something like the effect you want?

Edit: if the damage destroys the shield then any excess damage would fall on the creature holding it of course.

Scion said:

My suggestions:

Change expertise to give +2 ac for each -1 to attack while dual wielding or a weapon and sheild (only if sheild is held, not animated.. hey, if they make animated shields still cause spell failure then I'm not going to let those useing animated shields gain any beanies either)

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I like this idea, but allowing a character to gain a +10 to AC is a bit scary.


I agree that if this is about mechanical inferiority of Sword/board, then better bonuses for shields is the answer. If we are talking about "coolness factor" that's when you should consider new mechanics.

Just because something is balanced doesn't mke it fun to play. And normally, using PA to dish out tons of damage is more fun in my mind to just never getting hit.