Shield master on twitter

[smbakeresq]

There is now virtually no reason to take the feat. Resiliency is far better for improving dexterity saves. If you want to avoid damage, you should have increased your constitution or taken Durable. Want to run around avoiding combat? Should have taken a different class because that's not what my character is there for. I want to be the focus of attacks. If I can still attack-shove-attack at 5th level I'm still going to have an opposed roll every round so that buys nothing.

Shield master was one of the few iconic feats designed for tank/sword-and-board characters. Two weapon fighting? Dual Weapon is pretty good. Two-Handed? Great Weapon and/or Polearm Master especially in combination with Sentinel. Archer? The obvious.

I guess I can still run it the way I want for home games (I've never considered tweets official), but for AL play? My fighter is now stuck with a feat that buys them basically nothing useful.

This.

 

[TwoSix]

I am not sure because I don’t see how it makes any other rule simpler and easier to interpret. If JC wanted to he could have worded Shield Master like Monks Flurry of Blows, they didn’t.

I will of course use the old way, it’s makes the feat worth taking as opposed to almost garbage now and players enjoy it. But then I am the DM that rolls for ability scores, lets rogues use hand axes to sneak attack (the dwarf rogue mini has hand axes) lets fighters use their shield to bash without penalty for a d4 (a trained fighter would learn that as part of using a shield) etc. None of which has ruined my game.

Yea, 5e is pretty hard to break. The worst thing balance adjustments like this SM nerf do is change the balance between various PC options, which is often problematic.

 

[jaelis]

I am not sure because I don’t see how it makes any other rule simpler and easier to interpret. If JC wanted to he could have worded Shield Master like Monks Flurry of Blows, they didn’t.

I think that in normal usage, when you say "If you do A, you can do B," it implies that B occurs after A. Otherwise there would be a lot of kids claiming their dessert before cleaning their room

I will of course use the old way, it’s makes the feat worth taking as opposed to almost garbage now and players enjoy it. But then I am the DM that rolls for ability scores, lets rogues use hand axes to sneak attack (the dwarf rogue mini has hand axes) lets fighters use their shield to bash without penalty for a d4 (a trained fighter would learn that as part of using a shield) etc. None of which has ruined my game.

Sure. But it is far from the only crappy feat, and far even from the worst IMO. In general they did a poor job balancing the feats, I think that if you play with feats you probably ought to adjust them. But I wouldn't say adopting a strained interpretation of the wording is a good way to do that.

Just another example: Elemental Adept is universally judged as terrible. A way to fix it is to interpret the benefit "when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2" to mean that if you roll 10 damage for you firebolt, it becomes 20. That is a perfectly defensible reading, but IMO not a good idea.

 

[Jester David]

Sure. Sounds fun to me.

It pretty much negates the usefulness of Cunning Action for rogues, since you can do anything with your action rather than just Dash, Disengage, and Hide.
Or bonus action attack, and Ready to attack again when the enemy acts, doubling your attacks each round with both being granted Sneak Attack.

And the Tank fighter/ Paladin has a much better tactic. Move forward and offhand attack with his shield then Dodge, making your chances of being hit exceedingly low.

 

[Oofta]

I think that in normal usage, when you say "If you do A, you can do B," it implies that B occurs after A. Otherwise there would be a lot of kids claiming their dessert before cleaning their room


Sure. But it is far from the only crappy feat, and far even from the worst IMO. In general they did a poor job balancing the feats, I think that if you play with feats you probably ought to adjust them. But I wouldn't say adopting a strained interpretation of the wording is a good way to do that.

Just another example: Elemental Adept is universally judged as terrible. A way to fix it is to interpret the benefit "when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2" to mean that if you roll 10 damage for you firebolt, it becomes 20. That is a perfectly defensible reading, but IMO not a good idea.

But at least elemental adept is useful based on the campaign. For example in a recent campaign I ran one of the themes was soldiers/monsters infused with red dragon dragon blood so therefore regularly had fire resistance. So in addition to a minor bump in damage, the feat is still worth taking. That may not be true for every campaign.

On the other hand, I struggle to think of any value that shield master adds that could not be done better with other feats or just increasing ability scores. Which is not the end of the world if I could swap out the feat for something else useful or continue playing the way it worked when I chose the feat. Unfortunately for me the affected character is an AL so I'm SOL depending on my DM.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You missed the point of my statement entirely. JC claimed it was cheese in his tweet. That he considers it cheese at all compared to SS is absurd. That’s why I put a ? at the end but I guess you missed it.

Yes the point of SS is that it is a ridiculous feat that is way more OP then shield master ever was. That’s the point.

It’s not a mild change either, Shield Master isn’t any good as a feat now and not worth taking. It was 3 situational benefits in a package that added up to be ok with the right build. The choices before where SS for ranged (dominant) GW or GW + PAM (excellent) or for shield builds Shield Mastery (not as good as first 2 but fun and still useful.)

Now since you can’t benefit from your own shield bash if the initiative comes out unfavorable your team can’t either as the creature will just stand up before they can go. That makes it essentially useless. Shield Mastery was a good feat because you could set up yourself (with the right sized creature and good rolls) and sometimes your teammates

Both SS and GWM and PAM are FAR more powerful now and let the PC who took them benefit directly from taking them with zero conditions, you just use them when you wish.

And don’t bother to say -5 to hit is a limitation, it isn’t. There are many ways to mitigate that, and it’s only -3 to hit for SS anyway since the people who take it take archery style also.

Nothing in Shield Master (or any other feat really) compares to the effective -3/+10 DMG with no range or obstacle limitations in SS in a bounded accuracy game.

That’s cheese to me by definition. There is a reason many DM limit it and many threads here call it out as OP and ridiculous. I have never seen the thread that Shield Master needs to be reigned in or the build guide in which Shield Master is rated “must have.”

The useage of shield master you liked was cheese, though, and SS isn’t.

Cheese doesn’t mean “it’s powerful”, it means that something is being used in a way that bends RAI to go beyond what it was meant to do.

Shield Master is still a good feat. 5ft of forced movement as a bonus is good. It can often put enemies into positions that they can’t escape from without getting rekt, or just give you allies better room to maneuver, make the target unable to OA an ally, break a grapple, etc
Knocking them down is still useful to your allies, and getting back up still costs half their movement, which makes it useful for locking down an enemy that wants past you. And the only way initiative can make it useless is if the enemy goes after you but before any of your allies go. That isn’t exactly going to happen all the time.

As for the defensive stuff, they should be relevant quite often. You’ve basically got evasion as part of a feat. If it isn’t coming up often for you...sorry your DM isn’t using dex save spells?

Regardless, this doesn’t ruin the feat, it literally just clarified what the rules mean, and discourages cheese.

 

[smbakeresq]

The useage of shield master you liked was cheese, though, and SS isn’t.

Cheese doesn’t mean “it’s powerful”, it means that something is being used in a way that binds RAI to go beyond what it was meant to do.

Shield Master is still a good feat. 5ft of forced movement as a bonus is good. It can often put enemies into positions that they can’t escape from without getting rekt, or just give you allies better room to maneuver, make the target unable to OA an ally, break a grapple, etc
Knocking them down is still useful to your allies, and getting back up still costs half their movement, which makes it useful for locking down an enemy that wants past you. And the only way initiative can make it useless is if the enemy goes after you but before any of your allies go. That isn’t exactly going to happen all the time.

As for the defensive stuff, they should be relevant quite often. You’ve basically got evasion as part of a feat. If it isn’t coming up often for you...sorry your DM isn’t using dex save spells?

Regardless, this doesn’t ruin the feat, it literally just clarified what the rules mean, and discourages cheese.

No, it made the feat not worth taking. It’s not nearly as good as evasion, and evasion wouldn’t be worth a feat either.

And yes SS is cheese, the fact they built in doesn’t make it less so.

If JC really really wanted RAI he would have wrote it that way or changed it years ago as it’s been used that way openly since the PHB came out. He saw something he didn’t like and changed it, that’s cheese in and of itself.

 

[cmad1977]

I mean.... it was pretty clear from the wording of the feat that this is the way it was supposed to be ruled so...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Forcing some enemies to contest every round isn’t a bad feat design. Enemies contest against SS, GWM and PAM every round with less chance at success in some cases and for more direct damage, they just contest with AC.

Look at it this way, GWM and SS users probably outnumber Shield Mastery users 10 to 15 -1 at the tables. I didn’t check the character guides section for the martial classes before I wrote this but I don’t think I ever saw a recommended Shield Master build except as a niche.

I don’t think it was a problem that needed correction even if it wasn’t as intended. I would have changed to wording to allow it. The feat should have been written “after your attack action completes” if they wanted to be clear.

You are missing the point. It slows down the game and is boring. GWM and SS has nothing to do with that. Both are also quite overrated. They are especially good in trivial encounters and are actually speeding up the game... My statement was not about balance.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

What was the ruling about barkskin? Last I heard was that your AC is is set to a minimum of 16 or something though I just treat it as heavy armour and allow a shield bonus if you are using one.

He ruled before that you can add shield bonus or cover. I rule it the same as you, with the exception that it does not reduce your AC to 16 if it was already higher.