D&D 5E is a Fighter/cleric etc less powerful using a shield

[mellored]

Clerics should pretty much always use shields. They want to be the last people to fall down and their bonus damage doesn't benifit from 2-handed weapons, and they often have enough bonus action competition for dual wielding.

Fighters on the other hand scale just fine with 2-handed weapons. That extra 3 damage becomes 6, then 9, then 12. Not even counting action surges. Shields are still a possibility if you take feats, but damage is usually the way to go for them.

 

[CapnZapp]

That may be how it is in 4e (haven't played it, don't know), but that's a flawed assumption from the get go. It's only true if you recover all resources after every battle. And that's simply not true in most gaming scenarios. If you're given the choice of ending an encounter in 4 rounds with 55 HP left, or in 3 rounds with 50 HP left, the first is by far the better choice because you might need those HP later on.

This example completely ignores the value of ending the fight one full round earlier. That is, it sets a zero value on whatever nastiness the monsters would have done on round four.

In reality, chances are that nastiness is much worse than you losing 5 extra hit points. For example, the monster eating the face of the squishy wizard or bard for 6 damage.

6 > 5, thus making the offensive option better.

Focussing on your offensive instead of your defensive is generally a good idea in a game like D&D.

---

There are exceptions, such as the tempest Cleric with Spirit Guardians mentioned above.

Our party has such a Cleric. When things become really hairy he spends his action Dodging, letting the spirit guardians do the job for him. Cast at 5th level, they do a pretty good job.

He has all the feats and a great Constitution, so DC 10 Concentration checks are an auto-success for him.

In this special case, it would be madness to not go for a shield.

(To be honest, this isn't really an exception, since it is yet another way of maximizing offense. Since there aren't any real tanking possibility in this game, including aggro mechanics that govern the actions of NPCs, it is almost always substandard to go for a defensive build, when you can go for an offensive build and still get decent defense. Aggression is definitely the name of this game.)

 

[Prism]

I generally like shields however there are times when the lack of a free hand can be a problem. A two handed weapon is flexible in its use of two hands as you only need both when attacking. Shields require an action to equip or stow.

If an encounter involves any aspect of climbing, swinging or generally being athletic (or acrobatic) having a shield can be a problem with the lack of a free hand.

Grappling is difficult with a shield and is actually best used with a versatile weapon.

Two handed weapons are slightly easier to work with when mixing up spell casting and somatic gestures.

Fighters tend to scale better with two handed weapons when they get their multiple attacks at higher levels. A 20th level fighter with a maul is doing considerably more damage than one with war hammer and shield.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This example completely ignores the value of ending the fight one full round earlier. That is, it sets a zero value on whatever nastiness the monsters would have done on round four.

In reality, chances are that nastiness is much worse than you losing 5 extra hit points. For example, the monster eating the face of the squishy wizard or bard for 6 damage.

These types of comparisons are very general, and usually one on one comparisons. If you're gonna start throwing in other PC members, then I can just as easily say, "if that MU spends his one 3rd level slot on fireball to kill the monsters a round earlier, saving him from suffering 6 HP, then that's the wrong choice if the next battle they needed that fireball but didn't have it, so everyone in the party suffered 8 more HP damage than they would have if the wizard still had the fireball accessible."

The bottom line is this: The statement that offense is better than defense is only always true if you reset all of your resources after every combat, or you know exactly how many combats and how many resources per combat you will lose until the next time you reset everything back to full.

And since that pretty much never happens in a game, it's simply silly to make that statement as a universally true statement. Not saying that's what you're doing here, but I've heard it before. I would even hesitate to agree with what you are saying, that offense is generally the better focus than defense. That depends on SOOOOO many scenarios, as well as player preference, and for every example you bring up where it would be a good idea, I can bring up one where defense is better. Heck, it very well can vary between players at the same table.

 

[Istbor]

I have to agree with some others here. How do you measure power?

If it is numbers porn then you will probably prefer a two-handed weapon cutting bloody swaths through your enemies. If it is being able to take or mitigate a flurry of blows against you, and remain standing, then a shield would be your choice.

If we are talking about kitting out a fighter/cleric to be a beast with a weapon and shield, then that can be done too. I personally have to problems building a sword and board fighter, as it offers me utility and versatility. You can shove and knock down enemies, give yourself and your (melee) allies advantage. Use that shield as both a tool to block and dodge blows and spells, you can use it as an improvised weapon and bash an enemies teeth in for that extra edge of damage. (Depending on your fighting style chosen) You can safeguard your allies and create areas of denial, or make up some damage with dueling.

That to me is why I will sometimes make a fighter with a shield and even consider it more powerful, because you can become a force to be reckoned with on a battle field in several different ways (like my last fighter who also had take mage slayer and made any spell casters cry).

 

[CapnZapp]

Of course, you also risk using your resources ineffectively, if you make yourself too hard to hit. Why would the orcs obligingly attack the AC 21 fighter/cleric, when the AC 13 warlock is standing right over there?

That's why you should seriously consider not bringing along a squishie like that if you're interested in charop play - since fighters can't effectively aggro in 5E, that greatly diminishes the value of having a high AC.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The bottom line is this: The statement that offense is better than defense is only always true if you reset all of your resources after every combat, or you know exactly how many combats and how many resources per combat you will lose until the next time you reset everything back to full.

Not quite. It's true, even if you don't know the exact numbers, as long as you can state with sufficient certainty that whatever the number is will fall within a certain expected range. I don't need to know that I'll take 67 damage across the next three combats and then take a long rest, as long as I know that I'll take no more than 80 damage across however many encounters are left in the day.

And that's something you can actually estimate with a fair degree of certainty, based on a number of factors. Unless you're fighting things wildly out of your league, or you're trapped in a no-win situation, PCs are ludicrously resilient in this edition.

 

[ccs]

That's why you should seriously consider not bringing along a squishie like that if you're interested in charop play - since fighters can't effectively aggro in 5E, that greatly diminishes the value of having a high AC.

Am I playing the entire party in this charop play?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Not quite. It's true, even if you don't know the exact numbers, as long as you can state with sufficient certainty that whatever the number is will fall within a certain expected range. I don't need to know that I'll take 67 damage across the next three combats and then take a long rest, as long as I know that I'll take no more than 80 damage across however many encounters are left in the day.

And that's something you can actually estimate with a fair degree of certainty, based on a number of factors. Unless you're fighting things wildly out of your league, or you're trapped in a no-win situation, PCs are ludicrously resilient in this edition.

No, that's not something you can estimate with a fair degree of certainty unless you as a player pre-read the adventure you're going on, and knows exactly when and how the DM will implement the encounters --OR-- the players dictate with 100% certainty when and where they take long rests, regardless of what's actually going on in the game world. And if you do that, then that's an entirely different discussion, and a situation where I'd posit is the extreme exception on how gamers in general play D&D. Players shouldn't know the exact details of every encounter they could be facing in the adventure, which is the only way one could make such an "estimate with a fair degree of certainty."

 

[CapnZapp]

Sacrosanct and Istbor, you can keep talking all you like.

Will still not change the basic fact that it is possible to create a character with devastating offense and decent defense.

Not to mention the super-fundamental meta-fact that you can pick your offense, but not your defense. That is, you get to choose who you attack. You don't get to choose who attacks you.

Hence, doing a too-great job on defense will only mean the DM has the monsters attack someone else. (Had there been widespread aggro abilities, then it could have been a thing to make a career out of forcing monsters to attack the unhittable)

A party is never stronger than its weakest member, and there's no use being significantly stronger than the weakest link. Put your energy on offense instead, to end fights earlier.

If you are already decently strong on defense, and get to choose between getting even stronger on defense, and gaining offense, it stands to reason you should choose offense. Only when your defense is no longer sufficient does it pay to shore it up.

This is the minmaxers perspective, the only one to really matter. The perspective that realizes that the only behavior you need to optimize is your DM's.