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

[Horwath]

having shield is great, especially if you are caster and party buffer. But if you are DPS in the party you should focus on that part.

Encounters are designed to be beaten and you win by killing faster not dying slower.

Also damage is your biggest boost to AC as dead or fleeing characters have no attack roll.

 

[Giant2005]

having shield is great, especially if you are caster and party buffer. But if you are DPS in the party you should focus on that part.

Encounters are designed to be beaten and you win by killing faster not dying slower.

Also damage is your biggest boost to AC as dead or fleeing characters have no attack roll.

That is a fair perspective, but it is just one of two perspectives of the situation. The other side is that AC is the biggest boost to your damage as dead or fleeing characters have no attack roll.

 

[Flamestrike]

Wait, are you arguing that an improvised weapon is not a weapon?

Apparently.

Like; I can hit you with a table leg, a carpentry happer, or an inanimate carbon rod... but If I do so, I cant get the bonus for dueling, or smite, or rage.

But if I instead use a club or a mace, I'm suddenly golden again.

And I can wield a mace, nunchucks, tonfa, fighting stick or a club in each hand, but not a carpentry hammer, a pool cue snapped in half, steel wrench or an iron bar in each hand.

Dont mention this to Steven Segal or Jackie Chan by the way. I think we just invalidated half their films.

 

[Horwath]

That is a fair perspective, but it is just one of two perspectives of the situation. The other side is that AC is the biggest boost to your damage as dead or fleeing characters have no attack roll.

haha, true.

But, there is usualy more mooks than your party members and individually they are weaker. So it is imperative to bring them down. Also it is important to have a healer with highest AC so they cant beat down your source of healing/buffing and to minimize concentration rolls.

AC is great but it should not be bought on cost of DPS in DPS classes. Unless you can add shield to damage calculation. Then it is 2 for 1.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Whether you're optimizing for defence or fast damage output, it pays off to have the entire party use the same strategy. Having squishy dedicated DPR characters is asking for them to go down early before they can do enough damage to matter.

The "balanced" party belongs in 4E.

 

[Horwath]

Whether you're optimizing for defence or fast damage output, it pays off to have the entire party use the same strategy. Having squishy dedicated DPR characters is asking for them to go down early before they can do enough damage to matter.

The "balanced" party belongs in 4E.

that is also true.

best solution are;

stealth assassin-like alpha strike teams or

panzer division teams

 

[Quartz]

Two feats are your friends: Shield Master and Sentinel. Resilient in Dex synergises nicely with Shield Master too.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

An improvised weapon, is a weapon.

An improvised weapon is any weapon that isn't actually a weapon.*

Unfortunately, due to the use of natural language, there's no way to state definitively whether weapon-based feats and abilities are limited to real weapons (things that are designed to be weapons), or if you can use them with any object that is currently playing the role of a weapon. Just look at the debate over whether Magic Missile counts as an attack, if you attack someone with it.

If this was 3.5, I would agree with you due to the specific wording, but this is 5E and there's enough vagueness that any given DM might rule otherwise. I would expect them to rule one way or the other, based on what they think the intent of the rule is. They may also choose to interpret in such a fashion as to encourage the type of gameplay they prefer; i.e. if they think it's silly that a broken bottle could work as well as a finely-crafted dagger, then they may rule that you can't smite or backstab with it.

Notably, treating any improvised weapon as a weapon would set precedent for beating a werewolf to death with your bag of holding, if your non-magical greatsword wasn't silver. Depending on the table, that might be either ridiculous or ridiculously awesome.

* As clearly as I can tell, the rules are written in such a way that the only distinction of an improvised weapon is that nobody bothers to gain proficiency with it. The only difference between a greatclub and a stop sign, in terms of their combat efficacy, is that nobody bothers to learn proficiency with stop signs. A greatsword is effectively an improvised weapon, in the hands of a wizard.

 

[Helldritch]

Apparently.

Like; I can hit you with a table leg, a carpentry happer, or an inanimate carbon rod... but If I do so, I cant get the bonus for dueling, or smite, or rage.

But if I instead use a club or a mace, I'm suddenly golden again.

And I can wield a mace, nunchucks, tonfa, fighting stick or a club in each hand, but not a carpentry hammer, a pool cue snapped in half, steel wrench or an iron bar in each hand.

Dont mention this to Steven Segal or Jackie Chan by the way. I think we just invalidated half their films.

All the examples you have are close enough to known weapons to be considered weapons. What about a table, a chair, a cart's wheel, a wooden box or even the body of a dead opponent?
It clearly stated that if an improvised weapons looks like a defined weapons then it will behave as that weapons. A shield does not bear any resemblance to any weapons so it does not qualify for a weapon in respect to combat manoeuver requirement.
As stated in phb, the definition of a weapon in the phb is quite clear and your weapon must fall in one of the two categories; that is either simple or martial. A shield, unfortunately, does not qualify.

As for the feats they all specifies weapons, yes, but from the game's perspective. Not from the dictionnary one. So again, the shield does not qualify.

For the fighting styles, look at it from à single class perspective. Only the champion ever gets two. Multiclass is supposed to be an option. So without mc you only get one style. Is it the RAI that you should only use one style at a time? I do believe so. Can you know more than one style? Sure you can and that is a great thing. That enables you to adapt much more to different combat situations. Juste like many martial artists practice different styles like jujitsu, kung-fu, aïkido, karate, and judo to name but a few. Do they use more than one style? Of course they do. But not at the same time. They choose from moment to moment which style is the best at that moment and use it. In game turn, it means that they change style from round to round.

The power of choosing between styles is already strong enough. Please do not stack them. Neither of our position is quite as RAW as I would like, but I do believe that mine is as RAI as possible. I might be wrong, I was not on the design team.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

An improvised weapon is any weapon that isn't actually a weapon.*

According to Jeremy Crawford, "@mackenzie884 An improvised weapon is, indeed, a weapon, but only the moment it's used as such. A chair/shield/etc isn't a weapon otherwise."

But he also say, "@YetiMoose Dual Wielder is meant to work (RAI) with a melee weapon or an equivalent, not something like a shield."


So...confused? 0.o

To further complicate things, taking Shield out of the equation, would you rule that you can't dual wield improvised weapons? Like if you snapped a pool cue in half and now had a piece in each hand, could you not dual wield those sticks? If the answer is "yes, you can dual wield those", then you should be able to dual wield attack with a Shield as an improvised weapon.

Mechanically, look at popular film. The fight between Hector and Achilles in Troy shows Achilles using his Shield offensively with strikes. In the Deadliest Warrior TV series it also shows how deadly a shield strike with a Spartan Shield is. So dealing damage with a Shield seems like something that should be legit.