Arcane Spell Failure with Shield and Armor

[Abisashi]

Search is taking me to a blank page, so I'll just ask this:

If a wizard is wearing armor with an arcane spell failure chance of 10% and has a heavy shield (ASF = 15%), he rolls ASF twice, once against 10% and once against 15%, correct?

Thanks

 

[hong]

Add the numbers and roll once (25% in this case). PHB p.122.

 

[Thanee]

I think you just add them together and roll once.

(Though, I really do not know why shields give ASF... you could chop the whole arm off and have no ASF, you could carry a trunk (well, a small one) on your shoulder and have no ASF, but strapping a shield to it... yeah, right! )

Anyways...

If a character is wearing armor and using a shield, add the two numbers together to get a single arcane spell failure chance.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Abisashi]

Thanks for the quick replies hong and Thanee!

 

[Hypersmurf]

you could carry a trunk (well, a small one) on your shoulder...

A big one, if you're Colonel John Matrix!

-Hyp.

 

[Li Shenron]

(Though, I really do not know why shields give ASF... you could chop the whole arm off and have no ASF, you could carry a trunk (well, a small one) on your shoulder and have no ASF, but strapping a shield to it... yeah, right! )

Or IIRC you could just CARRY the shield instead of WIELDING it strapped to your arm: same weight, even less comfortable to carry, only no AC bonus of course. But also no ASF

 

[Mekabar]

As I pointed out in an other post: ASF in't logical at all and doesn't even have a half-decent ingame explanation. It's a pure rule-induced mechanism.