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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 4519175" data-attributes="member: 1645">If shield & armour were considered separately (shield gives cover, armour reduces damage) you'd get a much more realistic effect.I agree with S'mon's point, but a good deal of it comes down to the subtle math of rolling d20 + modifiers against a target number.  Stacked bonuses are unusually effective.  You might think that each +1 to AC means you get hit 5% less often, but that's simply not true.  Going from getting hit on a 19 or 20 to getting hit only on a 20, for instance, halves the number of hits you take; it doubles your expected lifespan in combat.It turns out that a spear man with little armor gains little from a shield, while a dismounted knight with heavy armor gains a tremendous amount from a shield, which is the opposite of what we'd expect.Armor has little to no effect on a warrior's ability to block with his shield or parry with his weapon.  Its effect on his overall agility is also fairly mild -- but wearing armor is exhausting, as the weight adds up and the heat becomes unbearable.  (It's like cutting weight in a sweat suit.  Not fun.)An upper limit on agility bonuses makes much more sense than a simple penalty, because an immobile warrior should suffer no penalty for encumbrance, but an extremely light-on-his-feet warrior should have difficulty staying light on his feet.Once armor advanced to high-quality plates, it became futile to attack fully armored body parts with an ordinary sword.  D&D's armor class mechanics model this fairly well; the challenge is hitting an unarmored (or less-armored) spot.Heavy thrusting swords (tucks or estocs) were developed for just this purpose; you could jam them into the chinks in the armor and thrust home.  Narrow daggers were developed for the same purpose -- but you had to knock the other knight to the ground and pounce on him to use such a small weapon effectively.The other tactic was to switch to a heavy mace -- which is a surprisingly small weapon, by the way -- to concuss foes, or to an axe, which can overcome armor better than a sword.So, yes, you can either avoid armor or overcome it.If every attacker could allocate part of his attack bonus to defense, that would model your combat states fairly well -- except that fully rational players (and GMs) don't freeze up and neglect to fight back, the way demoralized fighters do in real life.Shields are tremendously useful, especially against ranged attacks, which follow a set trajectory from a ways off.  Shields are also especially useful in formation, where there's little room to dodge, but each soldier can "borrow" the shield to his right.</blockquote>

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