Changes in shields?

[Lurker59]

After seeing the +1 Heavy Shield of Protection had an enhancement bonus to AC and Reflex I decided to look again at the Dragon article on Magic Items. Obviously the developers thoughts on shield properties could have changed but the article stated:

"Arms: These are bulky items that fit over your arms, such as bracers, vambraces, and shields. You'll notice that shields no longer have an enhancement bonus. Instead, shields have special defensive effects and items you wear instead of shields, like bracers, are more offensive. 3.5 Equivalents: Arms, shields.

Then consider the one of the shields we have see:
+1 Heavy Shield of Protection Level 3
This shield is good for a fighter or paladin to use.
Body Slot: Arms
Enhancement: Armor Class and Reflex defense.
Power (Encounter): Standard Action. You and your adjacent ally gain resist all 5 until the end of your next turn.

I'm a little curious at how the system will handle this considering their goal of keeping numbers relatively balanced against each other. With an AC and reflex bonus on shields the sword and boarder will gain AC at an accelerated rate compared to other characters and possibly break the math at higher levels. Any thoughts on this? Perhaps the +1 isn't included in AC and Reflex defense calculations?

 

[Andur]

Wel there is a typo somewhere, or a redefinition of the term enhancement.

However, since all shields (not sure about bracers though) grant a bonus to both AC and REF, so the question becomes how high do those pluses go, a +5 won't be that bad at epic levels, double or more of that and it would seem to break pretty quickly...

 

[Irda Ranger]

Good catch.

Hmm. Well, off-hand weapons presumably scale in usefulness too. And two-handed weapons scale a little faster than one-handed weapons to everyone's about the same, right?

At least, that's the hope. I hope that it's all well balanced and that the DMG presents some good tips for how to strip it out of the rules if you want to run a more low-magic, low-fantasy campaign.

 

[Fiendish Dire Weasel]

I'm not sure. Shouldn't a "sword & boarder" have a bonus for giving up use of a 2h weapon or a second weapon.

How much of a difference will it be though? +7 or so at level 30? That doesn't seem bad.

A very good catch, I agree, but I'm not sure I'm too worried about it at the moment. Keep in mind that things have changed over development, rendering lots of things devs said early on may no longer be true.

 

[FadedC]

I'm not sure. Shouldn't a "sword & boarder" have a bonus for giving up use of a 2h weapon or a second weapon.

How much of a difference will it be though? +7 or so at level 30? That doesn't seem bad.

A very good catch, I agree, but I'm not sure I'm too worried about it at the moment. Keep in mind that things have changed over development, rendering lots of things devs said early on may no longer be true.

+7 is a huge deal no matter what level you are. Given that you just roll a d20 to hit no matter what, it's almost impossible to give monsters a hit bonus high enough that they have a reasonable chance to hit someone with +7 ac without making it so armor class is irrelevent for anyone who is not ultra heavily armored.

Granted there are now more abilities that target things other then ac so it might not be as bad if somebody gets his ac into the unhittable range. I guess we will have to wait and see. It's clear that many things have been changing so either the original bit on shields or the D&D experience bit may be outdated.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

This doesn't neccessarily stack with an enhancement bonus from armor. Each stat group - attacks, AC, and defenses - can probably only get a single enhancement bonus. If you have multiple sources of bonuses, just use the highest one. That's the only way to keep "the math" from being throw out of whack.

Just like in 3.5 the enhancement bonus of a bow and its arrows don't stack.

 

[small pumpkin man]

This doesn't neccessarily stack with an enhancement bonus from armor. Each stat group - attacks, AC, and defenses - can probably only get a single enhancement bonus. If you have multiple sources of bonuses, just use the highest one. That's the only way to keep "the math" from being throw out of whack.

Just like in 3.5 the enhancement bonus of a bow and its arrows don't stack.

The problem with that is that is it makes good magic shields mostly worthless.

Sure, that's a bit of an exageration, but it would be a really wierd design decision when they specificaly said shields would provide a seperate and assumably unique bonus.

 

[CleverNickName]

Shields granting a bonus to Ref seems wonky to me...in my head, it implies that carrying a shield somehow makes you more nimble and spry. I'm sure that is not the case, and I'm sure that is not what the 4E designers intended...but I'm having a hard time shaking it out of my head.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Shields granting a bonus to Ref seems wonky to me...in my head, it implies that carrying a shield somehow makes you more nimble and spry. I'm sure that is not the case, and I'm sure that is not what the 4E designers intended...but I'm having a hard time shaking it out of my head.

I view it like this you need good reflexes to block a strike, but having a better shield means you can be a tad slower since you have this large object to help in protecting you. Thus why a shield would add to your Reflex, so if your really fast AND have a shield you be able to block that much faster/better.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Shields granting a bonus to Ref seems wonky to me...in my head, it implies that carrying a shield somehow makes you more nimble and spry. I'm sure that is not the case, and I'm sure that is not what the 4E designers intended...but I'm having a hard time shaking it out of my head.

Yeah, it is a bit wonky. While I can see it giving a bonus to help deflect magic missiles or the like, it's patently ridiculous for a shield to give you a bonus to keep from falling into a pit trap.