D&D 5E Dual Wielder with Shield (and Shield Mastery)

[Paraxis]

How do you prone the target?

just curious.

Shoving is a combat action found on the bottom of page 195 in the PHB. It can knock the target prone.

Shoving a Creature
Using the Attack action, you can make a special melee attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you're able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them .
The target of your shove must be no more than one size larger than you, and it must be within your reach. You make a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). If you win the contest, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.

 

[Juriel]

This approach makes the shield objectively better as a weapon than a dagger or a club or a hammer. It does the same damage and give +2 AC.

It only gets the proficiency bonus to hit if they have Tavern Brawler. And if this is the one way to make Tavern Brawler useful, I'm thrilled.

Anyway, your 'it makes sense for them to lose the shield AC bonus' makes no sense to me, and the books mention nothing of the sort, so it's just a weirdly specific case houserule.

 

[Juriel]

How do you prone the target?

Best way is to take the Shield Master feat, which lets you make a Shove action as a bonus action. Then you can shove things down all day long.

 

[TwoSix]

Considering your taking two completely non-synergistic feats to begin with, I don't see an issue with giving some love to the combination. Seriously, who wants to screw over an icon like the S&B fighter?

I'd let Shield Master let you treat a shield as a light weapon that does 1 damage, in addition to everything else. You get the +1 to AC from Dual Wielder as well as the +2 AC from a shield, and you can use a bonus action either shove or do 1 (or 1 + Str, with Two Weapon fighting) damage.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Anyway, your 'it makes sense for them to lose the shield AC bonus' makes no sense to me, and the books mention nothing of the sort, so it's just a weirdly specific case houserule.

Given the edge-case-y-ness of the question in the first place, you'll forgive me if I continue to see the special pleading house rule and "weirdly specific" reading on your side of the fence.

Cite the text if you have a counter-argument: there is no way to wield a shield and make an attack with it. It's why they removed spiked shields (form previous editions, and from the play test), exactly to respond to this kind of edge-case. You may house-rule it differently (power to you), but it's not a plain reading of the text.

 

[Dausuul]

I agree with @Kobold Stew.

If you wanted to do this in my game, I would allow you to switch off between treating the shield as a shield and treating it as an improvised weapon; shifting your grip would constitute your free "interaction" on your turn, akin to drawing or sheathing a weapon. You would then be able to use Dual Wielder and Two-Weapon Fighting with the shield, albeit without proficiency unless you had Tavern Brawler or something of the sort. You would also lose the AC benefits of carrying a shield and could not apply Shield Master.

But you're either dual wielding or sword-and-boarding. You can't do both simultaneously.

(I might add that if you're allowed to keep your shield AC bonus while using it as a weapon, your AC increases thanks to Dual Wielder. This is the sort of weird interaction I want to avoid. The game is built on the assumption that dual wielding, great weapon fighting, and sword-and-boarding are mutually exclusive. Screw with that assumption and all kinds of issues may crawl out of the woodwork.)

 

[variant]

(I might add that if you're allowed to keep your shield AC bonus while using it as a weapon, your AC increases thanks to Dual Wielder. This is the sort of weird interaction I want to avoid. The game is built on the assumption that dual wielding, great weapon fighting, and sword-and-boarding are mutually exclusive. Screw with that assumption and all kinds of issues may crawl out of the woodwork.)

Why is that weird? People trained at actively using the shield in combat to parry should be superior at it than those that just strap on a shield. They are giving up the ability to do 1d8 in their off-hand to gain an additional +2 AC.

 

[TwoSix]

(I might add that if you're allowed to keep your shield AC bonus while using it as a weapon, your AC increases thanks to Dual Wielder. This is the sort of weird interaction I want to avoid. The game is built on the assumption that dual wielding, great weapon fighting, and sword-and-boarding are mutually exclusive. Screw with that assumption and all kinds of issues may crawl out of the woodwork.)

Personally, I'd rather let my player do something cool (spend 2 feats to be really good with the sword and shield combo) than worry about theoretical issues. If someone can identify a numerical issue, then I might be more convinced. But not allowing a player to be a combination of dual wielder/sword-and-boarder appears to be some kind of niche protection, more an issue of concept than gameplay.

 

[Kristivas]

Personally, I'd rather let my player do something cool (spend 2 feats to be really good with the sword and shield combo) than worry about theoretical issues. If someone can identify a numerical issue, then I might be more convinced. But not allowing a player to be a combination of dual wielder/sword-and-boarder appears to be some kind of niche protection, more an issue of concept than gameplay.

That's kinda how I saw it, since you're spending two feats, but.. since it's my character, I wanted some fresh insight to make sure it wasn't going to be too OP or ridiculous before pitching it to my DM. Adding Tavern Brawler as a third feat to make this work is just too much.

Personally, I don't think I'd have much of a problem with it as a DM, but I'm not the DM. Less damage, 2 more AC. Compare that to Polearm Master, which I wanted to avoid this edition with my melee characters, and it doesn't seem that bad. I will probably scrap the idea, because the rules don't seem to want to go my way on this.

 

[Paraxis]

That's kinda how I saw it, since you're spending two feats, but.. since it's my character, I wanted some fresh insight to make sure it wasn't going to be too OP or ridiculous before pitching it to my DM. Adding Tavern Brawler as a third feat to make this work is just too much.

Personally, I don't think I'd have much of a problem with it as a DM, but I'm not the DM. Less damage, 2 more AC. Compare that to Polearm Master, which I wanted to avoid this edition with my melee characters, and it doesn't seem that bad. I will probably scrap the idea, because the rules don't seem to want to go my way on this.

I would check with your DM, I gave you what IMO was as close to a rules as written answer as I could, but at my table if a player wanted to do this I would seriously consider letting his proficiency in shields as armor and the fact that he spent 2 feats doing this give him his proficiency bonus to hit. That or just make a spiked shield and call it a martial weapon. Compared to what other things you can do with the combination of a fighting style and two feats I don't think this is OP or anything.

So rule of cool, a fighter with all this, would do the d4+str mod as bonus action or shove, get his +2 to AC (maybe even a +3 from dual wielder feat), and get his proficiency bonus to attack. But intention has something to do with this ruling, if it was about gaming the system I am less inclined to rule this way as opposed to building a cool but effective character concept.