Just kind of wandering down a house rule that would aim to mostly reskin existing rules...
One thing that has always bugged me with D&D is that the shield has had a very low impact on the defense of a combatant.
Now, it is true that D&D's combat has always been abstract in nature, with both AC and hit points not really reflecting any specific blow by blow action and so the ratings for the various defensive values have to be taken as an overall measure of protection.
Still, the siren song of more visceral simulationism continues to sing to me after three decades. I don't want to monkey around with the overall math too much of the system, but there ought to be ways to reframe some of the values to nudge the system in different directions.
One of these ways would be to do some inversion of the shield and armor bonuses in the game. Rather than shields providing only a small defensive value, instead they would provide the "frontloaded" defensive value, and armor would take up the slack.
The basic idea is that within the game world, the shield would be the first thing that comes to mind in terms of providing defensive value. Armor would be the secondary and backup measure.
The basic idea would be for shields:
Double the Shield Bonus and Armor Check Penalty for Shields
Halve (round down) the Armor Bonus and Armor Check Penalties for Armor.
You could also add a bit more granularity, and triple the Shield bonus and Armor check penalties for Heavy Shields.
I put together a pdf with various charts to compare the numbers which you can find here.
One thing that has always bugged me with D&D is that the shield has had a very low impact on the defense of a combatant.
Now, it is true that D&D's combat has always been abstract in nature, with both AC and hit points not really reflecting any specific blow by blow action and so the ratings for the various defensive values have to be taken as an overall measure of protection.
Still, the siren song of more visceral simulationism continues to sing to me after three decades. I don't want to monkey around with the overall math too much of the system, but there ought to be ways to reframe some of the values to nudge the system in different directions.
One of these ways would be to do some inversion of the shield and armor bonuses in the game. Rather than shields providing only a small defensive value, instead they would provide the "frontloaded" defensive value, and armor would take up the slack.
The basic idea is that within the game world, the shield would be the first thing that comes to mind in terms of providing defensive value. Armor would be the secondary and backup measure.
The basic idea would be for shields:
Double the Shield Bonus and Armor Check Penalty for Shields
Halve (round down) the Armor Bonus and Armor Check Penalties for Armor.
You could also add a bit more granularity, and triple the Shield bonus and Armor check penalties for Heavy Shields.
I put together a pdf with various charts to compare the numbers which you can find here.
