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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mephista" data-source="post: 8806471" data-attributes="member: 6786252">You're entitled to your opinion and I'm not going to argue that even if I disagree with it. That said, aren't you being a little lopsided in your portrayal here?  You make a point that Shield costs a resource and a reaction. Fair enough. But you avoid saying that Uncanny Dodge also costs a reaction, hinting as if its not a concern for that ability even as it is for Shield. The net difference is that Shield costs a low level resource.  Limited resources versus spamming for free is a good point to make, though its a debatable one, given the nature of spellcasting versus martial endurance and the length of adventurer workdays. Shield is not quite predicated on chance.  You do get to activate the ability when you know it will absolutely negate an attack, so its not like you're wasting resources, which is an important point to make, even if its not one you mean to. With the potential for further negation.  You also don't mention that complete negation of an attack is worth two Uncanny Dodges.  If we assume 50% chance of hitting (someone else can run real numbers from MM), reducing that by half again with Shield means that, for every two attacks that would land on the rogue, Shield blocking one of them on the mage. So, its evening out before we factor in the round long defense versus single attack-ness. Over the course of the battle, Shield at least equals UD in terms of damage negated.Uncanny dodge does not halve damage from any one source for a round.  It halves the damage from a single attack - that damage source can make more than one attack and stack more damage on that Uncanny Dodge has zero effect on.  It also doesn't work against spells without attack rolls or traps. I'm not saying the others like Shield do, but that you're being inaccurate in your portrayal here.  As you grow in level, multiattacks grow to be bigger and bigger concerns, so you're going to be hit by more attacks from a single source instead of a powerful single attack. So, the value of halving a singular attack decreases as you grow higher and higher in level when you face more and more multiasttacks, whereas Shield's round long defense actively grows in value. Granted, most games end before it becomes majorly noticable, but still.</blockquote>

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