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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gorice" data-source="post: 8809984" data-attributes="member: 7032863">That isn't my experience. PCs do not waltz through all fights unharmed, and I am absolutely able to apply resource pressure -- it just doesn't happen continuously in every case, which exacerbates the effectiveness of casters in general.My party is at level 15. They have access to the kinds of magic items you would expect them to have at that level. The characters in my game who have access to shield have an AC of 15 (poorly-optimised single class), 18 (well-optimised single class), and 22 (multiclass). They generally face enemies with an attack bonus of +7 (minion, CR ~6) to +15 (CR >20), with +11 (normal for CR 15 or for a standard GMM leveled enemy) being the most common. I use both official enemies and those made with Giffyglyph's much more accurate and powerful Monster Maker.A +7 bonus hits AC 15/18/22 exactly 65/50/30% of the time. With shield, this becomes 50/25/5%.With a +11, this becomes 85/70/50% without shield, or 60/45/25% with.At the rare and extreme +15, it's 100/85/70% without, or 80/65/45% with.I don't think shield is a problem with the 15 AC character; it's clearly too powerful on AC 22 (not hard to do, with plate + a shield + 1-2 magic items). On AC 18, it is observably very strong.This is incorrect:As an aside:This means that shield only needs to be cast in those situations when a character has actually been threatened, then hit, and then the player has decided that they don't want to take damage. Whether or not damage is rolled first is not particularly important, since you generally know whether a monster is going to hit hard or not, and whether your health is low.As I said before: it's not game-breaking. Like most things in 5e, it's poorly designed but can be finessed with a bit of work.</blockquote>

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