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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Is "Shield" too powerful?
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<blockquote data-quote="AngryPurpleCyclops" data-source="post: 4692023" data-attributes="member: 82732"><p>This makes pretty good sense to me. Narration in a game with interrupts is a little problematic to begin with.</p><p> </p><p>Well I would point you to my earlier post citing the math involved comparing halfling reroll and shield. I would say halfling reroll is slightly more powerful than shield if you assume that the pc's know when shield would or would not be effective. If you take away that knowledge shields comparative value to the halfling power is completely negligible. </p><p> </p><p>This is at least a respectable position. It obviously could be adjudicated either way by the powers that be in some future errata release. My perception is that shield would be next to worthless without the information. I think the math supports this.</p><p></p><p>As a side note, compare shield to cleric utility powers at 2nd level. Shield of faith, bless and cure light wounds are all equally or more impressive than shield (shield with full disclosure). Assuming a party will face 2-3 encounters in an average day allows shield 3 "chances" to be effective. Even if it comes into play all 3 times, I would argue that shield of faith will easily block more damage in one encounter (likely to be a critical encounter since you wouldn't use the daily unless the situation is particularly dangerous).</p><p></p><p>As an example, a serious combat probably lasts in the area of 7-14 rounds and a party of 4-5 pc's might likely face 8-13 enemies. If you took a low level party (2-3) and put them up against "hard encounter" (dmg page 56 defines a hard encounter as 2-4 levels above the party) so I'm going to look at a level 5 encounter for 5 level 2 pc's. 1000 exp points from the dmg page 57.</p><p></p><p>that would be 10 goblin warriors, or perhaps 5 goblin warriors, a goblin hexer, 2 goblin sharpshooters and 4 goblin cutters. I think the second instance is a more likely mix (and more threatening to the party in many ways), I'm going to briefly talk about how affective shield of faith would be in the first instance only because it's easier math wise.</p><p></p><p>10 enemies. 10 potential attacks per round to start. Obviously as the party impacts the goblins (through death and conditions) the number of attacks per round goes down. Just because I have to pick some numbers I'm going to be conservative and reduce the goblins faster than I think likely. Something like this occurs: (10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2) 10 rounds of combat, the party put out 290 damage (not counting the damage lost to overkill) or 29+ damage per round (I would call this 320+ damage by factoring an average 3 overkill per bad guy) for 5 2nd level pc's which is pretty generous in my estimation and discounts the idea that the 10 goblins might actually take some pc's down during the combat and thus lower the parties damage output.</p><p></p><p>The point of all this is the goblins get 71 attacks in my example. Shield of faith is a level 2 utility. It has a 10% chance of blocking each attack vs AC. In this example it's pretty likely that it would block 6-8 attacks about 90% of the time. Even if half the attacks were not vs AC (goblins not being a good example for this) you can expect shield of faith to block 3-4 attacks per day. Pretty comparative to a best case shield spell with "full disclosure". Take away "full disclosure" and shield is probably likely to block about 1 attack every 10-15 encounters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AngryPurpleCyclops, post: 4692023, member: 82732"] This makes pretty good sense to me. Narration in a game with interrupts is a little problematic to begin with. Well I would point you to my earlier post citing the math involved comparing halfling reroll and shield. I would say halfling reroll is slightly more powerful than shield if you assume that the pc's know when shield would or would not be effective. If you take away that knowledge shields comparative value to the halfling power is completely negligible. This is at least a respectable position. It obviously could be adjudicated either way by the powers that be in some future errata release. My perception is that shield would be next to worthless without the information. I think the math supports this. As a side note, compare shield to cleric utility powers at 2nd level. Shield of faith, bless and cure light wounds are all equally or more impressive than shield (shield with full disclosure). Assuming a party will face 2-3 encounters in an average day allows shield 3 "chances" to be effective. Even if it comes into play all 3 times, I would argue that shield of faith will easily block more damage in one encounter (likely to be a critical encounter since you wouldn't use the daily unless the situation is particularly dangerous). As an example, a serious combat probably lasts in the area of 7-14 rounds and a party of 4-5 pc's might likely face 8-13 enemies. If you took a low level party (2-3) and put them up against "hard encounter" (dmg page 56 defines a hard encounter as 2-4 levels above the party) so I'm going to look at a level 5 encounter for 5 level 2 pc's. 1000 exp points from the dmg page 57. that would be 10 goblin warriors, or perhaps 5 goblin warriors, a goblin hexer, 2 goblin sharpshooters and 4 goblin cutters. I think the second instance is a more likely mix (and more threatening to the party in many ways), I'm going to briefly talk about how affective shield of faith would be in the first instance only because it's easier math wise. 10 enemies. 10 potential attacks per round to start. Obviously as the party impacts the goblins (through death and conditions) the number of attacks per round goes down. Just because I have to pick some numbers I'm going to be conservative and reduce the goblins faster than I think likely. Something like this occurs: (10, 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2) 10 rounds of combat, the party put out 290 damage (not counting the damage lost to overkill) or 29+ damage per round (I would call this 320+ damage by factoring an average 3 overkill per bad guy) for 5 2nd level pc's which is pretty generous in my estimation and discounts the idea that the 10 goblins might actually take some pc's down during the combat and thus lower the parties damage output. The point of all this is the goblins get 71 attacks in my example. Shield of faith is a level 2 utility. It has a 10% chance of blocking each attack vs AC. In this example it's pretty likely that it would block 6-8 attacks about 90% of the time. Even if half the attacks were not vs AC (goblins not being a good example for this) you can expect shield of faith to block 3-4 attacks per day. Pretty comparative to a best case shield spell with "full disclosure". Take away "full disclosure" and shield is probably likely to block about 1 attack every 10-15 encounters. [/QUOTE]
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Is "Shield" too powerful?
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