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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IceBear" data-source="post: 64106" data-attributes="member: 1118">BTW, Caliban (in case you feel like I've left you twisting in the wind on this thread), I've been wanting to add a post like Mark's but I figured that it would make me seem like even more of a toadie licking your hand <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I wish that when I make a post on here I had the time to COMPLETELY explain myself instead of having someone infer that I'm mindless and can't make my own judgements.So, I want to just fill in the backstory for Corwin.  When my group and I first started playing 3E in August (2000?) one of the players was a Monk.  He asked me if he could use a shield and still keep his monk abilities.  I said, No, shields are armor. He kept arguing.  So, I read the books, and still said that shields are armor.Then this thread cropped up on Eric's old boards.  I read some of the debate, and quickly came the conclusion that "Shields are still armor".  Then it came up again, and again, and again.... I've glanced at them each time and have never seen a compelling reason to treat shields as anything but armor.Yes,  some of the "shields aren't armor" camp made some good arguments.  But then it boiled down to, in my opinion, they were arguing semantics.  What's the big picture?  What impact would declaring shields aren't armor have in my campaign?  The main one, allowing monks to have an even higher AC, was unacceptable to me in my campaign.The fact that the Sage, and other people (who's opinion I respect) ruled the same way just validated my ruling to my players.  If they had ruled differently I may not have changed my mind.  I would have taken a closer look at things to see if there was some hidden impact that I missed, but I wouldn't have been so mindless as to just switch rulings.And again, I ask, what's the point of someone going to The Sage (or another source at WotC) after a long debate on these boards; a pretty common occurance.  If their opinions don't matter any more than anyone else's because its not in the OFFICAL errata, then it's pointless.  I'm pretty sure that if the Sage is a little unclear he can run it by some other people who maybe on the rules council.  I don't think he does that all the time, but you never know whether or not the Sage's reply is just his own opinion or the opinion of several others as well.  I just see a lot of arguing amongst ourselves until we turn blue in the face and the arguments never resolve.Anyway, this thread has gone way past pointless and silly in my opinion.IceBearPS The other ramification of shields not being armor is that you could then argue that you could use one while protected by mage armor.  Now, I *used* to be of the opinion that I would allow a wizard to use a shield with mage armor,  but as I look at some posts on here, I can see that wizards can get enough protections and AC bonuses that allowing them to carry a +5 buckler at the same time is just pushing it.</blockquote>

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