Please rate Shield Expert

[Stalker0]

This gives you the best of Board/Sword and TWF styles, I'd say its a very poweful feat.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I gave it an '8'.

IF you are already using TWF style then this is a very efficient and powerful feat. A spiked shield is almost as good a weapon as a shortsword.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

I wonder what would happen if those spikes had the Defending enhancment? *evil grin*

 

[Legildur]

I'm with The Souljourner and Marshall on this one.

I'm having some fun with my Dwarf Bbr4/Rgr4 with the Power Attack, Improved Shield Bash, Shield Expert feats and a Shield of Bashing.

He isn't the greatest melee combatant of all time, but the extra +3 to AC and the chance to bull rush someone 5ft every time I hit is useful.

I'm looking forward to the Shield Charge feat at 9th level - then my DM might start to freak out at the double damage from a power attack charge when raging <grin>

I gave it a 7 - not for everyone, but great for TWF types who need a defensive boost.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

This is an excellent feat. If it were any better, it would probably be broken. . . .

As others have pointed out, it allows a melee character to take advantage of a shield's AC bonus (and possibly a the AC bonus from defending Shield Spikes as well ) and still compete with the greatsword wielders in terms of damage.

The only real drawback of it is that a character could also wear a shield and dual wield bastard sword/armor spikes. That's a less attractive option though since there isn't bashing armor and many D&D characters find their armor as loot and therefore can't reliably expect to have magical spiked armor. Any shield, however, can have bashing added to its enhancements. And it can have offensive enchantments added as well (according to my understanding, whether or not it's spiked).

 

[GuardianLurker]

Bummer. Know of any that allow keeping the shield bonus as I described?

Nope. What you're looking for gets discussed a lot, but from my limited experience as a stick jockey, it wouldn't work IRL - even a buckler is too large to wield this way. Of course, you could always house rule it, but it would be a *very* powerful feat, possibly "broken".

 

[Archer]

This is definitely a feat to build combos around. Divine shield as someone already mentioned, shield charge, improved shield bash. These feat are exponentially synergistic. The bash triggers all kinds of AoO's from your friends. If you have knockdown then they are prone when triggering all those AoOs. If you can get TWF and all that on top (which is hard to do before epic levels) it just boggles the mind how much you are getting. Get charisma 36 and you have a +13 weapon that can bypass any DR, +15 AC bonus and you can pile on +9 more enhancements to your shield like level drain and such and improve the critical to 18-20/x2. Being able to use a shield as a weapon eliminates the drawbacks of 2 weapon fighting which was that you couldn't use a shield.

The feat is second in power only to Large and in Charge.

 

[smetzger]

6.53 after 44 votes.

I agree, its a good feat, but only if you have Ambidex and Two-Weapon Fighting.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Bummer. Know of any that allow keeping the shield bonus as I described?

The only one I know of allows you to stack a buckler with your off hand parry defense bonus.

Normally you lose the buckler bonus if you use a weapon in that same hand. It's just that the buckler is so small that you have the option of holding both, just haveing to chose which one you use in a round.