Raise Shields!

[JohnSnow]

Star Wars Saga Edition has a set of talents for Lightsaber wielders that works that way.

The Block talent grants the character the ability to negate a melee attack by making a Use the Force check. The Deflect talent grants that ability (to an extent) against ranged attacks, effectively functioning as a form of armed evasion (replacing one's Ref defense with a skill check). Finally, Lightsaber Defense allows you to gain a +1 deflection bonus until your next turn as a swift action. That last talent can be taken multiple times and stacks, granting a deflection bonus as high as +3.

Those make a great deal of sense as Shield talents available to fighters. On the other hand, since we don't KNOW how classes gain abilities, they might also be done as powers or even feats.

 

[maggot]

I'm hoping for a Golden Wyvern feat for my board-and-sword fighter.

 

[bgaesop]

Ooh, that's awesome. I dearly, dearly hope that's what they do with them.

I've tried to custom-rule up stuff like that in the past and it's never worked too well. I personally am a fan of the Iron Heroes ideas mentioned earlier, as well as the Evasion ability, that could be neat. Whatever it is, I trust the dev team with it.

 

[Gloombunny]

I'd prefer for all levels. I don't want to have to toss away my faithful shield at 11th-level because it suddenly becomes mechanically useless.

Heck yeah. There's no reason why a fighter should stop finding a shield useful just because he's badass.

One thing about shields that I've never seen represented at all in any rpg is their offensive potential, and I don't mean hitting people with the shield (though that shouldn't be discounted), but the way that having shield in one hand improves your ability to attack with the other. When you only have one weapon, you have to use it for defense as well as for offense, so you have to pass up some of your opportunities to attack because they would leave you open. A sword-and-board dude can use the shield to cover himself while attacking more with the sword.

The same is largely true for two-weapon fighting, of course, with less defensive capability but a bit more ability to threaten attacks with the off hand. Games don't tend to reflect that aspect of two-weapon fighting very well either, come to think of it...

What would be really cool is if shields were treated as a special case of two-weapon fighting rather than as a wholly different thing... but I'm rambling. I'd be quite happy with just some expanded shield-defense options as LoinCloth and JohnSnow have described.

 

[Simon Marks]

I'm hoping for a Golden Wyvern feat for my board-and-sword fighter.

Rule 28!

 

[loseth]

Rule 28!

Wait! I have the perfect shield feat: Golden Lightning Wyvern-Panther's Tail Cut!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Increased usefulness of shields was the one thing I sent in where I would like to see an improvement.

Sorry, have mentioned this in sev places, but how many pictures are there where the fighter/knight raises his shield to protect himself from the dragon's fiery breath? And in each of those the shield diverts the flame. Heck, it is even in a few DnD pictures (inc a full page spread from Complete Divine if my memory serve me correctly). And yet there is NOTHING in the rules to explain this. Having a shield vs a dragon's breath weapon is useless???

I sure hope all the abilites mentioned above are possible. I hope it was an ability just like this that protected the fighter from the rock spray.

I would also prefer to see the Block and Deflect talents from SWSE. Shields need to be more useful than a +1 AC (boring). I hardy ever have a player use a shield. Don't blame them either.

C

 

[Stogoe]

I don't want sword-and-board to be the optimal choice at any level. I want it to be an interesting and effective choice, but to make it objectively better than two-handing would be to fall into the same sort of trap as 3e did.

 

[Nebulous]

I sure hope all the abilites mentioned above are possible. I hope it was an ability just like this that protected the fighter from the rock spray.

I would also prefer to see the Block and Deflect talents from SWSE. Shields need to be more useful than a +1 AC (boring). I hardy ever have a player use a shield. Don't blame them either.

I completely concur. I think that no matter what direction shields take, they're going to be a massive improvement from earlier incarnations of D&D shields. Which, in a word, were crap.

 

[Alaxk Knight of Galt]

Quick point on this post
Active Defense = An action taken (most likely the character's Immediate Action) in an attempt to avoid a successful attack, for example: rolling a shield parry against a successful attack (if such a thing existed in 3.5).
Passive Defense = A target number to determine the success/failure of an action, for example: 3.5 AC values.

Active Defense in 4E would be a new spin for the base DnD game. Bot9S had several active defenses; the one that comes to mind is a maneuver that allows you a roll to beat the attack that struck you.

Oddly enough, the best example of Active Defense is with saving throws. Fireball coming, make a saving throw to dodge some of its effect. Drink that lovely poison, better make a good fortitude save.

Combat (at least for martial types) is almost completely devoid of Active Defenses. AC and DR provide hard and fast passive defenses. A player can do several things to adjust his passive defense (combat expertise, armor and shields, finding cover) but aside from Bot9S has no way to do defend against that successful attack.

With 4E, saving throws are going from active to passive. The reason: to streamline combat and make it more fun (side note: fun is the reason for all changes in 4e ). Because of the change to saving throws, I strongly doubt we will see shields always providing an active defense. I do think that the designers might develop shield talents/feats that allow such an active defense for those highly specialized in shield use.

Edit: Cleared up my definition of Active/Passive defenses