Shield or no shield?

[Kaodi]

If armour was partially damage reduction, then it would make sense for shields to be armour class.

 

[Minigiant]

Shield or no shield, it doesn't matter.

The base AC assumption should be based on whatever the most generic character is.

The Human Warrior/Fighter who is a highwayman.

Strength is his main ability. Dexterity follows as second. So his Dex is probably 12-13. He probably wears leather armor or maybe studded leather or hide armor if his gang is successful. Mobility is important. He probably wield a one handed melee weapon (short sword/handaxe/mace) and a one handed ranged weapon (dagger/throwing axe/hand crossbow).

So whatever the AC for a human in the highest AC light armor +1 is should be the base.

Warrior classes, plate wearers, and high dexterity rogue-types in leather have higher AC.

Rogue-types and shield bearing cloth wearers have similar AC.

Wizards and people in plain clothes have less AC.

 

[Plane Sailing]

In D&D, shields provide a slight to moderate bonus. I hate that.

Shields should provide much better protection. It is really much harder to hit someone using a shield.

My thoughts exactly.

I really hope they are more significant in 5e

 

[Starfox]

This is difficult to balance properly.

In 3.5, the difference was a bit too big. Shields were pure cheese if used right. They could provide a +9 bonus to AC (and that's not a wall shield), give you additional armor abilities, AND be used to attack. Things like mithral bucklers even worked out for spellcasters and the nonproficient - lack of proficency gave you an attack penalty equal to the shields armor penalty, but a mithral shield has no armor penalty.

Then again, Power attack with 2 handed was also nice, and much cheaper in feats. Overall shields seemed more powerful tough.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Truth is, no edition yet has really captured the shield properly. There's a reason that "weapon + shield" was one of the most common fighting practices.

And I can see why it's difficult. Shield gives too low an AC bonus, and it's not worth it. Shield gives too high an AC bonus, and it's a no-brainer that overshadows all other options. And the gray area in between is tiny.

On a purely mechanical level, I'd love for shield to give a small AC bonus, but also let you make a roll once per round, in response to a (physical) attack, and if you equal or exceed that attack's roll, you've deflected it.

In practice, of course, this just adds another role and "interrupt" to the game, so I'm not suggesting that this is the way to go. But I do think it models the shield more accurately than what we've seen.

 

[Oni]

Definitely somewhere in the middle, so taking one option or the other doesn't deviate too much from the baseline expectation.