Shield vs. Two Weapons vs. Big Axe

[Janx]

Sounds like you need to consider probabilities.

The average of a single die is equal to the number of sides divided by 2 plus .5

In dnd, a +/- 1 is a 5% probability shift.

You can measure the impact to combat by applying that 5% to the average damage.

You can use this to balance the weapons and their penalties.

The shield extends the fighters life over rounds compared to an unshielded fighter

 

[Kingreaper]

Does this math sound balanced to everybody?

Slight flaw: If you're going to survive twice as long, but your allies AREN'T, that's not as good as dealing twice the damage.

If two-weapon/two-hander is doubling the damage output, being shielded needs to be better than 50% decrease in hits taken. Especially if you don't have any way to redirect attacks from allies to you.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Slight flaw: If you're going to survive twice as long, but your allies AREN'T, that's not as good as dealing twice the damage.

If two-weapon/two-hander is doubling the damage output, being shielded needs to be better than 50% decrease in hits taken. Especially if you don't have any way to redirect attacks from allies to you.

Even this reasoning has it's flaws - taking half damage AND redirecting all enemy attacks to yourself is effectively doubling the damage that the entire party does. Taking half damage and having the monster ignore you is effectively doing nothing. You really have to assume that you've got a party of a certain size and make some guesses about how easy it is to make monsters hit the right person before you can actually work out what's balanced and what isn't.

Most likely this is why the OP sees sword and board as imbalanced: he's thinking of the 1-on-1 scenario. In a 5 man group, doubling your damage is only increasing party damage by 20%. So if the shield guy is improving his time to live by 20%, and he's managing to take the bulk of attacks, it's all good. 20% extra time to live means ~20% less damage taken, and a +2 to AC covers that in the case that monsters hit 50% of the time.

And that's ASSUMING that you don't get any healing. Healing throws all those calculations out of whack.

 

[Herobizkit]

You could also give shield users a "block" ability which absorbs or cancels damage. Some game systems give players the choice to Parry (with held weapon), Block (with shield), or Dodge (anyone can do this). Perhaps a sword and board can block and parry in a round, while a 2-weapon user could parry with their off-hand (negating their second attack).

 

[pemerton]

Balancing the sword and shield fighter will be a bit trickier, as you are balancing not being hit, with doing more damage. So how much AC will you need to get to get hit half as often to balance reducing your opponent's hp twice as fast?

If an opponent has a default AC of 10, with an attack bonus of +0 then they would hit 50% of the time. To increase those defenses so the opponent would only hit 25% of the time you would need a +5 AC. So the right AC boost for the shield should be +5.

For the two-handed fighter, you'll be hitting half as often as the two weapon fighter. Since I am making all one-handed weapons d8 damage, a two-handed fighter should do double damage to make up for it, with 2d8 per round.

Saeviomagy and Kingreaper make good points. In addition to what they say, I would consider this: a combat model in which many hits miss (because of the effect of a shield) can end up producing the same outcome, but taking longer to eventuate (because more rounds end up with nothing achieved). Does this make for gripping combat? (High bonus Runequest can have this problem.) One solution is to allow for other sorts of benefits or opportunities to be opened up by dragging out the combat (I believe that Iron Heroes does this with its "tokens" mechanics). But this will introduce further complications into your balance equation.

You might also want to consider that a +5 AC bonus (or any other bonus, for that matter) is going to change in the overall effect it has, unless AC and to-hit bonuses scale in a consistent fashion (a la 4e).

For example, suppose monster A has a +2 to hit, B a +4, C a +6 and D a +8 to hit, that leather grants +2 AC, that chain grants +5 AC, and that a shield grants +5 AC.

Then here are some chances to hit, for monsters A through D, vs leather (+shield) and chain (+shield):

A (+2): 55% (30%), 40% (15%)

B (+4): 65% (40%), 50% (25%)

C (+6): 75% (50%), 60% (35%)

D (+8): 85% (60%), 70% (45%)​

You can see that depending on the monster's attack bonus and the PC's armour combination, the shield can go from reducing the to hit chance by less than one-third (leather plus shield while fighting monster D) to reducing the to hit chance by close to two-thirds (chain plus shield while fighting monster A). Once DEX bonuses, magic bonuses etc to AC get taken into account, the contribution that a shield makes to defence is going to be even more variable.

 

[rkwoodard]

shield, 2 weapon

Disclaimer, my weapon knowledge comes from LARPing. (which may be about as realistic as D&D).

I tinkered with the C&C ruleset on this, cause I thought shields were underpowered and 2 weapon fighting was overpowered.

Shields, start at +2, and are easy to magic (very plentiful)

2 weapon fightings gave you either: 1) +1 AC, or 2) +2 to hit, or 3) +1d4 damage. you could switch between the three each round.


I only ran it a short time, but it seemed to work, at least at low levels.

I hate multiple attack rolls in a round.

RK

 

[Argyle King]

What if the guy using the shield wants to use his shield as a weapon? Does he get the benefits of two weapon fighting?

 

[rkwoodard]

Honestly, I don't remember, but I think I let them give up the +2 sheild bonus to get the +2 to hit, but I don't think I give them the +1d4 damage option.

 

[Corinth]

Shields are portable cover. They ought to grant much higher bonuses to the user's defense than the rules currently grant, and a skilled shield user is a devastating fighter on the battlefield--"shield-bearer" was a mark of honor for a reason, and it wasn't to be a glorified caddy; shield-bearers fought alongside their masters in battle, working as a team to frighteningly good effect--so if a player decided to spent character resources upon the use of shields in combat as offensive weapons, then they ought to retain the defensive benefits while doing so. (Fighting with two one-handed weapons was rare for a reason, folks.)