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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 5509403" data-attributes="member: 5890">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.</blockquote>