Shields and the Left Handed

[Sixchan]

I've been considering this for all of...2 days now.

Shields are meant to catch and deflect weapon blows, but if you have a shield strapped to your left arm, it is difficult--if not near impossible--to block a blow coming in directly on your right side with that shield, right?

So given that, would a left handed character be able to negate and enemy's armour bonus gained from a shield when he strikes? Although, given that he could, a right handed attacker would be able to neglect the shield bonus of a right handed person...

Now, were this a feat, it would be out of place as no other feats, AFAIK, give you penalties as well as benefits, and if it were something the player could choose (or choose, and then have, say, a 1 in 10 chance of getting), he would probably never wield a shield since they are useless, which would lead to more dual wielders and 2HW users.

What do you think?

 

[Deset Gled]

The concept you propose makes sense in terms of real-world fighting. Unfortunately, I would have to say that this is yet another place in D+D where the real world simply doesn't work out. When starting to worry about things like left and right hands, it would also become important to consider facing. Facing simply doesn't exist in the core rules. It is feasable to create a system for it (though I think it would be a bit more trouble than it's worth).

I also am having trouble with thinking about how Ambidexterity would fit into all this.

 

[Sixchan]

I guess you're right. Oh well, it was just a thought.

 

[Xeriar]

Left-handedness is so effective in the real world I even trained myself for it.

It is, ultimately not 'better', however, and people will learn to deal with it, so D&D just leaving it may be best.

 

[SylverFlame]

Simply assume the character with the sword attacks the front of the opponent. The defender will bring their shield up to block, and being a leftie or a rightie doesn't affect this too awful much. As such, I look on handedness as flavourful and not a big deal until someone gets ambidexterity.

A neat trick is to give a population a belief having to do with people of a certain handedness. This happened in real life when school teachers would be nasty to lefties, forcing them to learn to write with right hand. This persisted as the accepted mode of teaching lefties until about 30 or 40 years ago I think (probably wrong about that, it's likely even shorter).

It's not uncommon to hear of these lefties having been strapped for using their left hand. Nasty but true.