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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hewligan" data-source="post: 4808882" data-attributes="member: 19688">The second and third of these houserules I have been using for years, but the first one is an interesting concept. It certainly addresses part of the problem with the shield just not being powerful enough (why take a shield in 3e or later when you can do double weapon fighting), and also seems to have quite a strong in-game reason for working.I think I would adjust it a little, just to avoid it becoming unbalanced at higher levels when single foes dealing large amounts of damage with single attacks are more common than the multi-foe lower levels. Perhaps:* "Broken shield": A character using a shield may elect to discard it in order to reduce the damage from an attack. The first 6 hp of damage are avoided completely, with any damage above this level being halved. This option can be elected after rolling for damage.And to add my experiences to the thread: I was only lucky enough to play D&D for a few months before our GM, a teacher at high school, died. I then took over GMing, started a gaming group at lunch times (that grew to about 20 people playing all sorts of games), and just winged it. I was always in the school that preferred the story to develop and characters to build, and thus character death was a bit less common than the rules alone would suggest.</blockquote>