Workshop: Shields and Shield Block

Felt gross this past week, so I didn’t have the energy or motivation to do another deep dive in time for my normal release. This was faster. Potentially back to normal next week.

Image courtesy of Paizo, Inc.

What Paizo did to shields in second edition is great. They made them, and their use, more dynamic and fun to use.

For those that don’t know, when you have a shield, you gain access to an action called Raise a Shield. This action gives you the shield’s circumstance bonus to your armor class (usually a +2) until the start of your next turn. Characters that also have the Shield Block general feat gain access to the Shield Block reaction that triggers if you have you would take damage while you have your shield raised. The Shield Block reaction applies the hardness of the shield as damage reduction against the damage you took, then the remaining damage gets applied to both the shield and the character.

All shields have their own hardness and hit point values. When a shield is at half its hit points, it is considered Broken and is unusable. If it's hit points reach zero, it is Destroyed and cannot be repaired.

This is all good stuff. It really makes shield use interesting and very important without seeming out of place for rules reflecting (or at least inferring) reality.

The Problem

Here’s the thing, the rules as written only work for the first couple levels of the game. The way that damage scales in Pathfinder 2e, any moderately decent attack from about 3^rd or 4^th level on will either break or destroy a shield in a single blow.

When I was running the first module for the Age of Ashes adventure path, the champion in the group just stopped using shield block because it became so useless before the end of the first module.

A 4^th level creature they were fighting did 2d6+3 damage on a normal hit versus his steel shield (hardness 5, hit points 20, break threshold 10). If the creature did minimum damage, the hardness would take it all and no issues. If the creature does average damage, the shield takes five points of damage and has one block left before being broken. This doesn’t take into account criticals or special abilities (like twin takedown which allows the creature to make two attacks and combine the damage to overcome damage reduction and such).

Again, this is only a 4^th level creature. It gets so much worse in a level or two.

There is a type of magical shield, called a Sturdy Shield, that exists solely as a way to keep the shield block feat viable at higher levels.

This is a bad design. For multiple reasons.

There is a whole string of feats in the fighter class that is built around allowing you to use the Shield Block reaction more often. None of those feats actually makes your shield live longer. Unless the DM has magic shops readily available in their world (I do not), it forces the DM to give out the Sturdy Shield as essentially mandatory rewards since not doing so would completely negate the player’s completely reasonable choices for their character.

I hate that. I don’t want any magic items to be mandatory rewards to keep the balance of the game. They should be fun additions and new bits for people to play with.

My Fix

After realizing how bad Shield Block was even at 4^th level, things needed to change. After coming up with a few ideas – I briefly floated the idea of making runes for the shield before deciding that it was not the direction I wanted to go – I settled on what follows and it’s worked great for the year plus that we’ve played since enacting the rule.

The Shield Block feat gets additional rules added to the end of the feat's description.

Additionally, when your proficiency with simple or martial weapons reach Expert, Master, or Legendary, increase your shield’s Hardness, Hit Points, and Break Threshold as follows:

Expert  -  Hardness +5, Hit Points/Break Threshold x4

Master  -  Hardness +10, Hit Points/Break Threshold x6

Legendary – Hardness +15, Hit Points/Break Threshold x8

That’s it.

Well, except for the rolldown effect of removing the Sturdy Shield from the game since this rule removes the need for them. That was part of the goal of this rule anyway, so it's hardly rolldown.

Reasoning

These numbers were reached by comparing three of the levels of Sturdy Shield against the base Steel Shield from the equipment chapter and figuring out the math difference between their numbers. The three levels I chose to use were the ones whose item level was roughly when the martial characters would get their weapon proficiency increases so that everything stayed roughly level.

I tied it to weapon proficiency level because the use of a shield is a weapon/fighting skill. It’s not that the shield is actually getting harder/more health any more than the character is actually getting more blood in their bodies when they gain more Hit Points each level. It’s a reflection of how skilled the character has become at taking blows with the shield. Tying it to proficiency level vice character level also means that a wizard will never be as good at using a shield as a martial character. Well, without some martial archetype feats at least.

Does it mean that Shield Block is effectively a dead feat for casters? Pretty much. But I’m okay with that. Casters get a bunch of crazy stuff to mess with the world, they can be bad with shields.

If you truly desire everyone to have a chance to use a shield effectively at all levels, I’d tie it to character level. Probably levels 5, 13, and 19. You should still tie it to the Shield Block feat though.

Bonus

Here's a bonus tidbit about shields. Give the Shove trait to shields. Not bucklers or tower shields, just shields. There are zero reasons why they shouldn't have it as shoving with a shield is absolutely a thing that was done with them. It also removes the need for a sword and board fighter to have a free hand (a requirement for the Shove action) to push people around. This is a good thing.

Summary

If you want to use my shield house rules here they are separated from the rest of the text.

Shields (not bucklers or tower shields) have the Shove trait.

Add to the end of the Shield Block Feat:

“Additionally, when your proficiency with simple or martial weapons reach Expert, Master, or Legendary, increase your shield’s Hardness, Hit Points, and Break Threshold as follows:

Expert  -  Hardness +5, Hit Points/Break Threshold x4

Master  -  Hardness +10, Hit Points/Break Threshold x6

Legendary – Hardness +15, Hit Points/Break Threshold x8”

OR

“Additionally, when you reach 5^th, 13^th, and 19^th level, increase your shield’s Hardness, Hit Points, and Break Threshold as follows:

5^th Level  -  Hardness +5, Hit Points/Break Threshold x4

13^th Level  -  Hardness +10, Hit Points/Break Threshold x6

19^th Level  -  Hardness +15, Hit Points/Break Threshold x8