Animated Shields and Touch AC

[FoeHammer]

So my character has an animated shield. What I would like to know is if this would affect his touch AC, which it would not as an ordinary shield IIRC. As the Animated entry doesn't mention this, I'm looking for a consensus from the Playground or a link to somewhere where a ruling might have been made.

[Morbis Meh]

Just shield AC, the shield is just a shield only floating in front of you.

[Boci]

Not by default, but there are ways to get shield bonus to touch AC.

[Greenish]

Yeah, by default it won't add to touch AC, you'd need something like Parrying Shield or Shield Ward feats.

[FoeHammer]

ok, so by RAW an anomated shield doesn't provide touch AC. Why is that? Just thinking about it logically if a touch spell hit the shield as it was flying around in front of you, how would the damage affect you?

[Greenish]

ok, so by RAW an anomated shield doesn't provide touch AC. Why is that? Just thinking about it logically if a touch spell hit the shield as it was flying around in front of you, how would the damage affect you?http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/spellcomp_gallery/92302.jpgThat's a touch attack. Does it matter whether the shield is held or floating?

[Geigan]

ok, so by RAW an anomated shield doesn't provide touch AC. Why is that? Just thinking about it logically if a touch spell hit the shield as it was flying around in front of you, how would the damage affect you?

Floating was always a bit of a misnomer for the effect. It says you still take penalties and such as if you were holding the shield, so I always fluffed it as a sort of invisible third arm holding the shield for you. Of course that's just personal fluff.

[Jack_Simth]

So my character has an animated shield. What I would like to know is if this would affect his touch AC, which it would not as an ordinary shield IIRC. As the Animated entry doesn't mention this, I'm looking for a consensus from the Playground or a link to somewhere where a ruling might have been made.
Touch attacks take advantage of the mystic connection between a person and their equipment, which (95% of the time) prevents the Fighter-20's full plate from getting dissolved when he's hit by a Great Wyrm Black Dragon's Acid breath. With a touch attack, that mystic connection is subverted, and used to channel the energy of the spell into the target, despite the fact that there's a plate of steel in the way.

An Animated Shield extends that connection to itself while it's active, even though it's a little ways away from you. Ioun stones work the same way. Such things can be physically rent from you, and some effects bypass the mystic connection and hurt your stuff directly, but for the most part, you've got a mystic connection about you preventing your stuff from getting hurt.

[KillianHawkeye]

An animated shield is a device which enables you to use a shield without it taking up one of your hands. That's all. It still functions exactly how a shield normally functions.

Figuring out why is an exercise left for the reader. (In other words, come up with something that explains how it works, as Jack Simth has done.)