Offensive Shield fighting/TWF with a Shield?

[SA HnK416]

I'm making a new character for a friends game and I want to try something new, and was thinking about making a "Sword and board", technically "hammer and board", who uses his shield as an off hand weapon. Sort of going around swinging the hammer and knocking heads with the shield. I've done it in 4E, but I've never made anything but Rogues/Casters in 3.5, and I have no idea if there are any feats that allow you to use a shield that way, or if there are any shields that act as weapons, like in 4E.
For reference, we're at level 3, and my stats are;
Human Fighter
18 STR
15 DEX
18 CON
16 INT
15 WIS
13 CHA
Any help would be appreciated.

[Andion Isurand]

These feats are worth looking at:

Improved Shield Bash
Shield Specialization (PH2)
Shield Ward (PH2)

You will need a 19 Dex to qualify for all of the following:

Two-Weapon Fighting
Improved TWF
Greater TWF

I would swap your Dex and Con to make the most of the TWF

[Feytalist]

It's possible, yeah. It's going to take a lot of feats, though.

You can shield bash with light and heavy shields, but you lose you shield bonus on every round you do that. Improved Shield Bash (PHB) fixes this. Agile Shield Fighter (PHB2) allows you to fight with a weapon in one and and a shield in the other, and the wording of the feat is such that it allows you to use a heavy shield (which is a one-hand weapon) with no further penalty while TWFing. You'll probably want this. Then there's Shield Specialisation (PHB2, it's a prerequisite for Agile Shield Fighter) bumps your shield AC bonus with a stacking +1. That's what you need for your build, attacking with a shield and weapon at the same time. You're eventually going to want a shield with shield spikes and the bashing enhancement, to enhance your bashing damage.

Then there's a couple of other feats you might find useful. Shield Ward (PHB2) allows you to add your shield bonus to your touch AC in certain situations. that should make carrying a shield around a bit more useful.

Then there's Shield Charge and Shield Slam (both from CW) that allows you to trip and possibly daze an enemy on a successful charging shield bash.

And now, since you're on a roll, why not pick up Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush and Shock Trooper (CW for the latter) for more charging and bull rushing options.

Edit: Agile Shield Fighter overrides the TWF feat line. You get no benefit benefit from those feats when you use Agile Shield Fighter.

[Little Brother]

You want ToB. Swordsage or Warblade(Or both. Use those ridiculous stats to power the swordsage damage bonus) are best. Tiger Claw, for TWF but better.

A fighter dip would be good. You could get Hit-and-Run fighter, which is pro, especially with Sapphire Nightmare Blade and Assassin's Stance.

Only problem is that Tiger Claw doesn't like hammers. Still, a disciplined hammer would work.

Hey, you might even want to build an Idiot Crusader, though it might be a bit High-OP, it's one of the most fun builds I have ever played.

EDIT: The most fun shield-bash build I played was a Bard/Knight with a touch of ToB and fighter. Used the Gauntlets of Heartfelt Blows, the Slippers of Awesome, and an Echoblade. Wasn't super powerful, but fun as hell. The bard did most of the carrying, though.

[Thiyr]

You want ToB. Swordsage or Warblade(Or both. Use those ridiculous stats to power the swordsage damage bonus) are best. Tiger Claw, for TWF but better.

A fighter dip would be good. You could get Hit-and-Run fighter, which is pro, especially with Sapphire Nightmare Blade and Assassin's Stance.

Only problem is that Tiger Claw doesn't like hammers. Still, a disciplined hammer would work.

Hey, you might even want to build an Idiot Crusader, though it might be a bit High-OP, it's one of the most fun builds I have ever played.

EDIT: The most fun shield-bash build I played was a Bard/Knight with a touch of ToB and fighter. Used the Gauntlets of Heartfelt Blows, the Slippers of Awesome, and an Echoblade. Wasn't super powerful, but fun as hell. The bard did most of the carrying, though.

While it didn't do the twf end of things due to lack of pounce and a few other issues, I had quite a bit of fun doing a shield basher using shield charge/slam, knockback (races of stone), and dungeoncrasher(dungeonscape, a fighter ACF). Sadly, the last two are technically a tad out of reach for you due to race/level. if you can talk your DM into letting you take dungeoncrasher later than it was meant to be taken (I'd allow it so long as the second level of it comes 3 levels after the first, and it's on even levels), I'd highly suggest going down that lane. Sadly, knockback will be out of reach for you due to your race (unless you can find some way to get large size easily). Again, though, if you can get your DM to allow the 3.0 version of improved shield bash (which is a completely different version than the 3.5 one), you can to some degree make up for the loss of knockback. ToB ends up being a very good choice to support this as well.

For all your shield based needs, I will also highly recommend Person Man's Guide to Shields (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123630). Seriously, good stuff.

[Krazzman]

On a side note, there is a Pathfinder Feat for that, that'll negate all maluses you have. Shield Mastery or something like that...or was it part of an archetype? You could ask your DM.

[SA HnK416]

Thanks for the help. The only problem is that I'm stuck with Fighter, so no multi-classing, and there's a lot of book restrictions, but hopefully PHB2 will be okay.

Still slightly upset that there's no actual "This shield can be used as a normal weapon" thing, but I suppose bashing counts for that.

[panaikhan]

There is a weapon in one of the PF books, basically an animal skull with a short-sword strapped into it, that counts as a shield as well as a weapon. I think it's light too.
I was going to make a TWF barbarian build with it, based on one of my old Darksun characters (that had a very similar weapon)

[Thiyr]

Thanks for the help. The only problem is that I'm stuck with Fighter, so no multi-classing, and there's a lot of book restrictions, but hopefully PHB2 will be okay.

Still slightly upset that there's no actual "This shield can be used as a normal weapon" thing, but I suppose bashing counts for that.

I don't quite see what you mean by "can be used as a normal weapon". Anyone can bash with a shield, and it's a regular ol' bludgeoning weapon. Can be enchanted like a weapon, can be weapon focused and such, etc. There's no feat to let you do that because it's the default. It just normally carries enough penalties that unless you're going that route to begin with, it's not really worth doing. It follows all the same rules, though. The only downside is that -technically- it can only be used as an offhand weapon (meaning half strength to damage), but I'd say most reasonable DMs would let you use it as a primary if you were so inclined, and that's not a huge issue for you anyway as you're gonna be using it as an offhanded weapon anyway from what i can gather.


edit: and if you can't multiclass, can you PrC? if Tome of battle isn't a banned book, definitely consider picking up martial study as a feat, as well. Dungeoncrasher is still a fighter thing, so that's still a good idea as well if you can manage to finagle some way of turning a shield bash into a bull rush as well.

[Aotrs Commander]

Edit: Agile Shield Fighter overrides the TWF feat line. You get no benefit benefit from those feats when you use Agile Shield Fighter.

A RAW reading if the feat also only gives you one shield attack, though.

Granted, the pre-reqs and feat tax is much lower than for TWF/ITWF/GTWF/ Oversized TWF (from Complete Adventurer, which allows you to treat one-handed off-hand weapons as light) which gives you the same result but with your iteratives. (A generous DM might give you those anyway, of course.)

(Personally, in my games, I give fighters a feat every level anyway, and we've often forgotten/ignored in practise the Dex requirement for TWF anyway. (We actually have a fighter that uses the above route, and I'm pretty sure he's not high Dex.) We've also assumed there's no reason why you can't use a shield as your primary - and we give off-hand weapons full damage in any case, for that matter (given the feat-investment-heaviness, I see no reason it shouldn't get theoretically better damage than THF, sans PA). I even made a tactical feat especially for Roman-Legionary-type tactics that stacks up with the other various shield feats (Shield Wall, Phalanx Fighting etc).)