Enhancement Bonuses and Disarms.

[S_Grey]

So I ran across a problem the other day in finding the proper total bonus applied to one of my player's rolls against a disarm.

The player in question was being disarmed of his +3 sword. The player in question has the shield ward feat (PHB2) which allows him to apply his shield bonus to defensive disarm rolls. He uses a +3 shield.

So my question is:

Does my player add both the enhancement bonus from his weapon and his shield on his attack roll against being disarmed, or do the enhancement bonuses overlap?

[ericgrau]

He has a total bonus to attack rolls (+3) and a total shield bonus (+4 or +5 depending on the kind of shield). They stack.

The enhancement bonus is added to the base bonus to make a total bonus that is of one type. Unless 2 enhancement bonuses are being applied to the same item, they don't interact or interfere with eachother.

Other examples:

If a player has bracers of armor +4 and a +1 chain shirt, his armor bonus is +5 (+4 < +5). Not +8 nor +9. The enhancement bonus on the bracers don't replace the one on the chain shirt. Rather the entire chain shirt armor bonus (+4+1=+5) replaces the entire bracers armor bonus (+4).
Someone with +1 natural armor, a +3 enhancement bonus to natural armor, a +2 chain shirt, a 16 dexterity and nothing else has 10+(1+3)+(4+2)+3=10+4+6+3=23 AC. The enhancement bonus to natural armor and the enhancement bonus to armor don't get in each other's way; they are unrelated.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The +3 sword gives him an enhancement bonus to attack rolls, which applies in its entirety to disarm checks.

The +3 shield gives him an enhancement bonus to his shield bonus to AC. He gets to apply his entire shield bonus to AC as an unnamed bonus to disarm checks. The +3 is not added to disarm checks as an enhancement bonus, but as a portion of an unnamed bonus, which stacks with everything.

[GenghisDon]

And that covers that...

Shield Ward seems like an awesome feat to me (although it helping so much vs disarm attempts is just gravy, perhaps overkill).