Guys, I need help making a dual-shield tank!

[pso_zeldaphreak]

A player in my campaign wants to be a literal shield wall, and wants to survive encounters in doing so. What kind of build progression are we looking at? Dealing a great amount of damage isn't necessary, although obviously not a bad thing, and Tome of Battle is fine (although good lord I need to go read it).

Best thing I saw was Knight or crusader, with levels (maybe) in Deepwarden and Deepstone Sentinel, if he ends up being a dwarf.

[Flickerdart]

What do you imagine having dual shields does for you, aside from dropping ridiculous stacks on having two different sets of enchantments?

[AlltheBooks]

I think there was a dual shield dungeoncrasher/pinball build that could daze or something. I'll poke around.

EDIT: Was distracted sorry yeah I thought so it's a build by JaronK
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1532.0

[EugeneVoid]

Blood-spiked Charger?

[zlefin]

the biggest problem is that you don't get the shield bonus for wielding two shields at the same time; i'm not sure if there's anything that gets you around that.

[pso_zeldaphreak]

Blood-spiked Charger was one I saw, and it looked great.

The reason for 2 shields is primarily flavor based. If nothing else, he wants to use the shield as his primary method of attack.

[Zweisteine]

I would sugget that you remind your player that simply surviving is not enough. Without enough offensive capabilities, a character will not be successful.

If he's alone, he won't win because he can't hit his enemies hard enough.

In a party, a few problems could arise.
1. Most likely, he is less of a threat than his party-mates, so monsters ignore him, and the squishier characters suffer.
2. Even if he does have a moderate damage output, he does less damage than others, and is harder to kill, making him a less valuable target.

Unless he also has a way act as an attack magnet, being a living wall is useless, because you can walk around a wall.

That said, Races of Stone has some good stuff for heavily armored characters (like a few armors that give +10 AC, and a shield that gives +3).

[pso_zeldaphreak]

Goad, also from Races of Stone, IIRC, allows him to attract enemies, as do knight's challenges. I don't know if there are Tome of battle stances etc that do the same (AFB and its a new acquire for me).

[Bakkan]

He'll want to check out the feat Agile Shield Fighter from PHB II, which will allow him to dual wield his shields without needing a high Dex and drops the penalties to where they would be if his off hand weapon were light.

[Baroknik]

Has he considered just using a single shield and building him as an ubercharger? Dealing massive damage is a good way to force enemies to attack.
The good thing about using a shield is that there are tons of ways to effectively boost it's size! Generally size boosts for damage aren't great, but they can get good at the high end.
Using a heavy spiked bashing shield gets you to 2d6 damage.
Enlarge person puts you at 3d6
If you allow him to boost the size one more in exchange for it being a "two handed shield" you get 4d6 while enlarged and effectively colossal sized.
Any further gained size grants +2d6 damage per size category.
Combine with ubercharger multipliers and have fun!

[Azoth]

Dungeon Crasher fighter6/warblade or crusader x/Bloodstorm Blade/Master Thrower. Charging bullrush people with your shield. When that isn't an option pinball people with it.

[Derpldorf]

If your insistent on "Duel shielding" then you may want to consider the Gnome Tortoise Blade. It's basically a buckler with a blade sticking out of the front edge of it. It counts as both a weapon and a shield and can be enchanted as both (the shield part can actually be enchanted as a weapon too, so you can double enchant it.) The buckler part can shield bash and have spiked or razors attached if your so inclined (and enchanted again!)

[Bullet06320]

dwarvin defender build maybe, large steel spiked shields
TWF fighting and shield bash to keep the AC bonus's from the shields

[Baroknik]

dwarvin defender build maybe, large steel spiked shields
TWF fighting and shield bash to keep the AC bonus's from the shields

TWF'ing shields doesn't give stacking AC, as they are both shield bonuses.

Making one riverine gives half the bonus as deflection though, so 2 shields = 1.5x AC

[Rubik]

dwarvin defender build maybe, large steel spiked shields
TWF fighting and shield bash to keep the AC bonus's from the shieldsThere's only one PrC I know of that's worse for a PC than dwarven defender: the shining blade of Heironeous.

Try deepstone sentinel from ToB instead.

[ArqArturo]

I have to second with the Deepstone Sentinel. Better HD, full BAB, good saves, not so impressive abilities, but the best thing is that they use Constitution for AC.

But, I can't stop thinking of this when I read the two-shielded bit :smallbiggrin::
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EiqS%2BONIL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[Bloodgruve]

A Single Spiked shield can function as an effective weapon, and it should be able to be wielded with 2 hands.

So, Improved Shield Bash, Shield Charge, Shield Slam, Battle Jump, Leap Attack, Imp Bull Rush/Shock Trooper, Bashing enchantment, Cleric/Paladin Energized Shield, etc..

I've allowed a player in my campaign to be a Dual Shielder. I homebrewed a feat that allows the base shield AC bonus to stack (no enchantment stacking though) and the ability to use some shield wall feats solo.

[Darrin]

Best thing I saw was Knight or crusader, with levels (maybe) in Deepwarden and Deepstone Sentinel, if he ends up being a dwarf.

Hmm. How about:

Fighter 4/SLT+WT Barbarian 2/Crusader 4/Deepstone Sentinel 5/Crusader +5
Feats:
1st) Improved Shield Bash, TWF
2nd) Shield Specialization
3rd) Agile Shield Fighter
4th) Shield Charge
6th) Shield Slam, Wolf Totem -> Improved Trip
9th) Power Attack
12th) Improved TWF
15th) Greater TWF
18th) Leap Attack

Whenever you charge, you get a full attack with two heavy spiked bashing shields, free trip attempt (Shield Slam), free follow-up attack (Improved Trip), and the target must make a Fort save vs. dazed for 1 round (Shield Charge). (If that's not enough tripping, you can add Knock-Down for more.) I looked at Blood-Spiked Charger, but didn't have room for the two Weapon Focii. It adds some more damage, but that shouldn't really be much of a deficiency with this build.

I tried to fit some Knight or Deepwarden in there, but that just delays the shield-specific stuff and may prevent the build from getting 9th level maneuvers. If that's not a concern, then Knight is... somewhat problematic, as you don't need the Mounted Combat feats (unless you want to ride around a Flying Force Surfboard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=10294124&postcount=5) as a mount) and your non-Knight levels weakens the DCs of your Knight's Challenge stuff.

I'm also tempted to throw Dragonborn in there and swap Mounted Combat for Dragon Tail, add Prehensile Tail + third shield for Multi-Weapon Fighting.

A riverine shield is expensive but you can treat half of the shield bonus as a deflection bonus, which will stack with your first shield bonus. You can also use Inlindl School (Drow of the Underdark) to convert one of your shield bonuses to an attack bonus, but it only works with light or finessable weapons. Light shields would work best there, but then taking Agile Shield Fighter would be pointless. You could maybe get around that with a pair of Feycraft heavy shields (DMGII): they count as light weapons for the purposes of Weapon Finesse, and do bashing damage as light shields, but still have the shield bonus of a heavy shield and count as one-handed weapons for Power Attack and Agile Shield Fighter.

[Bloodgruve]

Darrin,

Does Agile Shield Fighter stack with TWF or would it be better to just go Oversized TWF? Agile Shield Fighter simply states -2 on the attacks, not a reduction like TWF, but I suppose if you apply ASF first then TWF.. But then you'd have +0 Primary and +4 Off Hand??

Does an attack from a spiked shield count as either a 'shield bash' or an 'armed strike attack'?

Blood~

[Rubik]

Darrin,

Does Agile Shield Fighter stack with TWF or would it be better to just go Oversized TWF?Go for the MIC's strongarm bracers. You spend a tiny amount of gold for an item which works better than spending an incredibly valuable feat.

[Flickerdart]

There's only one PrC I know of that's worse for a PC than dwarven defender: the shining blade of Heironeous.

Try deepstone sentinel from ToB instead.
Shining Blade doesn't actively encourage the PC to act counter-intuitively to the thing they are trying to do, like Dwarven Defender, though.

[Rubik]

Shining Blade doesn't actively encourage the PC to act counter-intuitively to the thing they are trying to do, like Dwarven Defender, though.And yet the shining blade PrC takes away casting that can make your weapon considerably better (among other things, such as smiting and a mount) and gives you a +1 equivalent weapon 1/day instead.

Yay.

[Flickerdart]

And yet the shining blade PrC takes away casting that can make your weapon considerably better (among other things, such as smiting and a mount) and gives you a +1 equivalent weapon 1/day instead.

Yay.
There's a difference between "I want to hit dudes and I am worse at hitting dudes than I would have been" and "I want to protect dudes but can't do it at all because my class features require me to stand in one place and not get between my friends and pointy bits."

[Darrin]

Does Agile Shield Fighter stack with TWF or would it be better to just go Oversized TWF?


Mechanically, they are pretty much identical. TWF penalties = -2 primary/-2 offhand. The only real difference is Agile Shield Fighter requires two non-TWF bonus feats, and Oversize TWF just requires TWF.

Replace Agile Shield Fighter with Oversize TWF in the build above and there's room for another feat. Hmm. Unless you really want Shield Specialization, which isn't exactly a really good feat (just +1 AC, Shape Soulmeld: Wormtail Belt for +2 AC is better), but not bad for a shield-based fighter that wants to justify using a shield.



Agile Shield Fighter simply states -2 on the attacks, not a reduction like TWF, but I suppose if you apply ASF first then TWF.. But then you'd have +0 Primary and +4 Off Hand??


No, Agile Shield Fighter replaces the penalties for TWF. Taking TWF with Agile Shield Fighter does nothing for you (you already get an offhand attack via Agile Shield Fighter) except allow you to take Improved/Greater TWF.



Does an attack from a spiked shield count as either a 'shield bash' or an 'armed strike attack'?


"Armed strike attack" is not defined by the rules, but taken at face value, it sounds like any sort of armed melee attack. Armed in this case probably means "manufactured or natural melee weapon." A shield bash is a martial bludgeoning weapon (manufactured), so it already counts as an armed strike attack. The designer assumed Agile Shield Fighter would be used "sword & board style" with a typical melee weapon (sword, axe, etc.) rather than another shield. If you allow shield bashes to be primary without quibbling over the "offhand" language in the weapon description, then "shield bash" and "armed strike attack" are the same thing from a mechanical standpoint.

[Bloodgruve]

No, Agile Shield Fighter replaces the penalties for TWF. Taking TWF with Agile Shield Fighter does nothing for you (you already get an offhand attack via Agile Shield Fighter) except allow you to take Improved/Greater TWF.


So..

Agile Shield Fighter "These penalties replace the normal ones you incur for fighting with two weapons." If Large Spiked Shields are handled as standard weapons you would, without any feats, have -6 MH and -10 OH. With ASF its -2/-2.

Now, TWF, "Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6."

If we treat both spiked shields as weapons with ASF and then apply the reduction to the -2/-2 penalties with TWF, wouldn't that bring the attacks to at least -0/-0 if using either 2 Spiked Shields or one shield and a sword?

I'm sure this isn't what was intended but ASF replaces then TWF reduces.. If they are applied in that order..

IDK, just looking at it by RAW. Not saying it would be valid in a game.

Blood~

[Osiris]

Get your shields the Bashing enchantment. Now you can use your shields as weapons.
EDIT: also, the Agile Shield Fighter feat is useful.

[Gotterdammerung]

Look up the magic item Eric's Shield. It is from a printed module using the characters from the D&D cartoon. And it sounds similar to what your friend is wanting to do.

[Metahuman1]

Bind Vestige + Improved Bind Vestige Delver-Nari (I probably spells the name wrong, he's a second level vestige.)

Bind him. Now get a Riverine Animated Object, a little one, and hide it in your armor. Have it not resist and place Delver-Nari's ability to split damage with a target on it. Congrats, you now only take half damage. That should help with being tanky.

Beyond that, play a crusader with a couple of levels of Warblade for Diamond mind concentration in place of saves counters, Wall of Blades and Iron Heart Surge.

Get combat reflexes, TWF + Double Strike, Karmatic Strike and Robilars Gambit. Stone Power is good too along with highest possible physical scores.

Lastly, there is a shield in sandstorm that let's you do the 50% miss chance thing. Get it made of our Mithril and have it have a thin riverine coating, and buy a collar of perpetual attendance. The unseen servant can place it so that you can have a 50% miss chance off it, while wearing armor spiked armor for TWF + Double Strike, and holding a tower shield for defensive enchantments and AC and a spiked heavy shield for bashing.

[Darrin]

I'm sure this isn't what was intended but ASF replaces then TWF reduces.. If they are applied in that order..

IDK, just looking at it by RAW. Not saying it would be valid in a game.


I had not considered that before. Hmmm. That could make Agile Shield Fighter very interesting... in general, you're allowed to order things in whatever way is most beneficial to you.

My main beef with that would be the -2/-2 TWF penalties are extremely hard to get rid of... I think Tempest and Bloodclaw Master are the only two ways that don't involve multiple heads. It seems unlikely that's how they intended Agile Shield Fighter + TWF to work.

[Bakkan]

The point of Agile Shield Fighter is you take it instead of any of the TWF line. Just remove TWF from your build entirly and you get the same feat you would have saved by taking oversized TWF but without a Dex requirement.

[Metahuman1]

Except that this only get's you 1 extra attack, 2 with the speed property in play, not 3 extra attacks and 4 with the speed property in play.

As for getting rid of the -2/-2, my favorite thing to do is get an animated object with a permanent shrink item on it, and when it's made have it made with the weapons Finesse feat. It only has to make a DC 10 which is should auto make at that size category with weapons Finesses to use it's actions to Aid Another and give me a +2 to hit, which off sets the penalty.

What always bugges me was the 1/2 str mod on my off hand. I've still not found a way past that.

[Darrin]

The point of Agile Shield Fighter is you take it instead of any of the TWF line. Just remove TWF from your build entirly and you get the same feat you would have saved by taking oversized TWF but without a Dex requirement.

That would be the sensible and more optimized thing to do, but TWF isn't about doing the sensible thing. Moar TWF = MOAR DAKKA!

Now that I look at the RAW on the TWF feat, I don't think you can use it with Agile Shield Fighter to reduce your penalties to 0/0. The text of the feat says you reduce your primary penalty by 2 and your offhand by 6, which brings the standard TWF penalties down to -4/-4. The reduction to -2/-2 comes from the TWF rules in the combat section when you use a light weapon.

There's an odd quirk to RAW there, though. If your offhand weapon is light when you use Agile Shield Fighter, you get the two point reduction, so you get 0/0 even without taking the TWF feat.

But... we can do that with a heavy offhand shield, too. If we take Oversize TWF (because at this point we like to set fire to our feat slots just to watch 'em burn), it counts as light, so we get the 2 point reduction.


What always bugges me was the 1/2 str mod on my off hand. I've still not found a way past that.

Bloodclaw Master can do it, but only with Tiger Claw weapons, and you take a ding on your BAB. If you dip monk, your unarmed strikes always get full Str bonus... only you have to live with the shame of having monk levels. Battle Dancer dip should fix that.

There's also a disfunction with double weapons. The rules say you treat a double weapon as a one-handed weapon and a light weapon for the purposes of determining attack penalties, but says nothing about how to determine damage. The damage rules in the combat section are contradictory. First it says offhand damage is x0.5 Str, then it says two-handed damage is x1.5 Str. And while the offhand portion of a double weapon is treated as light for attack penalties, it is wielded with two hands.

[Bloodgruve]

I had not considered that before. Hmmm. That could make Agile Shield Fighter very interesting... in general, you're allowed to order things in whatever way is most beneficial to you.

My main beef with that would be the -2/-2 TWF penalties are extremely hard to get rid of... I think Tempest and Bloodclaw Master are the only two ways that don't involve multiple heads. It seems unlikely that's how they intended Agile Shield Fighter + TWF to work.

I agree that they didn't intend for it to work like that, but this edition is riddled with this sorta thing ;)

When you look at who would use this and what tier they sit in, I wouldn't have a problem with it as a DM TBH. A groups damage output isn't the biggest concern where DMing is concerned.

I agree that Oversized TWF might be needed to get -0/-0.

Blood~

[commander panda]

is homebrew acceptable? because this might just be perfect for you. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218626)

[Ramza00]

A collection of shield stuff
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123630

[Captnq]

I worked on this for the EVD...

Lets see...

A shield is unique in that it is a hand held item that can recieve both weapon and armor enhancements. In effect, it is a dual weapon, not unlike a quarterstaff. Some shields are just shields. We will concern ourselves with A shield that can bash.

While there are a wide number of shields
Battlecloak, Gnome
Buckler
Buckler-Axe, Dwarven
Buckler, Beetle*
Kappa Shell
Manople
Sang Kauw
Shield, Diamond
Shield, Extreme, Steel
Shield, Extreme, Wooden
Shield, Gauntlet
Shield, Grasping
Shield, Heavy, Dragoncraft*
Shield, Heavy, Steel
Shield, Heavy, Wooden
Shield, Hide
Shield, Light, Dragoncraft*
Shield, Light, Steel
Shield, Light, Wooden
Shield, Rider’s
Shield, Stiletto
Shield, Tower
Shield, Tower, Steel
Tessen
Tortoise Blade, Gnome
Wagon, Sniper
Wagon, Standard

The shield that we will be looking at is the good old-fashioned spiked Heavy Wooden Shield.

Best to make the spike out of Gold, this increases the size class of our shield by one. Now we add the ASA, Bashing. a +1 Bonus to the shield. This gives out shield a +2 to it's size. Now we return to the weapon side of things and make out shield a size bigger, but then add the WSA to the weapon side of the shield for a +2 Bonus, making it a another size bigger, yet still usable in one hand.

So the shield is now +1 (Bashing +1) and the weapon part is +1 (Balanced +2). Damage is now a base of 4d6

Note: Bashing turns our shield into a +1 weapon for us, so we don't have to waste WSAs on a +1 EB.

But is that enough for us? No. We need some UMPH! What would work well with our large shield? Well, we could suck a -2 to hit penalty and make the shield one size larger, making the shield two handed and have a base damage of 6d6. Why would we do that?

Because barbarians love two handed weapons.

So what fun rage based things could we stack on our oversized bashing gold spiked shield?

Heraldic Crest: Ferocity for 6,000 gp gives us 5 rounds of rage a day.
On the weapon side we add:

+1 Berserker: +1d8 damage while raging
+1 Brash: All Rages last an extra 3 rounds and immune to fear
+1 Crazed: You can enter a rage 1/day for 3 rounds
+2 Furious: When you rage, you are +6 str, +6 Con +3 Will
+1 Fury: +1d6 damage while raging.
13,750 gp Jumping: Feather fall all the time and +30 to jumping every other round.

but is that all we can do? Lets extrapolate from some other weapons.

6,000 gp Anger: +1 round of rage, immune to fear
+1 Angry: No height limit on jumping and +2 to duration of rage.
12,000 gp Vaulting: No distance limitation on jumping when raging, +30 to jump.

So what do we have now?

HUGE Heavy Wooden Shield With a Gold Spike.
Shield: +1 Bashing/Heraldic Crest Ferocity (10,000 gp)
Weapon: +2 Balanced/+1 Berserker/+1 Brash/+1 Crazed/+2 Furious/+1 Fury/+1 Angry/13,750 gp Jumping/6,000 gp Anger/12,000 gp Vaulting.

193,750 gp.

Just under the 200,000 gp limit

And so you have...

When you rage +6 to Str and Con and +3 to will.
You can rage for 11 rounds and then for 9 rounds.
Your base damage with the shield is 6d6 with a built in -2 to hit. You do Strx1.5 damage because it's two-handed.

You have a +60 to jump then only +30 to jump the next round. When you jup you ignore height and distant limitations. So, in effect, you can jump further and faster then you can run.

Oh yeah, you are also immune to fear and have feather fall all the time.

So even if you aren't a barbarian, you can pretend to be one with this giant shield. Just chew on your shield for a bit (that's why it's wooden. Easier on your teeth then a metal shield) and then enter an 11 round frenzy where you bash people to death with a giant shield, bigger then you, that has a giant gold spike in the middle.

Sorry it's not a two shield build. But TWF sucks in comparison to THF.

Oh yeah, drop the 6,000 go and buy an armor crystal of Rubicund Frenzy. Soon as your HPs drop below half, you get a +5 morale bonus to damage. Become a barbarian with the ACF Whirling Frenzy for maximum effectiness.

Of course this is TO. You may need to scale it back to fit in your campaign.