Just how much does this change affect shields?

[SangoProduction]

So, I was playing in another system that had a similar ruling, and wanted to see how people would react to it, translated into D&D.

So, simply put: shield bonuses subtract from the "natural roll" of the user's attackers, rather than increase AC. Thus, making it impossible to score natural 20s, and more likely to automatically fail, regardless of attack bonus.

[Nifft]

Removes most critical hits, in addition to making shield + high AC = literally unhittable.

Less relevant vs. spells (which can target a much lower touch AC, or which can ignore AC and target a save), so casters become even more potent.


I'd suggest allowing the shielded character to sacrifice the shield to negate a crit instead.

[Kayblis]

The only change here is people won't crit you. Crit builds now have a hard-counter of 'using a shield'. The autofail won't come into play unless people can hit you on a ~3(which means you already failed defensively) or if you have a fumble chart.

Now, if your DM plays with fumble charts, this change is HUGE, because it lets you use a Tower Shield or the Shield spell to simply watch your enemy kill himself as he self-harms, attacks his teammates, loses every weapon he ever gripped, falls to the ground and other stupidities you see in fumble charts. At high levels, a properly buffed shield would make your enemies commit suicide faster than you could kill them with a DPS build.

[martixy]

Now, if your DM plays with fumble charts, this change is HUGE, because it lets you use a Tower Shield or the Shield spell to simply watch your enemy kill himself as he self-harms, attacks his teammates, loses every weapon he ever gripped, falls to the ground and other stupidities you see in fumble charts. At high levels, a properly buffed shield would make your enemies commit suicide faster than you could kill them with a DPS build.

This is definitely an amusing thought. Piling crazy on top of insane, but I can see that working in a slapstick game.

Also, if a roll is modified, by definition it's no longer "natural", so kind of contradictory language.

Now an alternative: I'm a fan of shields proving a scaling AC bonus - something like 1+1/4 BAB for the humble buckler. And you can decide how to tweak it for better shields - either increase the base AC or the scaling. I like scaling because it makes BAB matter more.

[Doctor Despair]

I could imagine an inventive system where characters who are not flat-footed could make opposed attack rolls at some sort of modifier to try to parry or block the blow, if you're trying to make shields more interesting or rewarding.

[Zaq]

Not sure I see how this rule would make the game more fun, to be honest.

Having a shield be an automatic hard counter to criticals (unless you've got a really big crit range) is... annoying at best? I could see that being part of the value of a feat, maybe, or an early fighter class feature, or I could see it being allowed by default if it cost the shield-wielder something (as someone else suggested, maybe that shield is disarmed/disabled/destroyed)... I don't think I like it as you proposed, though.

Now, just letting shields subtract their AC bonus from rolls to confirm a crit on the shield-wielder (all day every day, no investment required)? I can see that making sense. Still adding a little unnecessary complexity to the game, but critical confirmation is always a little bit finicky anyway, and if your goal is to make shields more meaningful, I can dig that.

[Doctor Awkward]

At low levels (1 through 6):
It's an interesting change. For martials. It gives quite a bit more survivability as it negates critical hits from all but critical-hit focused characters. No more being worried about the 1st-level orc barbarian one-shotting someone in the party up until level 5. How heavily you are invested into using your shield stands in contrast to how focused the other person is on hitting you.

Magic-users ignore this change entirely as they can simply change tack to saving touch spells for shield users and allow melee party members with shields of their own to handle opposing melee threats.

At mid levels (7 through 12):
Magic now starts to come into effect at exactly the wrong way. Shield bonuses to AC from naturally magical shields and from clerics buffing with the Magic Vestment spell now start to make melee combat against shield users an exercise in futility. At level 12, a cleric can turn a non-magical steel shield into a -5 to the natural roll, giving a 30% chance per attack to roll a natural 1 on every swing. As was already mentioned, combine this with a critical fumble chart to watch hilarity ensure almost every combat round.

At high levels (13-18):
This is effectively a game-breaking change. A +5 tower shield now incurs a 50% chance of rolling a 1 on every melee combat roll, making it superior to Displacement or any other form of magical defense. Shields are the premier defensive tool for all characters. Expect to see even arcane casters investing in twilight mithril bucklers and spending most of their money on oils of magic vestment. Magic-users are, of course, otherwise unimpaired by this change as touch spells still ignore shield bonuses to AC.

At epic levels (20+):
The game is now broken on a fundamental level. Enhancement bonuses to shield of +10 or more now make it so that combat is no longer possible against anyone using a shield. Opening with Disjunction against anyone holding a shield is the single most effective use of any spellcasters combat round if they make a conscious decision not to win the encounter outright.

Special note: The Shield Ward feat in Player's Handbook II allows you to add your shield bonus to your touch AC. This becomes a mandatory feat for the majority of melee characters and causes this change to apply to spellcasters. But not in any meaningful way, as while touch spells become garbage, there are still plenty of other spells that allow them to win the combat in their place.

[ExLibrisMortis]

So... you only need +19 shield bonus and Shield Ward to be invulnerable?

Let's see...
+4 tower shield
+5 enhancement bonus
+10 Divine Shield feat with 30 Charisma
= all attacks automatically hit a 1


Granted, most of the time it won't be this extreme, but it illustrates why there's no existing mechanic that changes the result of the die roll (you can bypass rolls, replace rolls, automatically force a 20 sometimes--but you can't add or subtract). You're supposed to have 5% crits and 5% failures, and messing with the "natural" result changes that distribution. You don't want that to be open to scaling, because eventually you're going to make the die irrelevant.

[martixy]

You don't want that to be open to scaling, because eventually you're going to make the die irrelevant.

I'd like to point out that "making the die irrelevant" is not actually a bad thing. In fact, depending on context, it's can be good game design.

First of all, skills do not have critical fail/success. So the state already exists in the game.
Second, even for rolls with crits, the DMG, p.25 has a variant rule that removes them - treat 1 as -10 and 20 as +30.

I like this idea of making the die irrelevant because it illustrates your character's journey and progression from a pathetic, skin-of-his-teeth, got-lucky adventurer to a seasoned veteran who can perform superhuman feats at the drop of a hat. This is precisely what I don't like about 5e. You can't become good at something there, only less bad.

The other thing is - much of the optimization effort that goes on in this board is actually specifically aimed at eliminating the die from affecting the outcome. Or at least forcing the enemy to roll instead. Why jump when you can fly. Why roll for saves vs SoDs when you can Death Ward. Why use a spell with a save, when there is one that allows no save.

So you could say this subforum owes its entire existence to this notion.

That said, I do agree with that messing with the natural roll is more trouble that is worth it. Not on the mechanics side, but on the human side, as it introduces a whole new level of confusion to the game.

[Doctor Despair]

So the general feeling seems to be negative, but here's a question on this topic: is there a restriction on this ability that would make it less abusable?


What if you don't crit-fail on this tampered-with nat 1, but still crit-succeed on a 20?

What if you still crit succeed on a nat-20, but don't crit fail on a nat-1?

If you both crit succeed on a nat 20 and don't crit-fail on a nat 1, is there a functional difference between this system and just adding to AC?

[Kayblis]

What if you don't crit-fail on this tampered-with nat 1, but still crit-succeed on a 20?
That's the standard rule, fail on a 1, crit on a 20. Do you mean getting rid of the autofail on a 1?



What if you still crit succeed on a nat-20, but don't crit fail on a nat-1?
Is this the same as above?



If you both crit succeed on a nat 20 and don't crit-fail on a nat 1, is there a functional difference between this system and just adding to AC?
The same of the two above? Not at all. It's the same system. If you get rid of the only change, you made no change.

[Nifft]

So the general feeling seems to be negative, but here's a question on this topic: is there a restriction on this ability that would make it less abusable?

Aye, what you do is add the shield bonus to AC instead.

There, same bonus but no abuse.

:wink:

[NotASpiderSwarm]

So the general feeling seems to be negative, but here's a question on this topic: is there a restriction on this ability that would make it less abusable?


What if you don't crit-fail on this tampered-with nat 1, but still crit-succeed on a 20?

What if you still crit succeed on a nat-20, but don't crit fail on a nat-1?

If you both crit succeed on a nat 20 and don't crit-fail on a nat 1, is there a functional difference between this system and just adding to AC?


What are you trying to do? Not mechanically, at least not precisely. What change do you want this to have at your table? Are you trying to buff shields, buff sword-and-board, buff martials, reduce the effects of dice rolls, weaken TWF rogues, etc? Chances are there's a different approach that can accomplish the same thing.

[rel]

As others have mentioned the proposed change penalises crit builds and can be optimised in a problematic way.

I feel like the intent here is to increase the chances of an attack missing and to reduce the effectiveness of criticals.
How about this as an alternative:

Wielding a shield gives you an X percentage chance to avoid hostile effects like a swung sword, a dragons fire breath or a wizards dominate monster. For the purposes of rules interactions a successful avoid is treated as though no line of effect exists between the effects originator and the shield wielder for the instant in which the effect occurs.

Select a value for X to get the kind of game you want. 1% for "neat buff but essentially the same game", 10% for "shields and dragons: the shieldening".

I recommend against using scaling percentages e.g. shield bonus = % chance but if you must simple categories are probably the way to go.
e.g.
buckler, magical effect like the shield spell, unsporting options like dancing shields 2%
good honest shields 4%,
really big shields and people who bothered taking shield feats or shield PRC's 6%.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'd like to point out that "making the die irrelevant" is not actually a bad thing.
When I wrote that post, I thought about adding that caveat... and I thought it'd be clear enough in context that this case is different from the typical "making the die irrelevant".

Usually, the die is irrelevant when a fixed investment makes it past a fixed threshold: you need +24 to a skill to make a DC 25 check, and so on. In this case, however, a fixed investment--a shield bonus of +19--makes a scaling threshold--an attack roll with any attack bonus--irrelevant. That's a major difference. It's not just "make the die irrelevant because I know I can do this", it's "make the die irrelevant because I'm no longer interacting with this mechanic".

[Kelb_Panthera]

Well let's look at the extreme; a tower shield with a +5 enhancement is a +9 shield bonus that you're now removing from the enemies' die rolls.

First and foremost that's just a flat 50% chance that they can't hit you regardless of their bonuses since their die roll would be treated as a natural 1 or lower. That seems a bit extreme.

At the other end, even an optimized crit-fisher is just plain shut-down on his chanes of making a crit. Critical hits are just plain not going to happen.

Finally, if the enemy had a 50% chance or less to hit anyway, this is effectively no change to the standard system. There's no functional difference between penalizing an enemie's attack roll against you and improving your armor class. At least for primary and most natural attacks. Iteratives get shut-down pretty quickly too. At BAB 11 the new attack at -10 just isn't going to matter unless your attack bonus exceeds the enemies' AC by a substantial margin and while that is doable it's not really to be expected.

At around 26k gp, getting this uber-defensive item is doable by level 13 when you go by the WotC guidelines. On WBL, you can probably swing it by 9 if you're willing to make sacrifices to do it.


Personally, I don't think it's a good idea. It lets a pretty basic item do the duty of a handful of magic items that would and should certainly cost more.


And since you didn't define it, I've got to ask how this interacts with touch attacks and attacks against flat-footed opponents.