Shieldbearer Fighter and Unarmed Strike Feats

[Zombulian]

Hey all!
I just recently discovered the Shieldbearer Fighter ACF and was surprised that I hadn’t seen any discussion about it and how it could apply to sword & board, board & board, or even just board playstyles.

The big standout is the Shield Strike optional class feature which treats you as having the Improved Unarmed Strike feat for the purposes of feat prereqs and lets you use your shield to perform the mechanics of those feats.

The first thing that comes to mind is Snap Kick, which is obviously already a great feat, but being able to get a free attack with your wombo shield is even better.

The text gives examples like Deflect Arrows and Stunning Fist because why not? You’re a whiz with a shield, you should be able to stop an arrow or ring someone’s bell when you smack them. Because of the wording of the feature, though, some much less intuitive options become available. Superior Unarmed Strike may now give your shield scaling damage? Improved Grapple now allows you to initiate a grapple with your shield?

It’s definitely not game-breaking, but I bet there’s some cool stuff out there that could take advantage of this. What unarmed strike feat would you use on your shield?

[liquidformat]

So some initial comments.

Like most of the dragon mag fighter variants Shield Bearer is strictly worse than a normal fighter because of the horrible bonus feat list it pigeon holes you with. If you can scrap the horrible bonus feat list (looking through most of these bonus feat lists they are just a subset of normal fighter bonus feats only from PHB and don't give you anything you couldn't already take) this wouldn't be horrible but as is people ignore these fighter AFCs because they are worse than being a fighter so you are taking a low end tier 4 class and making it a middling tier 5 class.

Typically if I am going to do a shield build I would be looking at taking feats like Shield Charge, Shield Slam, Shield Ward, Agile Shield Fighter, Shield Specialization, Martial Study (Shield Block and Shield Counter) Possibly Shield Sling, Brutal Throw, Power Throw, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot. None of these feats would be available to you with the Shield Bearer ACF. Though you could get the maneuvers through class dips.

Besides Snap Kick and Superior Unarmed Strike there really isn't much worth while using Shield Strike, you could already pickup Block Arrow feat which is the shield version of deflect arrow and the stunning fist line of feats isn't great especially if you don't get early entry.

[pabelfly]

I could hazard a few guesses why it doesn't get mentioned. First, Dragon Magazine isn't allowed at a lot of tables, so no point discussing them if you can't play them. Second, shield builds are generally really poor - the slight increase in AC doesn't make up for the loss of damage, and DnD combat is not kind to pure tank builds without area control, special combat circumstances, and/or the ability to draw aggro from enemies. The restricted feat list and lack of access to recommended shield combat feats mentioned in the previous post doesn't help either.

[Zombulian]

*valid critique of the ACF*

Sure, that’s all well and good, but you don’t need more than one level in the class to get the Shield Strike feature. There’s nothing stopping you from spending the rest of your build in something like Warblade.
For me I wasn’t too concerned with the feat list because I was originally looking at the class for use on a Dungeoncrasher.

[Troacctid]

From a prerequisite standpoint, it's not all that different from getting Improved Unarmed Strike. In fact, the pugilist fighter gets Improved Unarmed Strike for free on top of their normal 1st level bonus feat, so I'd even say it's a little behind. But that doesn't mean there's no upside, right?

Shields are cheaper to enhance as magic weapons than unarmed strikes. While the necklace of natural attacks allows unarmed strikes to become magic weapons at pretty close to the same rate as most weapons, shields have an advantage that they don't: the ability to gain the bashing property as an armor enhancement instead of as a weapon enhancement. Bashing adds a +1 to the weapon half of the shield and makes its damage count as two sizes larger. For a heavy spiked shield, that means you're now doing 2d6 base damage. It's not clear that you can use the +1 to add other enhancements more cheaply, but even if you can't, splitting one of your damage bonuses off onto the armor side saves gold.

Unlike unarmed strikes, you can Power Attack with a heavy shield held in both hands. This is great for builds that use Shield Charge, Shield Slam, or even Blood-Spiked Charger if you're feeling feisty. Snap Kick works well with all of them.

You might also consider grappling. Scorpion's Grasp allows you to get a free grapple attempt whenever you hit with your shield, and because it counts as an unarmed strike, you don't need to drop it to maintain the grapple.

[liquidformat]

Sure, that’s all well and good, but you don’t need more than one level in the class to get the Shield Strike feature. There’s nothing stopping you from spending the rest of your build in something like Warblade.
For me I wasn’t too concerned with the feat list because I was originally looking at the class for use on a Dungeoncrasher.

You would need 2 levels since Shield Bearer forces you to take Improved Shield Bash as your first level feat. Dungeon Crasher is still better with Shield Charge and or slam. Dual Wielding two Heavy spiked Shields of Bashing is pretty amusing.

[animewatcha]

So some initial comments.

Like most of the dragon mag fighter variants Shield Bearer is strictly worse than a normal fighter because of the horrible bonus feat list it pigeon holes you with. If you can scrap the horrible bonus feat list (looking through most of these bonus feat lists they are just a subset of normal fighter bonus feats only from PHB and don't give you anything you couldn't already take) this wouldn't be horrible but as is people ignore these fighter AFCs because they are worse than being a fighter so you are taking a low end tier 4 class and making it a middling tier 5 class.

Typically if I am going to do a shield build I would be looking at taking feats like Shield Charge, Shield Slam, Shield Ward, Agile Shield Fighter, Shield Specialization, Martial Study (Shield Block and Shield Counter) Possibly Shield Sling, Brutal Throw, Power Throw, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot. None of these feats would be available to you with the Shield Bearer ACF. Though you could get the maneuvers through class dips.

Besides Snap Kick and Superior Unarmed Strike there really isn't much worth while using Shield Strike, you could already pickup Block Arrow feat which is the shield version of deflect arrow and the stunning fist line of feats isn't great especially if you don't get early entry.

IIRC the shieldbearer is in 310 which means very beginning of PHB so any 'fighter bonus feat' after PHB should be fine.

[liquidformat]

IIRC the shieldbearer is in 310 which means very beginning of PHB so any 'fighter bonus feat' after PHB should be fine.

That type of ruling is really up to a DM as there isn't any rules I have ever seen any such thing. In general I do agree and I normally take it as 'you can take all of these feats in addition to normal Fighter bonus feats. However, due to the language it is very clear they are only supposed to have a very narrow subset of feats.

[PraxisVetli]

Can you do anything interesting with this and a +1 Ranged (MiC 13) Shield?

[liquidformat]

Can you do anything interesting with this and a +1 Ranged (MiC 13) Shield?

Shield Sling and the 'Ranged ____' feats give you some vaguely interesting things you can do with a shield. The main downside is you can't use any size modifiers which really reduces the utility of such special attacks. It's too bad knock-down is melee only as it could be interesting to have it as a rider for ranged shield attacks.