My own preference is to just use the rules as-is, with the understanding that a magic shield is made of "better material" than any non-magic weapon... so magic shields are knocked out of the defender's hand rather than shattered. You still "lose" the shield, but only for a few rounds, until you pick it up again.
But what to do about magical plusses? Well, in yesterday's rules, I restricted the use of most shields to defending against attacks that do 1d6 damage or less. Let's say that the magical plus of a shield adds one one or more dice to the maximum damage it can defend against. So, a +1 shield can be sacrificed to block a 2d6 blow from a hill or stone giant; a +2 shield could defend against any giant, or other creature doing 3 dice of damage or less; and the very rare +3 shield can block up to 4 dice of damage from a single blow, which means just about any melée attack in LBB D&D. I'd also add the bonus to resist being shattered by a magic weapon, although the magic weapon adds its bonus to the die roll as well, so this really only helps if the shield has a higher plus than the weapon.
Again, I'm glad you're blogging about this because I really like the magic shield that is knocked away rather than splintered.
ReplyDeleteI'm not interested in tracking amounts of damage though, for me it's take the blow or not. I even let them know how much damage before the decision because I love them knowing they narrowly avoided death. That's what evokes the cinematic, dramatic struggle of combat in our campaign.
I thought you were going to write about the shield spell. Which I would just assume was dispelled if it was shattered (but I'd allow it to block more than 1d6 if so shattered).
ReplyDelete@Telecanter: Your comment about tracking damage worries me, so I should probably make it clear that I wouldn't track damage to the shield, either. What I meant to say was that a +1 shield can block an attack from a creature or weapon that does up to 2d6 damage. Doesn't matter what the damage result actually is; even if that giant rolls a 2 on 2d6, it still knocks the shield out of your hand when you sacrifice your shield.
ReplyDelete@Richard: The shield spell in Greyhawk is pretty good as-is (much better than a real shield,) but I could see allowing it to be dispelled by one melée blow in exchange for absorbing the damage, no matter what it is.