- Any shield improves armor by 1 point; skip your attack to get an additional point of defense.
- A small shield provides minimum protection equivalent to leather.
- A large shield provides minimum protection equivalent to plate.
- Anything bigger than a buckler can be used to block missile fire from one direction (minimum protection equivalent to plate.
- A shield bash is treated as an ordinary attack (d6 damage;) on damage 5+, target is knocked back.
- Shields Shall Be Splintered is in effect.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Shield House Rules
This post is mainly so I don't lose something I wrote in a thread before I put it in a house rules document.
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Not bad rules, I look forward to your house rules document if you decide to publish it.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I was doing something similar to the 'minimum protection' bit myself, but it was maybe over-complicated. Shields filled in the AC chart; bucklers alone were one AC worse than leather, small shields one worse than chain, large shields one worse than plate, stacking armor + shield improved the better AC by one point. It gives a reason for a large-shield-user to still wear (say) leather armor, but it's more to keep track of than yours.
ReplyDeleteI like the missile-protection rule and the defend-yourself rule.
I like the ideas. I would however be careful about '5+knockback' rule as folks will start knocking -back dragons and giants.
ReplyDeleteGood overall rules though.
Anything bigger than a buckler can be used to block missile fire from one direction (minimum protection equivalent to plate.
ReplyDeleteNice; I think I'm going to use that too.
@Jonathon: It's a blend and simplification of other house rules I've seen people use. For example, in Chainmail a shield by itself protects just as well as leather. I decided a "best of" approach is easier to handle.
ReplyDelete@By The Sword: Naturally, it's assumed that we're talking about equal-sized opponents; if one is slightly bigger, modify the die roll by one or two points. If the defender is much bigger, knockback is impossible. We don't have to allow the impossible to happen.