Shield reform

[PleasingFungus]

Currently, shields have hidden 'breakpoints' of skill at which their penalties are completely eliminated. This is bad, both because they're hidden (and vary by species, so even a spoilered player has to memorize & recall several different sets of numbers), but because they're hard breakpoints. I'd like to change this.


random pictures of shields are here to break up a huge pile of text.

From a design perspective, the primary goal of shields (as I see it) is to provide an alternative to two-handed weapons; a strategic tradeoff of offense for defense. At present, certain characters care more about this tradeoff than others. Primary-melee characters care a great deal about the loss of offensive power; unarmed characters are induced to care by losing both their off-hand aux attack, and getting additional shield penalties specific to unarmed combat. Primary-casters and enchanters tend to not care a great deal about this tradeoff - though they do care about the skill investment of larger shields, and so often stick to bucklers. It's possible for a new, breakpoint-less system to preserve this dynamic (where " " " fighters " " " are less likely to use shields than " " " casters " " "), though I'm not convinced that it's desirable.

The obvious model - and I suspect the correct one - for removing breakpoints from shields is to do with them what was done with body armour; give them, effectively, EVP and AEVP. A penalty that isn't subtracted from by skill, but divided by. The problem with this is balancing; without changing anything else, buckler penalties are now halved at (some armour skill), rather than eliminated entirely at 3/5/9 skill. If that halving point is very low, the penalties are essentially meaningless; if not, it's a very significant nerf to bucklers (and other shields), which are already marginal equipment for many character types!

My approach to dealing with this is to again steal from body armour: mitigate shield penalties with strength. That makes it more feasible for many character types to wear shields, since the penalties will come significantly pre-mitigated for them.

It will also shift the dynamic of shield-type choice from “how much am I willing to invest in shields skill?” to “how much in the way of shield penalties will I accept?” Again, more similar to body armour. This is not ideal, since it’s nice to have different decision-making dynamics in the game, but has certain advantages - among other things, I suspect it would make large shields significantly more viable, since they’d be usable (with enough str) without needing 20+ skill investment for most races.

It would also change the dynamic of investing in Shields skill; rather than being about reaching breakpoints to eliminate penalties, it would be about gaining SH, with reduction of shield penalty as a largely secondary effect - again, rather like armour skill and AC.



What do to about the interaction of different species with shields? Many shield types are forbidden to various species - e.g., spriggans can’t use anything larger than a buckler, ogres & trolls can’t use bucklers at all. To compensate for this, currently, larger species require a smaller amount of shield skill to remove penalties - since otherwise they’d be unlikely to use shields at all. It would be easy to translate this as a multiplier to shield skill in the new system (for penalty-reduction purposes), but that’s a hidden multiplier, which I don’t like at all.

One answer would be to remove this system entirely - since str reduces penalties, and large races have large str, it seems fairly redundant. Any further adjustments could probably be done by tweaking Shields aptitudes.

Large races also get penalties to sh values, based on difference between their size and the size of the shield (similarly, small races get bonuses) - this... is quite small, seems very silly, and can probably be safely dropped in the transition.

A last question, on which I’m undecided, is the contribution of stats (str and dex) to SH *values*. Currently, both add to SH - bucklers get a large bonus from dex, medium & large shields get a much smaller bonus, plus a small bonus from strength. It’s not exceptionally intuitive or unintuitive; slightly opaque, but not extremely; neither especially necessary nor astonishingly undesirable. I really don’t know what I think of it at all, and would appreciate feedback on that.



Summary:
- Shields serve a valuable game role.
- Shield skill breakpoints are bad.
- My proposed fix is to give shields a body-armour-like encumbrance system, with penalties divided by skill and str.
- Thoughts?

There are certainly other problems with shields - their relative weakness in extended, the opacity of the “less useful against sequential attacks” system - but I’d prefer to leave that for another topic, since this is quite big enough as it is.

[PleasingFungus]

Clarifications in advance:

- In this plan, the penalties would be of the same type (-ev, -cast success, -attack speed, -uc attk spd) as at present; they’d just be reduced on a different schedule.

- By analogy to armour, I’d place bucklers somewhere around, or slightly below, ring mail in penalty; not completely trivial, but not too hard to mitigate. Vanilla “shields” would have penalties somewhere around fire dragon armour; large shields would hover near plate armour. These are initial suggestions; I’m not set on them.

I would have put these in the above post, but I couldn't find anywhere they fit. (Likewise, this image.)

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

Under any shield system, a character should wear a shield only if the defense gained from wearing a shield outweighs the offense lost. For casters, reduced offense comes in the form of spellcasting penalties. For fighters, reduced offense comes in the form of being unable to wield two-handed weapons. (There's also the issue of xp investment and EV penalty but let's ignore these for now.) Therefore spellcasters are incentivized to wear the largest shield they can and still cast reliably. Fighters typically forego shields in favor of two-handed weapons since the loss in offense to too great for any amount of SH, barring certain niche cases (short blade users, halfling long blade users, UC trolls come to mind) or randart shields. Even if the only penalty shields had was that you could not use a 2h wep, many fighters would forego wearing a shield once they trained enough weapon skill.

For casters your proposals may make a difference, but for fighters I don't think it will matter. Unfortunately I don't see how to give fighters greater incentive to wear a shield.

[Quazifuji]

Another thing to consider: right now, shields are often a way to compensate for weak defenses in other areas. One of the main reason trolls tend to use shields is because they have weak defenses, especially before they find any dragon armour. Casters and short blades users, in addition to benefiting less from using a two-handed weapon or having an offhand punch than other characters, also tend to be wearing lighter armour and shields are often a good way to offset that penalty.

With this change, shields would have the same set of requirements as armour - they require you to be able to deal with the casting, stealth, and EV penalties of using one - along with also costing a hand. I don't like that. I like the fact that heavy armour and shields have completely different requirements right now, because it means some characters that can't make good use of one can use the other instead. Characters who need good casting success rates or stealth but are willing to give up a hand and spend some experience can use shields for defense. Characters who have good strength and are willing to give up some stealth and casting ability but really want a two-handed weapon or an offhand punch can use heavy armour. Characters who want to be ultra tanky can use both. With these changes, shields and armour would become much more similar, and using shields to compensate for lighter armour wouldn't work as well.

[Psiweapon]

wall of text engraved with finely crafted images of humans, elves and shields

Summary:
- Shields serve a valuable game role.
- Shield skill breakpoints are bad.
- My proposed fix is to give shields a body-armour-like encumbrance system, with penalties divided by skill and str.
- Thoughts?

There are certainly other problems with shields - their relative weakness in extended, the opacity of the “less useful against sequential attacks” system - but I’d prefer to leave that for another topic, since this is quite big enough as it is.

Let me get this straight out of my chest:

The very fact that primarily melee warriors often don't want a shield (unless they want to be ultra-tanky as you said) means there's something wrong with them. Currently, shields aren't an alternative to two-handers, they just fill several niches where two-handers are already not viable or where defenses are sorely lacking. But you already said all this. Unless and until something close to 30-50% of primarily melee characters use shields, I won't consider shields "fixed", but that's my personal opinion.

About the dex-str weighting of bucklers, shields and large shields; I don't remember the exact numbers but when I read it I thought it was a good idea. Bucklers should benefit nimbler characters more, large shields are for really big strong characters, and normal shields should be a balanced middle ground.

If shields are handled mostly the same way as armor, I think it'll give casters even more failure rates to worry about (discouraging) and I don't think that solution specifically would give any incentive to primarily melee warriors, but maybe the specific numbers make a relevant difference.

My suggestion, to be considered on top of what has already been said:

Shield bash. Make shields grant an auxiliary attack. Shields have always looked more like a "defensive weapon" than a piece of armor to me.

• Buckler: High frequency, low impact.
• Regular shield: medium frequency, medium impact.
• Large shield: low frequency, high impact.

Shield attacks are, of course, blockable with a shield; and can be performed both by the player and monsters.

[Lasty]

Increased attack delay is a fairly severe penalty to offense, especially when combined with the limitation to only one-handed weapons; as such, under the new formulae, I don't think people will be more inclined to use shields without fully (or mostly) ameliorating the penalties first than they are now, but under the new system they'll have to continually try on the shield to determine when they've hit what they consider to be an acceptable level of penalty. Overall, that seems like a net loss in usability and clarity to me.

Overall I like the suggestions, though, so I'd propose that the attack delay component be removed from shields in this proposal. As a side bonus, that would you can treat it exactly like other sources of AEVP in code.

As a side note, I'd be in favor of having str increase your Sh value and having Dex decrease the penalties you receive for each additional attack each turn.

[XuaXua]

Adding the obligatory thing that Galehar once got very annoyed with me for posting because I always post it:

I'm a big proponent of giving certain weapons (quaterstaves) an innate SH modifier that can be increased with Shield skill; I had mechanics placed elsewhere that would compensate for a block by reducing weapon speed for the next attack.

[Sandman25]

Overall I like the suggestions, though, so I'd propose that the attack delay component be removed from shields in this proposal. As a side bonus, that would you can treat it exactly like other sources of AEVP in code.

This. Quickblade has 0.3 turn per attack, adding unavoidable attack delay from even a buckler means almost nobody will use shields.
Shield already penalizes attack by using weapon with lower base damage, why do we need another penalty?

[grisamentum]

Adding the obligatory thing that Galehar once got very annoyed with me for posting because I always post it:

I'm a big proponent of giving certain weapons (quaterstaves) an innate SH modifier that can be increased with Shield skill; I had mechanics placed elsewhere that would compensate for a block by reducing weapon speed for the next attack.

Maybe Long Blades generally? They just feel lackluster compared to cleaving on Axes right now.

It also seems like shields should be able to block magic bolts. For all the insane amount of offensive capability you give up (have to use a weaker weapon that also starts doing less damage and attacks slower), it doesn't feel like you get enough defensive capability in exchange.

[Sar]

One thing I kind of like (as somebody who plays Nagas a lot) is the lowered requirements for big races. Those races also often have a malus to traditional defences. which plays nicely with shields. I'd like that to be preserved, though I do think the spoilerness of that is bad.

[epsilon]

I wouldn't go as far, as to say that Shields are weak in extended. From my experience, one-handed weapon gives you enough offensive power to fight anything, while wearing a shield improves your defences quite a bit, and also serves as an additional possible slot for an artifact/good brand. Also, as it currently is, getting one-handed weapon + shield working on maximum efficiency requires much less experience compared to a good two-handed weapon. So shields aren't bad.

On the other hand, I kinda dislike the fact of shield being "side" equipment. You can win the game by focusing on your magic, weapon and, specifically, armour skill; but shields are only an addition to this. If this reform will give full scaling to Shields skill and possibility of actually basing your character on usage of shields, it is very good IMO.

[XuaXua]

Found the old thread, requesting Shields be renamed to "Blocking" alongside some unpolished mechanics.

[Siegurt]

What if shields didn't have their own skill, but used the armour skill instead? That way they'd have the penalty they have, but wouldn't cost additional XP on top of it.

[and into]

I support what PleasingFungus is going for, as Shields could really benefit from greater clarity and fewer weird edge cases. Unless I missed it, I don't think you mentioned that the shield penalty is easier to remove if you are in encumbrance 0 armor, which is both a hidden mechanic *and* a hidden, hard break-point! So yeah, there is a lot that could be made smoother and more user friendly, here, especially for new and unspoiled players.

A few other things to consider, though.

Because sufficiently good two-handers are more prevalent than sufficiently good one-handers, in terms of damage output, it is risky, especially for a dude focused on killing with melee, to commit to shields until you have found a good one-handed weapon. (Of course if you start as a fighter or whatever you can use your shield until a good two-hander has dropped, but usually that doesn't take very long.) In other words, it is your weapon that dictates whether or not you should use a shield, and that is not likely to change unless shields are quite significantly buffed—which then may introduce other problems with balance.

So while a lot of stuff about shields could maybe be made more intuitive, for those who are using shields, I don't think any of these changes (even if you gave a solid increase to base shield value for all shields) would drastically alter how shield use is determined—that is, by the weapons you have available. That dynamic is unlikely to change majorly unless you really overhaul how shields work; I think you would probably need to fundamentally change how the blocking formula works, as well as expanding what things can be blocked by shields, which are more radical changes. I'm not calling for such changes, just pointing out the scope of the changes that OP has suggested, and suggesting that those changes alone, or just having higher SH values, or whatever, won't change when/how I decide to use shields, and I think that would be true for at least some other players, as well.

Other than that... As far as tweaks go, I'd suggest giving bucklers better base shield value, and I'd suggest letting strength and dex have equal value, both in mitigating shield penalties and in giving extra SH. (This differentiates it from armor while using a similar mechanic, and would help keep shields from becoming even more niche than they already are.)

EDIT: Siegurt's idea to combine shield and armor under one skill would be a pretty big change, but I think it is interesting and worth consideration. "Armour and Shields" as an entry on the skill screen may be a bit inelegant, but no more so than "Maces and Flails."

[Sandman25]

Hidden mechanic problem can be solved by changing description. Currently we have "Base delay 2.0", "Min delay 0.7 " for executioner's axe, why can't we have "Max attack delay 0.5", "Min attack delay 0.0 at Shields 15 (12.51 with 0 EVP armour)" when Tr player is looking at large shield description?

[and into]

Hidden mechanic problem can be solved by changing description. Currently we have "Base delay 2.0", "Min delay 0.7 " for executioner's axe, why can't we have "Max attack delay 0.5", "Min attack delay 0.0 at Shields 15 (12.51 with 0 EVP armour)" when Tr player is looking at large shield description?

That may be better than the status quo, but breakpoints and unneeded complexity are inelegant design, even when they are transparent. Breakpoints are also less interesting in terms of their effect on game play. Right now, if I get X amount of skill with a shield, I know that no matter what else I may want to do with the character down the road, that shield penalty simply doesn't matter—it has been eliminated. (Well okay, except for bad draining.) Hitting the magic shield skill number is just a milestone, something you check off the list, and then you don't need to think/care about it, at all. It is just an experience tax. The effects of armor encumbrance on character development are, by contrast, far more interesting!

[Sandman25]

That may be better than the status quo, but breakpoints and unneeded complexity are inelegant design, even when they are transparent. Breakpoints are also less interesting in terms of their effect on game play. Right now, if I get X amount of skill with a shield, I know that no matter what else I may want to do with the character down the road, that shield penalty simply doesn't matter—it has been eliminated. (Well okay, except for bad draining.) Hitting the magic shield skill number is just a milestone, something you check off the list, and then you don't need to think/care about it, at all. It is just an experience tax. The effects of armor encumbrance on character development are, by contrast, far more interesting!

Well, it already happens with weapon and min delay, with Armour (skill 24+ can give the same AC as skill 27 does), Dodging, Invocations, Spellcasting (50 MP max), magic schools (spell failure rate remains 1% and it looks like nothing changes, especially for Controlled Blink)

[PleasingFungus]

Found the old thread, requesting Sheilds be renamed to "Blocking" alongside some unpolished mechanics.

Heh. I'm unsurprised that someone's suggested this before. (Though it looks like people in that thread weren't quite clear on the mechanics involved - not that I can blame them!)

Summarizing:

• Primary-melee characters that can use 2h weapons will use them over shields, even if they had no shield penalties at all. That's possible, but I don't know that it's true. I'm told that in very old versions of Stone Soup, the conventional wisdom was the opposite of the present system, in which 1h+shield was considered almost always better than 2h for primary-melee characters. It seems like, if the penalties are low enough and the defensive benefits are high enough, even melee characters will sometimes want to use shields...
• Shields and heavy armour would have the same use requirements. That's... true and false. For example, trolls would be just as likely to use shields (if not moreso), since they still can't use most body armour (esp. early-game). It's true, though, that as both you (Quazifuji) & I posted, the rationale would become less distinct: it wouldn't be about whether or not you have a hand and some xp to spare, it would be about whether you have a hand and the stats to spare, and can survive the penalties. I don't think the loss of distinctness is good, but I don't think the new rationale is worse.
• Shield bashes. You're trying to solve the problem of "trading offense for defense is undesirable for many characters" by changing it to "trading offense for defense and also offense and also a new mechanic". This seems thematic, but not a very strong solution.
• Players will constantly retry shields until their penalties have been reduced/eliminated. Penalties won't be completely eliminated, for relevant stat/skill levels; retrying is a problem, but probably no worse than checking armour penalties at present. (It might be nice if there was some better UI for that regardless...?) It's possible that adding shields to the equation will complicate things, but the penalties will add, not multiply, so there shouldn't be a real combinatorial explosion.
• Losing 2h is bad enough; drop attack delay. Plausible; I'd want to keep UC's delay penalty (because they only lose their aux attack, not a full weapon type), but that's a separate mechanic anyway.
• Make STR increase SH & DEX reduce sequential-attack SH-degradation. Eh. Could. Providing bonuses to an invisible mechanic isn't the best thing, but we want to make that visible anyway, so, eh.
• Make shields use Armour skill. This proposal already removes most of the 'xp cost', changing Shields skill into something you use to get more SH, not to reduce penalties. Merging it into armour skill means you don't get to choose how much you care about shields, which I think is unfortunate; it also makes Armour skill stronger, which I think is unnecessary. (It's already a useful good skill.)

Things which are outside the topic:

• Rename SH, give it to quarterstaves
• Let shields block bolts

I'd also suggest not focusing too much on feel. I'd personally like it if shields were a little more useful for primary-melee characters, but I don't think that's critical; the key thing is removing the breakpoints without adding something even worse in its place.

[crate]

Making 1h + shield obviously better than 2h weapons is a much worse situation than the status quo, in case that's not obvious.

(You'd then simply never use 2h weapons on any character, whereas currently there are lots of characters that do use shields and it makes sense.)

fwiw I don't think shields from a gameplay-standpoint are bad right now.

The design problems (breakpoints, not working the same way as armour) are real and should be fixed but they're not too weak right now imo.

[and into]

That may be better than the status quo, but breakpoints and unneeded complexity are inelegant design, even when they are transparent. Breakpoints are also less interesting in terms of their effect on game play. Right now, if I get X amount of skill with a shield, I know that no matter what else I may want to do with the character down the road, that shield penalty simply doesn't matter—it has been eliminated. (Well okay, except for bad draining.) Hitting the magic shield skill number is just a milestone, something you check off the list, and then you don't need to think/care about it, at all. It is just an experience tax. The effects of armor encumbrance on character development are, by contrast, far more interesting!

Well, it already happens with weapon and min delay, with Armour (skill 24+ can give the same AC as skill 27 does), Dodging, Invocations, Spellcasting (50 MP max), magic schools (spell failure rate remains 1% and it looks like nothing changes, especially for Controlled Blink)

The only thing that is somewhat comparable to shields breakpoints is min_delay, which many developers consider less than ideal and which one developer tried really hard (unfortunately not successfully) to address, already. Out of all your examples, that's the only one that is similar to what I talked about, in which you train something to X level, and then really don't think about it again. Shields is not *as* bad, since you do get more SH value if you train the skill more, but mitigating penalties rather than eliminating them at a certain magic number of skill points is a better system, and I think PF is right to want to implement that system, and then rebalance shields around it.

The other examples you list are not really analogous to what I was talking about, but I will point out that what spell failure you are comfortable with for different spells vs. the skill investment to get it lower is an interesting judgment call that doesn't have an unambiguous, clear-cut answer for all cases. (Which again is one reason why it is more interesting that the penalties from armor encumbrance cannot be completely eliminated at some level of armor skill, and why switching shields to that system might be a good idea.)

[Lasty]

Players will constantly retry shields until their penalties have been reduced/eliminated.

As the person who raised that issue, let me add that to me that issue is linked to shield penalties to attack speed, and I would drop the issue if shields did not affect attack speed. Three reasons for that are 1) The exact penalty to attack speed can matter significantly more than the others at even small values, and 2) people are already used to having other AEVP penalties apply on a curve, and they've already got heuristics for understanding it, even though it's not clear; adding another hard-to-spot factor to the equation makes things even more fiddly to investigate, and 3) you can see your penalties to EV/spellcasting quite clearly after putting on something that increases AEVP, but checking your attack speed requires you to swing your weapon at the air repeatedly and then (if you want to be precise) do some statistical math.

Min attack delay 0.0 at Shields 15 (12.51 with 0 EVP armour)

The discount on AEVP only applies to spellcasting failure. Specifically, whatever your total AEVP is from armour + shield + barding, etc., that total is reduced by 0.8 before being used to determine spellcasting failure.

[PleasingFungus]

Unless I'm completely mistaken, bardings only give an EV penalty, not an AEVP.

player_armour_shield_spell_penalty() also agrees with me.

[Lasty]

Unless I'm completely mistaken, bardings only give an EV penalty, not an AEVP.

player_armour_shield_spell_penalty() also agrees with me.

Ah, my mistake.

[Skrybe]

Something that hasn't been mentioned is, besides serving as a choice between offense (2h) or defense, shields also serve as an alternative to EV, for some characters. Someone clomping around in CPA/GDA who wants to stop attacks from landing is going to get more mileage out of training Shields than training Dodging. In this light, mitigating shield penalties with Str sounds like a good idea, since tanky types who can't dodge are going to have high Str anyway.

A last question, on which I’m undecided, is the contribution of stats (str and dex) to SH *values*.

I play shield users a lot, and I can't recall a single case where this influenced my choice of stat boosts or equipment, nor have I ever seen it cause a change in SH value that I think would make a real difference in gameplay. I won't say that the mechanic is good or bad, but if doing away with it would make things simpler, I doubt anyone would even notice it was gone.

EDIT: But I also tend to use plain and large shields rather than bucklers, which apparently get a bigger boost from stats.

[Quazifuji]

What if shields didn't have their own skill, but used the armour skill instead? That way they'd have the penalty they have, but wouldn't cost additional XP on top of it.

Well, this goes against what I said earlier (although I haven't seen anyone repeat the same sentiment). I think one value of shields currently is that they're useful as a way for light armour characters to make up for the lost defenses of wearing light armour. Depending on how things were balanced, if shields scaled with armour skill, then they could become less valuable to light armour characters who don't get as much out of training armour.

Maybe it could work out if you made training armour skill solely for the purpose of shields worthwhile even if you're not wearing heavy armour, though. It sounds unbalanced, but when you think about it, the characters that wear heavy armour now are typically the characters who also use melee heavily for damage without as much stealth or spellcasting. These characters give up more by using a shield, since they could be using a two-hander. Light armour characters are usually using more stealth or spells (unless maybe they're a race with hugely skewed armour and dodging aptitudes like merfolk), which means they're more likely to be using short blades or spells for their damage, which means they're often giving up less by using a shield.

So if the same investment in armour skill now gave about the same return in value when using a shield as it does now, it would be a significant buff to shields for heavy armour characters who are already training tons of armour but are making a big sacrifice by giving up the extra hand, while being a much smaller buff for spellcasters or stabbers who don't train as much armour skill but don't care as much about the loss of a hand.

It would be a pretty huge buff for Formicids, but I don't think they get accused of being too strong very often.

[SaidTheAlligatorKingToHisSon]

fwiw I don't think shields from a gameplay-standpoint are bad right now.

For some reading this rather than the OP got me thinking about the more basic question, "Is there a problem with shields?" rather than "How do we fix shields?" (the latter implies there's a problem with shields) And thinking about it some more, the only real issues I have with shields are:

1)Tanky fighters don't seem to want to use them, which some should because tanky fighters and shields go together.
2)Mages virtually always use a shield.

A simple fix for the latter wouldn't be to change shields, but to make enhancer staves two-handed. Still don't know what to do about the former.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is, besides serving as a choice between offense (2h) or defense, shields also serve as an alternative to EV, for some characters. Someone clomping around in CPA/GDA who wants to stop attacks from landing is going to get more mileage out of training Shields than training Dodging. In this light, mitigating shield penalties with Str sounds like a good idea, since tanky types who can't dodge are going to have high Str anyway.

I like this train of thought, since str needs a boost imo and helps with the "tanks should sometimes use shields". However I'd probably still stick with a 2h wep since offense in this game is just too good. Also I rarely use CPA/GDA, since I prefer a balance of AC+EV over AC+SH (have done the latter on chei statue trolls before, when statue form nuked EV).

[Siegurt]

What if shields didn't have their own skill, but used the armour skill instead? That way they'd have the penalty they have, but wouldn't cost additional XP on top of it.

Well, this goes against what I said earlier (although I haven't seen anyone repeat the same sentiment). I think one value of shields currently is that they're useful as a way for light armour characters to make up for the lost defenses of wearing light armour. Depending on how things were balanced, if shields scaled with armour skill, then they could become less valuable to light armour characters who don't get as much out of training armour.

Maybe it could work out if you made training armour skill solely for the purpose of shields worthwhile even if you're not wearing heavy armour, though. It sounds unbalanced, but when you think about it, the characters that wear heavy armour now are typically the characters who also use melee heavily for damage without as much stealth or spellcasting. These characters give up more by using a shield, since they could be using a two-hander. Light armour characters are usually using more stealth or spells (unless maybe they're a race with hugely skewed armour and dodging aptitudes like merfolk), which means they're more likely to be using short blades or spells for their damage, which means they're often giving up less by using a shield.

So if the same investment in armour skill now gave about the same return in value when using a shield as it does now, it would be a significant buff to shields for heavy armour characters who are already training tons of armour but are making a big sacrifice by giving up the extra hand, while being a much smaller buff for spellcasters or stabbers who don't train as much armour skill but don't care as much about the loss of a hand.

It would be a pretty huge buff for Formicids, but I don't think they get accused of being too strong very often.

Well, what I had in mind was just using Armour instead of shields in all the existing formulas. If you would currently train dodging and shields, under my proposal you'd train dodging and Armour instead. So for light Armour users it would be a wash (except you'd get a point or two of ac that you wouldn't otherwise) and it would be a more attractive option for heavy Armour users. I have the perception that light Armour users already find shields a better option than heavy Armour users, so in my head it brings some attraction for using shields for some users who don't currently find it a good option.

[Galefury]

One thing I kind of like (as somebody who plays Nagas a lot) is the lowered requirements for big races. Those races also often have a malus to traditional defences. which plays nicely with shields. I'd like that to be preserved, though I do think the spoilerness of that is bad.

I agree, shields being more useful to some races than others is nice. Related: the spoilerness also applies to the changed EV calculation for large races. Also there are other minor size/species related things like having stable footing in shallow water. Nagas and centaurs in particular are a little weird because they have large body size but a normal torso, which translates to different equipment restrictions but equal penalties to the plain large trolls and ogres. This could (and probably should) be made more transparent by adding lines to the A screen.

Generally I think making the shield penalty scaling more similar to armor would be good. Probably making shield penalties work exactly like armor penalties would be best. They are not so different, I think mostly the effects on UC are slightly different, and I don't think anything of value would be lost if the distinction were dropped. To be clear, what I propose is that wearing a shield should still induce the fixed penalty of losing access to your offhand, and in addition each shield type should have an encumbrance rating that works exactly like the one for body armor. The only difference: it's reduced by shield skill instead of armour skill. This would simplify the systems, while still preserving the gameplay. Large species could simply get a percentage reduction to shield encumbrance, small species an increase, which could be indicated on the A screen.

I don't have much of an opinion regarding the effect of stats and skill on SH. Maybe just use strength for stat scaling. Additional SH from stats and skill levels should probably be a fixed percentage of the base value for each point (probably different ones for stat points and skill levels), I don't see a reason for something more complex. I don't think messing with the SH penalty for multiple attacks is a good idea, because SH should be somehow different from EV. And I don't see the point in making SH more like EV depending on dex.

Numbers that might work for an initial implementation, off the top of my head:
Encumbrace ratings as suggested by PleasingFungus: between leather and ring mail (4 to 7) for buckler, FDA (11) for shield, plate (18) for large shield
100% increase for tiny species, 50% increase for small species, normal for normal, 33% reduction for large species

Note that I didn't take any care to preserve the status quo, I don't think that's really a valuable goal in this case. I just repeated what PleasingFungus suggested or mentioned the first numbers that came to my head respectively. Should be playable. A slightly more systematic way to set the encumbrance ratings would be to have similar spell failure penalties to the current ones for each shield type for a character of reasonable strength (say, 10 or 15), at skill levels that are slightly below the current elimination point (so for example skill 0, 10 and 20 for the three types of shield). It's easy to do in wizmode because armor already uses the formulas I'm proposing for shields, and armor of various penalties is available ingame. Maybe I'll do that later.

[Siegurt]

Well, that would be a terrible nerf for shields, which already have huge penalties.

Presently you can reduce 40% of the EV penalty of body armour by training the armour skill to 27, If that was translated to shields, that would mean you could *never* eliminate the penalty altogether (Yes I realize this is what "no breakpoints" implies) and hence the penalty for using a shield would be *at best* 60% worse than it is currently.

The only reason shields are worthwhile at all presently is because with enough training you can eliminate the penalties for chunk of XP. Exchanging a chunk of XP for a mild-to-moderate amount of extra defense is an exchange that's worth it currently for some builds where the loss of a hand is a good trade.

The fact is, currently the loss of a hand and the large spellcasting penalties that go with an untrained shield are only sometimes worth it, if you can never eliminate the EV and spellcasting penalties altogether, then what incentive does anyone have to ever use one?

[PleasingFungus]

If you can never eliminate the EV and spellcasting penalties altogether, then what incentive does anyone have to ever use armour?

[duvessa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

[Galefury]

If shields use the same penalty system as body armor, wearing a shield would have to improve your defense by more than upgrading your body armor to one of higher encumbrance rating (with the encumbrance difference between current body armor and upgraded body armor equivalent to the encumbrance rating of the shield). Otherwise giving up a hand and a chunk of exp to achieve something you could just get from wearing heavier body armor would never be worth it.

But body armor upgrades already diminish in efficiency as you move to heavier armor, base ac per point of encumbrance is lower for heavier armors than for lighter ones. Leather armor has 3 base AC and 4 encumbrance. Scale mail has 6 base AC, twice as much as leather armor, but 10 encumbrance, which is more than twice as much as leather armor. So it would be nice to be able to wear two leather armors at once instead of upgrading leather armor to scale mail.

I realize this argumentation is a little convoluted. And probably the penalties would have to be a bit lower than the ones suggested in my previous post for shields to be really worth using. But overall I think making shield penalty work exactly like armor penalty is a much better idea than making it work more like armor penalty but slightly different. Also all this fits fairly well with the concept from the original post:

It would also change the dynamic of investing in Shields skill; rather than being about reaching breakpoints to eliminate penalties, it would be about gaining SH, with reduction of shield penalty as a largely secondary effect - again, rather like armour skill and AC.

[Siegurt]

Well, if SH stops being a second-class defensive mechanism and starts being good enough to rely on as your primary defenses, then it might well be worth the expense and additional penalties.

As-is it's simply not worth using if the penalties are as you describe (And so far all we've talked about is the penalty side of things)

If shields give the same SH as they give now, and raising your shield skill increases your SH by the same value they do now, and the *only* change is that the EV penalties and spellcasting penalties worsen (by a large margin, you've suggested the difference between 0 penalties at 15 Shields vs 60% penalties at 27 Shields, if you do indeed make it "the same as armour")

Now if someone wants to talk about making SH not be quite so marginal in exchange for larger penalties then at least we'd be talking about maintaining the same usefulness.

If you can never eliminate the EV and spellcasting penalties altogether, then what incentive does anyone have to ever use armour?

AC is both a better defensive bonus than SH and comes with a smaller built-in penalty, Armour gives you a spellcasting penalty, and an EV penalty, works on most attacks in the game, and provides good, consistent per-point protection. Shields give you a spellcasting penalty, an EV penalty, a large (melee and ranged weapon) offense penalty, and provide less per-point protection than AC (Now it's roughly on par with EV per point, which is good because it used to be half that), against a smaller subset of attacks, it also requires more XP per point than AC does in heavier armour,and more XP per point of EV for a reasonably dexterous non-large character in light armour.

Now there's a reason it's got all these extra things stacked against it, that being that you *can* eliminate the spellcasting and EV penalties. at a fairly economical rate for the smaller shields.

So if you're going to drastically *increase* the EV/Spellcasting penalties, without taking any other action, Shields will be significantly more marginalized than they already are.

Now I realize no development takes place in a vacumn, and I assume there's *some sort* of vague plan to make shields not become a complete waste, but what that is hasn't yet been discussed or even mentioned beyond "It'd be good if people trained the shields skill to get more SH rather than to get rid of shield penalties", Which I agree with conceptually, but it's not going to happen until getting more SH is more attractive (or at least "more attractive in some circumstances") than just not using a shield in the first place.

That could look like "Your SH value has more impact than it does now" or it might look like something else entirely.

[crate]

also related FR: can you please remove the "free" encumbrance you get toward spellcasting penalties, thanks

unfortunately the best time to implement that change has already passed (when EVP -> ER happened) but really it's quite weird that leather armour has literally no effect on spellcasting for a large majority of characters (and the rest basically all use shields at low shield skill) despite having an encumbrance rating >0

[KoboldLord]

Yeah, I don't even understand what the free encumbrance toward spellcasting was even supposed to do. Normally when there's a klunky mechanic like that, you can see where maybe the original coder meant it to be simulationist, or perhaps it was much easier to implement that way. I don't know what the free encumbrance was ever supposed to be for.

On a completely different issue, is there any hope of traction on the possibility of removing the SH penalty for blocking multiple attacks per turn? This one was obviously originally intended to be simulationist, since if you move your shield to block one arrow it obviously can't be located elsewhere to block another arrow, but it constitutes a large mechanical penalty to shield use that it doesn't really need. Being attacked by multiple monsters at once is already heavily penalized on account of the fact that you are being attacked by multiple monsters at once, so why do we need an extra mechanic to ensure that shield-using players are extra-obsessive about baiting monsters to planned kill zone exactly one at a time and never more? If not being extra-terrible against multiple monsters is too good for shields, they can always have a compensatory drawback like working against a much smaller subset of monster attacks than AC or EV, or forcing the player to compensate for weaker offense.

[duvessa]

Yeah, I don't even understand what the free encumbrance toward spellcasting was even supposed to do. Normally when there's a klunky mechanic like that, you can see where maybe the original coder meant it to be simulationist, or perhaps it was much easier to implement that way. I don't know what the free encumbrance was ever supposed to be for.

My guess is that someone wanted warper/crusader/etc to start with leather armour but also thought an evasion penalty of 1 hurt their spell success too much, but they really wanted warper/crusader/etc to start with leather armour anyway so they added that thing

[stickyfingers]

27 armour skill reduces penalty by 60%, not 40. Not that it changes much in the argument though.

[Galefury]

On a completely different issue, is there any hope of traction on the possibility of removing the SH penalty for blocking multiple attacks per turn?

SH should be substantially different from EV in some way. The penalty for blocking multiple attacks is one difference. I think the only other one is that some attacks can be evaded but not blocked, and the other way around (Orb of Destruction, is there anything else?).

If anything I think the penalty should be increased. Perhaps even to the point of SH blocking at most one attack per turn. The amount of SH you get would have to be increased in this case. Or maybe one attack for bucklers, two for shields, three for large shields, with a reduced SH difference between the three types of shields. Lots of monsters have multiple attacks, so it's not just relevant for fighting multiple enemies at once. This would make shields better against monsters with single powerful attacks (casters with blockable spells like liches and orc wizards; giants, large slime creatures, hobgoblins, kobolds, most other early game enemies, and so on), but worse for fighting multiple enemies, very fast enemies, and enemies with many weaker attacks. This would make SH substantially different from EV and AC. AC is best against lots of small attacks, EV is equally good against everything, SH would be best at preventing single powerful hits.

If the multiblock penalty is removed there should be something else to distinguish SH from EV. Or if SH and EV end up being pretty much the same thing (even moreso than currently), shields should just give you a bunch of extra EV so the SH stat can be removed. Because having different names for the same thing is rarely good.

[KoboldLord]

SH should be substantially different from EV in some way. The penalty for blocking multiple attacks is one difference. I think the only other one is that some attacks can be evaded but not blocked, and the other way around (Orb of Destruction, is there anything else?).

If anything I think the penalty should be increased. Perhaps even to the point of SH blocking at most one attack per turn. The amount of SH you get would have to be increased in this case. Or maybe one attack for bucklers, two for shields, three for large shields, with a reduced SH difference between the three types of shields. Lots of monsters have multiple attacks, so it's not just relevant for fighting multiple enemies at once. This would make shields better against monsters with single powerful attacks (casters with blockable spells like liches and orc wizards; giants, large slime creatures, hobgoblins, kobolds, most other early game enemies, and so on), but worse for fighting multiple enemies, very fast enemies, and enemies with many weaker attacks. This would make SH substantially different from EV and AC. AC is best against lots of small attacks, EV is equally good against everything, SH would be best at preventing single powerful hits.

If the multiblock penalty is removed there should be something else to distinguish SH from EV. Or if SH and EV end up being pretty much the same thing (even moreso than currently), shields should just give you a bunch of extra EV so the SH stat can be removed. Because having different names for the same thing is rarely good.

This reasoning sounds good, but the game already involves a degenerate amount of corridor-fighting. Anything that makes this worse is bad, because using terrain isn't much of an interesting choice if one specific terrain feature is always better than every other.

At the moment, the main difference between EV and SH is that on a point-for-point basis EV is almost strictly better. It works against more things, more actually dangerous things, and more things at a time. EV also doesn't indirectly penalize your damage output, although AC+SH is easier to maximize early on than AC+EV.

[Galefury]

I think the corridor thing got a lot better in recent versions. Partially through addition of monsters that make you want to avoid corridors, like LRD users such as deep troll earth mages and cloud creating monsters such as catoblepae. Partially through introduction of the spider branch and layouts with few or no size 1 corridors. Taking advantage of the available terrain is more of a player skill than an "interesting choice" in my opinion. Some places are better for fighting, others are worse, and you have to tell these apart, get there and use them.

Fighting many enemies at once is almost always worse than fighting them one at a time, and once multiple enemies have noticed you corridors are usually the easiest way to force them to fight you one at a time. I doubt that's ever going to change, and it's certainly not going to change just because of changes to how hard or easy it is to block multiple attacks per turn. The interesting things happen when there aren't any corridors that can be easily reached or if there is something around that makes you want to stay away from walls.

[Psiweapon]

There's Qazlal, too.

[duvessa]

I really don't agree that fighting monsters one at a time is degenerate. I don't like that shield penalty because it's weird and a massive spoiler, but I posit that its presence or absence doesn't really change tactics that much.

[Siegurt]

27 armour skill reduces penalty by 60%, not 40. Not that it changes much in the argument though.

Oh, you're right, I had my fraction inverted in my head, sorry, but you're correct, it doesn't change the argument at all.

[KoboldLord]

I really don't agree that fighting monsters one at a time is degenerate. I don't like that shield penalty because it's weird and a massive spoiler, but I posit that its presence or absence doesn't really change tactics that much.

Agreed with those points. I wanted to concentrate on the fact that the shield penalty doesn't serve a good and useful purpose. I probably should have included the counterintuitive spoiler aspect, too, particularly since that line of argument is harder to argue against.

[Galefury]

No it isn't. It can be fixed fairly easily by mentioning the penalty to multiple blocks in the shield item descriptions and manual (if it isn't in there already), and slightly changing the messages for multiple shield blocks to indicate that they get harder to do.

[damiac]

Well, why do shield need extra layers of penalties and badness, when they already have a huge penalty to begin with, in that you lose the ability to use two handed weapons. They also require spending XP on a special skill. Characters who would use a shield by default, like a stabber or a conjuration type still have to pay the XP cost, and in exchange they get what, 6-8sh? Why do shields need so many penalties and inherant suckiness? It's already different from EV, in that it's like the same thing but worse, and I really don't think getting a penalty to subsequent blocks in a single turn fits anyone's definition of 'interesting'. In fact, I would guess it's irrelevant in 99% of games played with a shield, which is a small subset of total games played.

Shields seem to be in a fairly decent place now, with the recent buffs to enchantment level's effect on SH. They're worth at least considering now if you have a decent 1 hander, and I can't imagine anyone finds them overpowered...

As far as the breakpoints, I'd say if something must be changed, the best way would be to completely remove the extra attack delay from shields, and instead have essentially the same effect as armor encumbrance (or even simply add to existing armor encumbrance), meaning increased fail chance for spells, decreased stealth and accuracy, which never goes away, but is reduced by investment in SH skill. To balance that, you'd probably need to make regular and large shields a bit better, but bucklers could stay the same.

Effectively, this means the people who get 'free' shields, like stabbers and spellcasters, now have downsides to consider, while the people who might not typically use shields might find it worthwhile to invest the XP for a standard or large shield.

[Jeremiah]

Give all shields the Protection brand (they can still have another brand as well.) So shields automatically give some AC as well as SH.

[Quazifuji]

Give all shields the Protection brand (they can still have another brand as well.) So shields automatically give some AC as well as SH.

This is pretty common in other RPGs. Shields have some sort of blocking mechanic, but also provide a large amount of armour or evasion. It might work here too. Maybe rather than trying to find ways to differentiate SH from EV we should just make shields give AC and/or EV.

I'm also inclined to agree with the general sentiment that shields already have a significant handicap for many characters and don't necessarily need an encumberance penalty on top of that. I think the main question is, if shields have no penalty besides using a hand, how do we stop larger shields from being strictly better? I think maybe something like weapon mindelay is a good model here. Mindelay also has a problem with thresholds, so it's not the perfect model, obvious, but I think mindelay is good because it only inhibits your ability to use the weapon, rather than your ability to do other things while using the weapon. At lower level skills, larger weapons are a tradeoff of speed and damage per swing, but as you train weapon skill, they become faster until eventually they're strictly better. Maybe a similar model could work for shields. I'm not sure what the best way to do it from a clarity, non-spoilery standpoint, though.

[acvar]

Ok here goes. I have done quite a bit of actual fighitng. I will give my oppinions of the prblems with shields in crawl a well as a possble solution that coensides with my real life fighting experience. Note that real life experience is not always a good thing in a game.

1. Shields historically were not used by tanks. Tanks have armour to rely on. They don't need shields. Shields were used by light infantry. It is a good thing that heavy armour fighters in crawl choose 2h weapons over shields. It is bad that light armour melee characters do the same.

2. Shields are weapons not armour. They are used in an active way to block attacks. They do not belong lumped together with the armour skill. I do think that the best solution is to remove the shields skill, but believe that shields should be tied to some other skill (hightest weapons skill or fighting).

3. Shields should be a trade off between offence and defence. Melee is a trade off between 1h and 2h weapon. Spellcasting is a trade off of lower spellcasting penalties. No other penalties are required and should be removed.

I would remove the shield skill. I would remove the bonus to hitpoints given by fighting. I would make it so fighting skill gives you a bonus to hit and a bonus to block in melee. I would make wielding a shield improve that bonus in melee and give you the ability to use that block vs missle attacks.

[PleasingFungus]

I think the main question is, if shields have no penalty besides using a hand, how do we stop larger shields from being strictly better? I think maybe something like weapon mindelay is a good model here. Mindelay also has a problem with thresholds, so it's not the perfect model, obvious, but I think mindelay is good because it only inhibits your ability to use the weapon, rather than your ability to do other things while using the weapon. At lower level skills, larger weapons are a tradeoff of speed and damage per swing, but as you train weapon skill, they become faster until eventually they're strictly better. Maybe a similar model could work for shields. I'm not sure what the best way to do it from a clarity, non-spoilery standpoint, though.

Here's what you do. Make shields simply add to your weapon delay: reduce this penalty linearly with shields skill. Let's say it's reduced to a penalty of 0 at, say, 5 skill for bucklers, 15 for normal shields, and 25 for large shields...