Mines Malingerer
Posts: 49
Joined: Wednesday, 7th November 2012, 10:13
Two ideas to make shields more viable
1. Add a new passive mechanic 'Bashing' that scales with the shields skill. Each point in shields gives a 1% chance of proccing. The bash effect will depend on which type of shield you're using:
-Regular shield: Bash applies confuse on target.
-Shield of fire resistance: Bash if landed applies a weak version of sticky flame to the target.
-Shield of ice resistance: Bash if landed applies a weak version of slow to the target.
-Shield of poison resistance: Bash if landed creates a weak miasma cloud.
-Shield of magic resistance: Bash applies silence on the target for 1-2 turns.
-Shield of life protection: Bash applies a weak version of agony, or vampiric draining. (I can't really think of an interesting effect for this one)
-Shield of resistance: Bash applies confuse on target. (This gets the basic effect because resistance is already a very powerful attribure)
-Shield of reflection: Bash has a chance to transfer enemy buffs to yourself. (Also don't have any great ideas for this one)
The actual bash would be resistible based on HD and size of the monster. Once a bash is successfully landed, the actual effects are reduced or resisted further based on resistances, except confuse which should be a 'physical effect' (bonk!) and should be affected only by size and HD.
Power of all effects are 15/30/50% as effective as their parent effects for small/medium/large shields.
Reasoning: The main reason would be to make shields a bit more strategically competitive compared to two-handers in melee. Other reasons are: To add flavor and strategy to your shield of choice. To add more of an incentive to keep training shields past the breaking point for your race/shield combination, without buffing the classic spellcaster with a buckler. To make shields somewhat more viable as a training choice in the beginning. To make large shields more competitive compared to medium/small ones.
Downsides: Tricky to balance. We don't want to make shields become the obvious choice for melee characters. Presumably this can be done by playing with the percentages of the parent effects. Is it worth the headache though? There are many other, easier ways to code a balance fix for shields if desired by the devs, although obviously I think my suggestion adds a lot of flavor.
2. Shields give a passive protection against torment and hellfire: 10/15% for medium/large shields.
Reasoning: Shields are drastically less competitive compared to 2-handers when it comes to dealing with monsters that deal damage through torment or hellfire, which currently bypass classic warrior defenses. I chose not to give bucklers any passive protection because bucklers are already a 'no-brainer' for spellcasters most times. This is meant to throw a bone to melee-shield users particularly who enjoy the post game, although it can help with the rare instances of hellfire/torment found in abyss/zot.
Downsides: It is perhaps intended for characters to not use shields for post game. This combined with my first suggestion may make shields potentially OP, and overall harder to balance.
We have some very smart people in the community. I'm happy to have any of you shoot down my ideas with stuff I haven't thought of. I welcome the opportunity to discuss shield viability (again), as I think it's a good topic.
EDIT: Added idea for shield of reflection.
EDIT2: Made some of the language clearer.