I think you could add an action for the shield in combat, Ready for Missile Attack, where you crouch behind your shield and grant yourself better protection vs such attacks. Which would then provide the Disadvantage to Missile Attacks like you suggested.
Oh its in no way better than dodge, was it supposed to be better than dodge?
Why make up a new item-specific action if there's already an action available that does what you want it to do and more? That's just bloating the game.
So scrap a great many magic items and half the existing feats, then, since they have their own unique rules?
WOOOOOOW way to hit the strawman argument right into the home run zone......
Making a HB rule that someone as an action can use their shield to imposed disadvantage on range attacks, when the PC can ALREADY use their action to take the Dodge is not all all the same in any damn fashion to UNIQUE and DIFFERENT actions granted by items and feats.....
I myself like shields just the way they are equipping a shield is basically giving your character half cover i.e. +2 to AC, why does it need to be made better then it already is decent. Then you have your magic shields that just grant +1,+2 or +3 so a potential total of +5 to AC without any of the special magical shields in the game already.
I think you could add an action for the shield in combat, Ready for Missile Attack, where you crouch behind your shield and grant yourself better protection vs such attacks. Which would then provide the Disadvantage to Missile Attacks like you suggested.
Oh its in no way better than dodge, was it supposed to be better than dodge?
Why make up a new item-specific action if there's already an action available that does what you want it to do and more? That's just bloating the game.
So scrap a great many magic items and half the existing feats, then, since they have their own unique rules?
No, scrapping a redundancy being proposed. How is an action dedicated to putting missile attacks at a disadvantage anything but dodge that's opting to limit itself to one mode of attack?
Outside action economy, I think giving shields special anti missile cover properties fails to recognize the precedent of the tactic being used in armored formations. Individually whatever protection you get goes out the window if you're dealing with multiple attackers with any degree of mobility. There's a reason those tactical shields popularized in CoD are IRL only trained/deployed for use in close quarters battle (e.g. inside a house or through a door frame).
I think you could add an action for the shield in combat, Ready for Missile Attack, where you crouch behind your shield and grant yourself better protection vs such attacks. Which would then provide the Disadvantage to Missile Attacks like you suggested.
Oh its in no way better than dodge, was it supposed to be better than dodge?
Why make up a new item-specific action if there's already an action available that does what you want it to do and more? That's just bloating the game.
So scrap a great many magic items and half the existing feats, then, since they have their own unique rules?
No, scrapping a redundancy being proposed. How is an action dedicated to putting missile attacks at a disadvantage anything but dodge that's opting to limit itself to one mode of attack?
Outside action economy, I think giving shields special anti missile cover properties fails to recognize the precedent of the tactic being used in armored formations. Individually whatever protection you get goes out the window if you're dealing with multiple attackers with any degree of mobility. There's a reason those tactical shields popularized in CoD are IRL only trained/deployed for use in close quarters battle (e.g. inside a house or through a door frame).
100%. The Hoplon and the Scutum only worked so well because they were tightly packed in with other dudes holding them. Big heavy shields only work in closed quarters. Sure, they look really cool in Anime, the Dragon Prince, and 300, but they aren't practical alone... and smaller shields typically make it hard to turtle up.
Hmm... I like the general concept of allowing somebody with a shield to better defend themselves against ranged attacks. Personally, I would be more likely to provide the benefits via a homebrewed feat versus just an innate benefit via a house rule, though. Not quite sure what would be most appropriate and balanced rule wise, but here's my initial thought:
Shield Defender
You are especially adept at using your shield to defend yourself against incoming ranged attacks. You gain the following benefits while you are wielding a shield:
As a bonus action, you can strategically position yourself behind your shield to reduce the chances of being hit by missile fire. Until the start of your next turn, you gain a +3 bonus against ranged weapon attacks.
As a reaction, you can shift your shield to deflect the missile when you are hit by a ranged weapon attack. When you do so, the damage you take is reduced by 1d10 + you proficiency bonus.
Again, just a quick outline of my idea, but I would probably create something along these lines for my gaming tables if somebody wanted to have a character that had these types of benefits from their shield.
Change the second to either d4 + proficiency bonus, or just proficiency bonus. At first level your reaction could reduce an attack by 12 pts.
Seems a little much to me. You already position yourself behind your shield and get a +2 to your AC, which is significant. The way i think of it is if the ranged weapon would have hit you if not for your shield, it hit the shield. If it was close to that, it may have hit the shield or some part of your armor and either stuck or was deflected. If it wasn't even close, it missed entirely.
Probably is a little unbalanced in certain aspects, since I only spent about 5-10 minutes coming up with the two points to the feat idea. Wasn't really thinking it through in great detail, since I was aiming mostly to indicate that I'd personally create a specialized feat to accomplish what the OP was suggestion versus making it a flat [house] rule to all shield usage.
As for the specifics of the reaction aspect of my feat, my general thought was that the user would know how to shift/tilt the shield a bit when being hit to better deflect some of the damage away (similar to the monk's deflect arrow ability). Arrow might pierce the shield or get past it slightly, but shield bearer could potentially lessen the damage by moving the shield a bit so that said arrow doesn't hit as hard as it could...or maybe pierces the shield but doesn't strike flesh because the shield was push away enough to negate the damage.
As for your bonus, I would give penalties then to melee attacks while you positioned your shield against the ranged attack. And how would you protect against ranged attacks coming from 2 sides?
Not sure that I would penalize melee attacks per se, since the bonus action could just as easily be done after they use their action to attack. Agree that impose some sort of drawback makes a bit of sense, though. My general thought on the bonus action aspect was along the lines that if one considers having a shield to be similar to having half cover (not the same but similar), then the bonus action increases that bonus by +3 to equate as if having 3/4 cover from ranged attacks. Doesn't help against melee attackers right next to you, but you are using the shield to defend/cover yourself better from ranged weapon attacks... Honestly, I would probably by more likely to say that using the bonus action reduces your speed by half (or completely) until your next round, since you're limiting your movement to maintain your defense.
Ranged attacks from two different sides? Hadn't really thought that far into the concept. Suppose it depends on how realistic a DM wants the rules to be in the situation. If we're going very realistic, then I would say that the bonus would only apply to ~50% of the coverage, since the shield can only block so much. If we're being a bit more free in interpretation, then a character spending a feat on something like this might just be able to "turtle up" for the round.
Wasn't really expecting to get any responses to the specific details, so my apologies for not really building this out more to be a truly legit feat. Might take the idea over to the Homebrew Forum and workshop it a bit more to see if it can create something more viable, though.
Change the second to either d4 + proficiency bonus, or just proficiency bonus. At first level your reaction could reduce an attack by 12 pts.
Honestly, considering that the bonus was from a feat, I didn't think that the 1d10 was out-of-line. Both the monk's deflect arrow ability and gloves of missile snaring use a 1d10 plus some sort of modifier(s) to reduce damage. Understand that a 1st level character that happened to have this feat (such as a variant human) could reduce a ranged weapon attack by 12 points by rolling a 10. However, if we only use a d4, then a 20th level character would only be able to reduce a ranged weapon attack by a maximum of 10, which seems fairly low... Then again, since a 6 point difference at 20th level probably doesn't mean much, using a smaller die might balance out the potential overpowering aspects.
I think these proposals are discounting the streamlined math of the actual game design. Half cover is +2 to AC, Shield is +2 to AC. All y'all realizing maybe, just maybe, in the game design half cover = shield, or at least it treats the shield as mobile half cover? If anything, I think we're going about some of these proposals backwards. That is, if you're taking half cover, you're no longer using your shield (because rather than configuring your body in a defensive posture with your shield, you're configuring your body to take advantage of available cover, so must adjust AC accordingly. This is almost like my dodge objection. In one proposal, people want shields to do something which as performed does exactly what dodge does (just dodge includes melee). In the cover instance people want their shields to do what half cover does, but the shield actually does that already, and you can move around with it.
Player, "I'm getting behind my shield to maximize my protection against missile attacks, putting any missiles at a disadvantage."
DM: Ok, you're dodging.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
WOOOOOOW way to hit the strawman argument right into the home run zone......
Making a HB rule that someone as an action can use their shield to imposed disadvantage on range attacks, when the PC can ALREADY use their action to take the Dodge is not all all the same in any damn fashion to UNIQUE and DIFFERENT actions granted by items and feats.....
I myself like shields just the way they are equipping a shield is basically giving your character half cover i.e. +2 to AC, why does it need to be made better then it already is decent. Then you have your magic shields that just grant +1,+2 or +3 so a potential total of +5 to AC without any of the special magical shields in the game already.
No, scrapping a redundancy being proposed. How is an action dedicated to putting missile attacks at a disadvantage anything but dodge that's opting to limit itself to one mode of attack?
Outside action economy, I think giving shields special anti missile cover properties fails to recognize the precedent of the tactic being used in armored formations. Individually whatever protection you get goes out the window if you're dealing with multiple attackers with any degree of mobility. There's a reason those tactical shields popularized in CoD are IRL only trained/deployed for use in close quarters battle (e.g. inside a house or through a door frame).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
100%. The Hoplon and the Scutum only worked so well because they were tightly packed in with other dudes holding them. Big heavy shields only work in closed quarters. Sure, they look really cool in Anime, the Dragon Prince, and 300, but they aren't practical alone... and smaller shields typically make it hard to turtle up.
That's exactly the way I also see it.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
Change the second to either d4 + proficiency bonus, or just proficiency bonus. At first level your reaction could reduce an attack by 12 pts.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Probably is a little unbalanced in certain aspects, since I only spent about 5-10 minutes coming up with the two points to the feat idea. Wasn't really thinking it through in great detail, since I was aiming mostly to indicate that I'd personally create a specialized feat to accomplish what the OP was suggestion versus making it a flat [house] rule to all shield usage.
As for the specifics of the reaction aspect of my feat, my general thought was that the user would know how to shift/tilt the shield a bit when being hit to better deflect some of the damage away (similar to the monk's deflect arrow ability). Arrow might pierce the shield or get past it slightly, but shield bearer could potentially lessen the damage by moving the shield a bit so that said arrow doesn't hit as hard as it could...or maybe pierces the shield but doesn't strike flesh because the shield was push away enough to negate the damage.
Not sure that I would penalize melee attacks per se, since the bonus action could just as easily be done after they use their action to attack. Agree that impose some sort of drawback makes a bit of sense, though. My general thought on the bonus action aspect was along the lines that if one considers having a shield to be similar to having half cover (not the same but similar), then the bonus action increases that bonus by +3 to equate as if having 3/4 cover from ranged attacks. Doesn't help against melee attackers right next to you, but you are using the shield to defend/cover yourself better from ranged weapon attacks... Honestly, I would probably by more likely to say that using the bonus action reduces your speed by half (or completely) until your next round, since you're limiting your movement to maintain your defense.
Ranged attacks from two different sides? Hadn't really thought that far into the concept. Suppose it depends on how realistic a DM wants the rules to be in the situation. If we're going very realistic, then I would say that the bonus would only apply to ~50% of the coverage, since the shield can only block so much. If we're being a bit more free in interpretation, then a character spending a feat on something like this might just be able to "turtle up" for the round.
Wasn't really expecting to get any responses to the specific details, so my apologies for not really building this out more to be a truly legit feat. Might take the idea over to the Homebrew Forum and workshop it a bit more to see if it can create something more viable, though.
Honestly, considering that the bonus was from a feat, I didn't think that the 1d10 was out-of-line. Both the monk's deflect arrow ability and gloves of missile snaring use a 1d10 plus some sort of modifier(s) to reduce damage. Understand that a 1st level character that happened to have this feat (such as a variant human) could reduce a ranged weapon attack by 12 points by rolling a 10. However, if we only use a d4, then a 20th level character would only be able to reduce a ranged weapon attack by a maximum of 10, which seems fairly low... Then again, since a 6 point difference at 20th level probably doesn't mean much, using a smaller die might balance out the potential overpowering aspects.
I think these proposals are discounting the streamlined math of the actual game design. Half cover is +2 to AC, Shield is +2 to AC. All y'all realizing maybe, just maybe, in the game design half cover = shield, or at least it treats the shield as mobile half cover? If anything, I think we're going about some of these proposals backwards. That is, if you're taking half cover, you're no longer using your shield (because rather than configuring your body in a defensive posture with your shield, you're configuring your body to take advantage of available cover, so must adjust AC accordingly. This is almost like my dodge objection. In one proposal, people want shields to do something which as performed does exactly what dodge does (just dodge includes melee). In the cover instance people want their shields to do what half cover does, but the shield actually does that already, and you can move around with it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm guessing it is for simplicity.
Your character has an AC. One number. Every attack uses it.
Different procedures for different attacks gets complicated (for example think back to how unweildy touch AC was).