Something that always bothered me was how dwarves (and other smaller creatures as well) didn't get a larger bonus to AC from using shields. It covers more of their body, and if we look at the cover ratings, 3/4ths cover confers a +5. There are plenty of explanations, balance being a major one, but I'm curious what you all think of it.
I always thought of it as each race has different sized shields. So a dwarf would carry a dwarf sized shield and a gnome would carry a gnome sized shield. It would be difficult for a gnome to carry a dwarf sized shield because it is basically as large as it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the player's handbook mentions equipment sizes being a variant rule. Carrying something that provides cover would be pretty difficult, as it would seriously impede movement. In my games i have tower shields that give the +5 AC that players can use, but it reduces their movement speed by 15.
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Hell yeah I am going to Polymorph the boss into a Rabbit. I have always wanted a being a pure evil stuffed into a ball of fluff.
Yeah, that's basically what I had ran with for a while. I really like that tower shield rule, too. And I think it mentions equipment sizes in terms of not being able to put on some dead mook's armor.
For dwarves specifically, they are broader than a human, so the shield might cover more vertically but less horizontally, so it's a wash. Also they are considered the same size category as humans.
Now go to halfling with a tower shield. Probably the shield is bigger than the halfling by a significant margin. So what do you do? Either it's full cover but too big to use effectively (imagine a human hauling about a 7 foot tall, 5 ft wide shield) or...we do what 5e did and ignore size when dealing with weapons and armor.
Personally, the convenience of this approach is worth the loss of "realism" but if you want you can look at previous editions for another approach. In 3.5 you had small versions of weapons and armor. Small weapons did less damage and using wrong sized equipment came with a penalty. For instance a halfling using a human sized short sword takes a penalty even though it's the size of a halfling long sword because it's crafted and balanced for a human weilder.
In this case a halfling with a large human shield has great coverage, but also a steep penalty for using equipment that isn't made for them.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. A buckler, while covering less, could be maneuvered more easily, while a tower shield covers more but can be moved less, so it all evens out to a +2.
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Something that always bothered me was how dwarves (and other smaller creatures as well) didn't get a larger bonus to AC from using shields. It covers more of their body, and if we look at the cover ratings, 3/4ths cover confers a +5. There are plenty of explanations, balance being a major one, but I'm curious what you all think of it.
I always thought of it as each race has different sized shields. So a dwarf would carry a dwarf sized shield and a gnome would carry a gnome sized shield. It would be difficult for a gnome to carry a dwarf sized shield because it is basically as large as it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the player's handbook mentions equipment sizes being a variant rule. Carrying something that provides cover would be pretty difficult, as it would seriously impede movement. In my games i have tower shields that give the +5 AC that players can use, but it reduces their movement speed by 15.
Hell yeah I am going to Polymorph the boss into a Rabbit. I have always wanted a being a pure evil stuffed into a ball of fluff.
Yeah, that's basically what I had ran with for a while. I really like that tower shield rule, too. And I think it mentions equipment sizes in terms of not being able to put on some dead mook's armor.
For dwarves specifically, they are broader than a human, so the shield might cover more vertically but less horizontally, so it's a wash. Also they are considered the same size category as humans.
Now go to halfling with a tower shield. Probably the shield is bigger than the halfling by a significant margin. So what do you do? Either it's full cover but too big to use effectively (imagine a human hauling about a 7 foot tall, 5 ft wide shield) or...we do what 5e did and ignore size when dealing with weapons and armor.
Personally, the convenience of this approach is worth the loss of "realism" but if you want you can look at previous editions for another approach. In 3.5 you had small versions of weapons and armor. Small weapons did less damage and using wrong sized equipment came with a penalty. For instance a halfling using a human sized short sword takes a penalty even though it's the size of a halfling long sword because it's crafted and balanced for a human weilder.
In this case a halfling with a large human shield has great coverage, but also a steep penalty for using equipment that isn't made for them.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. A buckler, while covering less, could be maneuvered more easily, while a tower shield covers more but can be moved less, so it all evens out to a +2.