Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Shield proficiency should be limited to martial classes. Otherwise the advatage to playing a straight fighter starts to fade
That's a strange take and not one that's ever been a trend in A/D&D as far as I can remember, but early AD&D is a bit hazy. Mace and Shield Clerics and Scimitar and Shield Druids are as old as I can remember.
As far as the original question, as of this time, there's Tensor's Transformation. I cannot find any other way aside from that, Lightly Armored, and multiclassing, which is strange. I say that because there are ways to be proficient with armors, languages, skills, tools, and weapons from items, but not shields. It's a strange gap that regardless of rarity, there are zero options.
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
This is such an odd take I don't know how to constructively address it.
Should only martials be allowed to use medium and heavy armor? What about martial melee and ranged weapons?
Give me an 11th level druid who is, for some reason, going into melee and an 11th level fighter. Give them both a shield. Guess who still has an incredible advantage in melee?
I suspect it has more to do with giving full casters a higher level of defense than they pay for. Martials when they want to go full offense need to have both hands devoted to weapons giving up on defense. Casters can cast at full strength while getting the benefits of a shield.
If I were designing magic using the D&D framework all spells would require a focus. Some spells would require a two handed focus. Make them give up both hands to go full offense. Allow them to be disarmed. It helps balance, and imo it helps settings so you don't have to either have mystic jails everywhere that suppress magic or have brutal conditions in jails to curb casting like cutting out tongues, blinding etc.