A new look at shields

[Lemurion]

To introduce myself, I'm just getting back into Hero after a number of years away, and am going to be running a Harn campaign. One thing I have never liked is how most games handle shields. A shield should not only provide improved DCV, but it does also get directly in the way and provide additional defense to the user.

 

I've divided shields into three categories (in additional to the standard size classes); wooden, metal rimmed, and metal. A wooden shield has a DEF of 1, a metal rimmed one a DEF of 2, and a metal shield has a DEF of 3. In order to deal with the fact a shield cannot always be interposed I also add activation rolls based on the size of the shield. A small shield activates on an 8-, a normal shield on an 11- and a large shield on a 14-. I haven't done out the point costs as this is for a Fantasy Hero campaign and they won't be paying points for them anyway.

 

Any one have any thoughts?

[L. Marcus]

Re: A new look at shields

 

I'm not familiar with the original Hârn system. Is this something you're trying to emulate from that?

 

There is a similar, optional, rule to your suggestion in Fantasy HERO (p. 199).

[Lemurion]

Re: A new look at shields

 

More trying to emulate how shields actually work, they not only make it harder to get hit but do also directly stop damage. I did see the optional rule you mention, and simply twisted its efficacy.

[L. Marcus]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Well, I don't think there would be any balance issues . . . But I can certainly live without the extra roll!

 

By the way, you won't be using the Hit Location and Sectional Defenses rules?

[LordGhee]

Re: A new look at shields

 

In my Fantasy games I allow shield to be used as cover. example a large shield held in front of a person (example roman sctum) cover form 6-17. it is assume that people are active and are slightly hunched behind it.

 

now according to 5er thin board is 2 Def, Playwood is 3 def and heavy wood is 4 Def.

 

Body is 2

 

now according to fantasy hero shields are Def of three and body of 3,4 and 6 for large.

 

Now most wood shields were coverd in leather, to protect it and hold it together.

(some metal shields also had this cover.

 

in a medival setting my shields are def 4 body 3,4 or 6

 

the metal rim is def of 5, metal shields start at 6 Def

 

also buckler start at +2 dcv (better at blocking than a dagger)

small +3

medoium +4

large +5

Finally Swashbucklers came from the fact that Englishmen who wanted to duel would wear thier bucklers on thier belt which would make a disticive sound as they walked ( it tap against thier sword),.

 

this system allow players in my Mycene game to form shield walls. in my medival game to crouch behind thier shield and charge with lance.

 

if shielding as i called it a player got the cover bonus, if active they got the Dcv bonus. and if shielding your had to reach around the shield to strike at the minus of the shield.

 

A Greek shield wall with large shield (like vikings shields) in my game if shielding got cover form knee (why they wore metal Grieves) to shoulder and if striking with spear got a -4 to hit.

 

now shielding means that a lot of hits hit the shield and why the metal rim came in.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: A new look at shields

 

What I am going to suggest decreases the utility of shields compared to nromal play but provides some of the 'gets in the way' feel without another roll.

 

You could simply attest that the DCV provided was an indicator that the weapon hit the shield rather than simply missing - thus you get three combat results: hit, miss and shield hit. A shield hit would be like a normal hit except that the shield DEF removes dice from the attack (like a force wall). When more BODY is done than the shield can withstand it becomes 1 DEF less effective against future attacks.

 

A bit more working but no more rolling and some additional flavour for those one-on-one duels....

 

 

Doc

[Theron]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Just to be pedantic, metal rims on shields appear to be a Hollywood anachronism. Shields in films had to stand up to repeated takes, so a rim was a good way to keep from having to constantly replace props. Real medieval shields were intended to splinter and catch incoming blades and weaponry. They were cheap, disposable defense and were never intended to last (which is one reason why there are so few surviving examples of medieval shields and no examples of surviving "rims" where a wooden shield might have rotted away.

 

Metal shields also fall into this category. You see metal shields in movies and the SCA because aluminum and other space age materials make such things feasible from a weight to durability standpoint. Medieval armourers had iron and steel to work with and a steel shield that can stand up to a fight is too heavy to wield.

 

The exception to the above is the buckler. Unlike a full shield, bucklers seem to have been intended to see long-term use. I've seen bucklers made entirely of iron or steel and I've seen surviving pieces that consisted of a metal boss, a cuirboilli body, and a metal reinforcing ring along the outer edge (though it wasn't really a rim, more of a backing, or in one case, a stiffener riveted between two pieces of cuirboilli). But medieval and renaissance bucklers were small, seldom more than a foot across and often less.

 

Of course, in a fantasy setting, you can do what you want; my inner medieval ironmongery pedant just always seems to need to spout off about this when it comes up in a gaming context. It's a PsychLim.

[Lemurion]

Re: A new look at shields

 

A lot of good information here-- and as I'm still working up the campaign I'll take it into consideration. I will use hit locations and sectional armor-- the reason for the activation roll (skill roll is probably better) is to reflect the fact that sometimes you can't get the shield to cover the part of the body the weapon hits.

 

I do like the disposable shield idea-- I knew historically most shields didn't last all that long in battle and having to get a new one is a good money siphon.

[Theron]

Re: A new look at shields

 

A lot of good information here-- and as I'm still working up the campaign I'll take it into consideration. I will use hit locations and sectional armor-- the reason for the activation roll (skill roll is probably better) is to reflect the fact that sometimes you can't get the shield to cover the part of the body the weapon hits.

 

I do like the disposable shield idea-- I knew historically most shields didn't last all that long in battle and having to get a new one is a good money siphon.

 

There's a tendency (re-enforced by both Hollywood and "touch=loss" sports like fencing and kendo to seriously discount the tactical value of shields and armour in a fight. There's a passage from a 15th century manual that basically tells the warrior to expose his midsection so his opponent will swing at it, trusting his armour to stop the blow, and allowing him a savage counter at an unarmoured area.

 

Returning to unedged shields, I would allow one a bonus to disarming maneuvers in exchange for being an ablative defense.

[LordGhee]

Re: A new look at shields

 

The romans when they incounterd the Celts in 400 bc added metal to thier edges of thier shields. some have been found with only the corners metaled.

 

Fantasy Hero 1sted had a rule that if the miss was caused by the shield modifer then the shield took the wack. I use this rule in all of my campains and it works.

[Curufea]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Leather rimming of shields was very common, and also preserved a shield's life. As to metal shields - it was more common for jousting than combat.

 

The most important piece of metal on a shield is the boss. Behind which the hand, or arm are located.

http://member.melbpc.org.au/~kja/shield.html

http://www.medieval.co.nz/construction/shield.htm

[Theron]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Leather rimming of shields was very common' date=' and also preserved a shield's life. As to metal shields - it was more common for jousting than combat.[/quote']

 

I'm curious what you're basing your latter assertion on. The few surviving jousting shields from the medieval era that I'm aware of are all wood or wood and leather. I'm not trying to be prickly on this, I just have studied the subject of medieval and renaissance weapons for most of my adult life, and I don't know of any extant metal shields from the period.

 

Bear in mind, there are very, very few surviving medieval shields at all.

[Curufea]

Re: A new look at shields

 

The late medieval period - which was all plate armour, just before they started making "joust-only" armour which has built in shield-equivalents (ie the entire left arm was a metal plate).

[LordGhee]

Re: A new look at shields

 

From what I have read, long ago metal shields came in the late 15th centry. About the time handgunns have made an impact. Dosent the armory in Vienna (the collection name escapes me have at least one example.)

[Bismark]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Don't forget the joys of metal-faced shields; a thin layer was very handy for deflecting arrows and blows from heavier weapons that did not hit square-on.

 

I cannot remember where I came across it, but I believe the adoption of the heater shield instead of the kite shiled alowed the shield to be thicker and possibly faced with a thin layers of metal (rather than just leather), while keeping the weight within manageable limits.

 

There are quite a few pre-mediaeval examples of metal rims on shield, though not many with complete rims:

 

The early Roman oval scutum (which pre-dates the semi-cylindrical one beloved of Hollywood) had metal edging on top and bottom, and it was usually bronze (to avoid corrosion - the shield was often grounded as it was not exactly light…).

 

The Ancient Greek hoplon could be bronze-faced/rimmed (the Spartan ones come to mind…).

 

For something really freaky try the Scythian ones made of wickerwork but with metal scale facing [poor versions used bone - often human - taken from their victims - to face the shield with instead].

 

 

As for dealing with shields in game terms, I just use the method mentioned in earlier posts (if the blow would have hit the character but for the shield's DCV bonus, then the blow hits the shield).

 

I have also used a different house rule for when a character has in theory been hit but there is no way that the blow could land anywhere except on the shield - this can happen when fighting from behind cover, particluarly when using a large or tower shield. In this case I say that the attacker has hit the shield, but I allow him to do maximum possible damage rather than rolling it, thus allowing the possibility of the shield being totalled (the assumption is that a powerful blow has landed at a 90 degree [or close] angle of incidence to the shield, which is normally bad news for the shield and possibly the arm behind it)

[Curufea]

Re: A new look at shields

 

I remember seeing a ludicrous "lantern-shield" which was metal, with spikes, and a lantern.

 

If you want weird armour - look at the gothic and late french armours.

[Markdoc]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Just to be pedantic' date=' metal rims on shields appear to be a Hollywood anachronism.[/quote']

 

Not just pedantic, but wrong. I must confess though I used to spout the same line once upon a time - you hear it a lot - but it ain't true.

 

(which is one reason why there are so few surviving examples of medieval shields and no examples of surviving "rims" where a wooden shield might have rotted away.

 

Alas, only partly true. It may be true of medieval shields - but grave finds from the pre-viking Vendel, Välsgarde, and Thorsbjerg sites all contain shields with metal rims, as do bog finds from northern germany. Since these are made of metal plates rather than a cast rim, it has been argued that these were decoration, repair or reinforcement (and in some cases, it probably is), but the difficulty of casting a rim that size, together with the finding in the Viking contemporary Birka graves that the metal rims have been butted to provide a continuous strengthened rim, tend to argue for protection. The vikings may not have used metal rims on their shields, but at least some of their contemporaries did - the famous Sutton Hoo shield has a metal rim, though other anglo-saxon shields do not.

 

Likewise, going back in time, both the later period (rectangular) and early period (oval) Roman scuta had metal rims. The brass rims on the UK finds may well have been decorative, but the Dalamatian Scutum had a fairly heavy iron rim, which appears to have been more protective than decorative (it also had a woollen facing - something you don't see very day!) This is not unusal - Roman army standing orders from the first century BC specify an iron rim and brass boss on all scuta (soon replaced by an iron boss). Both bosses and rim reinforcements in a variety of forms have been found: I have seen them with my own eyes in museums.

 

Now this is not to say that all shields had metal reinforcements - no viking era shields have been found that have this, for example. Celtic shields also seem to have lacked metal reinforcements, apart from the boss. But so few shields have been found from these eras, that all we can say is that shields might - or might not - have metal rims, depnding on the culture and period.

 

Metal shields also fall into this category. You see metal shields in movies and the SCA because aluminum and other space age materials make such things feasible from a weight to durability standpoint. Medieval armourers had iron and steel to work with and a steel shield that can stand up to a fight is too heavy to wield.

 

Somebody should have told the Greeks then, who for hundreds of years used large, very bloody heavy, bronze shields. By the classic era the greeks had dumped the all-bronze version for the aspis, as did their macedonian successors, who went on to kick the living snot out of the surrounding cultures. The aspis was wood with a bronze facing (still bloody heavy) or sometimes only a bronze rim - this is the shield that the scuta evolved out of.

 

Moving right along, museums in both Aalborg and Copenhagen have quie a lot of iron shields - the spoils of battle apparently smashed and dumped in bogs between the 6th to 9th centuries, while iron shields were used by middle eastrn armies from the 9th century onwards. The Arabic Nihayat al-Su'l wa'l Umniyaya fi Ta'lim A'mal al-Furusiyya - written sometime after 1240 AD - was used as a mamaluk training manual and specifically discusses the use of wooden and iron shields. Genuine iron shields from the 14th-19th century, survive in large numbers - I've seen plenty in museums both Turkey and Egypt.

 

Metal shields - both bucklers and heater shields start popping up in Europe in the 15th century - the Ross collection in NY at the Met has a 14th century steel heater shield from France, if memory serves. There are other examples, but you get the drift, by now, I am sure.

 

In other words - metal has been used as both reinforcement and material for shields in many places and by many cultures. Just not all.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: A new look at shields

 

From what I have read' date=' long ago metal shields came in the late 15th centry. About the time handgunns have made an impact. Dosent the armory in Vienna (the collection name escapes me have at least one example.)[/quote']

 

I suspect you are confusing it with the armoury at Graz (it's a must-see!) which has a small number of medieval heater shields, at least one of which is steel. I have visited the national collection in Vienna twice (last time Christmas 2002) and I don't beieve they have anything other than targets in their collection.

 

cheers, Mark

[LordGhee]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Markdoc, I love you rep!

[Markdoc]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Actually in all the shield-geekery, I forgot the main point.

 

Although in real life shields do provide some armour-like protection (ie: they can soften a blow, even if it then hits you) I recommend - very strongly - against using them that way in FH.

 

When we started using Hero system for Fantasy - before FH came out - that's exactly what we did. It was armour - at first with an activation roll, later with a skill roll (block). But it worsened the highly protective effect of armour in an FH game - and thus greatly lengthened combat. Get a warrior in chain with a shield and 4 PD - not an outrageous combination - and you start needing 16+ stun to get ANYTHING through if he blocks with his shield. Forget doing BOD.

 

It means that player characters are much more wiling to rush massed troops since the chances of them being significantly hurt greatly decrease. Sure, to get that extra protection, requires a Block roll, but 4 points gets you +2OCV with shield block, which is plenty, on top of the shield bonus...

 

The problem is that current weapons and combat are roughly balanced. Light to medium hand weapons can menace a lightly or medium armoured figure, though the the armour usually prevents one-shotting. They are less of a threat to a heavily armoured man. Heavier weapons are a significant threat to a heavily-armoured man. But add in 3-6 points of extra armour and lighter weapons drop off the bottom of the scale.

 

It could be argued that the extra DCV a shield gives you (which means a clean miss) also slows damage and thus combat, but in real life it hasn't worked out that way. I think that's because it's easier/cheaper to boost your OCV than it is to max out damage. It also means that you end up with slightly higher lethality since shields used as armour ends the chance of doing BOD - fights always end with lots of KO's.

 

So we use the bonus to DCV with the proviso already noted that if the attack would have hit without the shield bonus, then it hits the shield instead, which takes damage. It's not unreasonable - saying that soaking a blow with a shield so that it does little damage is extra DCV rather than armour makes just as much sense. People are too hung up on the special effect of "didn't hit me"

 

One last point - if you decide to go the "shield takes damge" route, note the special rules for foci whose main function is to soak damage - otherwise they are ridiculously fragile.

 

cheers, Mark

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: A new look at shields

 

To introduce myself' date=' I'm just getting back into Hero after a number of years away, and am going to be running a Harn campaign. One thing I have never liked is how most games handle shields. A shield should not only provide improved DCV, but it does also get directly in the way and provide additional defense to the user.[/quote']

 

Thats exactly what the DCV of the shield represents...if an attack misses because of the DCV bonus of the shield, the shield is hit instead of the target. In which case, you roll damage vs the Sheild, if you are keeping track of such things in your campaign.

A sheild is effectively Cover that one can use to actively block with. Thus any attack that hits the cover has a possibility of blowing through the sheild and continuing on to hit the target, but must go through the Def and Bod of the sheild first, if any damage is remaining then the additional damage goes through the sheild to the target.

Rules like these allow for characters to do things like use their Wall Sheild as Cover vs Dragons Fire, or form a Sheild Wall against a hail of arrows....

[Curufea]

Re: A new look at shields

 

I'd make dragon fire penetrating for just such a use of shields - the heat is going to go through a thin metal or wood barrier.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: A new look at shields

 

I'd make dragon fire penetrating for just such a use of shields - the heat is going to go through a thin metal or wood barrier.

 

Thats why cover your shield in Dragonscales if you are expecting to be facing dragons in the near future!

[prestidigitator]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Thats why cover your shield in Dragonscales if you are expecting to be facing dragons in the near future!

Chicken and egg...chicken and egg....

[KA.]

Re: A new look at shields

 

Let me begin by saying that there is nothing I love like a good pedant-fight.

 

Leaving all that aside, since I know basically nothing about real armor, has anyone considered adding the "Costs End" Limitation to Shields?

 

No matter what they are made of, moving one around enough to actually have it cover what you want covered, while using the other arm to fight, seems like it would be a bit of a drain on your endurance.

 

Just wanted to throw that in there,

 

KA.