Passive Defense from Shields

[Tomsdad]

How do you envision this working with penalties for to hit rolls while carrying shields. In particular in combat between shield wielders?

I think that the system compensates for the specific point that shields should make torso hits more difficult, by adding to all active defences.

If you take the view that torso hits are in general all hits, and all hits will be effected by all active defences and that all active defences will be strengthened by DB and therefore includes both the active benefit the shield gives and the passive benefit it gives, you kind of get there.

That said that is abstract. As I said in my longer post in the other thread i'd have to check it it in play, and its going to depend on what you want from your combats.

However I think if I was going to go with something I'd go with just the -DB on torso hits suggested in the thread as it would be less of head ache.

And there's the issue of why does the shield magically stop working when it's wielder goes for AoA?


EDIT: also I'd be extremely leery of making head hits easier (especially from Swing damage) a +1 dodge is not really very meaningful for very many combatants. One of the things I like about GURSP combat is that there are already several ways to use to make hard shots easier.