[3.5] Why is Sword & Board bad, and what can be done to fix/improve it?

[HaikenEdge]

I recently had a fellow player who adamantly insists on playing a sword-and-board combatant; while I am aware that it's a suboptimal fighting style (and thus suggested the player play a Warblade who Martial Studies the shield maneuvers from Devoted Spirit), I'm also curious as to why (I imagine it's because of a lack of support for the style, both in feats and class features) sword & board is considered a poor choice of fighting styles.

I'm also curious what can be done to improve and/or fix this inequality.

[Zanos]

From what I've heard the increase in AC from using a shield doesn't make up for the loss in damage from two-handing enough. In the long run, you would take less damage by just killing your enemies faster. The other problem is that, even though your AC is higher, you can't really do anything to force enemies to attack you or lock them down so they can't get past you. The damage loss from strength and power attack is just too high.

Lack of feats doesn't help either though.

I personally don't think it's awful. At low levels it's a pretty cheap way to increase AC, and at higher levels it's another slot to enchant with more armor properties, some of which are pretty good. It's certainly not as amazing as going to town with 1.5x str and power attacking.

There was a build from awhile back that focused S&B, but it was pretty much all about the board and shield slam/shield charge.

[Friv]

As I understand it, Sword & Board is the second-best of the melee combat options - it's better than Two-Weapon, but worse than Two-Handed.

The main issue is that S&B is bad because AC is bad. As you gain levels, enemies who ignore your AC and go after your saving throws with their dangerous attacks become more common, as do enemies whose attack bonuses are so stupid-high that your AC is meaningless unless you dump insane amounts of money into it, which means you don't have any of the cool tricks that are fun to play. A shield mostly means having to spend even more money to boost your AC. Meanwhile, if you're using optimization tricks, you're trying to set yourself up to be able to kill one or more enemies per round, and your shield AC is useless for that - but your two-handed weapon does an extra 9-10 damage before tricky multipliers come in, which is kind of a huge deal.

[HaikenEdge]

These issues make me sad for the players who wants to play sword-and-board, since S&B is such an (historically and visually) iconic fighting style.

[JeminiZero]

The normal "fix" is to use an Animated Shield. It might have a lower enhancement bonus, but that can be taken care of by Magic Vestment.

If you friend really wants to carry his shield himself, take Improved Buckler Defence. Then he can carry a Buckler AND use a 2 hander at the same time.

[Seerow]

Generally your best bet for sword and board is going to be either two handing the shield captain america style, or two weapon fighting using the shield as an offhand. The former is effective, but a lot of people don't like it. The latter becomes really feat intensive.

There actually are a lot of pretty decent shield support feats out there (Shield Charge and Shield Slam for example), so the issue isn't lack of support so much as the feats being so spread out that you can't take all that you would like in a normal build, and they're not quite good enough to justify going straight fighter to get all the ones you want.

[genericwit]

It can be done, but it's really feat-intensive. Even a fighter in Pathfinder is going to be really feat-starved to pull of Sword and Board, and that relies off feats that let you keep your AC while shield bashing, using shield bashes to initiate bull rushes, getting weapon training in close weapons/shield, double slice for full str to both weapons, etc etc.

If you can get them to use the pathfinder version (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter) which probably puts the fighter more on par with TOB classes (in terms of combat power, if not versatility) and port in some feats like improved shield bash, shield slam, and shield mastery (pathfinder versions) and a bashing shield, a fighter in 3.5 could make pretty brutal use of Robilar's Gambit and dual strike. Still you'd need to figure out a way to offset penalties to Power Attack.

[Mnemnosyne]

If you want to keep the concept of carrying a shield instead of having one floating around next to you, you could homebrew a shield enhancement that costs the same as an animated shield, but instead says something along the lines of "any weapon being wielded in one hand by the user of this shield is treated as being wielded two handed for the purposes of power attack, strength bonus to damage, and (any other important part of two-handing a weapon that I'm not thinking of at the moment)."

[Reddish Mage]

I recently had a fellow player who adamantly insists on playing a sword-and-board combatant; while I am aware that it's a suboptimal fighting style (and thus suggested the player play a Warblade who Martial Studies the shield maneuvers from Devoted Spirit), I'm also curious as to why (I imagine it's because of a lack of support for the style, both in feats and class features) sword & board is considered a poor choice of fighting styles.

I'm also curious what can be done to improve and/or fix this inequality.

I wonder if the premise of your question is appropriate. You want to know why the style is suboptimal and can it be fixed? Why not ask if you want optimality? Going by RAW, even a Warblade isn't as powerful as a optimal Druid/Cleric-build even assuming the same melee focused-role. I've never been in a group that actually used RAW and a group of players focused on optimal builds, the games in my circle that contained a significant number of powerful characters would either use extreme temp gimps for adventures or ridiculously powerful challenges.

But to answer the original question, a DM can always fix things on the fly with magical items and a little homebrew. Getting the balance right is a bit of a headache but I would suggest giving the character the same 1.5 strength bonus as two-handed would be an easy way to remove the loss. The resulting character still won't be OP.

[Piggy Knowles]

As has been mentioned, S&B sacrifices too much damage for the minor boosts you gain.

That said, ToB makes sword and board a lot better. Its maneuvers are largely not contingent on two-handing a weapon in order to get reliable damage from them, so while you'll certainly be somewhat worse off than a two-handed fighter in the damage department, you'll do alright. On the plus side for you, in addition to an AC boost, you'll have more slots for weapon/armor enhancements and wand chambers, and you can use the two shield-focused crusader maneuvers, both of which are pretty cool. Also, Shield Charge and Shield Slam are fun (although they kind of need to be built around to get the most out of them).

But honestly, just about any ToB build can swap out their greatsword for a longsword and shield, and still do alright. It's a less optimal choice, but it's still doable.

EDIT: I missed the bit about what can be done to fix it. Off the cuff, I'd recommend adding the following feat:

SHIELD EXPERT [Fighter]
Prerequisites: Shield proficiency, Power Attack

Choose a type of shield. When you perform a shield bash with the chosen shield type, you retain your shield bonus to AC. Also, while holding that shield type in your offhand, you are considered to be wielding your primary weapon two-handed for purposes of Power Attack.

SPECIAL: Shield Expert can be used in place of Improved Shield Bash to qualify for a feat, prestige class, or other special ability.

Being able to get 2:1 Power Attack returns would go a long way toward making shields suck less, and by allowing it to qualify for feats as though you had Improved Shield Bash, it means that a feat-heavy Shield Slam build isn't getting penalized by having yet another required feat.

[Flickerdart]

Basically, non-Tome of Battle melee goes like this: you either grab a big stick with both hands and Power Attack for loads, or grab a long stick (which are basically all two-handed weapons) and knock people over with Improved Trip and friends. Using a hand on a shield means that you can't wield your big or long stick. And what do you get for it?

You're probably using a heavy shield, so +2 to AC. Later maybe you'll have the cash to spare on some cool enchantments for it, but most of the shield-only stuff is terrible, so all you're doing is saving money by distributing enchantments between your armour and shield.

The thing is, there's no reason not to have sword & board guys in the campaign world. A level 1 warrior (as in, most of the soldiers in all of our history) benefits greatly from a heavy shield. He's probably wearing medium armour and has a handful of Dexterity, so his AC is around 15. A guy exactly like himself probably has about +4 to hit (+1 BAB, +2 Strength, +1 Weapon Focus), so he'll hit him half the time. A heavy shield drops that chance to 40%. On the flip side, they're swinging weapons for 1d8+2. If they dropped their shield and grabbed the weapon in two hands, they'd get...1d8+3. It's not like they're going to get a different weapon from their quartermaster just because they decided to be uppity about it.

Part of what makes a warrior look heroic is ditching their shield for a bigger stick. Why do you think so few main characters who are part of a uniformed army actually wear helmets? Because it makes them look like badasses who tank damage with muscles.

[Eldonauran]

Just my, two copper:

Sword And Board is not bad. It is merely not optimal. It is a perfectly viable way to play a character at any level. There is nothing to fix though you can improve it. Just be sure not to step on any other niche's toes when you do.

[Azoth]

While not sword and board there is a feat in a dragon mag (forgot the number) called Shield and Pike Style. It lets you use a light shield and a polearm without penalty and you are still considered to be two handing the polearm.

Not the worst feat you can nab for a character so he gets his shield and can still lay a beatdown. Probably on par with Improved Buckler Defense unless you ever end up disarmed and needing to bash someone's face in.

[Blackhawk748]

I agree with Eldonauran, ive played a Sword and Board Fighter and i had a lot of fun, this is pretty much how combat went.

1. Charge biggest opponent and hit with shield, trip, hit with axe.
2. Trip when it tries to get up, hit with axe again.
3. Kick'em while he's down!!

Now im sure there is some way to mix the Shield Charge/Slam, with Dungeon Crasher to get you some pretty nice damage as well as tripping.

[Optimator]

Here's a custom feat I and my DM allow:

Shield Parry
Requirements: Shield Specialization
When wielding a non-animated shield, you get your strength bonus as a shield bonus to armor class in addition to your shield's regular bonus to AC.

Also, these two builds are really cool, especially the first one.

[Eldariel]

Just my, two copper:

Sword And Board is not bad. It is merely not optimal. It is a perfectly viable way to play a character at any level. There is nothing to fix though you can improve it. Just be sure not to step on any other niche's toes when you do.

Well, that's not entirely true. "It's suboptimal" in the sense that it just contributes less to a party than a two-hander; which might not be nice for your friends since you're already playing a low-contribution archetype. Sword'n'Board is really thoroughly obsolete by the time Animated shields enter play. That way you can have two-handed damage and a shield instead of just one or the other (and the damage difference is massive). Not to mention that's around the time when AC begins to not be worth the effort doesn't really help either.

Even worse, sword&board is a worse teamplay setup than two-handed fighting. Sword'n'Board gives up reach weapons/battlefield control (aside from Kusari-Gama, which is an exotic weapon), and your best damage bonuses in exchange for personal protection. In other words, you give up two ways to help teammates:
- Reach weapon attacks of opportunity preventing hostile melees from getting to your squishies.
- High damage alpha strike attacks enabling you to kill hostiles before they can get to your squishies.

And get AC from that. AC doesn't protect you against spells, breath weapons, tripping, grappling, etc. (basically everything most high CR monsters and high level NPCs do) but more importantly, it doesn't protect your allies in any way. So if you go Sword'n'Board, you pray enemies attack you. If they don't, you're basically condemning your teammates to death with your inability to protect them. You give up two ways to restrict enemy's actions for a protection that only works for a small subset of enemy actions (physical attacks targeting the turtle).


@OP:
- Active block is nice. Shield allowing an immediate action block attempt within your natural reach; allows you to protect adjacent allies. Resolve as an attack roll using the shield's armor bonus as bonus instead of your weapon enhancement bonus.
- Either make Shield Ward [PHBII] more easily available or automatically extend Shield benefits to Touch AC and Reflex-saves. In addition, enable blocking Rays and spells with the active shield block when wielding a magic shield (see above).

With these two changes, a sword'n'board warrior can be a defensive steroid for the whole team (though still restricted to once per turn, but you could give warriors extra immediate actions anyways), while also enjoying defense against a wider array of attacks he might practically expect to face.

One bigger change would be the way combat turns work; non-reach melee is really messed up by the fact that enemies can just walk past them. It makes no sense and it really hurts. Some way to cover a bit larger area passively out of turn order would be nice. Perhaps allow the warrior to intercept movement within a 15' area or something so the enemy practically can only walk past him. Or just increase warrior (warrior = any full BAB class, plus specific inclusions like Swordsage/Monk-types) threatened area overall out of turn order when they gain levels so you don't need reach weapons to cover ground and make acting near you fast. Fluff that as the warrior getting better reflexes and becoming faster thus enabling him to react in a wider area (with the accompanying movement, of course).

[ericgrau]

Shocktrooper.

Also means all of the half dozen fighting styles a fighter might use that don't involve shocktrooper are bad. Rather than making a half dozen questionable fixes, the simplest solution is to ditch the editing oversight which is heedless charge.

In core sacrificing only ~10% of damage to stop ~40% of enemy physical damage is a no brainer in all but the most special ability monster heavy campaigns. Or at high levels you can get an animated shield and get both styles. And a foe sacrificing the first of his 1-3 actions in his brief life to go around you is down syndrome level retarded. So as a prime target your life really is in danger.

EDIT: This is speaking in general. There are corner cases and special strategies & counter-strategies which are what make D&D fun. So depending on the case you might get a different style since they're all pretty close together in core. And that's why shocktrooper greatly reduces fun and should not be used: since it makes only 1 style the best no matter what and then there's no planning and counter-planning.

[VoxRationis]

What about tower shields? The ability to take total cover anywhere is good.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Basically, the optimal way to fight in D&D is to end combat as quickly as possible. For melee characters, this means throwing all resources into damage and mobility, rather than defense. If you're going to defend, the optimal way to go about it is to prevent attacks in the first place, which means the reach weapon and trip method of battlefield control (or, again, killing them in one quadruple-digit-damage charge on your first round).

Shields help with neither of these things, so they're not optimal. However, they aren't unusable, either, which is a distinction the internet seldom makes. There's good feat support for shields in the PHB2 (well, mostly Shield Ward), as well as the Devoted Spirit maneuvers you're aware of. You shouldn't really need to houserule things unless all your enemies are optimized Wizards or slavishly devoted to eating the guy in the robes first. Basically, give him his share of dumb melee monsters to fight and he should be happy.

Oh, and as a very specific case, Lance+Mount+Shield is one of the more viable ways to do tanking in D&D. Feat intensive and unless you're a halfling/gnome you have to deal with DMs applying realistic logistical problems to Large mounts rather than anything else in the game, but it does give you mobility, reach, and AC better than just about anything else with the same cost, at least until the enemy starts focus-firing on your horse (which should be a Hippogryph or something by the time that becomes a problem).

[TheIronGolem]

What about tower shields? The ability to take total cover anywhere is good.

You have to give up your attacks to take cover with a tower shield, which is rarely a worthwhile trade. Plus there's the -2 attack penalty for wielding a tower shield to begin with. It's a similar problem to what the Monk faces; sure, you can make yourself very hard to hurt, but at the cost of negating yourself as a threat as well.

[VoxRationis]

-2 is pretty minimal when you think about how much people favor massive Power Attack penalties to hit anyway.

[Pinkie Pyro]

I've always had a home brew feat that solved the problems with sword and board, at least defensively.

Shield parry:
prerequisites: shield proficiency
bonus: may make as many parry attempts with a shield as attacks they could make with their primary weapon per round.

this feat allows you to deflect an incoming blow by parrying with your shield, you roll an attack, and use it in place of your AC.

special: a fighter may take this as a bonus feat.

[georgie_leech]

What about tower shields? The ability to take total cover anywhere is good.

At the cost of not attacking anything, and even then people can still cast spells on you without hindrance. There's also the -2 penalty to attack, so it directly weakens your offensive abilities rather than just preventing you from gaining Two Handed bonuses.

EDIT: People don't mind the -2 to attack from Power Attack because it increases your damage by a significant amount, so it can still increase your expected damage per round. Even then, Shock Trooper is popular because it mitigates said penalty.

To the OP, Sword and Board tends to be bad because what you gain in defenses doesn't make up for the loss of offensive power. You can address it either by improving the defenses, or by adding offensive capability, or by adding utility that other styles don't get. Defensively, I usually allow shield bonuses to apply to touch AC and Reflex saves, either directly or with a feat depending on the campaign, have feats for improving said bonuses if the Fighter wants them, and have ways of making shield provide miss chance that also applies to spells. Offensively, a simple way to improve it is to allow a shield bash when then wielder makes an attack (I usually make a feat Greater Shield Bash that does just that), sort of like a non-unarmed Snap Kick, except the other attacks aren't penalised and it applies your full strength bonus. You could also make feats to let that extra attack start to work similar to Two Weapon Fighting, gaining additional shield bashes on the extra attacks in a full attack. Finally, aside from increasing the defenses of the wielder, you could also make ways of providing defenses to allies, like being able to interrupt attacks or increase their saves or otherwise actually tank hits of your side. One of my former players appreciated a feat that lets him force nearby opponents to include him in their attacks or spells, sort of like Goad but with a better save, affecting more creatures, and applying to more than just melee attacks.

[ericgrau]

Tower shields tend to favor the victor, which is usually the PCs, or else campaigns would be very brief. As in the attacker who is getting a lot of hits and taking few can switch to still getting a decent number of hits and taking almost none. Against a BBEG who is better at melee than you it's not so hot. Against foes who don't attack physically it's not so hot. And it's better when you're down to mid hp or expect a full attack from something nasty. When you have plenty of hp you still want to quickly slay and get in good attacks of opportunity against anything that tries to push past you. And since a good bonus minus (effectively) a smaller penalty is only a marginal benefit, any special cases that negates it can quickly make it not worth it. That makes combat expertise much better for melee than a tower shield, because you can switch it on and off. Fight until you start to get in danger (either medium hp or impending troll full attack), then max it out. With a good base AC the foe will need a 20 to hit, while you continue to contribute. For a tower shield to work you better be in a 300 type scenario where you expect nothing but slashing and more slashing from melee foes who are weaker than you. Or in a scenario where a portable wall helps.

[VoxRationis]

But when you're in danger, as from a troll's full attack, being able to completely prevent ANY of those attacks from hitting you is surely better than +5 to AC, especially as everyone keeps talking about how useless AC is.

[HunterOfJello]

1. A shield doesn't always boost AC enough to make a difference in the Attack vs. AC arms race. AC is also an all-or-nothing play in the game. You either get hit or you don't and shields don't provide any sort of damage reduction so using them can be a waste at times.

2. AC isn't a great way to mitigate the hp damage that you take. Being out of arms reach, gaining concealment, or being invisible are more effective.

3. Shields don't provide Touch AC which becomes an extremely important AC later in the game.

4. It is more effective to mitigate hp damage to yourself by killing a monster faster with a two-handed weapon than by having an increased AC to avoid its attacks. The added damage of about 1d6+(1/2 your strength)+your power attack bonus added in again can be very significant.

~~~~~~~~~

Playing sword and board style isn't always a bad option in the game and can be very effective. It isn't an idea that should be immediately shot down or heavily warned against like two-weapon fighting (without precision damage). If a person isn't interested in FIGHTER SMASH! and doing tons of damage, then they're probably interested in doing other things anyway. The majority of things you can do with a 2hander you can do with a 1handed weapon.

He should check out the shield feats from various books that can let him add his shield bonus to a touch AC and let him do things like take defensive actions without taking penalties. If he combines it with other forms of damage like you can find in ToB, through effective weapon enchants, or Dungeoncrasher Fighter then he can make up some lost ground of not using a 2hander.

[Averis Vol]

I'm gonna go ahead and say shields make for better two weapon fighting than two normal weapons.

Why? because blood soaked charger is awesome. Do something like fighter 2/Crusader 18 with maybe replacing some levels in crusader with warblade to pick up the save maneuvers. Take shield specialization, agile shield fighter and the blood soaked charger line, then go about picking up shield ward, commetary collision and some of the other defensive feats or charging feats, depending on what you want to do, and you'll have yourself a pretty damn solid character. Those two levels of fighter are, of course, for dungeon crasher.

If you need more inspiration, here is a great guide to help with shields. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ide-to-Shields

[ericgrau]

But when you're in danger, as from a troll's full attack, being able to completely prevent ANY of those attacks from hitting you is surely better than +5 to AC, especially as everyone keeps talking about how useless AC is.

That's not true though, that's only the internet speaking in hyperbole. You can negate all his secondary attacks and most if not all of his primaries. Reserve hp for a hit or two in case of bad luck. It's always worth it to get at least some AC, because the cost is a sliding scale and hyperbole doesn't match practical play. Reliably negating 1 hit OTOH is only 1 hit... and often expensive. While it plays better to hyperbole's love of absolute certainty, it stops far fewer hits on average.

Or in other words play to the generalities and averages not to the 1% "what-if's". Just because someone can bring something up in discussion with 10 seconds of typing and remembering when 100 other people did the same, doesn't mean it's the most common or biggest concern.

[kellbyb]

How about these?

Vigilance
Requirements: shield specialization, combat reflexes
Benefit: When you use defensive fighting of total defense, enemies that attack your allies provoke attacks of opportunity from you.

Intercept
Requirements: shield specialization
Benefit: when you declare defensive fighting, you may select one of your allies. Until your next turn, if an enemy attacks that ally, you may move to them and cause the attack to target you instead.

[Tar Palantir]

That's not true though, that's only the internet speaking in hyperbole. You can negate all his secondary attacks and most if not all of his primaries. Reserve hp for a hit or two in case of bad luck. It's always worth it to get at least some AC, because the cost is a sliding scale and hyperbole doesn't match practical play. Reliably negating 1 hit OTOH is only 1 hit... and often expensive. While it plays better to hyperbole's love of absolute certainty, it stops far fewer hits on average.

Or in other words play to the generalities and averages not to the 1% "what-if's". Just because someone can bring something up in discussion with 10 seconds of typing and remembering when 100 other people did the same, doesn't mean it's the most common or biggest concern.

What you need to compare is how many attacks will that extra AC negate versus how many attacks will be prevented by killing the enemy that much more quickly. Unless you're fighting a large number of scrubby archers or something, usually the latter choice comes out ahead. Best case scenario (your enemy has neither overwhelmingly high nor overwhelmingly low attack bonus, even on their lowest iteratives), a tower shield removes four pips out of twenty that could hit you, meaning every attack there's a 20% chance of a result that the tower shield makes the difference on. If, by ditching the shield, you can end the fight one round faster, you negate one full round's worth of attacks. That means, at best, the tower shield only comes into it's own in fights that last longer than five rounds. At higher levels, it gets worse, because the gap between primary attacks and lowest iteratives increases so much that the tower shield will almost certainly be irrelevant versus one or the other, and high level fights aren't usually 6+ round affairs.