Shields and bows

[Ali Akabba]

This may be already covered somewhere else, but I didn't find it. And I guess adressing this issue specifically can be helpful to a lot of people. So... the point is this: from a role-playing perspective, is it OK to equip and unequip large or tower shields during battles? This happens more often when a character is using a bow (or crossbow), and then some enemy approaches. The temptation is then to switch from the bow to a shield and a melee weapon. I know there is the possibility of an exploit in this, because it can be used to gain an extra attack. Actually, I don't know exactly when this happens, and if it ever happens with any of my caracters, it's not intended - and I don't remember it happening, to say the truth. Anyway, I'm not very concerned with this, since I believe that the majority of people who play here don't act like that. I'm interested in the RP aspect of the situation.

Realistically, a bow can be dropped on the ground and picked up latter. So maybe unequipping it could be thought as meaning exactly that, without the need to actually dropping it. This is the same type of reasoning that can be applied to the quiver - a real archer would have the chance to recover some of the arrows he shot, so the 99 arrows could vaguely account for that (a little stretching here, I know, but it makes some sense). But what about shields? If a tower shield is supposed to be strapped on the forearm, then equiping or unequiping it quickly would be out of question - not even dropping it. Small shields pose no problems, but what about large ones? Are they as clumsy as the tower ones, or easy to use as the small ones? Middle-ground, probably, but can they be equipped or unequipped during a battle? In other words: among the three shield categories, which is the largest that can be equipped/unequipped freely in battle? And I see this question as related to the issue of switching from bow/crossbow to a melee weapon (and the care that must be taken to not use an exploit).

My main character, Lyrian, used for a long time, since the first level, a shield and a sling. Her principal weapon is a sword, though, and she could (and still can, of course) switch freely between the sling and the sword without worrying about unequipping the shield. But now she has a good bow AND a tower shield... So I'm thinking about using either the shield with the sling OR only the bow, depending on the situation, or getting a smaller shield that could be unequipped easily during the battles. But her case is not the main point here. I think that these questions are of general interest, and deserve some reflection.

So... any thoughts on that?

Ali Akabba

[Rendrog]

Glognar can relate to this situation, however he can simply switch from throwing axes to his regular 1-hd axe on the fly, as you can with your sling. I'm not positive about the whole extra attack per round thing. I would say either stick with one or the other, bow or shield depending on the role you intend to play during that certain outing. Or..you could realistically wait one round, if you intend to switch in-between 2-hd or 1-hd melee to 2-hd ranged weapons.

[AtraAngelis]

The swaping of gear during battle reapeatedly is considerd an exploit. The way i understand is, it resets the characters status in battle when a new weapon set is activated thus allowing the weapon to strike duirng the same round (A more technical reason may exist).

So... from an OOC!.. point.. use your ranged then go to melee..

[TheRingBearer]

I don't think I ever heard of any kind of exploit about this... Whenever I try changing my weapons in battle after firing a shot it like waits untill the start of the next combat round before changing it.

The only way you might get an extra attack by changing your weapons is if you did it in a way so that you got the Attack of Oppuntunity against the Goblin charging at you (Because its not in combat but is moving towards you). Because moving around in combat can result in an AOO it might be coming from that. Or something like that.

[Vind]

I wasn't aware of any exploit, but I don't think that's a huge issue in any case since most people don't switch weapons more than once or perhaps twice in a battle.

As far as the tower shield goes, I think there are multiple problems with really RP'ing it well. First off, I don't think there would be a really good way to carry it around unless it was being used (and realistically, dragging around a tower shield would probably make your character tire more quickly). I figure that, when it comes down to it, this isn't reality and there are obviously unrealistic things in the game on purpose that it's okay to ignore these problems though it might make the game a little more fun or interesting to try to RP the size and weight of a tower shield.

[goatte]

Looked at historically, and in regards to the NWN implementation of shields, the tower shield is roughtly the equivalent of the shield of the warriors of the Trojan War (Iliad) or the Roman Republic and early to middle Empire. The large shield could be considered the equivalent of the sort of shield a Middle Ages knight might use. The small shield could be considered the equivalent of a buckler, such as was used by some archers of the middle ages and some Spanish warriors of the Roman era.

I can remember reading somewhere that the shields of the Iliad had a strap at the top of the shield to allow the shield to be slid around behind while the warrior was walking. Of course, those shields were wood frame with cowhide over it, while the NWN tower shield is obviously steel over a wooden frame. Much heavier, making it difficult to walk without such a strap choking you. When I rp'd Karn with a tower shield, I emoted strapping the shield to the back of his pack before and after combat.

The small shield had many iterations in history, IIRC, where it hung by a strap around the neck, ready to use when the warrior needed it. Usually it consisted of a simple hand grip for interposing the shield between a melee weapon and the bearer's body. Perhaps a buckler makes sense for a dedicated archer.

A large shield which may or may not be strapped to the arm based on the time period of its use might be used. I believe that a wooden large shield, such as the vikings used, would have been held by the center grip only (going from memory here at 8:20am) and used in a more flexible manner. The knight's shields would have been strapped on, due to the difficulties in riding a horse and losing articles of equipment during a gallop.

Just some things to think about in regard to the mechanics of shields which vary depending on the size, weight and use of a shield. HTH

Also, I never noticed an exploit in switching shields, but I usually got that one throwing axe or other ranged weapon off before switching to shield and sword or axe. You have to wonder how Legolas did it so fast during Lord of the Rings.

goatte

[AtraAngelis]

Here is a link discussing the Exploit on NWN Bioware forum. Any one cought using it should be baned. it discusses how some simple scripting can prevent it.

----->Bioware Forum Thread

[Morgan Gallanhart]

I'll admit I never thought about it, I normally shoot one arrow, and then reequip to a sword and then a shield and pray that my character doesn't start running towards the bandit/goblin/etc....

And then of course (as Atra is aware), I can be pretty slow at targeting as well.... I couldn't imagine someone being fast enough to switch weapons constantly!

[Cafall]

The discussion of historical shields is interesting. On the topic at hand, I agree with Vind. There's no hard rule on what we can or can't do with shields, but it's always cool to add a little more realism to the mix. I like the idea of limiting a character to either a bow or a tower shield and sling/sword, but it will be cool to see whatever you decide on for personal RPing rules. Lyrian could always switch to her sword in melee, even without the tower shield; or she could find an entirely different melee weapon to complement her bow.

I've heard of the exploit with weapon switching, and I've seen it a few times when I accidentally pressed the wrong weapon quickslot and had to switch again in the middle of a fight. It does exist, but I've only ever experienced it when switching between melee weapons, never from ranged to melee. I looked at that thread, and it looks like most of those scripts punish the player pretty harshly. Personally, I don't know if it would be a good idea to implement it on this server.

[L3]

I never realized there was an exploit if you switched weapons. I hate to think that if a creature charges you when you have a ranged weapon hat you would be cheating to switch to melee. Just seems the sensible thing to do. I think it would likely be worse to force a player t fight a melee battle with his ranged weapon when charged by possible several creatures, the AoOs alone would be thinning the serverspopulation very fast.

[Dragon Chucker]

Well, there is the absence of the "Fast Draw" feat. The way it is now, switching weapons appears to be a "free action." To add, some Roman tower shields have a strap to hang on the torso but tend to use a solid grip of wood or metal fitted behind the center of the shield where you can see the metal "knob" on the front. Also, there is a style of tower shield used by crossbowmen called a pavis (as I recall.) It's often worn on the back and allows the crossbowman to turn and load the crossbow while having cover from incoming fire though I can see it being somewhat handy to melee attack if very limited in protection. The pavis has a ridge that runs its length which is used in conjunction with a stake to create cover as well.

Anyways... That's not to say that a person can switch to a shield as quickly as allowed in NWN. I don't think it to be practical at all in a realistic sense anyway...



.

[goatte]

Dragon Chucker, thanks for catching that. You're right about the strap on the roman 'scutum.' I totally blanked on that aspect. What I've read describes the shield covering the Legionary from face to shins, the shield held by the horizontal grip directly behind the shield boss. The short sword was stabbed around the shield and sometimes the shield was used to strike the enemy with. This was a more active style of shield work than the Greek hoplite, where the forearm was held in a sleeve with a hand grip just right of center and the shield was held locked into position as the phalanx struck the enemy. From what I've read in several sources the inner lip of the shield was rested on the hoplite's shoulder as the 'hoplon' was an extremely heavy shield. The scutum wasn't meant to last more than one battle, while the hoplon was meant to be brought back from campaign for reuse, IIRC.

A pavisse (sp?) was usually stationary like you mentioned and, at the very least, couldn't be interposed between the enemy's weapon and the warrior, IMHO. The AD&D tower shield is much closer to the pavisse. The other shields mentioned in P&P AD&D included large, small and buckler, IIRC. Likely the NWN has shifted the names one column left. The nwn tower is the d&d large. The nwn large is the d&d small. The nwn small is the d&d buckler. I might be dredging up 2nd edition rules on this, so I appreciate any verification.

Perhaps we need to consider if there is active 'shield work' or passive 'shield work' in battle? Is our character fighting in a heavy infantry, medium infantry or light infantry style? All of which leads to some pretty cool RP possibilities, IMHO. I always considered Karn as fighting in typical heavy infantry style (influenced by the Roman Republican style), where he flings a hand-thrown weapon (throwing axe) before reaching for his battle axe, which was held by his shield hand, along with his shield.

Personally, I'd say that if you went with a bow and a small shield in nwn, you could consider that it is a 'buckler' strapped to your forearm or hanging from your neck awaiting quick use in battle. You should consider the character's strength as a factor for hanging that much dead weight on your 'bow' arm or from your neck when fighting with the bow, of course.

Atra, I read that discussion on the exploit, and I agree with Cafall that we should be careful how any sort of fix/patch is implemented. If you forget to swap more arrows into your 'quiver' from inventory and you end up without could mean that you're stuck having to enter inventory to swap it in the heat of battle, with one of the fixes they described. I'd say that a penalty to attack rolls or AC depending on the exploit would make better sense. If you just slipped a shield on your arm, there's no way you're going to be able to get full usage out of it, IMHO.

Great discussion, folks.

goatte

[sarah petite]

*nods to Ali* there has been a thread discussing this issue, but that was lost in the hacker-attack. it was started by Bernissus, who had trouble imagining how his ranger could switch from longbow to rapier anyway realistically during a fight.

personally, i used to use the easy quickslotting of weapon and shield, but after a while the realism got in the way, so i started using different quickslots for weapon and shield. so, when changing from ranged to melee, my char would sling on a shield first, then equip a weapon.
nowadays i think none of my chars has to use a switch, they either have no shield, or have one they have equipped at all times.

personally i never heard about the exploit. if my memory serves right it should be the other way around...switching weapons during melee provokes an AoO. (which is why the lost thread was started anyway)and from what i read on the biowareforums it seems they talk about ammunition rather than weapons.

[Dragon Chucker]

Honestly, when 2nd Ed came out, I used only elements of it and stuck with 1st Ed. I will check both books though and get back to you on the details.

The scutum, as I recall was mostly of wood construction while the hoplon was mostly metal? There's also metalurgy to consider to boot. Bronze is pretty heavy stuff but even bronze has its range in quality. I remember reading an article about the difference in metal technology and how the Greeks managed to make huge advances in bronze quality over the Persians in the span of about 5 or so years prior to their attempted invasion under Xerxes (the Spartans managed hold them off -I'm pretty sure a lot of you folks have heard that story before.) Anyway, tests of bronze samples showed that greek bronze weapons were able to cut into, and possibly cut completely through Persian bronze weapons due to differences in hardness.

Which reminds me of how the Chinese washed their swords in chromium in order to give it a sharper edge but that's another story...

moving along...

I do hope that if they put in a fix which delays swapping of weapons, that they would include the "Fast Draw" feat...

Swapping in fresh stacks of ammo is sort of a pain if it were a problem but I've noticed that the game automatically loads in a fresh stack. The main problem I found is that if you rely on it and you have a variety of arrows (not that common on Vast,) you may end up cutting into that stash of the good stuff you were saving up....

I discarding and drawing a weapon in PnP, I believe, does not cause an AoO but it does count as a full action so it prevents you from attacking. It's in essence a free set of attacks by the opponent though not an AoO....

All the stuff about weapon/shield swapping gets me thinking about kiting/threading but I suspect it's better left to a different topic thread.



Have you folks ever watched the HBO Rome TV series? One of the characters actually gives a nice example of fighting with a scutum and gladius/semispatha.




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[Ali Akabba]

Good comments, all. The discussion of historical shields is very interesting, and I'll probably start reading more about all this.

Maybe I should have done this before, but I decided to check at the Player's Handbook (3.5), and that's what I found: "Strapping a shield to your arm to gain its shield bonus to your AC, or unstrapping and dropping a shield so you can use your shield hand for another purpose, requires a move action. If you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you can ready or loose a shield as a free action combined with a regular move." Essentially the same thing is said about drawing or sheathing a weapon (with the difference that this last one is always a move action, never a free one). The shield's size and the type of weapon, if melee or ranged, doesn't make any difference - the rule is always the same.

So... the BioWare implementation of these rules seem to follow very closely the PnP rules. I thought there was a greater distortion, to say the truth. There is also a table showing how long it takes for donning or removing both armors and shields. For armors, it ranges from 1 to 5 minutes, depending on the weight, but for shields it takes always one move action. This means that, according to the Player's Handbook, readying or loosing a shield is not that much complicated, and it doesn't take much time, unlike putting armors on or off.

Of course this doesn't address the realism issue, but reveals something that I confess I wasn't aware of before: the simplifyed system for using shields is a part of the core D&D rules, not something introduced by the NWN version. I thought that in PnP the tower shield had special rules, because of its size, but that's not the case. Thus, restricting the use of the tower shield in any way would mean going beyond the realism set up at the core PnP rules themselves, which are already pretty damn detailed.

My original question was: "from a role-playing perspective, is it OK to equip and unequip large or tower shields during battles?" Now I believe that yes, it is OK. Quoting Vind:

I figure that, when it comes down to it, this isn't reality and there are obviously unrealistic things in the game on purpose that it's okay to ignore these problems though it might make the game a little more fun or interesting to try to RP the size and weight of a tower shield.

Let me give just one example of these unrealistic things: hit-points. An arrow can kill us at first level, but, say, at level 10 (or 20, if you insist), it would never be fatal (assuming we were uninjured). But why? If a "role-playing perspective" were to mean the same thing as a "realistic perspective", then we should consider making a CON check to see if we survive, let's say, any critical shot (or blow, or whatever), regardless of how many hps we have to spare. Well, I suspect this idea won't have many adepts, in spite of being based in what seems to be a sound and realistic theory - a single arrow, well shot, should be enough to kill anyone. Are we all poor role-players because we don't question this weird hp system? No, of course not; this is a game, there are rules, and we accept them - even when some (or maybe most) of these rules are very unrealistic.

I guess my point here is this: after some reflection, I arrived at the conclusion that to extend the concern for realism in RP to the point where unnecessary conflict with basic rules arise is foolish. It is foolish because the whole set of rules is quite unrealistic. Frankly, if readying somewhat quickly a tower shield is unrealistic, where is the realism of casting any spell?

Still, it can be fun, as Vind pointed out, to try to RP the size and the weight of a tower shield. But not by restricting its use in battle. This is better accomplished, it seems to me now, by emoting or talking about its size and weight when not fighting. To restrict its use in battle would be as foolish as to make those CON checks that I suggested above. (Well, I didn't actually suggest them...)

Anyway, that's how I came to see things. Feel free to disagree.

Ali Akabba