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Physical Shields and Cover Rules
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Merrick
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:20 am    Post subject: Physical Shields and Cover Rules Reply with quote

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has run into players using a physical shield in combat?

I am referring to a physical riot shield or say a slab of metal sheeting a brawny combat type character may pick up and carry to provide himself some cover.

For instance the Riot shield from Gundarks p.59. (Skill Melee Parry, Difficulty Easy, Strength of 4D) If the character makes the skill roll, the user has used the shield to block incoming attacks on one facing. The shield has a Strength of 4D.

Question 1 (Difficulty to hit): Would the Melee Parry Roll work as a typical reaction skill for all attacks from the one direction? Does that become the difficulty for attackers to beat, or would the difficulty for attackers at that point forward become the base difficulty to hit the character standing still but damage goes right to the shield? (full cover)

Question 2 (Damaged Shield): With cover I understand full damage is rolled against the Strength or Body of the cover. (In this case 4D for the Riot Shield) If the Riot shield is Heavily Damaged by a Blaster Rifle (5D), it stops 2D of the damage and 3D hits the wielder of the shield. Does this damage reduce the effective strength code of the shield or would it roll the full Strength code to resist the next blaster bolt?

Thank you in advance.
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Kytross
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Before I answer your questions I want to let you know there are no specific rules for shields in the 2E R&E Rulebook. On pages 94 & 95 they go over Cover, Protection and Armor.

Please note, if you are familiar with combat terms used by the military than you know that concealment means being harder to see, while cover is protection, something to take the round for you. In WEG Star Wars the term cover means concealment, i.e. that you are harder to see. Protection means cover, i.e. a defensive position. Armor still means armor.

If we get jargon mixed up then we will get quite confused. I will be using the WEG terms.


Question 1 - Yes, it would become a typical reaction skill, used the same way as melee parry for a sword or ax or lightsaber, in melee combat.

The shield works differently in ranged combat. In ranged combat, assuming they make the roll and get the shield in place in time, you roll the damage against the strength of the shield and person, like armor on page 94 and 95 of the 2E R&E rulebook. Someone else may know the page numbers for REUP, if you're using that. If they make the melee parry roll than the attacker hit the shield.

Question 2 - Treat it like standard Armor. If the blaster bolt does more damage than the shield and player together can handle than the rolled damage goes to both the armor and the player, degrading the armor and hurting the player as appropriate.

At least, that's what I do, and it makes sense to me. Stand by for a flurry of opinions by people who know this game better than I do.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 07, 2015 12:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

On 1, yes it would become a standard parry roll to interpose the shield. But i can also see some logic in making you take a MAP each time you do so, as they are bulky.

On 2, imo i would treat the shield like armor. If the shield takes a light-heavy-serious damage rating, it should degrade.
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nuclearwookiee
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Question 1: If the character is using something large and just carrying it around like portable cover (which you seem to describe in your question), then I would not use an opposed roll. Just treat it like anyone else hiding behind stationary cover. I don't have my books with me, but I think it's something like +1d to the ranged difficulty for 1/4 cover, +2d for half cover, +4d for 3/4 cover, or something like that. If the shield/chunk of metal is so big that it gives total cover, then it is impossible to hit the target directly. The base difficulty is determined like normal for a ranged attack, then roll the "cover dice" and add it to the base difficulty for the total difficulty to hit the character. If the attack roll beats the total, it hits the character outright. If the roll is less than the total but equal to or greater than the base difficulty, it hits the cover and has to roll damage against the cover first.

Question 2: I would not treat the shield like armor. Giving the shield itself a strength of 4d, rather than giving it an armor bonus like any armor entry would (e.g., +1d against energy, +2d against physical), indicates it is meant to be treated as an independent object. Plus, adding 4d to both energy and physical resistance of a character is a bit extreme. I agree that the effectiveness of the shield should be degraded as it takes damage, but do it according to the object-damage rules, as you do in your example. A riot shield is supposed to deflect bottles and rocks, which a strength of 4d should have no problem doing. A riot shield is not supposed to withstand sustained fire from anything less than a light repeater (even wielded by a human of average strength, this shield would get to resist damage with 6d if treated like armor).
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Would (or should) shields have a min str rating to use? What about dex penalties?
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Kytross
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Like I said, the core rules are silent on this, and that leads to discrepancies. Some of the shields have descriptions on how they are to be used. Some of the shields were designed to be used with 'protection' rules, others with 'armor' rules. The 4D Riot shield could go either way, but a 2D shield or a +1 shield are hardly worth bringing into combat under 'protection' rules. I prefer armor rules in general; they are closer to shield rules for starships. Shields give a big advantage in combat, so keep that in mind as a GM.

Garhkal, three of the statted shields are energy shields. No weight, no encumbrance.

Cover rules do not apply to shields. A character with a shield has to roll to block with it, just like every other defensive weapon.
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nuclearwookiee
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 1:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kytross wrote:
Like I said, the core rules are silent on this, and that leads to discrepancies.

But the rules aren't silent on this. Armor entries are always expressed in terms of a bonus to physical or energy resistance. Armor entries use the "+" symbol and say, e.g., "+2d to physical, +1d to energy." Armor entries do not list a Strength attribute for the armor and then say that number gets added to the character's Strength attribute. This would be problematic as a fair number of armors have different bonuses to physical and energy anyway. In contrast, objects simply have a Strength score, as is the case with the riot shield in question here.

I'm not sure what other shields there are out there, but I think the bottom line is this: if the entry gives a Strength score for the shield and not a bonus (i.e., a "+") to physical or energy (as is the case here), then the shield is an "object" and not "armor."

Kytross wrote:
Cover rules do not apply to shields. A character with a shield has to roll to block with it, just like every other defensive weapon.

This is not consistent with a plain reading of this item. The entry for this riot shield says, "If the character makes the skill roll, the user has used the shield to block incoming attacks on one facing." In other words, if the character makes an Easy Melee Parry check, all incoming attacks from that facing are blocked by the shield, period. For any other "defensive weapon," the Melee Parry roll would simply set the new difficulty number for any attack made against the shield-bearing character. Therefore, the roll required to use this shield is not like every other defensive weapon.

Furthermore, a roll is not always required to benefit--in some fashion--from carrying around this shield. The thing is a one-meter-long sheet of layered metal and transparisteel. A character who jumps behind a garbage can doesn't make any roll to gain the benefit of cover--that benefit is bestowed by the simple fact that the object might block the vector of an incoming attack. The same is true of a character carrying around a giant chunk of sheet metal. In other words, while an Easy Melee Parry roll means that all incoming attacks on one facing are automatically blocked (and have to roll damage against the shield's 4d Strength before potentially damaging the character), a character holding a shield on a particular facing but who does not attempt the Easy check still benefits from the normal cover rules on that facing (probably 1/2 cover assuming the character is not substantially larger than two meters).

So there's the tradeoff. Make a Melee Parry check to automatically block all attacks on one facing, or just hold the thing and increase the attacker's difficulty according to the normal cover rules, potentially blocking attacks on one facing. Of course, this all might change for a different shield that is actually statted out as "armor" and not an "object."
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cheshire
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 9:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

nuclearwookiee wrote:

So there's the tradeoff. Make a Melee Parry check to automatically block all attacks on one facing, or just hold the thing and increase the attacker's difficulty according to the normal cover rules, potentially blocking attacks on one facing. Of course, this all might change for a different shield that is actually statted out as "armor" and not an "object."


I once had made a big mistake when running a D6 Fantasy campaign. I thought it seemed silly to have a shield add to damage resistance, since the purpose of the shield was to not get hit at all, and deflect the incoming weapon away. So, I added a bonus to melee parry, depending on the size of the shield. With a fairly sizable shield, the character had a +2D to melee parry.

Unfortunately, that made him darn near un-hitable by most NPCs. Granted, I could eventually work a way around that, but his ability to avoid damage far outstripped his fellow players.

I know that isn't quite what you're trying to do here, but I thought I would still lend a bit of experience from one experiment with melee shields.
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Merrick
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2015 10:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nuclearwookiee wrote:
if the entry gives a Strength score for the shield and not a bonus (i.e., a "+") to physical or energy (as is the case here), then the shield is an "object" and not "armor."


I agree the strength code would indeed indicate it is meant to resist damage on its own and operate like cover.

The riot shield is the only D6 Canon listing for a physical shield that I could find. It appears D20 lists some shields that have similar "converted" statistics but that's nothing concrete. For what its worth, this is what I found:

Primitive Shield
Type: Wood or hide shield
Scale: Character
Skill: Melee parry: shield
Cost: 50
Availability: 2
Game Notes: Blocks brawling, melee or ranged attacks on a successful melee parry roll. The shield has a Strength of 3D.
Source: Ultimate Adversaries (page 155)

Primitive Shield Original D20 Stats:
...stuff...
Description: This is a one-meter-long shield made of wood, layered bamboo, or tightly woven animal hides. A primitive shield is tough enough to resist most non-powered melee weapons, but it can be overcome by modern energy weapons: It has Damage Reduction 5, 10 Wound Points and Break DC 15.
Normally, a primitive shield provides one-half cover (+4 cover bonus to Defense). During any round in which the wielder makes an attack, a primitive shield only provides one-quarter cover (+2 cover bonus to Defense) to the wielder.
...stuff...


I know d20 stats on this forum is heresy and I do not like that system, but it would seem to operate with similar cover mechanics in that it takes damage. Though in d20 a cover bonus just adds to the Defense value to avoid damage similar to armor in d6. Laughing Not much help there.

Well, thanks for all the input.
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griff
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 9:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is a monkey wrench for this topic, Gungan energy shield that can parry back blaster bolts.
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nuclearwookiee
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 12:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are you saying there are rules on the Gungan energy shield somewhere or are you asking how the Gungan energy shields would work?
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 11:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bringing this question up, as i am thinking of making a Melee focused barbarian like character (shield and axe)..
First off
Would using a shield count for your melee parry or would it just add a Cover bonus..?

Secondly, if it IS used for melee parry, would it be vs all attacks from the front/side the shield is on, or only for that specific attack, needing a separate MAP'ed roll for other attacks?

Third.. Could one offensively use said shield (capt america style)? If so, what would a good damage rating be?

Fourth, what would the 'body/soak' rating of shield types be?
Primitive wooden round (small) shield
Primitive wooden kite shield (medium)
Medieval metal round shield
Medieval metal kite shield
Medieval metal body shield
Modern metal/composite body shield (riot troop/swat troop) style?
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

In Star Wars rules, I would be inclined to have shields count as part of the Melee Parry skill when used against melee attacks, and provide a cover bonus when used against ranged attacks. As a melee parry, I would let it apply against all attacks, since a weapon used in melee parry doesn't have a problem; if used as cover, I might limit it to a single facing. When used as a weapon, I'd probably add two pips per size to the strength roll... so a small shield would be STR+2, Medium would be STR+1D+1, and Large would be STR+2D (as you're basically hitting them with a door).

I'd go based on REUP pages 93 and 94... a small shield would be 1/4 cover, medium 1/2, and a large, scutum style, shield would give you 3/4 cover. I'd let you choose to increase that by "hunkering down"... a small shield can cover half of you if you drop to a crouch. As for defense, a wooden shield would be 2D-3D, a metal shield would be 3D-4D, and a modern composite shield would be 6D. However, since Star Wars usually doesn't deal in damage to weapons or armor, I wouldn't deal much with damage to the shield.

In this version, you have two reasons to choose a shield. One, you can specialize in melee parry with your shield for a cheaper advancement. But shields also give that cover bonus against incoming fire.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 5:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you have a copy of D6 Fantasy, they provide stats for Shields on pg. 116.
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 9:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And if you don't have a copy of D6 Fantasy, then it is officially available for free download as a part of Open D6.

(As a side note, I recommend all Star Wars D6 GMs at least download D6 Space as it is pretty much an IP-less WEG SW 3E.)
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