Shield AC and QoL improvements

[GeneralShenanigans]

Hello! It is my opinion that the quality of life of a large majority of builds is hampered significantly by the limited methods in which shield AC is obtainable.

AC is one of the most important stats for any character to have on the server, and when single points can be the breakpoint for immunizing you from taking critical damage, players are wise to chase down every drop of AC they can manage within reason.

However, shield AC only seems to come from four places: The shield spell, Deez's repulsive barrier, Equipping actual shields with the bonus on them, and casting Magic Vestment on equipped shields. There is also supposedly a single rapier with +3 EB, +3 shield AC on it.
*Edit: And also "Shades" spell

Some types of builds do not have access to shield proficiency, and so they must rely on two arcane spells exclusively. 2-handing, dual-wielding, one-weapon, and bow/xbow builds also must rely on these two spells to gain any shield AC.

Due to the design of the server, lacking that +4 Shield AC has extremely noticeable effects on player survivability. Two-handers and Dual Wielders are the most affected by lacking this AC due to their front-line melee nature, and most will have to keep the spell going if they want to survive.

So in most cases, people default to the Shield spell due to its cheap cost as a circle 1 spell. Shield trinkets and potions are available by vendors, making shield AC available to everyone with the latter being affordable at very low cost (~100 gp / each).

However, the shield spell casts at CL5 and has a 1 minute / CL duration. This means that running your dungeons while RPing with others can take up to 12 or more castings, and your uptime on the shield spell (which has no VFX for the player to track) will be less than 100%, allowing PCs to frequently be attacked while the spell is down due to not noticing when the spell is inactive.

Because of the wide availability of the spell due to these potions as well as scrolls and wands, as well as the vast amount of builds that require these spells to function, I would argue that the current situation is not ideal. Players are punished for not keeping track of a totally invisible timer. And while the /effectfade command exists, it does not persist throughout restarts, and the message can just as easily be lost in the sea of combat information players are spammed with, leaving us with the same issue.

It can be argued that having to deal with all of this is the price to pay for players who do not use actual shields. While I am a believer in trade-offs and fulfilling certain roles where builds are concerned, I do not believe that increasing the duration will have significant impact on balance due to several factors such as Equippable Shields' substantial Base AC being impossible to replicate otherwise, as well as the many benefits of not having to waste money, consumables, inventory space, or spellslots on maintaining shield spell AC effects throughout dispels and antimagic zones.

I also do not believe that significant penalties to quality of life should be part of the trade-off, based entirely on whether someone uses shields or plays wiz/sorc. The number of potential builds that are not shield users or wizards/sorcerers is much greater than those who are.

With all that said, I suggest that the duration of the Shield spell be increased so as to alleviate the issue of juggling a cheap, low-duration spell with invisible VFX that is extremely important to maintain for the vast majority of builds, yet unnecessarily difficult to do so.

[Deathgrowl]

There's also Shades, which in the ward configuration gives Premonition, Protection from Spells and Shield for 1hour/level. From a scroll that is minimum 17 CL, and if I recall correctly 1 hour ingame is 15 real minutes, so that's over four hours real time.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

/effectfade in the autocmds will launch the game every time with the CE feature of announcing when spell effects expire.

Magic Vestment cL 20 will net you +5 Shield AC when cast on a shield, and 20 Hours of shield AC. Won't need shield proficiency to net some of its benefits based on some changes made in this PW.

The clickable option of potions is a minuscule price to pay for a build that was deliberately designed without taking shield AC into consideration, and I see no particular reason to increase the spell's duration because of that. When in combat take full advantage of the dual wield when the target isn't directing its attention on your character, switch to using a shield with an AC on it when it makes sense to survive the attention, or parry.

[GeneralShenanigans]

There's also Shades, which in the ward configuration gives Premonition, Protection from Spells and Shield for 1hour/level. From a scroll that is minimum 17 CL, and if I recall correctly 1 hour ingame is 15 real minutes, so that's over four hours real time.

Good catch! I would have thought that shades would simply have the shield spell portion be 17m in duration, but bundling them together does seem to provide a long lasting solution for those who are UMD-capable, at least. This is extremely useful information.

/effectfade in the autocmds will launch the game every time with the CE feature of announcing when spell effects expire.

Magic Vestment cL 20 will net you +5 Shield AC when cast on a shield, and 20 Hours of shield AC.

The clickable option of potions is a minuscule price to pay for a build that was deliberately designed without taking shield AC into consideration, and I see no particular reason to increase the spell's duration because of that. When in combat take full advantage of the dual wield when the target isn't directing its attention on your character, switch to using a shield with an AC on it when it makes sense to survive the attention.

To give another viewpoint, /effectfade messages are easy to lose in the sea of messages, effects, and popups one can get during combat. Assuming one goes through the extra steps necessary for it to persist throughout relaunches and server restarts, I don't think a line of text that lasts mere seconds popping over our heads is sufficient notice for so important a buff- not when other buffs' expiry, maneuver and stance messages also go there, and especially in more personalized cases where players may have trouble finding and reading the message before it disappears in that short period of time due to personal handicaps.

Magic vestment also requires a physical shield, which most builds cannot use or are significantly impaired by using- but it's probably the most opinionated part of this whole topic, so I'll respect your viewpoint on it.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

To give another viewpoint, /effectfade messages are easy to lose in the sea of messages, effects, and popups one can get during combat. Assuming one goes through the extra steps necessary for it to persist throughout relaunches and server restarts, I don't think a line of text that lasts mere seconds popping over our heads is sufficient notice for so important a buff- not when other buffs' expiry, maneuver and stance messages also go there, and especially in more personalized cases where players may have trouble finding and reading the message before it disappears in that short period of time due to personal handicaps.

How then are people recognizing spell debuffs from chest traps, dispels, and mords for spells that also do not sustain a visual effect?

Magic vestment also requires a physical shield, which most builds cannot use or are significantly impaired by using- but it's probably the most opinionated part of this whole topic, so I'll respect your viewpoint on it.

I played a WD Barb swinging double falchions, my understanding is that I didn't build a tank, and the tradeoff sought was that my defense was baked into the offense of putting down something before I hit the fugue. As PvE ABs are coming down that survivability is increasing across the board by default and lessening the need of those clickies.

[GeneralShenanigans]

How then are people recognizing spell debuffs from chest traps, dispels, and mords for spells that also do not sustain a visual effect?

Honestly? I personally can't. I have to stop and bring up the dismiss effect menu to see what should be there but isn't- and even that isn't foolproof since it doesn't show spells that others have cast on you, most of the time. Effectfade doesn't help me there because it just blasts you with every message all at once and is gone by the next round. Scrolling up through the combat log is as precise as I can manage, but that's totally not an option in the middle of fighting, on account of log spam. A lot of the spells with no VFX are also much longer lasting than shield, which makes such circumstance vastly rarer. I'm open to suggestions.

I played a WD Barb swinging double falchions, my understanding is that I didn't build a tank, and the tradeoff sought was that my defense was baked into the offense of putting down something before I hit the fugue. As PvE ABs are coming down that survivability is increasing across the board by default and lessening the need of those clickies.

Someone using spells to gain their shield AC still has markedly less AC potential than those who get it through actual shields, don't they? The trade-off of offense for defense is still in place, and you're still down plenty of AC compared to some others who use different equipment. Shield AC is plenty accessible, it's just that the widest-available method is limited in player-unfriendly ways- the shield VFX removal was a custom change, and if not for it, then there wouldn't be as much of an issue in the first place, right? That's my issue.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

I'll think of what we can do accessibility side.

[Kayan]

Players who invest in classes that grant shield AC or who wear actual shields should have an advantage (in this case duration) over characters who don't build for it and rely on an amulet for access. I don't buy the argument that every character on the server should have access to long duration shield spells because AC is "important."

I agree that it would be helpful to have an easier to spot signifier that the spell has expired.

[GeneralShenanigans]

I'll think of what we can do accessibility side.

It would be greatly appreciated!

Players who invest in classes that grant shield AC or who wear actual shields should have an advantage (in this case duration) over characters who don't build for it and rely on an amulet for access. I don't buy the argument that every character on the server should have access to long duration shield spells because AC is "important."

I agree that it would be helpful to have an easier to spot signifier that the spell has expired.

I defaulted to an increase in duration as a way to approach the issue rather than a re-implementation of the VFX, since I figured mage players would not want to live in a bubble forever and are otherwise quite fond of their invisible long-lasting spells (as are we all). Other solutions are equally fine in my eyes, and hopefully not comparably difficult to manage.

[Ewe]

I hear you on the Shield spell duration and visibility issues. That does sound like a frustrating QoL hit, especially for builds that rely on it as their only source of Shield AC. CE has some help there, as AoS pointed out already.

That said, I still think it's okay for different builds to have different weaknesses. A shield user being tankier but doing less damage, and a glass cannon doing more DPS but being squishier... that kind of trade-off feels healthy to me.

What you're describing feels more like a solo min/max pain point than a group role issue. I'd be cautious about flattening build diversity just to chase a particular AC number across the board.

[zhazz]

I carry 3 x Shield Brooches on Adrian to occasionally buff his AC when it is needed. For the vast majority of content it isn't needed. Especially after Disarm has become a baseline feat for all characters, and work on anything holding a weapon.

The same should be true of any build that can reach ~50 AC without buffs. Disarm the enemy, and you're golden. Buff with Shield Brooch until you can land the Disarm.

The engine, let alone D&D, isn't built with quasi-permanent buffs in mind. We're not meant to run around with all buffs up all the time. The only reason why so many do is that the benefits of an 8 hour rest can be applied every 15 minutes (at level 30) by spending 5 seconds in a safe spot. Per day abilities, which wouldn't normally refresh from an 8 hour rest, but require 24 hours of recharge, also refresh with the aforementioned 5 second rest every 15 minutes.

In a tabletop game we wouldn't be running around with all buffs up all the time, because (most) buffs are a precious short-term resource. So while I sympathize with having to recast Shield multiple times during an adventuring session, my recommendation is to treat it, and other similar buffs, as a limited resource. If that isn't acceptable, then brute-forcing it with multiple consumables is the only option.


I do agree that some buffs should be easier to tell if they are active or not. The buff icons on the portrait are extremely lacking. If something can be done to make buffs (and debuffs!) easier to keep track of, I'm all for it.

[Ithilan]

Magic Vestment cL 20 will net you +5 Shield AC when cast on a shield, and 20 Hours of shield AC. Won't need shield proficiency to net some of its benefits based on some changes made in this PW.

Mimics disarming your shield dispels Magic Vestment on shields It has become a bit redundant to cast in some dungeons that have a lot of mimics unfortunately (at least prior to the bosses). I do not know if this is intended or not, I'm just crusading against the mimics dispel effects

I often carry a whole row of shield brooches on characters that don't use a shield, I think the availability of them is the compensation that's reasonable, even if recasting or monitoring your AC becomes a bit tedious, it is the trade off from wearing an actual shield I can live with.

[doctorsimon4]

I really struggle to notice when the shield spell runs out. I’d love a clearer visual on this.

[YourMoveHolyMan]

I'm of the opposite opinion - down with visuals!

[artemitavik]

My thoughts on this are:

My character is specifically built to use a shield. That's why he gets good shield AC. That's one of the bonuses of being say, a fighter.

if suddenly everything shield related is as good and long lasting as the literal piece of wood/metal strapped to the warrior's arm, or whatever, then that to me is a case of: "The magic casters can't get the raw AC of the fighters. We need to have the high tank AC as well as all our raw power, DPS potential, etc, to keep up with the warriors" who are, honestly, kind of out in the cold a lot when it comes to any sort of buffs due to how easy wands and broaches and such are dispelled.

Shield users get the benefit of the shield AC being more reliable and Higher simply because that's their build. The same way casters get their buffs and spells and such more powerful, because that's their build. The way that DPS builds do more damage than the shield user...

It's a give and take thing. That said, if Shield spell gets a duration buff, that's pretty legit as it's kinda meh as it is because the turn by turn tabletop its designed for ends up working differently in realtime, so it it IS really a bit too short.