Shield Bashing For Goodness

Allbrother

Hi.

So short story, this mod makes your shields bash.

Long story... all shields, in addition to whatever defensive bonuses they provide, now also do 1 attack per round as if you had a weapon in your offhand. They get strength bonus to damage, but not to thac0. And they have a chance to stun if the enemy fails a save vs death.

Each type of shield gets different stats. You can see it in the descriptions below:

A buckler, also known as a target shield, is a small round shield of wood or metal that fastens to the forearm. Because of its size, it is light and can be worn with very little restriction to movement.

STATISTICS:

Equipped abilities:
- Armor Class: +1
- No protection against missile and piercing attacks

Bashing Statistics:

- Damage: 1d2 crushing
- To hit: bonus 4
- Speed factor: 0
- Stun duration: 1/2 round
- Save vs death negates stun: bonus 2

Requires:
4 Strength

Weight: 2

A small shield is usually round and is carried on the forearm, gripped with the shield hand. Its light weight as compared to a medium shield permits the user to carry other items in that hand, although <PRO_HESHE> cannot wield or carry another weapon.

STATISTICS:

Equipped abilities:
- Armor Class: +1
- No protection against missile attacks

Bashing Statistics:

- Damage: 1d4 crushing
- To hit: 2
- Speed factor: 2
- Stun duration: 1/2 round
- Save vs death negates stun: bonus 2

Requires:
4 Strength

Weight: 3

A medium shield is carried in the same manner as a small shield. Unlike the small shield, however, its weight prevents the character from using <PRO_HISHER> shield hand for anything other than carrying the medium shield. Medium shields are usually made of metal, range from three to four feet in diameter, and can be of any shape, from round to square to a dragon's spread wings. A typical medieval shield resembles a triangle with one point facing downward.

STATISTICS:

Equipped abilities:
- Armor Class: +1

Bashing Statistics:

- Damage: 1d6 crushing
- To hit: penalty 2
- Speed factor: 4
- Stun duration: 1 round
- Save vs death to negate stun: no bonuses or penalties

Requires:
12 Strength

Weight: 7

A large shield inlaid with a golden griffin. This shield, also known as the kite or tower shield, is a massive metal shield reaching nearly from the chin to the toe of the user. It must be firmly fastened to the forearm and the shield hand must firmly grip it at all times. Naturally, this precludes use of the shield hand for anything but holding the body shield in place. Strangely enough, this shield feels unusually light for its size.

STATISTICS:

Equipped abilities:
- Armor Class: +1, an extra +1 vs. missile attacks

Bashing Statistics:

- Damage: 1d8 crushing
- To hit: penalty 4
- Speed factor: 6
- Stun duration: 1 round
- Save vs death to negate stun: penalty 2

Requires:
15 Strength

Weight: 15

Also, since the shields are now weapons, they're no longer governed by the sword and shield style, but by the 2 weapon style instead. This being the case, I've essentially taken sword&board out of the game by making it so nobody can put proficiency points in it. I consider this a public service in and of itself.

Furthermore, the 2weapon style is now called "Dual wielding and shield master" and has gone through the following changes:

-Wielding a second weapon or shield in the offhand will no longer affect main hand thac0
-Single class (dual too I guess, because exploits) fighters can now achieve grandmastery in this
-4th point grants 1 point bonus to AC
-5th point grants a 2nd point of AC and eliminates the off-hand thac0 penalty entirely


Few caveats to consider:

-There are no animations for shield attacks, so the character just swings with their main hand on offhand attacks. This is just a visual thing, the correct offhand attack is applied
-While I've updated the descriptions for regular shields and unidentified magical shields to display the descriptions above, identified magical shields will have their vanilla descriptions. So you won't be able to see their bashing stats in their descriptions. They'll still be displayed in the inventory
-Any npc that made the unfortunate decision to put points in sword&board style prior to joinining is sol, no refunds.
-Since shields are now weapons, slings (and probably darts and throwing weapons, though I haven't checked) now can't be used together with them. They behave the same as bows, hiding the offhand.
-For some magical shields, Bioware (and possibly Beamdog after them) decided to use the appearance of one type for a shield of another type (e.g. a medium shield that looks like a large shield, shield of the lost is an example of this). In these cases the item is treated as the shield it looks like rather than the shield it was for the purposes of determining unidentified description and bashing stats, however its vanilla stats, abilities and identified description remain unchanged.

That's about it I think.

Credits:

-I used a function provided by Ardanis on the G3 forums. So a big thanks to him
-Massive thanks to Lauriel, who spent time and effort to figure out for me something that had me tearing my hair out.
-And obviously this mod wouldn't exist without Near Infinity, Weidu and the IESDP

I think that about covers everything.