Shield Size Increase

Do you feel that the increase of Shield size is, overall, good?

  • Total voters
    72
  • Poll closed .
We all know Tantarus has no friends, just people that let him sleep behind their ward and waste Rebirth charges in the vicinity of.

In seriousness, though -- Turtling has always struck me as a bizarre rule since I started. If you can't attack someone from a single direction ... move. Have someone else move. Throw a spell. Throw alchemy. Unless they, somehow, have a card that's immune to literally everything, they aren't invulnerable.
 
I actually think the turtling rule is good for Alliance, to be honest. Some people want to play fighters without having high level stick skills. The turtling rule gives them a bit of leeway, which I feel is in the spirit of the game (be all you can't be). Not everyone can fight like @Tevas, and those who can generally have enough skill to not have to turtle to begin with.
 
With no more turtling rule, what do we call people out for if they stick just their head around a corner (presenting only their head as a valid target to enemies around the corner)? It was turtling before...now what they are doing isn't technically against the rules? I wouldn't want to have to deal with someone doing that as either a marshal or chapter staff, and certainly not as an owner/head of rules/executive staff. I mean, does the legal waver cover stuff like that?
 
On one hand I'd welcome a shield that could actually cover my knee.

On the other hand, with all of the other combat changes I don't think unlimited shield size is a good fit.

Avaran said:
With no more turtling rule, what do we call people out for if they stick just their head around a corner (presenting only their head as a valid target to enemies around the corner)? It was turtling before...now what they are doing isn't technically against the rules? I wouldn't want to have to deal with someone doing that as either a marshal or chapter staff, and certainly not as an owner/head of rules/executive staff. I mean, does the legal waver cover stuff like that?
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Yeah, I'm very curious how we deal with 'head on a plate' or 'flamingo' fighters under these rules. In other systems, the answer to tucking your shield under your chin and only presenting the face as a target is a sharp rap to the bottom of the shield to remind the wielder why that's a bad place for their shield edge to be, but that's not a safe move in Alliance.
 
So, this is a bit of an aside, but I genuinely cannot figure out how someone could be in violation of the turtling rules and still actively be participating in combat. The only way I can figure it is backed into a corner, crouched down so that you can fit your entire body and legs behind the shield. At which point you're not so much in combat as roleplaying/hiding from combat. If we remove size restrictions and you get an enormous shield, fine, you can't be hit, but you're not likely to be hitting anyone else, either, right?

Adam, to your point, I think it could easily be covered under either good sportsmanship (if you are engaging in combat while presenting 0 valid targets, you're not really giving your opponents a fair shot at playing the game) or safety (if you do something that's likely to get you hit in the head, stop doing that.)
 
Erin, I've been called for turtling behind an 18" center grip round shield. I'm six and a half feet tall and north of 350 pounds.

It's all about perception of what is an available shot.
 
Huh. I guess maybe I'm not understanding the rule, then. Because that sounds like just being really good with a shield to me, not turtling.
 
That was my argument as well, but the explanation that I was given at the time was that a punch shield fully extended blocked all available lines of attack that did not require charging due to my reach. I was fighting in a position where there was no good way to flank me easily.

I suspect it mostly came out of frustration, and didn't get offended, but it was a thing that happened.
 
MondayMcGee said:
So, this is a bit of an aside, but I genuinely cannot figure out how someone could be in violation of the turtling rules and still actively be participating in combat. The only way I can figure it is backed into a corner, crouched down so that you can fit your entire body and legs behind the shield. At which point you're not so much in combat as roleplaying/hiding from combat. If we remove size restrictions and you get an enormous shield, fine, you can't be hit, but you're not likely to be hitting anyone else, either, right?

Adam, to your point, I think it could easily be covered under either good sportsmanship (if you are engaging in combat while presenting 0 valid targets, you're not really giving your opponents a fair shot at playing the game) or safety (if you do something that's likely to get you hit in the head, stop doing that.)
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I promise you that I could easily use a larger shield and crouch low enough that your only options are to go over my shield and risk hitting my head, or just deal with my constant attacks on your legs.

I could also just go the one-handed spear route and thrust endlessly at you from behind a large shield.
 
Fair enough. I'm a pretty mediocre shield-user, so I guess it's just failure of imagination on my part. Thanks, guys.
 
I hear a lot of people saying that a larger shield would interfere with their ability to swing a weapon, but what about scholars?
 
There isn't anything forcing anyone to a minimum shield size, I'm not sure why "I won't be able to swing as well" is a valid reason not to go forward with this.

Again, I'm indifferent on the topic, but I'd like to hear why individuals may feel they're seemingly forced to a larger shield to use?
 
If this rule passes I am unlikely to change my shield rep size significantly. I know several people will, and I am certain I will "fight" some NPCs with some.

I'd personally much rather go with rules that allow for slightly larger shields and all around easier to measure shields.

Giving "unlimited" size is just a recipe for abuse.
 
Graham Wolsey said:
Giving "unlimited" size is just a recipe for abuse.
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I'm not sure that's accurate. IIRC, those who playtested large shields generally found them more cumbersome than it's worth, particularly with the Fighter Disarm/Shatter changes.

As a caster, I absolutely welcome stupidly large shields, though I'm likely going to be a fighter by the time 2.0 comes out.
 
So, I have seen shields 6' tall in other games and found it ridiculous. The only target was the guys head over the shield.

I don't believe an unchecked shield size is a good thing.

I am not against a large shield size or am easier way to measure shields.

As is, my preferred shield size won't change.
 
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I tested my large shield from another LARP in our [.9] playtest and found the following.
As I am a tall (6'3") fat fighter with 20+ years of boffer fighting experience.
A normal Alliance standard shield does not passively provide me with great coverage for entire frame, yet that same sized shield provides really good coverage to my 5'5" tall 1/3 my weight friend.
Using a larger shield that provides me equivalent coverage as my smaller friend felt good in melee fights. I'm sure you can imagine in years of playing Alliance it always struck me as unfair that my friend could fight as well or better than I with the same equipment. But now things were more even. It finally felt fair. Then I encountered casters. I'm already considered one of the best packet sponges in my local chapter, and the bigger shield didn't really help, I still didn't have the level of foot work my smaller friend has, which he uses to dodge packets like some spry ballerina dancer. So maybe I ate 5% more packets thrown at me. going from 80% to 85%. But that feeling of fairness and equality the removal of shield restrictions definitely made a difference.
 
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I'm fine with bigger shield sizes. I'm fine with them staying as is. I just want to get the hell away from square inches as the rule. Because..... brutally hard to calculate. I like Izzy getting to have a bigger shield. I like getting to be creative with my shield design without worrying too much about it's size. I do think that A) it will make things worse for lower skill fighters. (so if that is not something you want, keep it in mind) and B) it will increase the dominance of sword and board style (PLEASE let us use two longswords so that there is at least one other way to go).
 
For what it is worth, the general opinion of ARC and the Owners for this change were three-fold:
  1. This opens up a ton of options for mass manufactured shields which currently do not fit within our size constraints.
  2. With the change to Disarm and Shatter, the ability to remove a shield from play, even for a short time, seemed to overcome the potential problem of turtling.
    1. Similarly, choosing a huge shield just to have a "tower shield" now makes you very vulnerable to spells, said disarms and, obviously, flanking.
  3. Make it much simpler for people to understand what a "max size" shield really is. Right now it's 534 square inches or something minus cutouts? I had to put my shield pattern through AutoCAD to make sure I actually was within dimensions since I wanted max size. That's absurd to me.
MondayMcGee said:
So, this is a bit of an aside, but I genuinely cannot figure out how someone could be in violation of the turtling rules and still actively be participating in combat. The only way I can figure it is backed into a corner, crouched down so that you can fit your entire body and legs behind the shield. At which point you're not so much in combat as roleplaying/hiding from combat. If we remove size restrictions and you get an enormous shield, fine, you can't be hit, but you're not likely to be hitting anyone else, either, right?
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Tiny people with even our current max-size shields can easily achieve this.
 
If we are going to have a maximum shield size, why not just put a "No dimension can be longer than X"? Can be measured with a tape measure or even a pre-cut length of string.
 
MaxIrons said:
If we are going to have a maximum shield size, why not just put a "No dimension can be longer than X"? Can be measured with a tape measure or even a pre-cut length of string.
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That was one of the options we actually had back in I think it was 0.6 or 0.7. The maximum was 36", IIRC.

By the way, the photos of the 36" round shield made for the play testing in Denver were hilarious.
 
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