You can use the Shield ability to defend other people. The book doesn't explain this, which is totally my fault. Every ability in Agon has its own "special thing" right? This is the special thing for Shield. Here's what you do:

- If you're in the same range band as someone you want to protect, you can give them your Shield ability die to add to their left hand.
- You can only do this if you're wielding a shield.
- Doing this does not impair your Shield ability.
- You can certainly charge an Oath (or two) for this.

And yes, two or more heroes can do this for each other, forming a shield wall.

If you're an archer type, call in some Oaths to make someone position with you and give their Shield die to cover you while you shoot.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

John,

Does this rule belong in the Semi-Official Rules Changes thread?  Or possibly on the FAQ?  It should be someplace sticky.

I'm running Agon at Ubercon this weekend so I'm looking forward to seeing this rule in action!  I must remember to make little cheat sheets for the players!
Mel

This is exactly how I handle the Shield ability.  While you did not state it explicitly, the rest of the system made inferring this straight forward for me.

Thanks for making it official, John.

when you give your shield ability die to an ally do you still use the die for yourself as well as giving it to the ally for the turn or do you forfeit the use of shield for yourself for a turn? if the latter i dont then know what is meant by 'shield wall' effect

This use of the Shield ability in no way impacts which weapon die you use.

ok so for example:

I have a shiled and stand in same range band as Artos the archer - I can give him a 1d8 for his left hand as part of my shield ability AND I can still roll my 1d8 in my left hand for my shield.

Also if Artos had a shiled we could shield wall it and both roll 2d8 in our left hands

what if i could stand in between Artos and his brother bartos could I roll 3d8 one extar d8 from each of the two brothers

First remember that it is the shield ability dice that you are giving/getting to/from your ally, not the shield dice itself.  So in your example all those character would have to have a shield ability of d8.

Aside from that the first sounds ok but the the second has a couple of things to consider. 
In the case of a shield wall I imagine you get all your normal combat dice, weapon, chosen ability and name and pick your attack and defense dice as per normal.  Your ally would do the same.  Then you would both add each other's shield ability to your defense dice.  When three characters form a wall all of them would get the bonus not just one character for standing in the middle. 

I can't remember reading it anywhere, but I'm guessing you cant lend someone a die and use it yourself.  So chances are you are going to be using one of your other weapon abilities yourself and lending your ally your shield ability.

Aaron

shiled ABILITY ah yes right but then how does this go:

I have shield ability d8 my mate fred has shield ability d10 and my other mate tom has d6 shield ability so how does this shield ability think work re shield wall.

Troll: d8 Shield ability
Fred: d10
Tom: d6

You can give your shield ability die to one other character in the same range band as you. So, let's say you do this:

Troll: Gives d8 to Fred.
Fred: Gives d10 to Tom.
Tom: Gives d6 to Troll.

Now each person has these dice in their left hand:

Troll: d6 (from Tom) + d8 (from his shield)
Fred: d8 (from Troll) + d8 (from his shield)
Tom: d10 (from Fred) + d8 (from his shield)

Alternately, two people could give their shield ability dice to one person:

Troll and Fred give their dice (d8, d10) to Tom. Tom now has 2d8 1d10 in his left hand.

Does that help?

John wrote:

Does that help?

Helps me too.  Though it means that a character involved in a wall of 10 defenders gets no more benefit than if he was standing next to only 1.
In Johns example Tom with only the d6 is going to have to do some fast talking or oath giving to get involved in the wall! Why would Troll want to settle for Tom's d6 when he gave Fred his die and Fred has a d10!

Is it alright if a character armed with a sword and shield gave his shield die to his compatriot armed with two swords who is attacking twice in the round opting for no other defense?  I can definitely see the shield wall, a group of like minded warriors fighting in the same manner, or an archer hiding behind a shield guy, but one character on all out attack defended by someone else?  Ok, I can actually see it now.  Like a wingman.

Aaron

Yep, you got it.

Tom with only the d6 is going to have to do some fast talking or oath giving to get involved in the wall! Why would Troll want to settle for Tom's d6 when he gave Fred his die and Fred has a d10!

I've just realised that of course their is a benefit being in a larger wall.  If only one of the characters in a 10 man wall is attacked the other 9 can lend him their shield ability die! 
I just don't have enough dice!  I'm gonna have to get some more :). (though I can't imagine my game should see too many 10 man shield walls!).

Aaron

THAT HELPS!!!

thanks for your patience

I might be inclined to put a cap on that 10 man shield wall in Arons post tho...maybe only up to 2 could give a shield ability to the same character or is that being too literal minded?

Troll

We tried this last night and it seemed a little wonky so I wanted to make sure we weren't missing something.

Is there any downside to giving someone else your shield ability die? You don't lose anything, and there's no impairment, so there's no cost to doing it. Is that right?

If there's no cost, there's no reason for heroes not to just give each other their shield ability dice whenever they can, sans oaths. And since just about every hero has a shield, it increases the baseline defense of most heroes (6 dice if there are any other heroes in the same range band instead of 5 for the usual melee+shield combo).

That changes the balance of the game overall -- heroes start off better than minotaurs or snakes or boars, because they are often getting more dice then they were before.

I guess I'm unclear what problem this new rule was intended to solve. If you want the shield wall effect you could already do that in the rules: just ask someone to protect you for an oath, they give you shield as a helping die and take impairment. It works until everyone gets too tired to keep it up.

Ben wrote:
Is there any downside to giving someone else your shield ability die? You don't lose anything, and there's no impairment, so there's no cost to doing it. Is that right?

If there's no cost, there's no reason for heroes not to just give each other their shield ability dice whenever they can, sans oaths.
<snip>
If you want the shield wall effect you could already do that in the rules: just ask someone to protect you for an oath, they give you shield as a helping die and take impairment. It works until everyone gets too tired to keep it up.

ping wrote: I thought the downside of using the shield skill was because the shielder is giving up an offensive die and therefore reducing his chance for glory during that round. It might not be enough since he's getting more shield dice himself, living longer and getting better positioning roles for the higher level wounds later in the fight.

Hooray for playtesting!

You both make excellent points. Clearly this rule needs to be tweaked (or dropped as Ben says). I don't have an answer right now, but I will ponder some more.

I think the downside is in the initial character creation, and on going experience, not the use of the die in game.  What ability dice do the characters have in shield?  Without some special use of this dice there is no point in having anything above d6, and probably not alot of point even in a d6, unless you plan on using it as a helping die for yourself, and there are better ways to do that! 
Because shield die can only be used for defense it is half as versatile as spear and sword.

Maybe the thing to do would be to only use the shield helping dice after all the normal rolls have been made and the character is still going to get hit.  This would be instead of "front loading" the defense roll with all the shield dice.  Then he could decide whose dice to use and pay them an oath for them.  Sort of like falling back into the shield wall as a last option.  Than way not everyone is using the shield dice and it would still be reasonable to charge an oath.

Aaron.

Actually you can't defend with Sword ability unless you are doing some whiggy sword in either hand thing (which personally I reject as being out of genre, but that's just me). Ability die goes in the hand that holds the weapon.*

We have a character who bumped his Shield up to d10 and I can say it is effective. No matter what he's using to attack (except bow) he can always choose a solid defense.

Possibly the only weak point is letting the Spear ability defend, but then again it is in-genre that spear is the king of weapons.

Aaron wrote: Maybe the thing to do would be to only use the shield helping dice after all the normal rolls have been made and the character is still going to get hit.

I had missed the weapon dice had to go in the hand of the weapon. Wonder how I managed that..
Even so a character could use his shield ability dice in either hand if he wields two swords, unlike the shield dice.  So the shield ability isnt as weak as I first thought but it is still the weakest.

My idea is exactly like using the normal helping die/ creative rules but only allowing the "after you roll your other dice option".  So the character has used his own dice to defend first, then if unsuccessful he calls on aid.

That's really the problem -- using weapons in your left hand to defend breaks the system. Shields aren't broken, it's using weapons as shields that's broken.

I haven't had that much problem with it because I'm a stickler for Greek style, and I encourage my players to follow the classic forms (spear + shield, sword + shield, not sword + sword etc) but a quick examination of the math highlights the problem:

shield in left hand -- d8 to defend

sword in left hand -- 2d6 to defend, or you can move one of those to attack

javelin in left hand -- d6+1 to defend

Sword is at least as good as shield if not better (2d6 is more predictable than one d8), but javelin is the flat-out best -- a +1 is much better than a die size. When a javelin is a better shield than a shield... well that's pretty broken.

And of course with the weapon defense you can opt to make a left-hand attack if it turns out no one is attacking you, so even if a weapon gave you a d8 it would be better than a shield.

And that's before you factor in Abilities. As we've already discussed Shield only has one function, but Sword or Aim can defend if you have the appropriate weapon in your left hand and Spear can defend any time you have a spear. Taking a high aim and two javelins is terribly effective and versatile, which is goofy.

So clearly a fix is needed, but I would say leave shield as it is and change left-handed weapons instead -- after all by genre left-handed shield is the norm, left-handed weapons are the oddballs.

You already get a -2 if you attack with a left-hand weapon, so you could impose a -1 on defense any time you use a weapon (not a shield) to defend in your left-hand. If you wanted simplicity you could make it a -2 instead -- as soon as you have a weapon in your left hand you know they'll be a -2 to attack or defend. Like all modifiers these would apply to all defense dice you rolled.

Some characters might still find it preferable to fight with two swords, etc, but it shouldn't be better by default than the choices that fit the genre (sword + shield, spear + shield).

Huh.

I never said that you can't defend with a Javelin, did I? <checks game book> Nope! Dammit.

You can hold a Javelin in your left hand (and make a left hand attack with it) but you can't use it for defense. I should update the FAQ.

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I agree that two swords is an issue. It's (arguably) better than sword + shield, which is silly. I have a fix in mind, but I need to ponder it a bit more before I post it for discussion.

I could see Achilles *really* wanting to get Hector, but Hector having 9 friends surround him on all sides, protecting him with their shields.

Particle_Man wrote:
I could see Achilles *really* wanting to get Hector, but Hector having 9 friends surround him on all sides, protecting him with their shields.

John wrote: I agree that two swords is an issue. It's (arguably) better than sword + shield, which is silly. I have a fix in mind, but I need to ponder it a bit more before I post it for discussion.

Ben wrote: A group of minions could protect someone for quite a long time that way.