Missile vs Shield

[Folket]

Can someone make a mod with unarmoured tower shield welding hoburgs?

Then we can look at the damage.

[mivayan]

Folket said:
Can someone make a mod with unarmoured tower shield welding hoburgs?

Then we can look at the damage.

markata_greathideshield.dm:
#modname "Markata with great hide shields."
#version 1.0
#description "Markata get great hide shields, for testing."

#selectmonster 1118
#name "Markata of shield"
#hp 1
#armor "Great hide shield"
#end

Then I did a few tests. 200 Ulm crossbowmen with arbalests(14 AP) vs 2000 markatta modded to have 1 hp and a great hide shield. The crossbows were set to 'fire', the 4 groups of 500 markata set to Guard commander, the commander to "hold x5, retreat". almost all markatta left between shot 3 and 4. I tried it 5 times with the mod, 5 times without it (normally they have 5 hp, 0 prot, no shield, size 1).

Great hide shield, armor #112. prot 10, def -1, parry 6.
600 arbalest bolts were fired each game.

Summary:
with shield mod: 73, 89, 68, 68, 72 dead. Average 74
Without mod: 366, 372, 375, 381, 407 dead. Average 380

An arrow has a 76% chance to not hit the ground when landing on a tile full of unshielded units. 380 kills means about 380/0.76=500 arrows landed on someone each fight. So about 74/500 =15% of arrows got past the shield in the first scenario. Could be 10% or 20% perhaps, but not 6% like formula suggests.

[Jack_Trowell]

What are the results if you try the same mod, but adding a ligth (and helmet) to the markata ?

trying bow instead of crossbow could also show a difference if indeed the shield protection is used.

[Ighalli]

You could lower the shield prot to 1, so that if it only adds its prot value to armor then 380 should die regardless.

[Corwin]

Ighalli said:
You could lower the shield prot to 1, so that if it only adds its prot value to armor then 380 should die regardless.

Yes, this would be a good test.


So far all actual battle reports seem to confirm what I said - tower shields do not give virtual invulnerability against missiles. If I would have to guess, I would say that the suggestion that shield's defense is simply added to the "parried" missiles makes good sense to me. That's how shileds work in melee after all.

BTW that would take care of the situation where feeble skeleton with tower shield trying to deflect huge boulder thrown by giant. Sure, he will parry it, but the chances are is that he will still be grounded into bone dust most likely.

[mivayan]

Ighalli said:
You could lower the shield prot to 1, so that if it only adds its prot value to armor then 380 should die regardless.

I figured that if it works like melee, 14 AP vs 0 prot + 10 from shield should kill 1 hp units 90% of the time, which isn't near what I observed.

[Maltrease]

Could there be a bonus to hit for each subsequent arrow that lands on a person? Like +2 to the hit roll just like attacks?

[Endoperez]

Both the "shields work like they work for melee" (i.e. Boulders kill even when parried) and "subsequent arrows are harder to deflect" ideas seem reasonable, but we don't know if either one is the real answer.