Missile Weapons Damaging Shields

[adriayna]

Hi all,

Yet another "in-play" question courtesy of my group. (gotta love having internet access while playing the game :P ).

I understand that a shield acts as cover against a missile attack. But do you have to roll shield dice in that event to see if the shield is damaged? In the instance that I'm talking about, a crossbow was fired at a point blank range at a character with a target sheild. The crossbow attack, which was B3 skill with an OB3 on the attack, was successful. So it was definately a hit that would have impacted the character had he not had the shield. The character had allocated dice to the shield.

The DM's ruling was that missile weapons can very rarely damage a shield, for example in such an above occurence. Are we correct in that assumption?

[luke]

Shields offer "cover" from missile weapons. They are not rolled to Block, they simply raise the Obstacle of the incoming attack. This is described on page 109 of the Burning Wheel under Shields vs Rocks, Arrows, Bolts and Bullets. There's a table on page 110 that lists the obstacle modifiers.

The defending player would have raised his assailant's obstacle by at least +2 Ob for having that target shield.


Though medieval missiles often penetrated shields -- passing right through them -- I found that there wasn't significant evidence to warrant them actually blowing apart the device. That seemed a bit much.

And I never did come up with decent rules for spearing shields so as to make them useless. An age old practice that has yet to find a home in the game.

hope that helps,
-L

[Astros]

I was the DM, and since the Xbow hit was a very sure shot had the defender not raised his shield and increased the OB I ruled that the bolt firmly stuck in the shield but didnt not miss. Thats where the original question of damage came up.

It kind of would have mattered, as later in the battle a sure sword strike against the same character resulted in his shield being cut directly in half. But I jsut wasn't sure if I was missing something.

[eruditus]

What if you were to compare damage to the shield's VA and make a ruling. ie. an incidental hit blocked by the shield's dice does nothing. A mark result will knock the shield's defensive value down by one. A superb hit will knock the shield's defensive value down by two. If the shiled's value is reduced to zero its destroyed. A superb hit blocked by the shield warrants another DOF. On a 6 it hit the user's arm and delivers the payload anyway :D