Shields

The shields skill is a fighting style and a combat skill that governs fighting with a shield in your offhand. Fighting with a specific style initially makes you a more awkward fighter, penalizing your ability to hit your opponent at low levels before gradually easing off as you rise in skill.

The payoff for this is that in addition to the special weapon attacks of your weapon, fighting with a specific style opens the option for additional special attacks that grow more common as your fighting style improves. Shields specifically maximize your defensive capabilities, allowing you to operate as a frontline fighter that soaks up damage and attention from opponents. Special shield abilities also make you more difficult for multiple opponents to gang up on; as spears make you more effective offensively in groups while shields make you more effective defensively in the same scenario, shield and spear is often the favored composition of massed combat.

The amount of damage certain defensive special attacks from shields can absorb is based on shield ac, so heavier shields of higher quality block more, but require greater strength to use.

The shields skill trains similarly to base defense, whenever you are swung at by an opponent of sufficient lethality whilst equipping a shield in your offhand.

Skill with shields is governed by endurance (primary) and strength (secondary).