Shield breakage

For game effects, it matters very little whether a shield is made out of metal, wood, dragon hide, a giant sea shell, or some more exotic material.   It only matters when testing for shield breakage. Realistically, any attack has a tiny chance of breaking a shield, but for game purposes, it's best only to test for shield breakage under unusual circumstances such as a botched roll or an enemy is literally targeting the shield and not the person behind it.   When the game master decides a shield breakage test is appropriate roll the attacker's damage against the shield's automatic soak value. If the attack does more damage than the shield's automatic soak value, the shield takes damage or breaks.   Automatic Soak Value Bucklers (any) 3 Medium or large shield (wood) 4 Medium or large Shield (metal) 5   All shields are hard armor targets.   Add to the automatic soak value, half the defender's parry successes rolled rounded up (if any). A skilled parry will partially deflect the force of the attacker's strike against a shield.