Shield Rules

Shields provide active defense and passive defense.   Active Defense: Shields provide a reduced difficulty when used for the parry maneuver compared to the difficulty parrying with most melee weapons.   Bucklers and medium shields are difficulty 5 to parry with.   Large shields are difficulty 6 to parry with.   You do not need a shield proficiency Merit to be able to use a shield for active defense.     Passive Defense: Characters carrying a shield receive a passive defense bonus which is represented by a penalty to enemies attacking. Anyone receives this full bonus against ranged attacks assuming they have the minimum strength required for their shield. Only those with the shield proficiency Merit receive this bonus against close combat attacks.   Bucklers: No passive defense   Medium Shields: +1 passive defense ranged and melee   Large Shields: +1 passive defense in melee, +2 defense against ranged attacks.  

Miscelaneous Shield Notes

  A character without shield proficiency will suffer a +1 penalty on Fatigue checks when fighting with a non-buckler shield, +2 if it's a large shield   A character with shield proficiency will suffer a +1 penalty on Fatigue checks when fighting with a large shield.   Buckler shields weigh very little and still allow a person to fire a bow or carry weapons in that hand, but it does not allow spell-casting with that hand.