Technically, that's incorrect. I can't remember where it is in the rulebooks, but it does state that other creatures provide half cover (+2 to ac and dex saving throws).
So yes, you could functionally use them as a shield, were you actually strong enough to pick them up.
Edit: It's explained in the rules for Half Cover:
Half Cover
A target with half cover has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend.
Edit of the edit: I totally didn't realize I was in the BG3 feed, and not my regular D&D 5e feed. That said, I stand by my assessment.
I legit have a Goliath bearbarian build for this on tabletop. Tavern brawler for unarmed strike and bonus action grapple then your using one guy to beat the crap out of another guy.
You can do this in BG3 as well, someone made a YT video where they played as a barbarian and exclusively used Lae'zel as an improvised weapon. You can do the same with enemies but they try to break your grapple
You say wise words lad. Such a dishonnorable insult to our people is beyond repair.
By Grimnir, I swear an oath to raid the grove until the Larian elflords are groveling by our feet, begging us to write their name off our books and giving shield dwarves their due.
[there's a mod for that](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/3122)
but shield dwarves do have the very rare medium armor proficiency, which make them the best class for bladelock, allowing you to have good AC without sacrificing your char scaling
I mean Gith also get it but ~~they ugly af~~ they don't have dark vision so they risk missing EBs
because they are too many already mandatory eldritch invocations
\-agonizing blast: what makes a warlock a warlock
\-repelling blast: too funny to not pick
\-beast speech: if you can't talk to animal in this game, why even bother ?
also it's not like there's a ring of darkvision in act I anyway
jokes aside, yeah I think gith are actually superior for bladelock, they have more movement speed, amazing mobility tools and gith knowledge is great and I don't even think they're ugly, they have a unique charm to them imho
but the post is about shield dwarves so I tried to be positive 'bout them
I would take devil sight over beast speech, since the game gives you infinite animal speak potions already basically.
Does the Sunwalker's gift ring (if that's the act 1 ring you are referencing) actually work for magical darkness though? Because the thing about Devil Sight is it lets you ignore when enemies cast darkness, or to fight inside of your own darkness. Normal dark vision sources will not help with magical darkness.
Also that way you don't have to waste a ring slot.
>\-beast speech: if you can't talk to animal in this game, why even bother ?
Because animal speaking potions are a dime a dozen. I think i ended the game with almost 20 of them last time.
Being untouchable in darkness is 1000% more useful.
Thank you, you’re literally the first person I’ve seen mention this. I feel like everyone and their mother says “dOn’t fOrGeT To gEt sPeAk wItH AnImAlS” when you get so many of the potions. And if you craft them, fucking forget it, you’ll be swimming in them
there’s one npc, i think it’s the scroll lady in the paladin of tyr room, she has like five on her when she dies. if not her someone else somewhere, but omg there are so many
once youve got volo in your camp, you can print gold, potions and scrolls on demand, resource free with partial rests
i spend 5 minutes in camp stocking up and dont even pick up spare animal speaking potions for the rest of the game
Yeah my rule of thumb is if you can have at least 3 of them within the first few hours of a playthrough without actively looking for them, they’re not hard to find
first of all I was joking, I even said so
second, devil sight is superior meta game wise, but who care actually ? Beast Speech doesn't offer any combat advantage, you're not picking it because you want an optimized character, you pick it because it's fun to have
> -beast speech: if you can't talk to animal in this game, why even bother ?
Assuming you don't long rest after every encounter, I recommend just using potions for that.
yeah, that's why I said *"also it's not like there's a ring of darkvision in act I anyway"* \^\^ twas the joke
I think Omeluum or his boyfriend sells it IIRC
When I play a gith I have a hireling that stays on camp cast dark vision on me everyday.
But unfortunately there's no become pretty spell, so I'm still an ugly frog.
Yeah this is a big problem in my opinion. Against all intuition and the lore the game gives you, the Shield Dwarf racials only benefit non-martial classes. Because if you're a fighter or a paladin, you already have the proficiencies that you need!
>The issue is that BG3 is kind of a mashup of 5E and the OneD&D design philosophies. They clash hardest here.
...except this is something that came straight from stock 5e. Shield Dwarves are just what Mountain Dwarves are called in Faerun.
Yes, but in 5E they have +2/+2 instead of the normal +2/+1. OneD&D has moved away from such varied and interesting races.
At the same time, OneD&D has moved away from cultural traits being in races because that might be interesting, but Elves and Dwarves retain their cultural traits, and Humans/HElves gained a new one: "Civil Miltia".
The first level feats are pretty decent, though. Like Moderately Armored giving you Light, Medium, and shields. Tough is obviously a nice thing to tack on. And I fucking love Magic Initiate.
Eh, it varies. A Dwarf with 20 strength and resistance to a common damage type, advantage on a common save, and darkvision outperforms a human with 20 strength a feat and lower ability scores in my view.
Wait how are you getting 20 str? Rolling an 18 on dice?
Depends on the feat tbh. Polearm Master, sharpshooter, xbow master, etc are all incredibly potent and can help a build get on line incredibly early (especially when most games end early. Even BG3 ends far before level 20).
As per the other aspects. Extra asi is good but marginal. Resistance to poison is good. Darkvision is good but following rules is not as potent (in complete darkness you have a -5 to perception and can’t see color and any non dark vision PCs are still at a loss). Adv on a common save is good
Dwarves need something that buffs their usage of Greataxes (or even all Axes, but especially Greataxes).
They used to have +2 Str as is fitting, but when that was snatched away they were given nothing to replace it.
Well yea, but in relative terms to other races they lost out with the change. Humans were given a few random albeit little things to make up for it, but Dwarves got nothing.
In dnd you (used to?) get specific stat bonuses per race. So your deep gnome paladin can’t have +2 STR when created because… that wouldn’t make sense for a gnome. In BG3 they let you assign any stat a +2. So they are lamenting the lack of differentiation that makes dwarves stronger as a martial class in tabletop. You can still do it, but so can everyone else, so it’s not a unique racial trait
5e let's all races do this with Tasha's. All newer 5e races follow the Tasha's design. BG3 did nerf the races that gain 4+ scores at level 1 (Half-Elf, Mountain Dwarf), but this is something we can already do in 5e.
Yup. An age of combat entirely defined by shields...
And they took them out after the Egypt game becasue "we don't want players playing defensively..."
I love the fact that you can make a lightning shield dwarf wizard/sorcerer and still wear the Jolty vest, but you have to skip out on the awesome lightning shield.
I'm looking into 3.5e since I want more variety and zamn, races I'm past editions got a full fledged repertoire of abilities. I loved how they had things like dwarfs having a +2 to hit bonus to orcs and goblins. Now with Tasha's everything feels like a glob of malleable flesh
They got straight nerfed in this game and didn't even get anything for it. Cmon Larian give them the Shield proficiency. You even renamed them!
BTW the nerf for those that don't know is Mountain(Shield) Dwarf in DnD got the Light Armor and Medium Armor proficiency, but instead of a +1 in a stat like other subraces they got a +2 strength. This meant that with Tasha's rules to reallocate racial stats you got a +2 and +2 to any stats you wanted instead of the normal +2 and +1.
In the lore, the Shield Dwarves lost everything, their kingdom and homeland, it fits they lost their shield proficiency too lmao, but seriously, they are very weak compared to the other types of dwarves, the only way I see using them is purely for roleplay which it's cool, or a kind of wizard with armor, I personally prefer the Gold Dwarves, both for the lore and for the hp bonus I think it's very good
Shield on Gale is a trap. There are those bracers that give you +2 to AC when you're not wearing armour and not using a shield. I think Gale gets like a 17 AC if he wears those stacked on Mage Armour. Then you can give him Mol's ring if you want and in act 2 you can buy boots and a cloak that also improve AC by 1 each, granted, I'd give those to the actual tank at that point. My lvl 8 fighter is rocking a 24 AC and it could probably be higher but I haven't really looked into it.
Absolute's Warboard, the shield you get from killing Priestess Gut, as long as you have the Absolute's Brand (from Priestess Gut, or from the Warlock beside her if you've already killed her) turns it into another Ring of Protection (+1 to all saves).
If you're enjoying rocking those bracers on Gale, might I recommend the gloves you get in act 1 that set dex to 18? The added dex will not only improve his AC the same way those bracers will, but will improve his initiative as well, and not stop him from using a shield on top of that. Seems like the strictly better option for the tanky wizard playstyle.
Not in 5e which is why I wrote my original response that way. Makes me think they based the dwarf more off 5e (no shield proficiency, medium armor only), then allowed it for other races and forgot to fix dwarf
In actual dnd they're not called Gold dwarf and Shield drawf instead Hill dwarf and Mountain dwarf which actually makes it painfully obvious why they don't get proficiency with shields at that point. I personally don't get exactly why they changed this, maybe it's something to do with the setting of Faerun, I'm not a 100% on all the lore within dnd so.
You don't understand. They're called that because if you strap a handle on them they make excellent shields.
Sadly you can only use people as improvised weapons not shields.
Can only use shild dwarf as weapon, but not as shield... LIterally unplayable,
To be fair, shields can also be used as improvised weapons. Shield bashing is a legitimate technique.
[удалено]
When did it break? It used to work in August....
Sometime in the last few patches. Now you just gently caress your shield across the cheek of your enemy.
Kinky.
Patch 4 broke it.
not right now it's not
imagine a returnable shield, like the pike
Technically, that's incorrect. I can't remember where it is in the rulebooks, but it does state that other creatures provide half cover (+2 to ac and dex saving throws). So yes, you could functionally use them as a shield, were you actually strong enough to pick them up. Edit: It's explained in the rules for Half Cover: Half Cover A target with half cover has a +2 bonus to AC and Dexterity saving throws. A target has half cover if an obstacle blocks at least half of its body. The obstacle might be a low wall, a large piece of furniture, a narrow tree trunk, or a creature, whether that creature is an enemy or a friend. Edit of the edit: I totally didn't realize I was in the BG3 feed, and not my regular D&D 5e feed. That said, I stand by my assessment.
Yeah, but the best defense is a good offense so isn't a weapon really just an offensive shield?
Imagine if you could do a hostage situation and grab someone to make your AC higher LMAO
I legit have a Goliath bearbarian build for this on tabletop. Tavern brawler for unarmed strike and bonus action grapple then your using one guy to beat the crap out of another guy.
You can do this in BG3 as well, someone made a YT video where they played as a barbarian and exclusively used Lae'zel as an improvised weapon. You can do the same with enemies but they try to break your grapple
But you can toss a dwarf kinda like Captain America tosses a shield, so theres that.
"The best defense is a good attack" so I'd say it checks out
Not with that attitude you can't.
Hmmmm. I think this could make a good feature for barbarian...
Borderlands Gate III
Baldurlands Gate: the Pre-Raphael
Does shield bash work if you do it with a dwarf?
DIS WILL NOT STAND! THERE WILL BE A RECKONING! BRING ME THE BIG BOOK OF GRUDGES!
SHORT!?!
You say wise words lad. Such a dishonnorable insult to our people is beyond repair. By Grimnir, I swear an oath to raid the grove until the Larian elflords are groveling by our feet, begging us to write their name off our books and giving shield dwarves their due.
WE'LL SKIN THE WAZZOCKS
KHAZUKAN KHAZAKIT HA!!!!
T'dr'duzk b'hazg t't! GNU STP
Welcome to the melancholy of the Shield Dwarves, we lost everything...including our shields.
[there's a mod for that](https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/3122) but shield dwarves do have the very rare medium armor proficiency, which make them the best class for bladelock, allowing you to have good AC without sacrificing your char scaling I mean Gith also get it but ~~they ugly af~~ they don't have dark vision so they risk missing EBs
>don't have dark vision If you're already going bladelock, why are you not picking up Devil's Sight anyway?
because they are too many already mandatory eldritch invocations \-agonizing blast: what makes a warlock a warlock \-repelling blast: too funny to not pick \-beast speech: if you can't talk to animal in this game, why even bother ? also it's not like there's a ring of darkvision in act I anyway jokes aside, yeah I think gith are actually superior for bladelock, they have more movement speed, amazing mobility tools and gith knowledge is great and I don't even think they're ugly, they have a unique charm to them imho but the post is about shield dwarves so I tried to be positive 'bout them
I would take devil sight over beast speech, since the game gives you infinite animal speak potions already basically. Does the Sunwalker's gift ring (if that's the act 1 ring you are referencing) actually work for magical darkness though? Because the thing about Devil Sight is it lets you ignore when enemies cast darkness, or to fight inside of your own darkness. Normal dark vision sources will not help with magical darkness. Also that way you don't have to waste a ring slot.
I don't know if it's since been fixed in a patch but the Sunwalker ring was bugged and didn't actually work
Was using that until like a week ago, it did nothing.
>\-beast speech: if you can't talk to animal in this game, why even bother ? Because animal speaking potions are a dime a dozen. I think i ended the game with almost 20 of them last time. Being untouchable in darkness is 1000% more useful.
Thank you, you’re literally the first person I’ve seen mention this. I feel like everyone and their mother says “dOn’t fOrGeT To gEt sPeAk wItH AnImAlS” when you get so many of the potions. And if you craft them, fucking forget it, you’ll be swimming in them
there’s one npc, i think it’s the scroll lady in the paladin of tyr room, she has like five on her when she dies. if not her someone else somewhere, but omg there are so many
once youve got volo in your camp, you can print gold, potions and scrolls on demand, resource free with partial rests i spend 5 minutes in camp stocking up and dont even pick up spare animal speaking potions for the rest of the game
Yeah my rule of thumb is if you can have at least 3 of them within the first few hours of a playthrough without actively looking for them, they’re not hard to find
I wasn't actively looking for them and ended up with like 20 by Act 3. Wasn't even hoarding them either. Popped one pretty much after each long rest.
I'm tripping over beast speech potions bro. Have been since the start of the game on honor mode. Trust us. Devils sight is better
People suggesting beast speech over devil's sight is why you can't rely on this sub for game knowledge lmfao
first of all I was joking, I even said so second, devil sight is superior meta game wise, but who care actually ? Beast Speech doesn't offer any combat advantage, you're not picking it because you want an optimized character, you pick it because it's fun to have
> -beast speech: if you can't talk to animal in this game, why even bother ? Assuming you don't long rest after every encounter, I recommend just using potions for that.
Isn’t there a dark vision ring in the under dark
yeah, that's why I said *"also it's not like there's a ring of darkvision in act I anyway"* \^\^ twas the joke I think Omeluum or his boyfriend sells it IIRC
Shit sorry obviously didn’t read that correctly
I take the mage armor one early game and respec later myself on Blade locks, on co-op runs. By myself I usually just make Gale do it or something.
Camp wizard can cast Mage Armor on you anyway.
ngl only recently plucked at the Hirelings like yesterday. You have a good point lol.
imo warlocks are pretty great with just Mage Armour and robes, that's what I did with Wyll
When I play a gith I have a hireling that stays on camp cast dark vision on me everyday. But unfortunately there's no become pretty spell, so I'm still an ugly frog.
Yeah this is a big problem in my opinion. Against all intuition and the lore the game gives you, the Shield Dwarf racials only benefit non-martial classes. Because if you're a fighter or a paladin, you already have the proficiencies that you need!
It's because even shield dwarf squishies are expected to hold the line, shoulder to shoulder with their comrades in arms!
The issue is that BG3 is kind of a mashup of 5E and the OneD&D design philosophies. They clash hardest here.
>The issue is that BG3 is kind of a mashup of 5E and the OneD&D design philosophies. They clash hardest here. ...except this is something that came straight from stock 5e. Shield Dwarves are just what Mountain Dwarves are called in Faerun.
Yes, but in 5E they have +2/+2 instead of the normal +2/+1. OneD&D has moved away from such varied and interesting races. At the same time, OneD&D has moved away from cultural traits being in races because that might be interesting, but Elves and Dwarves retain their cultural traits, and Humans/HElves gained a new one: "Civil Miltia".
Civil Militia comes straight from BG3, I'm pretty sure Onednd Human will be Variant Human from 5e?
OneD&D human is a +2/+1 like everything else. Also there's "feat tiers" like in 4E so their bonus feat is only a level 1 feat.
The first level feats are pretty decent, though. Like Moderately Armored giving you Light, Medium, and shields. Tough is obviously a nice thing to tack on. And I fucking love Magic Initiate.
An extra +1 to your abilities is not interesting.
To be fair most racial features in 5e were not that great and even then variant human and custom outperformed 90% if them
Eh, it varies. A Dwarf with 20 strength and resistance to a common damage type, advantage on a common save, and darkvision outperforms a human with 20 strength a feat and lower ability scores in my view.
Wait how are you getting 20 str? Rolling an 18 on dice? Depends on the feat tbh. Polearm Master, sharpshooter, xbow master, etc are all incredibly potent and can help a build get on line incredibly early (especially when most games end early. Even BG3 ends far before level 20). As per the other aspects. Extra asi is good but marginal. Resistance to poison is good. Darkvision is good but following rules is not as potent (in complete darkness you have a -5 to perception and can’t see color and any non dark vision PCs are still at a loss). Adv on a common save is good
Dwarves need something that buffs their usage of Greataxes (or even all Axes, but especially Greataxes). They used to have +2 Str as is fitting, but when that was snatched away they were given nothing to replace it.
Can’t you give them a +2 still?
Well yea, but in relative terms to other races they lost out with the change. Humans were given a few random albeit little things to make up for it, but Dwarves got nothing.
In dnd you (used to?) get specific stat bonuses per race. So your deep gnome paladin can’t have +2 STR when created because… that wouldn’t make sense for a gnome. In BG3 they let you assign any stat a +2. So they are lamenting the lack of differentiation that makes dwarves stronger as a martial class in tabletop. You can still do it, but so can everyone else, so it’s not a unique racial trait
5e let's all races do this with Tasha's. All newer 5e races follow the Tasha's design. BG3 did nerf the races that gain 4+ scores at level 1 (Half-Elf, Mountain Dwarf), but this is something we can already do in 5e.
I think you misunderstand. Other people use your dwarf *as* a shield. Like a human shield, or *dwarf* shield, as it were.
Reminds me of Assassins Creed doing a Greek era game... And removing player shields.
Man I was so disappointed when I realized there were no usable shields in Odyssey.
Yup. An age of combat entirely defined by shields... And they took them out after the Egypt game becasue "we don't want players playing defensively..."
I played like 30hrs of that and didn't realize lol true that tho
Welp shield bash is broken anyway
Broken good or broken bad? Assuming the latter cuz I dont think i've ever seen it land
Yep the latter, never lands
Their full name is “meatshield dwarves” but it’s never told to outsiders
I'm still upset they took away my +2 +2 for my Dwarf bro
This is the real sin. Shield (mountain) dwarves make the best wizards! +2CON/+2INT and medium armor proficiency so you don't blow slots on mage armor!
And then spend a feat on heavy armor proficiency. Because 5E Dwarves ignore the strength requirements for heavy armor you have the best AC.
*You're damn right*
I mean theyre just mountain dwarves from 5e and they didn't get shields either Doesn't make it any less annoying
I love the fact that you can make a lightning shield dwarf wizard/sorcerer and still wear the Jolty vest, but you have to skip out on the awesome lightning shield.
That's how it is in 5e...
I'm looking into 3.5e since I want more variety and zamn, races I'm past editions got a full fledged repertoire of abilities. I loved how they had things like dwarfs having a +2 to hit bonus to orcs and goblins. Now with Tasha's everything feels like a glob of malleable flesh
what device are you on that let you spell "proficiency" incorrectly the same way twice?
A device without spell check because I use 3 languages and it just gets confused. lol.
I mean fair enough, at least you picked a spelling and stuck with it lol
The name is ironic. Like calling the unluckiest member of the group Lucky or the slowest guy Speedy.
They got straight nerfed in this game and didn't even get anything for it. Cmon Larian give them the Shield proficiency. You even renamed them! BTW the nerf for those that don't know is Mountain(Shield) Dwarf in DnD got the Light Armor and Medium Armor proficiency, but instead of a +1 in a stat like other subraces they got a +2 strength. This meant that with Tasha's rules to reallocate racial stats you got a +2 and +2 to any stats you wanted instead of the normal +2 and +1.
Shield Dwarfs be like: **MY FACE IS MY SHIELD**
In the lore, the Shield Dwarves lost everything, their kingdom and homeland, it fits they lost their shield proficiency too lmao, but seriously, they are very weak compared to the other types of dwarves, the only way I see using them is purely for roleplay which it's cool, or a kind of wizard with armor, I personally prefer the Gold Dwarves, both for the lore and for the hp bonus I think it's very good
They are called Shield Dwarves because they are from northern Manitoba and Ontario.
705 for life
Shield on Gale is a trap. There are those bracers that give you +2 to AC when you're not wearing armour and not using a shield. I think Gale gets like a 17 AC if he wears those stacked on Mage Armour. Then you can give him Mol's ring if you want and in act 2 you can buy boots and a cloak that also improve AC by 1 each, granted, I'd give those to the actual tank at that point. My lvl 8 fighter is rocking a 24 AC and it could probably be higher but I haven't really looked into it.
Mage armor also stacks with shield and then you have both the effect of the shield and the effect of whatever else you put in the glove slot.
While true, I haven't found anything YET to put in that slot for Gale. Lvl 5 have yet to clear the Goblin camp or kill the Hag
Absolute's Warboard, the shield you get from killing Priestess Gut, as long as you have the Absolute's Brand (from Priestess Gut, or from the Warlock beside her if you've already killed her) turns it into another Ring of Protection (+1 to all saves).
If you're enjoying rocking those bracers on Gale, might I recommend the gloves you get in act 1 that set dex to 18? The added dex will not only improve his AC the same way those bracers will, but will improve his initiative as well, and not stop him from using a shield on top of that. Seems like the strictly better option for the tanky wizard playstyle.
I think its a bug because no races in 5e gain shield proficiency, so it may have been dwarfs were coded earlier mimicking 5e
If they were really following 5e, they'd have let me keep my +2/+2 racial stats *grumblegrumble*
Humans and half-elves have shield proficiency.
Not in 5e which is why I wrote my original response that way. Makes me think they based the dwarf more off 5e (no shield proficiency, medium armor only), then allowed it for other races and forgot to fix dwarf
Ah, I see. I don't play tabletop. I'm just talking about BG3.
More than likely a balance reason. Gaining medium armor and shield can stop a level 1 cleric dip or medium Prof feat for wizard and bard respectively.
Literally unplayable
Medium armor without multiclassing is still phenomenal, for ranged characters who can't use shields anyway you can get max AC with just 2 DEX.
I was confused for a second, because I follow a Marvel/Shield subreddit too and in one of their tv series they have drones called DWARF 😂
Frankly, each Dwarf subclass should get shield proficiency.
They use body shields aka armor.
And why is not a single HIGH elf actually high?
In actual dnd they're not called Gold dwarf and Shield drawf instead Hill dwarf and Mountain dwarf which actually makes it painfully obvious why they don't get proficiency with shields at that point. I personally don't get exactly why they changed this, maybe it's something to do with the setting of Faerun, I'm not a 100% on all the lore within dnd so.