Knight’s Armoire

Choosing your Armour and Shield in Pathfinder 2e

Introduction

If you’ve read my other guide, Polyarmoury, you’ll know that I love Pathfinder 2e’s weapon system. The gigantic array of options means you have real, meaningful choices to make, and isn’t making decisions ultimately the most fun part of character building?

This same attitude has also bled over into 2e’s armour system. Although not quite as dazzling in scope as picking a weapon, there’s still plenty of thought to put into which armour you’d like your character to wear. Shields, too, are dynamic and interesting, rather than being a simple handheld stat buff.

This guide aims to make the process simple. By explaining how armour statblocks work, establishing some golden rules for how to choose them, and breaking down the options you have available to you in terms of traits, this will hopefully allow you to choose your character’s starting armour with a minimum of fuss.

About the Author

Hi! I’m Cassie, longtime Pathfinder 2e player and GM. This is the third of my 2e guides (the previous two being Polyarmoury and Fantastic Snares) and hopefully not the last.

If you have any questions or comments on the guide (or the new website!) you can find my contact details here.

Armour & Armouring

So how exactly does armour work? Let’s break down an example stat block to find out.

This is our good friend Chain Mail. Chain Mail is Medium armour, which isn’t mentioned in the statblock itself but instead by which category it falls under in the rulebook. You can also see the category in the Archives armour table.

Let’s dissect each part of this.

Name: No real mechanical effect, although other effects and abilities might refer to this.
Source: Doesn’t do anything in particular unless your GM wants to restrict options to certain sourcebooks, although that’s fairly uncommon in 2e due to the universal free availability of the rules.
Price: Armour costs money. This rapidly stops mattering after a couple of levels, but it does have one important effect, which is that it’s impossible to afford any heavy armour beyond Splint Mail at character creation. You might need to save up a little bit to afford that Full Plate.
AC Bonus: This indicates the item bonus you receive from the armour. This number makes up one half of your armour’s contribution to your overall AC. The higher this is, the lower the Dex cap.
Dex Cap: This indicates how much of your Dexterity modifier gets to contribute toward your overall AC. Heavier armour means a lower Dex cap (but generally a higher item bonus). Note that even if your Dex cap is +0, the Clumsy condition will still reduce your overall AC.
Check Penalty: If you don’t meet the Strength requirement of the armour, you take this much of a penalty to your Strength- and Dexterity-based checks. In this example, if you tried to wear the armour with less than 16 Strength, you’d take a -2 penalty to your Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, and Thievery checks. Note that (thankfully) this doesn’t apply to attack rolls, so you don’t get penalised on your Strikes or Grapples.
Speed Penalty: If you don’t meet the Strength requirement of the armour, you lose this much on all your speeds. This covers your land speed as well as any other speeds you might have, like a Fly or Swim speed. Another important note is that meeting the Strength requirement only reduces this penalty by 5 foot. For the vast majority of armour, this means you will be taking 0 speed penalty, but heavy armour has a 10 foot speed penalty so you’ll still lose 5 foot even if you meet the requirement.
Strength: This ties in to the requirements mentioned above but has no effect by itself. Generally, the heavier the armour, the more Strength you’ll need to wear it properly.
Bulk: The Bulk entry on a piece of armour dictates how much of your carry weight it takes up while worn. If you take the armour off and carry it around, this value increases by 1, so try to make sure you have a little bit of inventory wiggle room in situations where you need to change into/out of your armour. For example, the Chain Mail here is 2 Bulk while worn but 3 Bulk while it’s in your inventory.
Group: This mostly matters for Armour Specialisation. We’ll cover that in a bit more depth later.
Traits: Armour can have traits just like weapons, although for armour it’s not quite as diverse or impactful – they’re nice little perks rather than something your choice should revolve around. Still, it’s worth checking these out.

The Golden Rule

When you’re selecting armour at level 1, there’s one single rule you should understand first. This rule takes priority; other things, like armour specialisation or traits, are secondary to this. The rule is:

Your armour’s pre-rune Item Bonus and your Dexterity Modifier should add up to 5, or 6 for Heavy armour.

What do I mean by this exactly? Let’s take another look at Chain Mail again. Chain Mail has an item bonus of +4 and a Dex cap of +1. That means it’s ideal for a character who has +1 Dexterity, because none of your Dex is going to waste, and because that means you’re more likely to have higher Strength to meet the Strength entry in the statblock to avoid those penalties.

If your character instead has +4 Dexterity, 3 of those points are going to waste. You should look for armour that has a +1 item bonus instead (such as Leather Armour), which has a much lower Strength requirement to deal with. If you’re the kind of class who wants really high Dexterity, you’re probably not trained in heavier armours anyway.

Certain classes, mostly the so-called “cloth casters” like Wizard, won’t natively be able to reach the full +5 right away due to being untrained in any armours with an item bonus. That’s just the price you pay for commanding world-altering magical power, I guess. Once you get your Dexterity up to +5 this stops being an issue.

Armour Categories

Armour falls into four broad categories in terms of “weight” – Light, Medium, Heavy, and a special Unarmoured category. This is primarily important for proficiencies.

Unarmoured

This is mostly just the Explorer’s Clothing (and its clone the Gi), which acts as a halfway between armour and clothing. It doesn’t count as armour, which means you can’t, for example, Affix a Talisman to it or use any other feature that it also imposes a Dexterity cap. In exchange, it uses your unarmoured proficiency and allows you to etch runes on it, allowing unarmoured classes (like Monk) to properly participate in the armour upgrade system.

An alternative is the Bracers of Armour. The bracers are specific magic items that essentially come “preloaded” with both potency and resilience runes. They do not stack, so you’re picking between one or the other here.

Which one works best for you? That depends on a few factors.

How much money can you afford to spend? A set of Bracers of Armour with +1 to AC and saves runs you 450gp, while Explorer’s Clothing with the same bonuses would cost 500gp (and 1 silver). The third variant of the Bracers with +3 to AC and saves costs 60,000gp, a 10,000gp saving over the 70,000gp required for the equivalent fundamental runes. Will that money make a huge difference? Probably not, but it’s nice to have, especially if you’re trying to rune multiple weapons or have a variety of wands.
Do you care about keeping perfectly up to date with your AC? The Bracers of Armour become available in tandem with the Resilient runes, meaning that you’re getting that +1 AC somewhat later than the respective potency rune. How much do you mind having a couple of levels of -1 AC? Up to you. Anyone on the frontlines probably cares a lot, while squishy backliners who are trying to avoid being targeted anyway will probably not be quite as fussed.
Do you want to invest in armour property runes? We’ll cover those in a later section, but the Bracers can’t have runes etched onto them. If you couldn’t care less about property runes, then you might as well take the cheaper option.
Are you planning to wear other items in those slots? Bracers of Armour occupy your “worn bracers” slot, so you can’t use them alongside, say, Bracers of Missile Deflection. Explorer’s Clothing occupies the “worn armour” slot instead. Your GM might, somewhat reasonably, rule that you can’t wear it alongside a “worn garment” item such as a Bloodline Robe. Decide which slot is more valuable to you (or switch around as you find stuff!) and take the appropriate item.
Are you going to use talismans frequently? They’re often overlooked, but talismans can have some really nice effects, and you can’t affix them to Explorer’s Clothing. More notably, Spellhearts also count as talismans, so if you want to grab that Jolt Coil for Electric Arc on your Cleric, you better get some Bracers on.

Secret Tech: nothing stops you from wearing Explorer’s Clothing and a functionally useless set of Bracers just for hanging talismans off (unless you want another magic item in the bracers slot, I guess). Thanks to Kjell for pointing this out!

Light Armour

This category covers a variety of armours with between a +1 and +2 item bonus, usually with a matching Dex cap of +3 or +4.

This armour type is most obviously useful for high Dexterity characters, although after a certain point even they will push up against the Dex cap when their bonus reaches +5 or +6. Even when that happens, however, you probably don’t want to switch to unarmoured, since you won’t be able to use any of the perks of armour like property runes.

Light armour never has a speed penalty, and usually only has a small Strength requirement, making it ideal for characters missing those stats. It’s also a little more likely to have the Comfort and Flexible traits.

One downside that balances out light armour versus the heavier options is that there’s no way to access their armour specialisations (although they do still have groups).

Medium Armour

This category covers AC item bonuses from +3 to +4 and the commensurate Dex caps.

Medium armour is, well, a happy medium between light and heavy armours. It’s ideal for someone with a modest amount of Dex who isn’t looking to pump it much further. Of course, they all have between a 14 and 16 Strength requirement, so if you’re slow and weak then maybe you’re better off with something lighter.

Medium armour is the first category in which you can use armour specialisation and holds a healthy mix of different types to pick from.

Heavy Armour

This is the real beef right here. Heavy armour gets to add up to +6 to your AC rather than +5; either via a +5 item bonus and +1 Dex cap, or just a flat out +6 item bonus with no Dex added at all.

However, you pay a price for power. You need at least 16 Strength to wear it effectively. All heavy armour has a -10ft speed penalty, meaning that even if you meet the strength requirement, you’re still eating a 5 foot penalty (although dwarves can deal with this with an ancestry feat). It also tends to have a high bulk (up to 5 for the heaviest stuff!) which will eat a substantial portion of your carry weight. Pairing Fortress Plate with a Fortress Shield takes almost your entire bulk limit!

Heavy Armour is also the most expensive type in the game on average; you actually can’t afford anything past Splint Mail at level 1, and even that leaves you with a measly 2gp for your weapon and accessories. If you dumped to 0 Dex in anticipation of Full Plate, you’ll have to live with “merely” having on-par AC for a level or two.

What else do you get for dealing with all of the above? Well… a flat +1 AC should really be enough, since there’s not really any other way to access it. If that’s not satisfying for you, any heavy armour with +6 item bonus comes with Bulwark, which helps shore up your assumedly tragic Reflex saves. More on that later.

Armour specialisation effects are also usually more potent on heavier armour.

Armour Specialisation

Much like weapon critical specialisations, all medium and heavy armours have a specialisation group, usually related in some way to their type. It’s a little harder to get access to them than weapon groups, however; only a couple of classes get it as part of baseline progression. On the other hand, you never need to fulfil a specific condition, instead just acting as a passive benefit.

Access to Armour Specs

Since access is so scant, we’ll list the archetypes here as well as the classes.

Class/Archetype	Level
Champion	7
Fighter	11
Inventor (Armour Innovation)	11
Sentinel (Armour Specialist feat)	6
Hellknight Dedication	6 (Hellknight Plate only)

The Effects

As in the weapon guide, we’ll group together similar effects.

Chain

Reduce damage from critical hits by an amount between 4-7 for Medium armour and 6-9 for Heavy armour.

This can’t drop the damage to below what it would have been before doubling, although by the time you’ve gotten your armour spec that’s really not very likely.

If we look at Moderate damage for level 6, the earliest you can get this, the average crit will be around 30 damage. Knocking off 5 (for Medium) is a 16% reduction; 7 (for Heavy) is a 23% reduction. That’s not to be sniffed at, especially since critical hits are usually one of the biggest threats to your continued existence. If they roll low on their damage dice it might be quite nice.

However, as damage scales upward, the relative reduction won’t quite keep up, so it’s a bit less useful in the late game.

Composite, Leather, and Plate

Each of these groups reduces one of the physical damage types by between 1-4 for Medium, or 2-5 for Heavy.

The damage reduction is fairly minor, but considering how often you’re going to be hit by one of those types across your career, it does add up. Think about how often you fight something with slashing claws or piercing bites, not to mention weapons. Then think about how often you go down by 1 or 2 points of damage. Will it completely change the course of every fight? Probably not, but it’s nice to have.

Skeletal

The first of the two new groups from Treasure Vault (TV henceforth), skeletal armour protects you from precision damage for between 3-6 (for Medium) or 5-8 (for Heavy).

This might be the least useful of the specialisations, generally speaking. Damage type or crit resistance will at least do something in nearly every encounter, but it’s perfectly possible you could go your entire adventuring career without fighting something that deals precision damage. Maybe if you’re in a campaign where assassins are constantly coming after you?

It’s also worth noting that there aren’t actually any Heavy Skeletal armours yet, so only the lower damage numbers are currently accessible.

Wood

The second new TV group, wood armour provides a more offensive benefit compared to other options. If you are crit by either A) an enemy using a melee unarmed attack, including with reach, or B) an adjacent enemy using any attack, that target takes between 3-6 piercing damage (or 5-8 for Heavy, except there’s no Heavy Wooden armour in game yet either).

The damage isn’t spectacular, but it is out-of-turn, and every now and then it could save you an absolute ton of health if you finish off a weakened enemy in the middle of a multiattack routine. It might also discourage enemies from attacking you, which could be helpful for a Champion.

There is one flaw to this group, and that’s the fact that it does not trigger on enemies hitting you with reach weapons. Enemies with reach generally become more frequent at higher levels, and depending on your campaign, that may or may not include reach weapon users. If you’re using a reach weapon yourself, or you don’t have ways of easily getting adjacent to foes, you might find this goes off less often than you like.

Armour Traits and You

Although the list of armour traits is a little less diverse than for weapons, there’s still plenty of options to pick between, especially with the release of TV. Most armour pieces won’t have more than one or two traits, and their benefits tend towards being more passive, so it should also be easier to parse.

As usual, we’ll try to point out potential use cases and flaws, rather than giving a simple star rating or the like.

Comfort

Comfort is fairly straightforward: sleeping in this armour doesn’t cause you to become fatigued, and allows you to recover from fatigue as normal.

Currently this property only appears on Light pieces (as well as Explorer’s Clothing, which is a little redundant considering it’s not armour anyway and so wouldn’t impede rest), which take 1 minute to don. If you’re ambushed in the middle of the night, spending 10 rounds struggling into your leather is so impractical it may as well be impossible, so Comfort helps to ensure you’re always battle-ready.

Only you will know how often this situation comes up in your campaign.

It’s worth noting that this trait appears to intentionally limit Light armour to a +4 total Dex/item cap instead of the standard +5, so you’re going to have slightly worse defenses at all other times as well.

On the other hand, the various built-in ancestry armours (such as the Conrasu’s Rite of Reinforcement feat) have a normal armour cap and allow you to enjoy the benefits of Comfort on a heavier armour type. If you’re not so Dex-based, it might be worth considering.

Better for: Hexploration, sandbox, or other campaigns where you might be attacked in your sleep; low-Dex Conrasu, Automatons, Kashrishi, Nagaji, and any other ancestry with built-in Comfort armour

Worse for: Campaigns where the night is not dark and holds no terrors whatsoever; anyone who wants the maximum possible AC at all times (if not one of the ancestries above)

Inscribed

When Crafting a Scroll using normal methods, instead of creating a separate item, you can integrate it into a piece of Inscribed armour. This allows the wearer to Activate the integrated scroll without having to draw it (although a free hand is still required), which is a nice action economy saver.

Scroll crafting is actually a pretty good strategy (turns out high Intelligence casters make for great crafters – who knew?), and this enables you to have an emergency spell always available for when it’s needed. Consider, for example, inscribing a scroll of Feather Fall or Air Bubble – as long as you keep a hand open, you’ll always have access to them in the situations that demand it without having to dedicate a staff or spell slot.

Better for: Casters; parties with scroll crafters; campaigns with lots of environmental hazards where emergency scrolls might be handy

Worse for: Characters who can’t activate scrolls; anyone using both of their hands at all times (e.g. two-handed weapon users)

Laminar

If armour with Laminar breaks, you reduce the status armour penalty by 1, so 0 for light armour, -1 for medium, and -2 for Heavy.

This is a bit of a niche trait, but it has a couple of uses. Although rare, there do exist monsters who can damage armour directly (see the Smilodon for an example) and avoiding that nasty armour penalty might be helpful.

Another more specific combo is Sacrifice Armour. This operates a little bit like an emergency Shield Block you can perform with your armour, reducing a large chunk of damage in exchange for causing it to become broken. Usually that’s a big price to pay, since you’re then taking more hits and crits for the following rounds; Laminar makes this much more manageable – and removes the cost entirely, if you’re using light armour, so it’s basically just a free 1/encounter ability as long as you can fix up your armour between fights.

This only gets better if you take the follow-up feat Greater Interpose, which allows you to negate a crit. Here’s an example I stole from someone else (thanks again to Kjell): if you’re wearing level 14 armour and an enemy crits you for 84 damage total, Sacrifice Armour with Greater Interpose would reduce that to a mere 14 damage. That’s a tremendous reduction to get once per combat for the low price of 10 minutes of repair. Heck, if you get to Legendary in Crafting and take Quick Repair, you can fix your armour back to full functionality in one action, so you could just keep doing this over and over. Could be a fun build.

Better for: Sentinels or Champions who can access Sacrifice Armour; campaigns with lots of equipment-targeting foes; PvP situations if you’re fighting dudes with Corrosive runes; characters or parties with good Crafting

Worse for: People without Sacrifice Armour; parties who can’t keep equipment repaired and ready on short notice

Flexible

If you’re wearing Flexible armour and you don’t meet its Strength requirement, you don’t take a penalty to your Acrobatics or Athletics.

This is mostly a consideration for light armour, since the speed penalty is punishing enough on medium and heavy armour that you’d rarely want to wear it without meeting the Strength requirement. The most likely situation where this might come up is with light armour casters, like the Bard, who can’t max out their Dex but want decent armour.

In such cases, the Chain Shirt is an excellent choice. If you’re at 16 Dex, you get the full +5 AC bonus and all you have to deal with is the -1 to Thievery and Stealth (which you might not care about).

Better for: Moderate Dex, low Strength characters; light armour users

Worse for: Characters who want to maximise their Thievery or Stealth; characters who meet the Strength requirement anyway

Noisy

A pure downside trait (and therefore usually paired with something more positive), this trait means you always receive a penalty to Stealth checks, even if you meet the Strength requirement of the armour.

It’s hard to say much about this trait, really. Do you care about Stealth checks? Then you probably want to avoid this. Do you not care about Stealth checks? Then go ahead, you’re probably getting a decent trait alongside this for your trouble.

Better for: Non Stealth-users

Worse for: Stealth users

Adjusted

There are a number of armour adjustments available for you to attach to your armour (which we’ll cover in another guide – keep your eyes peeled!). Adjusted armour basically just comes with these adjustments built in, so you can’t remove or modify them.

This… is more of a downside than anything. It basically removes your ability to customise a piece of armour, in exchange for, well, nothing. To take a quick example, let’s look at Buckle Armour and compare it to Studded Leather Armour. The two armours are, other than the change in statistics from adjustment itself, entirely identical. It’s not even a discount; Buckle Armour is 4 gold, while Studded Leather is 3 gold plus 1 gold for the Storage adjustment.

Therefore the only reason to particularly consider an Adjusted armour over anything else is if you want a specific magic armour, like the Ouroboros Buckles for Buckle Armour.

Better for: Characters shooting for a specific piece of armour

Worse for: …everyone else?

Aquadynamic

This operates like a more limited version of Flexible, above: you don’t take the penalty to Acrobatics or Athletics, but only if you’re underwater.

This is an interesting one, because Flexible usually only appears on light armour; the one piece of armour Aquadynamic currently appears on (Coral Armour) is medium armour instead. In effect, you’re trading off the… flexibility of Flexible in order to get it on a higher tier of armour.

That being said, this is extremely niche. You need to be A) unable to meet the Strength score of the armour, B) able to tolerate the speed penalty of doing so (since it’s now on medium armour), and C) in a campaign where you’re constantly underwater. If you tick all those boxes, great! If not, you might be better off looking elsewhere, unless you really want a specific magic armour.

Better for: Someone who meets all of the criteria above

Worse for: Anyone else

Hindering

Another pure downside trait, this one gives an extra, stacking speed penalty that applies on top of the usual one given in the stat block. Even if your Strength allows you to negate the actual armour’s penalty, Hindering continues to apply a second instance.

Taking a speed penalty sucks, because Striding is something you’re gonna be doing in 95% of combats. In the case of the two existing armours, you’re basically paying Hindering in exchange for the Laminar trait or the Entrench Melee trait. Is that worth it? Up to you and how much you like those traits.

One important interaction here is the Unburdened Iron ancestry feat for dwarves. Not only does the first half of the feat reduce the armour’s speed penalty, the second half also negates the penalty from Hindering. This makes dwarves an excellent pick for anyone who wants to wear this style of armour, as long as you’re not taking any extra penalties.

Better for: Dwarves

Worse for: Characters who want to be mobile or who don’t care about the traits they gain in return

Ponderous

While you’re wearing this armour, the check penalty also applies to your initiative checks; if you meet the strength requirement, this drops to just -1.

Compared to Hindering, I think this is much less punishing a penalty. Depending on your build, you may not value going first; certain builds will want to go later, and might have ended up Delaying if they rolled high anyway (although it’s nice to have the option). Since you’re generally getting another positive trait in exchange for this, it’s often worth it.

Better for: High damage strikers that want their team to set them up first (Magus, Gunslinger etc.); After You Swashbucklers (and anyone with similar abilities) who are going last anyway

Worse for: Debuff or control builds who wanna go first to set up their team; Champions or anyone else who really wants to get their shield up and their reactions ready ASAP; squishy characters at risk of getting nuked to death if the enemies beat them out; characters who often use Avoid Notice (the initiative penalty will also apply to your Stealth check, which might end up making you detected)

Bulwark

Only appearing on the bulkiest of armours, Bulwark effectively replaces your Dex modifier with a flat score of +3 for the purposes of Reflex saves against damaging effects, as it’s so all-encompassing that you don’t need to dodge as the armour takes the brunt for you.

This basically just means you’re not completely helpless as a heavy armour user against stuff like fireball. It only works against damaging effects, so you’re just as vulnerable to being Tripped or various controlling spells and abilities that don’t directly damage you.

There’s one feat which specifically interacts with Bulwark, which is Mighty Bulwark from the Sentinel archetype. This bumps up the bonus to +4 and makes it universal to all Reflex saves, not just damaging ones, significantly increasing your survivability with no additional investment in Dex required. Anyone playing a heavy armour user with archetype picks to spare should seriously consider this as an option.

Better for: Extremely low-Dex heavy armour users; Free Archetype games where you can easily grab Sentinel

Worse for: Anyone using heavy armour and decent Dex (for some reason)

Entrench

Armour with Entrench is a bit like having a hands-free buckler; you can spend one action to gain a +1 bonus to AC for the round. The catch is that this only applies to a particular kind of attack; at present the options are “ranged” or “melee”, so fairly broad categories.

I actually think this is quite good. Dealing with handedness is one of those important aspects of a martial build in 2e, and essentially getting a buckler with no hand investment is worth the limitation, at least in my opinion. However, usually getting this trait means that you have to deal with something else like Hindering or Ponderous, so that needs to be part of your calculation.

Better for: Two-handed weapon users, dual-wielders, characters who otherwise have their hands occupied

Worse for: Parry weapon users, characters already using a shield or buckler, anyone who doesn’t wanna deal with the attached negative traits

Shields

Shields in 2e are a lot more active than in other systems you might be used to. Carrying a shield around does nothing by itself except occupy your hand slot (unless it’s a buckler). However, by having a shield equipped, you gain access to the Raise a Shield action. There’s no such thing as proficiency in shields; any character, even a wizard, can do this if they so choose (and can spare the hands for it).

Let’s look at a typical Shield’s stat block: the Steel Shield.

Some of this we’ve already covered in the Armour statblock, so let’s examine the unique shield characteristics instead.

AC Bonus: The “standard” shield bonus is +2, but some will offer less (Bucklers) and some will offer more (Fortress Shields) in exchange for various benefits or penalties. You only get this bonus while the shield is raised, as detailed below.
Speed Penalty: Some shields, like the Tower Shield, will slow you down while you wield them, again usually in exchange for some sort of bonus. If there’s no penalty, it’s displayed as “-” as above.
Hardness: Like many objects, shields have Hardness. This gives you flat damage reduction when Shield Blocking with the shield (again, more detail below) as well as reducing any damage done directly to the shield.
HP (BT): Shields have HP. They also have a Break Threshold, which is half their HP (as seen in the statblock above, the shield has 20HP, so the BT is 10). When the shield has HP equal to or less than its BT, it’s Broken, which means it cannot be used, so you won’t be able to Raise a Shield or Shield Block with it. If it ever reaches 0 HP, it’s entirely destroyed and cannot be recovered.
Traits: Although our example above doesn’t have a trait, shields can have them, just like weapons and armour. Also just like those, shield traits can be either positive or negative.

Using Shields

Raising a Shield costs an action and gives you +2 (more or less, depending on the shield) to your AC for the round. This means not only will you take less hits, you’ll also take less crits, which is great considering how nasty the average monster’s attack can be when doubled.

However, the action cost means it’s going to be a tax on your precious actions every round, so you need to carefully think about how you’re going to fit it in to your usual gameplan. Does your class have high action costs you’ll have to juggle (e.g. Magus, most casters)? Do you need a free hand for your other abilities or items (e.g. Alchemists or Battle Medicine users)? Do you have alternatives you could acquire that serve the same purpose (e.g. Dueling Parry)? This isn’t to say you can’t use a shield in these instances, but you’ll need to play around it.

The other benefit shields offer is the ability to utilise Shield Block. This isn’t a universal ability like Raise a Shield; you either need to be granted it by your class or subclass (many martials get it, as well as some extras like Druid and Warpriest Cleric), or take it as a general feat, meaning at level 3, or 1 if you can tolerate being a stinky human.

Shield Block is a reaction you can only use while you have a shield Raised; in response to being hit by a physical attack, you reduce the damage by your shield’s Hardness, then both you and the shield take the remainder. Note that you both take the full remaining damage; it isn’t split.

For example, if you Shield Block with a Steel Shield (hardness 5) and get hit by an attack for 11 damage, you would carve 5 damage off that – reducing it to 6 – and then you and the shield would both lose 6 health.

People tend to think they should save Shield Block for the really big crits, but what you should really be doing is using it to carve off damage from lots of smaller hits. It’ll save you more damage over time, and it’ll take longer for your shield to break, meaning you can keep it raised and get that nice AC bonus for more rounds. This also reduces the likelihood of your shield taking “massive damage” and getting completely destroyed, which is a painful experience if it’s tricked out with runes and the like.

The fact that your shield will take damage means you also need a plan to repair it. At minimum, you’ll need a Repair Kit and training in Crafting; however, you don’t necessarily need these things, so a helpful teammate may be able to cover these requirements. Fixing an object takes 10 minutes, so it’s something to do between combats rather than mid-fight (unless you get to legendary Crafting and take Quick Repair).

One final benefit that only appears on particular shields, like the Tower Shield, is the ability to Take Cover behind the shield if you’ve already Raised it. This bumps you up to +4 AC rather than the standard amount for your shield, so it’s a fairly ridiculous increase in survivability, but it’s also an equally ridiculous action tax. You probably shouldn’t plan to do this every single round unless you love trailing sixty foot behind the rest of your party.

Bucklers

Bucklers get their own section because they work a little differently from most shields. They only offer a +1 bonus to AC (although this can be improved with specific feats), but in exchange, don’t occupy your hand slot. However, you can only Raise them while the hand isn’t majorly occupied.

+1 is still nothing to sniff at, and I’ve discussed the power of having a free hand elsewhere. Need to chug a quick potion? Use a maneuver not covered by your weapon? Patch someone up with Battle Medicine? All these are now easier than ever. Just remember to raise your shield after doing the previous.

There are a number of feats, particularly for the Swashbuckler (appropriately enough) that make bucklers better. As early as level 1 you can bump a buckler’s AC bonus up to +2, matching a proper shield.

The other tradeoff, of course, is that bucklers are awful for Shield Block. With only 3 Hardness and 6HP, they’re likely to break or be destroyed entirely by attacks even at level 1. This makes sense – they’re designed to reflect rather than meet attacks head on, so stick to just getting the AC bonus in all but the most dire of circumstances.

Shield Traits

There’s not much overlap here, so we’ll just look at each one individually. I won’t give Inscribed its own separate entry because it works exactly the same way it does on armour – see above if you want more details.

Launching

This is sort of like having an attached ranged weapon, like a Shield Pistol, except it’s directly integrated into the shield. As far as I can tell, nothing forbids the weapon from having additional attachments, so you could also have a Shield Boss on the same shield. The shield always requires at least one action to reload, even if the integrated weapon doesn’t usually do so, as in the case of the Dart Shield. You also need hands to be able to reload the shield, so your other hand will need to be using a Free-Hand weapon or otherwise be empty.

That last caveat makes this a little tricky to use. Of course, you could simply treat this as a 1/fight emergency ranged attack and never bother to reload until after the encounter’s over. At present, however, the only shield with Launching is the above-linked Dart Shield, which has the statistics of a buckler but without the free hand. In this instance you’re basically using a much worse shield in exchange for getting one extra attack in particular situations. Is that worth it? Up to you.

Better for: Characters using a free hand + shield; characters who want an emergency ranged option

Worse for: Characters who want a real shield

Hefty

A pure downside trait. Hefty comes with a value, like “Hefty 14”, and essentially adds a Strength requirement to a shield. If you don’t meet the appropriate score, it takes you a full 2 actions to Raise the Shield rather than one.

This is a nasty enough penalty that you really, really want to meet the Strength requirement if you can. Spending two of your precious three actions – the equivalent of casting a spell! – just to raise your shield makes it practically unusable.

Better for: High strength characters. I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to you

Worse for: I’ll leave this one up to your imagination

Foldaway

This shield is built into a gauntlet, and you can stow it into the gauntlet or deploy it with an Interact action. When it’s deployed, it acts just like a buckler, only being Raisable if your hand is free or holding a light item. When folded away, it’s basically just stowed. You can’t put an attached weapon onto an item with this trait.

At present, since this trait only exists on a Gauntlet Buckler, it’s somewhat limited in scope compared to just… wearing a gauntlet and a buckler. You lose out on the ability to have an attached weapon in exchange for very little.

What do you get in exchange? Well… it can’t be Disarmed. It’s also probably less conspicuous to wear around, so you might be able to have it on during a fancy noble ball or something.

In theory, if this ever appears on a non-buckler shield, it would be pretty good, since it gives you the free-handedness of a buckler via the trait itself.

Better for: Characters in high intrigue campaigns where you need to leave gear behind frequently; campaigns with lots of humanoid enemies who love to try disarming you

Worse for: Anyone who wants to use their shield for anything other than the AC bonus

Harnessed

This is an interesting one, basically designed to keep characters who revolve around the use of the Jousting weapon trait relevant in tight dungeons and the like. The way it works is that you spend an action to “lock” your lance (or whatever other Jousting weapon) into the shield, and they’re then effectively a two-handed weapon; you can’t use one without the other until you unlock them. Once locked together, if you Raise your shield, you act as if you were mounted – e.g. you get a damage bonus on your attacks if you move at least ten feet before your Strike. In exchange, however, the weapon loses 5 foot of reach (down to a minimum of 5 foot).

It’s really cool that they added a trait like this to encourage a more niche playstyle and help compensate for its weakest situations. It’s not particularly powerful or anything, though, especially since the Harnessed Shield has a nasty speed penalty on it.

Better for: Anyone who usually fights mounted with a lance who wants a backup option

Worse for: Anyone who doesn’t use the above fighting style; campaigns where you never have to worry much about dismounting

Deflecting

Deflecting shields have a worse base Hardness (4) compared to a Steel Shield (5), but get a +2 bonus against a particular kind of attack, making them better against certain enemies. So far the options for Deflecting include damage types (such as Slashing or Bludgeoning) as well as types of attack (such as Ranged Physical).

This is an interesting little tradeoff. If you think you might be playing against a lot of particular enemies – say, your BBEG is known to animate statues, so you’re probably gonna get Bludgeoned by constructs a lot – this will add up in value.

The other option is to take this and try to only use Shield Block against your favoured type, while just relying on the +2 AC from Raising against other sorts of attacks. Or you just accept that your Block is worse against certain types and eat the extra point.

Better for: Campaigns with lots of a particular enemy/damage type

Worse for: Campaigns where you don’t know what you’re up against; characters who want to Shield Block against anything and everything as frequently as possible

Integrated

Integrated weapons effectively have an Attached weapon built directly into them (and thus can’t have another one added). While you’re wielding the shield, you’re also wielding the integrated weapon and can attack with it.

What makes this different from just attaching a weapon? A couple of key things: one, the integrated weapons come with a wider variety of traits and damage types. For example, the Klar has 1d6 Versatile S/P, which is an extra trait compared to a basic Shield Boss. Secondly, you can continue to fight with an integrated weapon even if the attached shield becomes broken, so you can Shield Block without too much fear of losing your offhand attack. If it’s destroyed, though, the weapon is gone too, unlike attached weapons where they can usually be salvaged.

Better for: Characters who want to use a shield weapon and want it to be better than the standard fare; characters who want to Shield Block often without losing use of said weapon

Worse for: Characters who Shield Block so much their shield might get outright destroyed

Shield Throw

The Shield Throw trait basically operates like a Thrown melee weapon; it always has a range included, which is the range increment. If you don’t have an attached or integrated weapon, this just does the basic Shield Bash attack, which sucks; if you do have such a weapon, however, this trait allows you to use that instead, effectively adding Thrown to that weapon.

This is pretty neat. It’s not that easy to add traits to weapons; even though the Shield Boss et al aren’t stellar in terms of budget, being able to conk an enemy from halfway across the encounter can be fun. Of course, if you don’t have Returning, you’ve just thrown your shield away; depending on your build that might be fine. For example, you might run an Athletics specialist who throws their shield to free up a hand if they need to Grapple two foes, rather than simply dropping it. Play around, see what you can come up with.

Better for: Characters with high Dex and Strength; level 5+ characters who can put a Returning rune on the shield’s weapon; Fighters, Rogues, Dwarves, and anyone else who gets a Returning-esque feat like Ricochet Stance; characters without Returning who are fine throwing a shield away to free up a hand

Worse for: Characters lacking the Dex to throw well; characters who want to Shield Block and Raise a Shield frequently

Making Decisions

If you’re new, all that discussion might have been very interesting, but really what you want is just to be told what to pick. Which is entirely reasonable.

I’ve put together what is hopefully a handy little table that will help you pick a basic set of armour. This only includes the most “vanilla” option for each type without any fancy traits.

Dex	Armour	Armour Type	Item
+0	Full Plate	Heavy	+6
+1	Half Plate	Heavy	+5
+1	Breastplate	Medium	+4
+2	Scale Mail	Medium	+3
+3	Studded Leather	Light	+2
+4	Leather	Light	+1
+5	Explorer’s Clothing	Unarmoured	+0

Just pick according to your character’s Dexterity and level of training. A Fighter with +2 Dex will probably want to use Scale Mail, for example, while a Wizard with +3 Dex will still use Explorer’s Clothing (or cast Mage Armour) since they aren’t trained to use light armour. You also might have to go with something a little lighter if you can’t afford your optimum choice yet (mostly just an issue with Full Plate).

How about picking a shield? Well, the “default” choice is the Steel Shield, and it’s never a bad way to go. If you’re a Druid, you’ll have to avoid using metal, least until the remaster drops, so grab a Hide Shield instead. If you want to maintain a free hand (or you’re a Swashbuckler planning to go down that line of feats), opt for a Buckler.

The decision making here is a little simpler than weapons, but there’s still plenty to play around with; if you want some fancy traits on your armour or to tweak how your shield works, have a look at Archives of Nethys.

Thanks

I’m grateful to every one of my readers. It brings me genuine joy any time I hear from somebody that my guide helped them out, even only a little. I hope you’ll find this guide helps you out too.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. See you in the next game.

Cassie