DND 5E Shields – Would Allowing Bonuses for Two Shields Be Unbalanced?

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Would allowing a character to gain bonuses for two shields be unbalanced?

I have a character I've been working on who worships a god of protection. The idea is that he will use two shields, but the Player's Handbook states you can only gain a bonus from one.

Obviously, the character will be severely limited in terms of damage output (improvised/unarmed attacks like kicks and shield bashes only only). Will the increase in Armor Class (AC at first level with chainmail will be 20) overcome the limited attack bonuses and damage output of this character?

I plan to optimize at later levels with thing like the Sentinel feat to make this character able to protect the squishies.

Best Answer

Too good when your offense doesn’t need hands

In theory, giving up a hand for more defense could be a fair trade—if you were losing offensive capability in the exchange. But as Dan B’s answer details, that just isn’t the case for far too many classes, particularly one your character would be likely to gravitate towards naturally, the cleric.

But maybe we could avoid that

Maybe we can avoid the problems by giving up on the AC bonus of the second shield—but still having it be a meaningful part of the character.

Shield as a weapon

The rules do not allow cover bashing things with a “real” shield. There is precedent, however—in the Monster Manual—for shields as weapons. The lizardfolk has an attack called “spiked shield” that deals 1d6+Str damage. At the same time, the lizardfolk’s 15 AC is described as being due to “natural armor, shield.” The lizardfolk shaman on the next page has “AC 13 (natural armor),” and it does not have a shield in its statblock. So the implication here is that the spiked shield provides the usual +2 AC bonus that a regular shield does, as well as being available for an attack.

You can’t do that as a player character—there is no spiked shield in the rules, using a shield to do damage forces you to treat it as an improvised weapon (which makes it difficult to get proficiency and limits its available damage potential), and so on. However, what you might do—with DM permission—is treat the spiked shield as a weapon only. After all, the lizardfolk’s ability to use the spiked shield at the same time as their regular weaponry is due to their multiattack ability—and you don’t have that.

So you could ask to have a “shield” that is designed to be used as a weapon, with the stats of, say, a mace or morningstar, and no bonus to AC. Or maybe it could do 1d6 piercing or 1d4 bludgeoning, i.e. a die size smaller than those, but be resistant to disarming. Then you just use it as a regular weapon, but it pays the appropriate homage to your god.

A homebrew feat or fighting style might be appropriate here

If the cost of using two shields is just “gives up a free hand,” then it’s not balanced because you can do too much without needing hands. But if the cost is more than that—say, you need to get a fighting style from fighter or paladin, or you need to spend a feat—it might be more reasonable.

It’s too far out of scope here to try homebrewing something, but the Defense Fighting Style or the Dual Wielder feat might be well worth considering as a starting point. Consider that someone wearing armor, with a shield and a “fake weapon–shield,” could take the Defense Fighting Style for a +2 bonus to AC from the shield and a +1 bonus to AC from the fighting style—you could easily just flavor that as your “fake weapon—shield” being half as good as a “real” shield for defensive purposes. If you had a fighting style that required two shields—a stricter requirement than Defensive’s simple “wear armor” requirement—you might be able to justify a better benefit than that. A feat might be able to go even farther.

You can ask your DM for help working out the details and coming up with something acceptable to you both—and you can ask about those details, once you’ve decided on them, here, and we can judge whether or not you’ve hit the right sweet spot.