So the magic Defense question can basically be answered as follows. If I have a wizard with a shield with 300 defense points that get's a final defense of 123 and a weaponmaster hits with a final attack of 180 and 100 base damage and the wizard has no armor how many life points of damage does the wizard suffer. basically i'm confused because when using a magic shield to cover someone else failure results in no damage being deducted and i'm wondering if that's also the case when a wizards shield is used to protect themselves

If at level 1 I had a strength of 10 and put the natural bonus into feats of strength (+15 characteristic bonus)+(+15 natural bonus)= (+30 bonus) and at level 2 I Increased my strength by 1 would I now have a bonus of (+20 characteristic bonus)+(+20 natural bonus)=40? or would my bonus be (+20 characteristic bonus)+(+15 natural bonus)=35?

The way magical shields (or any type of shield that uses life points like that) is one would roll for the shield's defense while the attacker rolls for offense. Any result is shown in the attack table in the book. (ignoring any counterattack result). After that is done the shield suffers in addtion (and only the shield) the base damage of the weapon no matter the result the weapon always deals base damage to a shield. Now many things can happen for this

1) The attack was stopped: (either no damage on the table or counterattck)

No reason to worry about anything here. You have defended and the shield suffers base damage.

2) The attack was stopped, but the shield was destroyed through the weapons base damage

Well that sucks, but you can always try to cast an other later. And any damage that was not dealt does not suffer to the person behind the shield.

3) The attack was not stopped.

Sucks even more. The shield will suffer base damage + The attack table damage

4) The attack was not stopped and shield is broken.

The damage that will be dealt to the character behind the shield will be:

if base damage > Shield HP AND the defender is the caster, the one behind the shield will suffer whatever the attack table says he suffers

if base damage < Shield HP AND the defender is the caster, the one behind the shield will suffer Base damage + Attack Table - Shield HP worth of damage.

If base damage > Sheild HP AND the defender is someone else, the defender defends against the attack normaly

If base damage < Shield HP AND the defender is someone else, ................

Well this last one is hard to define. I mean sure the shield managed to stop the attack a bit... But according straight up to the rules it states that the defender gets a chance to defend normaly. Normaly against what? the new difference between the enemy's original attack value, or the original attack value minus the shield's defense level? This one is hard to define for me. Going by the base rules: yes a defender will get an additional chance to defend himself. In addtion as a house rule I would allow reduced damage by however much the shield defended in addition to the base damage.

Now as for the natural bonus, if a stat increase (or decrease) allows your bonus to go up (or down) so the natural bonus will as well.

Cultadium said:

with your scenario the wizard's shield with final defense 123 (this would be from magic projection) would NOT block the attack of 180 by the weaponmaster, the wizard would need to roll dodge or block on his own. Lets say he rolls 80 dodge. this is not enough again to dodge the final attack of 180 by the weaponmaster, and the wizard with AT 0 against cut would take 100% of the weaponmaster's base dmg, or 100 LP.

The way a magical shield works is that you project it either to yourself or to an ally (assuming you make the range roll). Then when that person is attacked, the wizard who cast the shield rolls Magic Projection as defense to see if his shield blocks the attack. If not, the person gets their regular defense. If it DOES, then the damage the shield takes is 100% of the final dmg of the person attacking (in this case 100LP). This means that if 2 people have cast magical (or psychic) shields on someone, they can BOTH try to defend the person before they make their natural defense. Also remember that to cast a shield on an ally is an active action, but casting it on yourself as well as trying to defend with it (no matter who its on) is passive.

Cultadium said:

It should be 35, the stat-up should not be retroactive. If you decided at that level to put your new natural bonus into feats of strength, it would be +20 bonus, +15 natural (lvl 1) +20 natural (lvl 2)

KilledWithStyle said:

I recommend you both reread the magical/psychic shield section on page 92 (as i have had it open while i post this) it says specifically that "if a shield SUCCEEDS in stopping an attack it might suffer damage or even shatter. A shield that successfully stops an attack receives the base damage of the attack. Persons of high ability, therefore, have the possibility of shattering shields more quickly by making additional attacks."

Also, if you are GM i wouldn't care if you wanted to do natural bonuses retroactively, I simply believe logically it should not be retroactive.

Sorry I misread that. I had just assumed that the extra damage would be applied to the shield. Oh well.

Yeah I realized this soon after I read and was coming back to fix it, but you posted. I was reading believing that even damage dealt on the table would still affect the player's shield in question.

Thanks ILOVECHEESE and yeah being retroactive didn't seem normal to me either but I had to check and make sure. So I guess the shield rules make spellcasters pretty darn squishy any advice from the spellcasters out there? How much dodge is needed or is it better just to risk biting the dust

(and thanks for answering kill your reply made me realize how confusing things would get if you failed to block with a shield and it still blocked part of the damage)

Cultadium said:

Yes well I misread that paragraph because I have never used psychic or magical shields. I read (somehow and accidently) that the shield would always be hit. So I was lying out the possibilites. Huge mistake.

But as a further note for the part asking about your dodge level: The magical demo characters in the GM Toolkit actually do not put any points into block or dodge. The exception to that is that Warlock, Warrior Summoner, and Warrior Mentalist have developed their block abilities (as they should.) Keep in mind that the shield that you may or may not use will be enhanced by your ability of the Projection. Projection is the attack and defense ability of that class. So a Wizzard with Magical Projection of 100 (with no offset) has the equivilant of 100 attack in magic and 100 defense using magic assuming he is using a spell for that purpose.

hehe. sorry if i sounded like a jerk in my replies before.

Uhm. Yeah for advice there's really only two things to do, one is actually put points into dodge (some dont recommend, especially if your a wiz-mentalist) and the other one is to just try to max projection, even taking an imbalance towards defensive/passive spells.

What my players actually do is there are about 3 casters with shields at any one time, so they just cast shields all over each other and hope at least one person defends properly.

So a magic user can have 3 shields up and roll defense for them all passively as long as they're all on different people? Or do you mean that when a particular person is attacked the other mages put their shields over them leaving themselves temporarily unshielded.

What he is saying is each of the mages are casting shields on each other so that way in case they fail, the other can dodge. It sounds good, but you have to keep in mind that there is a -40 to the roll for defending an other player (I made sure to look this one up this time) See page 93 under COVERING ORDERS.

When a shield does fail, it gives the covered player a chance to dodge using the original attack roll that the attacker used.

KilledWithStyle said:

This is exactly why they do it.

even with the -40 they still get 3 chances to block it, and when they do all fail the person still gets to dodge on their own.

also does everyone else make them roll projection when the person with the shield is attacked instead of when they put it on them? just makes more sense to me to do it that way but it's a bit unclear.