If you have armor of +1 and a shield with +1, and a skeleton with Pierce 3 hits your character how many wound points do you take? Since the shield are not affected by pierce does it protect you from pierce?

When you say "a shield with +1" do you mean a shield that says "Armor +1" (of which there are very few) or do you mean a shield that says "exhaust to prevent one wound" (which pretty much all of them say, with varying number of wounds prevented.)

The generic shield ability to prevent wounds kicks in after damage has been converted to wounds, which is after the effect of Pierce has been resolved. A hero with 1 Armor (in total) and a shield that prevents one wound would suffer X-1 wounds from a skeleton with Pierce 3, where X is that amount of damage (hearts) rolled on the attack. Assuming, of course, that the hero chooses to use his shield. If the hero chooses not to use his shield, he suffers X wounds.

A hero with 2 Armor (in total) and the same shield would suffer X-1 wounds as well. As would a hero with 3 Armor (in total) and the same shield.

A hero with 4 Armor (in total) and the same shield would suffer X-2 wounds, assuming the hero used the shield, or X-1 if he didn't.

Peirce 3 means you ignore up to 3 points of ARMOR. If the hero doesn't have 3 points of armor, the excess Pierce is ineffective. Shields are not armor, except for a few rare and powerful ones which provide armor in addition to their normal effect of canceling wounds.

leoj said:

1. Read the shield card(s) carefully. Note that shields have got nothing to do with armour at all.
EDIT: (there is one expansion shield that gives armour bonuses in limited circumstances, but generally shields and armour are totally unrelated).

2. Read Pierce rules carefully. Note that Pierce does not do any damage, nor any wounds. Pierce only reduces (cancels/ignores) armour. It has nothing directly to do with damage, wounds or shields.

3. Read step 6 of the attack sequence carefully and understand the difference between wounds and damage . Then go back and note where the two terms are applied.

There are 5 seperate and distinct concepts to understand here.
i) Damage - this is like the 'strength' of an attack. It is not the final result, just part of the tally of what is being 'delivered' to the target.
ii) Armour - this is like the 'toughness' of a defender. This is what tries to 'absorb' part or all of the strength of the attack
iii) Pierce - this is like a special sharpened edge to the attack. The attack doesn't do any extra damage, but it is able cut through the defending toughness more easily. Pierce reduces the defending Armour value, that is all (and never below zero).
iv) Wounds - these are part of the result of the attack. The 'strength' that is left over after the defenders toughness has reduced it is converted into wounds. Damage - (Armour -Pierce (cannot be less than 0) ) = Wounds
v) Shields - Shields prevent wounds. They are unrelated to armour, damage or pierce and do not come 'into play' untll well after all these have had their effect and actual wounds have been done, which can then be prevented.

Your original question is not really answer-able because you didn't specify the damage that attack did.
However the Pierce 3 would reduce the Armour 1 to 0, so all damage would then convert to wounds during step 6 of the attack sequence. The shield could then be exhausted to cancel 1 of the wounds, so the net wounds inflicted would be Damage-1. And teh shield would be exhausted and unable to be used again until refreshed during the hero's next turn.