Can you equip two shields at once, so that you can exhaust two in one turn?

I think so, although that'll leave you hard-pressed for doing anything attack-wise.

Interesting question... one of my players did so and had the skill taunt, 3 base armor, rune armor (+4) and the ring of protection (+1) from the marketplace...

I couldn't kill him, obviously

Yes you can, and its a useful tactic if there is something in the room that you need to run and get fast. Have someone with 5 speed equip two sheilds and run like hell.

It's also useful if you have no targets and no fatigue, to get extra insurance that you'll see that rest action take effect.

An interesting piggy back on this subject: since you have one of the shields in your off-hand, would you get the bonus you normally get when having the ambidextrous skill of +1 wound cancelled? The idea of the skill card is that your offhand is just as good as your main and so you get a little better damage exhaustion? Granted, there's nothing in the RAW about it, but...you could house rule it. Certainly, if you actually had ambidextrous (not something I like to do as a hero), it would seem to apply to shields in each hand...

Feanor said:

I don't have the card in front of me, just a reference sheet version of it, but getting the +1 wound cancelled on the shield doesn't seem to require you to have a weapon equipped. So if you were equipping two shields, I would guess both would get the +1 wound cancelled. But again, I'm basing this off a reference sheet description of the skill, not the actual card.

"When you receive an Off-Hand Bonus , your attack gains +1 Damage. In addition, each time you use a Shield , it cancels 1 additional wound."

By RAW, if you've got 2 shields equipped, you clearly get the bonus on both shields.

...I keep forgetting that this is a subterfuge skill. I mean, really, a skill that helps dual-wielders (a melee-only tactic) in the subterfuge deck? That's just insulting.

Yeah it does seeem strange. I suppose it provides some incentive for those Heroes like Ronan of the Wild who are decent in both (since with Pico he's a 2/3 Melee/Ranged) to grab some melee weapons to trade off on.

Meh, I guess that it just means that a subterfuge hero is meant as not only an archer in traditional RPG terms, but also as a thief or rogue, backstabbing with a dagger when the necessity arises...

Antistone said:

The skill is still useful for a ranged character using a crossbow(or any one handed ranged weapon) and a shield. The skill may be more versatile for a melee character but not useless for a ranged.

haslo said:

Except that the game has no "backstabbing" rules (except Bogran's ability, which actually works better with ranged weapons), there is no synergy (besides this one anomalous skill) between daggers and having subterfuge skills or ranged trait dice, and attacking with a shop dagger is almost never a good idea. So, yeah, someone writing the skills may have thought that, but the rest of the game clearly doesn't support it.

Then again, there are a lot of skills that serve cross-purposes, and just because YOUR bow character never wields melee weapons doesn't make that skill useless for the rest of us ;-) Granted, it's a skill that's clearly meant to be used with shields or dual melee weapons, so it probably would've been better served as a combat skill, but personally I think it's good to have that skill in subterfuge, and having it means that the ranged player can pull out a sword and shield and not be completely useless.

It's all a matter of opinion, methinks ;-)