Shields (skill)

Version 0.14: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The Shields skill denotes how effective your character is at blocking melee or ranged attacks with shields, including some of the magical equivalents. A higher Shields skill raises your SH score and decreases the penalties to your EV, spellcasting, and accuracy that come with having a large piece of wood and metal strapped to your arm. In order to train the Shields skill, you must be wearing a shield of some sort.

For normal-sized characters, a 5/15/25 shield skill will completely cancel out the penalty from a buckler/shield/large shield, respectively. For other species, see Shields.

For information on item use, see Shields.

Shields aptitudes

From Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.12 in-game documentation:

At	Ba	Co	DE	Dg	Ds	Dj	Dr	Fe	Fo	Gr	Gh	Gn	Hu	Ko	Mf	Mi	MD	Mu	Na	Op	On	Sp	Te	Tr	Vp	VS
1	1	-3	-2	-1	-1	0	0	N/A	3	1	-1	8	0	-2	0	2	1	-2	-1	0	-1	-3	0	-1	-1	-1

The average shield aptitude of all species, excluding coloured draconian, is -0.577.

History

In 0.15, you will only have to possess a shield to train the Shields skill; you will no longer have to actually be wearing it.