If you play D&D, you're likely aware of the awesome power of the Shield spell. It's a 1st level spell available to Sorcerers and Wizards (though a few subclasses of other classes can get access to it as well) that lets you, as a reaction, give yourself a +5 to AC after you are hit with an attack, potentially causing the attack to miss. The AC bonus lasts until the start of your next turn, so it can potentially protect you from subsequent attacks as well.
This is one of the all-time great spells, because a +5 bonus is a pretty significant one - it essentially subtracts 25% from your opponent's chance to hit you.
And I think it's even a fair argument to say that it might be too powerful. After all, especially at higher levels when you might not be using your 1st level spell slots on anything else, a caster with this who doesn't often need their reaction will effectively have a +5 bonus to their AC.
Now, the other reason it might be considered overpowered (though I'll spoil my own opinion here and say I don't think it is) is dependent on what is essentially the question at the center of this post, which is:
Does the DM need to actually tell you what an enemy got with an attack roll when they announce that they've hit your character?
DMs will often mark certain information about their player characters to speed up gameplay. Passive Perception, for example, is a useful one to have because it's a passive, static effect and especially because you might not want to tip off players that there's something that their characters haven't noticed lest they (consciously or not) metagame it.
Players' AC is often another bit of information that some DMs will hold onto, allowing combat to move a little faster by letting the DM quickly and easily know if their monsters have landed a hit - if the Druid has an AC of 15, and I have a monster with a +4 to hit, I'll know that that 9 on the die ain't going to do it.
However, the practice that I see most DMs use (and that I tend to) when attacking with monsters is the following sequence: you announce that "this Troll is going to attack you," then you roll the d20, and then you say "ok, that's a 19." The player then tells the DM whether the attack hits or not, and if it does hit, the DM then rolls damage and announces how much.
But when that player has the Shield spell, I sometimes see DMs instead say, simply, "and that attack hits." The player is then forced to guess whether the attack was within 5 of their AC. If it is, and they cast the Shield spell, they are protected from the attack, but if it isn't, the spell is a waste.
Is this fair practice?
My answer is no, but let me tell you the reasons:
1. There's an imbalance in information.
Players do not know the armor class of monsters they're fighting. They might be able to infer it - an enemy knight with a greatsword and plate armor probably has an AC of 18, but there are tons of monsters that have "natural armor," which is the (2014) Monster Manual's way of saying "we don't have a justification for this AC other than it just seems right for the balance of this creature." (The new monster manual doesn't bother justifying AC, but will often list the equipment the creature has if they're getting it from something a player might be able to salvage, like a suit of plate armor.) A DM isn't expected to reveal the AC of their monsters to the player, and thus, the players need not "reveal" their characters' AC - meaning that the DM having access to that information is a matter of gameplay convenience, and an excuse to conceal information.
2. Narratively, a character should be able to tell if they're getting hit with a lucky blow or a dead-on strike.
If someone is swinging a sword at you and it just manages to catch you on the shoulder, that's going to look different than a swing that hits you right across the abdomen. Shield represents, to me, a short-duration force-field that is trying to push an incoming attack off-target, and that'll obviously be more effective against a glancing blow than a precise hit (taking less energy to change an incoming weapon or projectile's trajectory than to stop it dead). It's actually just a matter of geometry, where the angles of a spherical forcefield are going to be better at deflecting the farther it is from hitting dead-center. And I think that's 100% what is being narratively represented by an attack that is at or just above your AC versus one that is well over your AC.
3. There is a tendency toward arbitrary action on the part of the DM.
I only ever seem to see DMs tell their players they hit them without saying the result of the attack roll when the player has this spell. Now, sure, if the player can't do anything about it, what's the difference? But it's just kind of, well, suspect when a DM suddenly shifts this policy in order to draw out erroneous expenditures of the spell.
4. If the spell was intended to sometimes be wasted, it would have you cast it before the attack roll is made.
This, I think, is my most clear-cut point: some features, like a Barbarian's Brutal Strikes, force you to make a decision with some risk that it won't do anything. If you cast Disintegrate, there's a chance your big 6th-level slot is going to be wasted if the target succeeds on its saving throw, with a reward for the risk being that it does a massive amount of damage. But there are other features that are clearly designed to always work: a Paladin's Smite spells are always going to work if the spell is successfully cast (unless the target is immune to the damage it deals). You get to decide whether to cast it after you have already hit. And yes, as a first-time DM when the Paladin one-shot crit-smited my Spectator dungeon boss who hadn't even gotten a turn yet, I scoured the rules to confirm he could actually do that, but that's just it: that's what the spell (or at that time, class feature) does. And this is what Shield does.
Every table is different, and if you believe this spell is overpowered and want to impose some kind of nerf on it, that's up to you and your players. Again, I don't think it is - it's a good spell, but it doesn't end a combat or invalidate entire gameplay challenges (like how Goodberry makes any kind of food management - if you care about that kind of thing - unnecessary). What it does is just give your players a little more longevity, and while you might want to scare them with dangerous combat, PCs are designed to win. We don't need to make an attack roll to successfully heal a target with Cure Wounds, and we don't need to make an ability check to Misty Step out of a monster's grapple. And we don't have to guess at the monster's attack roll to know when to use Shield.
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