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[slothen]

quick question, I have it in my mind that the point of bucklers is that marksdwarves won't carry shields, quivers, and crossbows at the same time, hence arming your marksdwarves with bucklers.  Is this true? 

[kaijyuu]

My marksdwarves get along fine with shields.

[knutor]

I think its a matter of wt.  Ya want your marksman to be fleet of foot, to keep away from any melee threat.  I picture a Buckler as a large wrist band and lighter than a shield, however I haven't done any Shark Dentistry to confirm that this is how it is.  Although Arbalists used huge barn door shields, didn't they?  They proped their Xbow ontop of it, and fired very accurately, while fully covered, cept for their beedy lil eyes.  Wish the game had Tower Shields, we could make some tough defenders then, couldn't we? 

Isn't a buckler a less protective version?  Wish I knew too.  Like Breastplate(vest) is to an Armor Suit(coat).  Less.  With that your arms are nekkid.  Knutor

[Askot Bokbondeler]

idk about ingame but irl that doesnt make much sense. while some irl shields were strapped to the forearm, they weren't as frequent as they are in modern fiction and artistic representations, and certainly it wasn't the case with bucklers, those were used more as a kind of iron fist with which you'd parry enemy weapons by punching them out of the way, so i find it hard to picture them being used along with a two handed weapon like the crossbow.
the shield crossbowmen actually used was the large portable wall called pavise, not the buckler that is only effective in melee and ideally wouldn't be useful to a crossbowman

[Dunamisdeos]

I second Knutor's amusing written form.

Also, you can do some absurd thing in dwarf fortress as far as equipping thing in one hand that clearly do not fit in one hand. Such as two handed weapons and a shield, or a crossbow and a shield. It is a known bug.

[Kaos]

According to this info on the wiki, it seems a shield is superior, it's armor value is higher and it covers more than a buckler....

[NecroRebel]

According to this info on the wiki, it seems a shield is superior, it's armor value is higher and it covers more than a buckler....

Not really important. The ARMORLEVEL token is mostly cosmetic at this point (it's a holdover from the 40d and earlier uniform system), so the different levels there just means that you're guaranteed to have access to both when they're assigned to your entity at the COMMON rarity level. And since shields never actually blunt or deflect attacks like armor does, instead either blocking them or not, the area they cover doesn't matter, so the UBSTEP values don't matter.

What does matter is a bit of info not on the wiki there; bucklers have a BLOCKCHANCE of 10, while shields' is 20. I'm pretty sure this is a %chance of blocking any particular attack, with Shield User skill adding to it, so a shield is more likely to intercept any given attack than a buckler. That's how it worked in 40d, at least, and that's something I don't think has changed. Regardless of how exactly it works, this means that a shield is more likely to deflect any given attack than a buckler is.

[Flying Dice]

Yep, shields are more likely to block.


Incidentally...

[Lagslayer]

Shields are heavier, but block better. Bucklers are smaller, lighter, and have a smaller contact area. In combat, hitting the enemy with a buckler would likely penetrate armor a little better than a shield, similar to warhammer/mace relationship. Generally, though, the buckler is not as useful for straight combat outfitting, kind of like in real life.

[Loud Whispers]

To clarify everything, the main difference between bucklers and shields is that shields are twice as likely as bucklers to block things. The end.

[slothen]

Right, so unless you're trying to fight with bucklers, shields are better, primarily because of their block chance, and the archer/melee thing doesn't play into it at all.  Thank you.

[Kaos]

To clarify everything, the main difference between bucklers and shields is that shields are twice as likely as bucklers to block things. The end.

if they don't have any significant advantage then why do bucklers even exist in the game? just flavour? 

[NecroRebel]

if they don't have any significant advantage then why do bucklers even exist in the game? just flavour? 

Why do most clothes exist in game instead of just one cover-all piece and shoes? Why do all the various useless stones exist? Why are there so many animals that are functionally nearly identical and never coexist on the same map unless imported? Why are there so many different types of grass or tree? Why are there 3 different types of surface berry, all of which are functionally completely identical? There is a metric crapload of stuff in the game, most of which exists just for flavor.

This actually annoys me, so I've started a mod that removes much of the redundant stuff, which also seems to improve FPS. It's actually ready for a basic release at this point, except that I haven't written a readme for it yet. I should get to that sometime...

[nightwhips]

To clarify everything, the main difference between bucklers and shields is that shields are twice as likely as bucklers to block things. The end.

if they don't have any significant advantage then why do bucklers even exist in the game? just flavour? 

They are LIGHTER for a particular material type. You can move faster with them.

[NonconsensualSurgery]

In 10v10 testing, bismuth bronze bucklers were slightly better than shields for bashing opponents wearing iron goblin armor (head and chest).

Shields were reliably superior for unarmored opponents, probably due to the larger contact area. Shields were also better if both teams were armed with iron shortswords.

While they are lighter, they're not lighter enough to justify the loss of protection.