Shields vs projectiles vs dodging

[Dynggyldai]

Greetings, tribesmen!

Do shields in the game give you extra defence against thrown weapons and arrows? If yes, are shields worth buying for this purpose?
My character has a whopping 70% dodge with around 30% shield skill. Is blocking with a shield preferable to dodging at these skill levels in melee?

[PALU]

You can't dodge missiles in UrW. A shield is a static defense covering a part of the body according to how it's held, and protects that part against missiles (unprotected body parts can still be hit even if the attacker aimed for, but didn't quite manage to hit, a protected body part, or hit the shield while aiming for an unprotected body part, as the partial miss resulted in an attack against a protected body part).

Melee is a completely different issue from missile defense: I don't think a shield provides any passive advantage at all, but rather has to be used actively to block to be effective (but that doesn't rule out enemies [or companions, if you take the risk of equipping them with missile weapons] attacking you with missiles while you're engaged in melee).
Also, using a shield means two handed weapons can't be used as intended.

I don't know if there's any difference between using a shield to block versus dodging in melee (a shield can be damaged, as can weapons used to block attacks). In both cases the defensive skill can completely negate the attack, downgrade its severity, fail, or fail critically.

Maybe there's someone with a better understanding of the mechanics involved?

[JEB Davis]

Greetings, tribesmen!

Do shields in the game give you extra defence against thrown weapons and arrows? If yes, are shields worth buying for this purpose?
My character has a whopping 70% dodge with around 30% shield skill. Is blocking with a shield preferable to dodging at these skill levels in melee?

Yes, a shield is vital for protecting you against thrown weapons and arrows. When you use it, decide which parts of your body you want to protect in each situation.

For melee, with the skills you mentioned, in my opinion dodging and shield blocking would be roughly similar.

[werepacman]

So shield skill has no effect against missile attacks only melee?

[PALU]

I believe this is the case. The shield position provides a defense for the parts covered, and this defense comes into effect if the missile's hit roll ends up on a covered part, so no shield skill check is made.

[Matti-patti]

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-walk-through-harnmaster-combat-part-2.html

http://columbiagames.com/resources/4001/harnmaster-combattables.pdf

Presuming that defensive bonus of 6 that the wiki gives for shield is 30% and dodge action has no bonus of any sort, then masterwork shield would come down to about to same defensiveness as dodge in your character's case. Though I note that Harnmaster's block action more readily produces tactical advantage for the defender, not sure if that's the same in URW but if yes then the shield might actually be superior.