Perhaps blocking higher circle projectile spells from players ruins the shield, taking it down to nearly 0 durability. Fire breath and higher circle projectile spells from monsters should damage shields less (for balance reasons not logical reasons) so dexxers with parrying can still fight dragons without carrying around 10 shields. Maybe a shield can withstand between 2 and 10 (depending on material and quality) projectile spells from monsters before breaking. Just throwing in ideas.
Origins originaly marketed Ultima by this very concept. The foundational cover art should be honored. This is the very bedrock from which UO grew from. Besides only effects the few folk who has parry and only when PvM'ing dragons. It may even bring more PvP to Desterd when PK's see warriors begininig to flock there.
The warrior in question burned his hands horribly as his shield heated up, dropped it, and was charred to a crisp. For real, though, I am not sure how this would actually harm anything...but it is a rather non-accurate change.
I wouldn't worry about precise formulas at this stage, that can always be tinkered with until "balance" is achieved. I don't see a down-side here, besides "not era accurate" which is a small stream to cross on this shard, not a raging river. My biggest concern with it is that it won't actually help as much as people think. First... shields suck. Having to disarm it to drink a potion, and then re-arm it, is brutal. Especially when facing an enemy which poisons, and you need to drink orange potions frequently so your bandages actually heal damage. Against a dragon, you likely want to drink a yellow potion every 10 seconds. So that's 2 seconds out of the 10, or 20% of the fighting time, in which you don't even have the shield equipped. When you add in orange potions and possibly red ones... I never farmed dragons *with my dragons* because they took too long to kill and weren't worth it compared to a dozen or so other monsters which provided a better gold return. Even if I insisted on farming with my dexer, and even if he could parry ALL firebreath, dragons are still going to be a slower farm than other monsters because they have good armor and a ton of HP. People will fool around with their firebreath-parrying shields, and it would be a nice quirk to the shard, but I don't think it would greatly change the fact that dexers would still be an intentional handicap when farming, and choosing to farm dragons would be a further handicap. And people just don't spend an extended amount of time handicapping themselves on this shard.
I voted no, sir! Any group of three or more that knows how to heal, sync, and offscreen can wipe out a tamer zerg without too much trouble. When I PVPed regularly here, we did it all the time (and it was done to us). 1) Sync on one tamer. He dies. 2) Run away from firebreath and dragon bum rush and heal. 3) Come from another angle and sync on another tamer. He dies. 4) Bladespirit zerg to clean up the dragons when all their masters are dead or recalled off. PVPers like to complain about dragons because they are annoying as kek and there is always a chance even with offscreening that a few firebreaths with lock on you and wipe you out without a prayer... but for the most part they aren't that big a deal. I'd rather face 3 pvpers and 3 tamers than 6 pvpers. I think dragons add another level of challenge and strategy to PVP, if you like challenge. So long as the tamers don't act like they are l33tpvpers when their dragons allkill eat me. Now bringing dragons and mares to faction fights... it would be nice if some things were sacred.
My point wasn't to brag. As far as I know, my experience with dragons even in large numbers not being a big deal against moderately or greater experienced pvpers is the standard experience. This to your point that tamers are OP and should be easier to be killed and that parry would achieve this in addition to making dexxers more awesome. I don't see any reason to post anything that happened so long ago. TT has posted many SS's and videos of wiping out tamer zergs and my group (Iago, Bart, Cynic, me, etc) regularly wiped out tamer zergs of the guild UO (and others) when they were actively IDOCing. SS's were probably already posted somewhere. It's only fun if you like to see ducks being shot in a barrel.
Don't get me wrong, adding dexxers with Captain America shields to pvp/pvm could add yet another layer of complexity and challenge that could be fun.... but it would take an admin without a job and a life that could do nothing but code and deal with balance issues, etc etc.... so I'm still at no
