[Jack_Spade]

I recently spent a bit of time thinking about the riot shield: It's a damn good armor improvement if you have the strength to hold it without penalties to AGI.
But it never is explicitly mentioned what kind of weapon it is. I almost dreaded that it is another "exotic weapon" - meaning no-one in their right mind will ever use it as a primary weapon.
Until I stumbled over this in the core rules:
p. 131
"Clubs governs the use of all hand-held bludgeoning instruments. With this skill you can turn any blunt item, be it a baseball bat, crutch, or mace, into a weapon."

Now, clubs aren't the sexiest melee weapons: Knives, Katanas and Cyberspurs are still the preferred weapon of choice for the discerning street sam.

But for those interested in a new style, I present: The Shield and Club Style

Left Hand: Riot Shield
- Personalized Grip
Optional:
- Shockweave
- Pulseweave

Right Hand: Stun Baton/Heavy Pistol (Melee Hardened)/Power Blade
- Personalized Grip

Martial Arts: Arnis de Mano (RG p.128)
- Two Weapon Style Attack
- Two Weapon Defense

Optional:
One Trick Pony: Jiao Di (Charge)

Optional:
Full Body Armor
- Helmet
- Gel Pack
- Insulation
- Chemical Seal

Result:
You get a superbly armored close combatant. Shield mods allow you to reactively tase, disorient and bash their skulls in with increased accuracy and damage from a charge. If you use a melee hardened handgun instead of a baton, you don't even have to switch weapons between ranged and melee

You can enhance that by being an Adept: Adept Spell Power Blade can be wielded as a club, turning this whole setup into a Roman Legionare with a light saber. Critical Strike (Clubs), Improved Accuracy (Clubs)

At STR 8 you can have a sealed Full Body Armor for a total of 26 armor, easily increased by implants/Mystic Armor.
Your charges hit like a freight train with high accuracy, while looking at you with active pulse weave is a major mistake.
You benefit from your specialization as long as you have two weapons in hand - no matter the actual weapon.
You can easily disguise yourself as an ordinary riot cop - depending on what armor you ultimately choose.

[Hobbes]

Solid, but can't you do essentially the same thing but sexier with Blades?  Put a Bayonet on your Gun, load up with a couple of Sapphire Knives and Vibrosword (or Katana, or whatever)?   

It's not usually all that difficult to come up with enough + Armor to max out your armor value.  Cyber'd up Trolls and such I guess don't have enough + Armor options, but they've wandered into the 35+ dice of Soak usually without a shield. 

Anyway, Blades tend to be mechanically better than clubs and with Sapphire Knives you're getting through anything short of a strip search.  But if you're going to go Clubbing your set up is outstanding.   

[Chaos Monkey]

HeroLab at the very least would appear to disagree with your interpretation of the rules for the Clubs skill, as it lists the various shields as selections for the Exotic Melee weapon skill (Really? A separate skill for ballistic shield and another for riot shield?  /barf).

That said, your interpretation is certainly not without merit, not the least because the skill list is overly bloated as-is, and strictly speaking going "sword and board" is a two-weapon fighting style.  The shield is, and has always been, an off-hand weapon that serves a primarily defensive function.

I'm thinking it's worth at least a quick dig through RAW again on my part...

[Chaos Monkey]

Yes, it would seem that HeroLab's interpretation is indeed correct as the Ballistic and Riot Shields are listed as being "Exotic Melee Weapons" in the table at the top of page 438, and thus fall under the Exotic melee weapon skill (though I would *not* insist on treating each as needing it's own skill...)

[Dwagonzhan]

I've been working on a character for something like this. Former Lone Star SWAT, specializing in less-lethal riot control.
RAW lists shield skills as Exotic, but given what I've already dealt with being listed as "exotic" for my chemical-weapons expert, I'm just going to say nuts to that and rule shields as blunt weapons.

[fseperent]

Don't really have an issue with shields being exotic weapons, due to them not being weapons normally.
That being said, separating each shield to require a separate skill is questionable at best.
The Shields Exotic Weapon skill should suffice, with individual shields or actions as specializations.

[Jack_Spade]

Solid, but can't you do essentially the same thing but sexier with Blades?  Put a Bayonet on your Gun, load up with a couple of Sapphire Knives and Vibrosword (or Katana, or whatever)?   

It's not usually all that difficult to come up with enough + Armor to max out your armor value.  Cyber'd up Trolls and such I guess don't have enough + Armor options, but they've wandered into the 35+ dice of Soak usually without a shield. 

Anyway, Blades tend to be mechanically better than clubs and with Sapphire Knives you're getting through anything short of a strip search.  But if you're going to go Clubbing your set up is outstanding.

All correct, but this is mainly about using a shield as a club to activate the two-weapon-style boni.
Shields have the added bonus of being compatible with armor that doesn't allow accessories normally (i.e. most chemical seal armors) (+3 Helmet +6 Shield is just the 8 STR I mentioned).
Finally, shields are armor and weapon at once, so they are eligible for armor and weapon mods (powered breakdown for easy carry sounds nice, don't you think?)
Add to that that it's basically police riot gear, so you don't have to deal with anyone wondering about the outfit (Somewhere there is always a riot)


@all
Can someone quote me the page where shields are called out at as exotic weapons? I don't recognize char generators as authorities in that regard.
IMHO shields are one of the least exotic weapons you could think of. They have been in use longer than swords, only beaten by the spear and the club. I have a hard time seeing them as anything else than a blunt weapon - aka a club.

[Kuirem]

Page 438 CRB, in the Armor table listing the stats of shields their offensive stats are listed under 'Exotic Melee Weapon'.

[Jack_Spade]

Bummer, there it is.

Oh well, time to dust off the rule to substitute similar skills and keep going, while using the club skill with shields. 

[Chaos Monkey]

How a shield can be classified as an "exotic" weapon when the fact is that shields have been an integral part of the vast majority of fighting styles for over 2000 years is where the issue lies.  Much like a renaissance era's fencer's main-gauche, a shield is more accurately labelled as an off-hand weapon than as a piece of armor.  Properly used, a shield creates opportunities to disrupt, disorient, and to strike at an opponent.

Of course, this is an RPG, and not a perfect reality simulator and I'm being overly pedantic. A little knowledge and all that.  But since RAW is unequivocal, we're clearly into house rules territory.

Maybe with the trimmed-down skills list in Anarchy...

[Dwagonzhan]

Of course, this is an RPG, and not a perfect reality simulator and I'm being overly pedantic. A little knowledge and all that.  But since RAW is unequivocal, we're clearly into house rules territory.

It's not as pedantic as it sounds. Modern riot control training incorporates shield wall techniques as old as the Greek Phalanx, and personal close quarters techniques (1 vs 1, or 1 vs a few) used for centuries with a variety of close quarter weaponry into their regimen (bladed and blunt alike).

"Realistically" (yeah yeah, I know), the only time it would make sense to list shields as their own weapon specifically is if someone were fighting with ONLY a shield (ala Captain America).

For all sane practical purposes, I'd say it makes more sense to include "[WEAPON] + Shield" as a Specialization of Blades and Blunts than it does to require an entirely new exotic skill be employed, as the two objects are normally used in TANDEM rather than swapping between two completely separate paradigms (like you would with an offhand baton and a Monosword, for example).