Magic Item Monday - Shields

For our next set of magic items, I wanted to do something a little different. The shields we are going to look at this week all come from AD&D, and can be found in the older Dragon magazines. When I say older, I mean from issues under #100, back when I had hair and could run further than 20 yards without collapsing.

Are some ridiculous? Of course they are, it's AD&D! But they all have the potential for use in 5th edition, and I'll discuss briefly how you could tweak them for your campaign. I did remove the shield that when the command word was spoken it turned into a 60-foot-long bridge. Even I have my limits.

The Discus Shield
A +1 shield isn't bad, and being able to throw it like Captain America seems pretty neat. But as a +1 boomerang? It's hard to get excited about 1d4+1 damage.
What if we did this. Keep the +1 to AC. Add a ricochet feature, along the lines of "If you hit an opponent with the ricochet boomerang as a ranged attack, you can make a bonus attack with a –2 penalty against another target within 10 feet of that creature."  It's still not the coolest item in the world but gives it a little flair.

The Tortoise Shield
I actually like this one the way it is. +3 to your AC is damn good, and on average it should last an entire encounter.

The Iron Shield
The name gives you the hope that this is going to be some cool and powerful shield. You'd be right, but not in the way you think. To me, the name Iron Shield makes me think of a big AC bonus. Nope. In fact, it provides to addition bonus to AC.
That said, the two abilities it does have are great, as you can cast invIisibility and fly on yourself once per short rest as per the 2nd and 3rd level spells respectively. It's definitely useful, but I'd change the name though. It feels like a shield of the Feywild to me.

Shield of Air
Here's the spell's description. It's not a word for word copy of the original, but the feel is the same - "This shield is plain and battered, constructed of bronze plates bolted to a sturdy wooden frame. It bears no marks or inscriptions. Any damage that pierces the bronze plates, cracks or breaks the wooden frame, is magically mended overnight while minor dents, scratches, and scars are left as is."
Neat, but once again, it has nothing to do with the fact that when used you are in a bubble of never ending air. Also, there's no limit on how many times per day you can use this ability, so you can guarantee I'm going to be walking around in a globe of air all day everyday. I'd add "Once you use this property, you must wait until you finish a short rest to use it again."

The Buckler
A +2 is great. Casting blink on yourself is great. Nothing like being able to GTFO when even +2 from your shield isn't preventing you from getting hit. But what the heck is the point of casting levitate on the shield? It's too small to climb on and I'm not sure why I want a shield that goes up and down. If you want to keep it true to the original, but with a bit more usefulness, switch levitate for Tenser's floating disk. Otherwise, I'd drop the second ability and call it a day.

Grimjaw
I like this spell. Now the text "If the target of this effect is a sentient item, they can make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw to resist this effect." was added to the original item already, since the description stated that "Artifacts are likely to be unaffected, but may, at the DM's option, teleport away to a random location, with or without wielder. "  (Dragon Magazine. #89). In the 5th edition, I think most DMs would probably have the item and maybe you teleport nearby so that you don't lose your cool artifact. Remember though, this was created when Gygax was king, and he didn't like players (or at least it seemed that way). That meant the target and the artifact were probably teleported to another plane of existence...like the Abyss.