[Baalz]

Just to be clear since there seems to be a bit of confusion about what I said, what I meant is just what Jim said...the vast majority of times a shield hit is *effectively* a miss (causes no damage) for a fire bless but *effectively* a hit for a death bless (causes 2AN damage). So *effectively* a death bless ignores the shield defense, and thus any time the shield defense is greater than 4 it's *effectively* better than the attack bonus for a fire bless. I guess I was a bit ambiguous, I think of a "hit" in this context as an attack which causes damage.