[rdonj]

To be specific with regards to shields, they have two seperate values, parry and defense. In general, shields lower your defense and grant you a greater level of parry. A successful parry check means that any missile weapon that hits it is negated outright (though as we can see there are certain ranged weapons that bypass shields altogether). Parry works differently with melee combat, instead causing a successful parry check to add the protection of the shield to a unit's listed protection. Since this is still just protection an AN melee weapon benefits from attacking most shielded targets. There's only a very few shields in the game that don't lower your defense. You need actual defense value in order to avoid getting hit, so you are better off with a second weapon that adds to defense, cat charm, etc.