2e:Shield Mother

Dauntless, fearless, unbreakable - all describe the Shield Mother, a maiesta who has focused her power into becoming an unbreakable shield for her companions. Wielding a formidable shield and clad in heavy armor, her presence is an obstacle few foes can easily bypass. Combined with the ability to call on her gravs for potent effects bolstering her personal toughness, a Shield Mother protects friends, gravs, and herself with equal fervor.

How to play a Shield Mother
Shield Mothers serve as the positional anchors of their team. Regardless of which type of Shield Mother, she has access to abilities that create an advantageous space for her team around herself, whether that means healing and protecting nearby allies from damage or punishing enemies that try to ignore her in favor of targeting others. The exact positioning may vary — protective types want to set up near the majority of their allies to keep them in range for heals, defensive buffs, and pulling attacks off of them, while punishment types often want to dive into crowds of enemies instead in order to force Vigilance upon them — but the concept remains the same: a Shield Mother declares with her presence “this is my territory, challenge me for it if you dare.”

This anchoring is important to their style because Shield Mothers as a class are both slow and short-ranged. They are the only class to start with 4 base Movement, and almost none of their abilities have a range longer than 3 hexes. Their ability to control the surrounding space within this 3-hex range is immense, but beyond that range they are prone to floundering helplessly. As such, their playstyle is more predictive and/or reactive, focused around limiting enemy options and dealing with issues as they arise.

This anchoring is further reinforced by having the most solid all-around durability in the game, making dislodging them from where they have chosen to set up an incredibly difficult task. High Vitality, high Armor with numerous options to improve on it further, powerful self-healing with no gravitas cost, condition cleansing and negation, options for self-revival, and many more options besides; all of these are part of a Shield Mother’s survival arsenal, and most of them are inherent to their Basic kit, meaning that all Shield Mothers have access to these tools regardless of the rest of their build.

Attribute Advances
Any maiesta can purchase the following abilities. Additionally, they gain one of their choice for free upon reaching thresholds of 200, 500, 1000, and 2000 total XP spent on advances.

Basic Abilities
The shield mother begins the game with these abilities, without requiring the expenditure of any XP.

Novice Abilities
Any shield mother can purchase the following abilities.