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.

How to hybridize a Shield Mother
Shield Mothers are one of the easiest Hybrid component classes to work with due to their exceptional base stats as a primary and the defense and utility options they can bring to the table as a secondary. Their high number of Active-type Basics also allows them total flexibility in which Basics they can take as a secondary, as it is impossible to violate the one-passive limit, and their other abilities are for the most part not reliant on having specific Basics, making them much less self-contained and easier to dip than other classes may be.

Rage Bearer is particularly noteworthy as a potential partner class, whether as the primary or secondary. They share the Kindling keyword, so some Rage Bearer abilities can trigger the heal from Life From Life. Both have exceptional base stats, so which one is the primary causes no issues there, which can otherwise complicate some Hybrid mixes. Shield Mother benefits from the additional Armor, Capacity, and fatigue cleansing from Thrill of Battle and its Adrenaline charges to reinforce its capabilities in those areas even further, while Rage Bearer can make good use of Vigilance to continue to be a threat off-turn, or of Heavy Breathing to compensate for the Rage Bearer’s usual lack of self-sustain. Both also have kits that are relatively independent of their respective class’s Basics, which makes mixing and matching much simpler.

Aside from this, Shield Mother benefits classes and builds that either need help with self-sustain and survival or spend most of their time in melee, as it has numerous options to improve durability in various ways, while Vigilance and the options that improve on that allow a melee unit to continue to be a threat to nearby enemies off-turn. In turn, Shield Mother benefits from anything that would either further augment whatever the particular Shield Mother type already wants to do within her class (e.g. Rage Bearer’s additional Armor and Capacity from Thrill of Battle, or pairing Fierce Idol with Escalation to double up on bolstering allied damage output), or would offer her the ability to control the shape of the battlefield beyond her normally limited range (e.g. Predator Traps or Primal Geomancy).

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.