Hello there,
are house shields impassable for enemy foot soldiers? Or can they physically access a fortress protected by the house shield if they move slowly?
Thanks in advance!
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Good question.
The Asset āHouse Shieldā has the keyword Impenetrable, but in the verbiage it specifically states it defends against high-speed projectiles.
With what we know about Dune shields I would say that you are right, a foot soldier moving slowly enough would be able to penetrate the shield. The same with vehicles for that matter.
Of course they then have the issue of having moved very slowly right in front of a powerful defensive forceā¦
If you want to get complicated, Iād suggestā¦
The shield is impenetrable to foot soldiers as they are considered to be moving as footsoldiers usually do. Fast and avoiding enemy fire.
But you can allow them to move past a shield if the soldier assets take on the trait āvulnerableā as they try to move slowly to penetrate the shield.
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I like the idea of making troop assets extremely vulnerable while attempting to pass through a shield. They may also be required to not be shielded themselves while doing this, which could be cool, and likely why it isnāt done regularly.
You could always run an espionage conflict to get an inside person, or represent a special forces unit getting past the shield and then disabling it.
Curious what the slow moving bombs in the movie would count as RE: Warfare Assets? Artillery perhaps, with a special rule āthe slow bladeā applied to them? It seems like those really messed up the Atreides ships and equipment and would be used all the time.
The lore on shields in general seems to indicate wearers are immune to large explosions or any kinetic force really, however, I donāt see how the wearer isnāt simply hurled 50feet and killed due to the pressure/ force on their body coming to a stop. Somehow the shield must prevent them from being thrown? I would assume this to be the case, given Frank Herbert wants medieval style sword combat to be the prevalent method of fighting.
I guess you could always have a massive ship land slowly on a battlefield and crush the enemy regiments as they try to run away. Or make a giant vacuum/ sweeper tank to suck shielded enemy foot soldiers into a hold. Then seal it and remove the airā¦ dump them out the back every 5 min and repeat. Landsraad may not like that though lol. Iāll stop my tangent now haha. Hopefully some of my rambling was helpful.
Military tech is always advancing, especially in Dune 
The slow bombs from the movie would be assets with a trait āShield Penetratingā so if you used them to make an attack any shield assets in play would not increase the Difficulty.
It is always the trick with turning books and movies into RPGs, as players put 2+2 together and do things the authors didnāt think of. So many of these are really up to the GMās judgement.
Iām with you on using ships as a weapon. In the Dune 2: Battle for Arrakis computer game, you could use spice harvesters aggressively and run over any form of troop, no matter how elite!
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