This is kind of an addendum to my earlier post on Merging Weapon Skills in GURPS, which occurred to me after reading this other post in After the Ogre. I realized I hadn’t mentioned Shield skills, but I had been merging them for so long I had forgotten that wasn’t the standard.

In my GURPS games, there is only one shield skill:

Shield (DX/E)

This skill merges Shield, Shield (Buckler) and Force Shield. There is still a mechanical difference between a shield that’s held in the hand and one that’s strapped to the arm, but both of them use the same skill and there is no familiarity penalty from switching between them.

If you’re using the optional rules for Familiarity Penalties in the previous post, such a penalty would definitely apply when someone used to traditional shields wields a weightless force shield, and vice-versa. As a reminder, that’s a -2 penalty to Shield that goes away after a few hours of practice during downtime, at no point cost.