Shield Nerf

Make shields only block some of the damage taken, instead of all of the damage taken!

Notice

Shields will still block all knockback, and the death message isn't correct if you die from the non-blocked damage when you block a hit, but when making this I had to decide whether to use the minecraft:generic damage type which would make shields block all knockback and have the incorrect death message, or to use the minecraft:mob_attack damage type, which would give a better death message, but I would need to figure out how to bypass the shield, which the only method I can think of would cause knockback to be COMPLETELY REVERSED so that you'd get knocked toward the attacker instead of away from it, because I'd need to cause the damage to come from behind the player, and I decided on the former because the knockback part is a dealbreaker.

Configuration

Configuration is stored in the "ShieldNerfSettings" scoreboard objective.

Settings

• PercentDmgBlocked - The amount of damage that ISN'T blocked by the shield, as a percent. (I know, misleading name, but it's simpler for development purposes)
  • 50 is the default and is set when the pack loads. A value of 0 is vanilla behavior. A value of 33 is about correct for Minecraft 1.9.x and 1.10.x. A value of 50 is half damage blocked, and is correct for 1.8.x and older versions of Minecraft (sword blocking). 100 makes the shield not block any damage.
  • Any number above 100 will make the player take more damage when blocking than if they hadn't blocked.

Known Issues

• Knockback and death message related issues
  • See the Notice section.
• The damage tilt won't show, the hurt sound won't play, and the hearts on the HUD won't flash when taking partial damage from a blocked attack.
  • I have no idea what causes this, but I'm pretty sure it isn't fixable by the datapack due to the nature of how Minecraft handles this kind of stuff.

To Modpack Creators:

I permit the use of this datapack/mod in your modpacks. You can include it in modpacks without the need to ask me about it. However, notifying me if it is being included in your modpack would be nice.

Regarding Future Versions of Minecraft

When 1.21.5 fully releases, this datapack will become obsolete due to the addition of the blocks_attacks item component added in 25w04a, which is more customizable and works much better than this pack. Therefore I will not be supporting versions 1.21.5 and newer. I will instead make a new datapack that modifies the default behavior of shields using the blocks_attacks component instead.