New artifact The Golden Knight, a gold small shield that has the following properties:

• Sets strength to 25 when worn like gauntlets of power.
• Cannot be invoked directly, but if you fall below 25% of your HP maximum when your invoke timeout is good, it automatically invokes itself to take half of your current Pw points and heal you for that much HP.

If this doesn’t seem powerful enough, remove its strength effect and make the base item a shield of reflection instead.

You can apply an equipped small shield (or possibly other types of shields) to attack a monster with a shield bash. This could be treated either like a blunt weapon attack, or more likely as a special effect which has a chance of stunning the target. Stunning odds could be higher for either more martial-based roles, or could use a shield skill and scale with that.