Adds shield-breaking and shield-parry mechanics to replace the lackluster vanilla 1.20.1 shield mechanics. This replaces vanilla's "axes can break shields" mechanic with one based on shield durability, incoming damage, attacker's weapon type, and parrying.
Shields can protect from a certain amount of damage based on their durability, but if an incoming attack surpasses the shield's protection, it will cause a cooldown on the shield scaled based on how much damage was done. However, a well-timed parry can completely block an attack regardless of damage, and cause the attacker to be thrown back further than normal.
Weapons that can cause shield cooldown without this mod (Axes, or for example Halberds from Spartan Weaponry) now have a configurable chance to cause a large shield cooldown (With additional chance based on the Sharpness enchant), regardless of damage done or parrying.
Everything in this mod is configurable, and is only required on the server-side.
If this mod is installed client-side, it will additionally display tooltips on shields of how much damage they can protect against, however if the server modifies their configs from default then the client will require the modified config as well to display this correctly. This mod is for 1.20.1
- Edition: Minecraft Java
- File type: .jar
- Minecraft version listed: 1.20.1
- How to install: Install the matching mod loader (Forge, Fabric or NeoForge) for your Minecraft version. → Download the .jar. → Put it in the .minecraft/mods folder and launch that loader profile.
- Where to get it: Opens on Modrinth — not every file is mirrored on our own servers.
Install steps are the general flow for this file type — How to install Minecraft Java mods & modpacks walks through it step by step.
- Ships as shieldbreak-1.20.1-1.2.3.jar — drop this file into the mods folder
- Download size: 16 KB
- Download link checked 14 Sept 2026 — working
These come from our own check of the pack file, not from the source page.