ales' Thorned Shields

Vanilla Thorns does not apply to shields, and this mod adds the missing behavior. A shield enchanted with Thorns can damage the attacker in two ways. The first is a blocked hit, where the chance of returning damage is higher than the vanilla Thorns chance, and the chance and amount are set in the config file. The second follows the vanilla Thorns chance, and a shield with Thorns activates one durability point per reflected hit.

Holding a shield can also cost the player durability. A second player who only holds a shield, without blocking, is still hit by attacks aimed at the shield's hitbox, and the player holding it takes damage too. Durability consumption is configured in the config file. Shields can also be enchanted with Thorns through vanilla enchantment commands, so the mod gives survival players a way to reach the same effect without commands.

The mod runs on the server alone, so players join without installing anything. It is published for Fabric only, for game versions 26.1 – 26.2 across four release versions, and it is released under the MIT License. It is not open source, and snapshot builds are published.