Shield is indeed quite underpowered. I sort of understand Larian's decision in making block chance super low as an attempt to minimize RNG. However, if they want to keep the increased AP cost, they need to significantly buff the utility of the shield. Although it costs no AP to unequip the shield in the middle of combat in order to minimize AP penalty, I consider that gimmicky and an unintended design flaw. Here are some ideas:
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New Talent: Shield Bash (requires shield, Opportunist)
Replace the attack of opportunity with a shield bash (same damage based on weapon strength). If the target has no physical armor he is knocked down for one turn.
So basically what this does is promoting good positioning of your front line shielded fighter. If he is placed at a good choke point and your enemies are decently whittled down he should become an absolute menace by tying down a significant amount of your foes for free. If he's placed poorly or your enemies haven't received much of a scratch then they can pretty much just run through him fine. This should also be well suited for a PVP scenario because no one loses complete control of their characters and can counter with ease (fortify etc).
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New Talent: Shield Expert
No AP penalty for attacking with a shield equipped.
You trade a talent point to restore your offensive capability. However Larian needs to fix the "take shield off, attack, put it back on" gimmick first.
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New Skill: Raise Your Shield! (requires shield)
School: Warfare
AP cost: 1
Memory slot: 1
Cooldown: 2 turns
Restore the amount of physical/magic armor provided by the shield back to the character (does not go beyond the maximum).
Quick spammable limited armor restoration to give the fighter more CC resistance and staying power.
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