i agree the shield is goofy

I am a huge fan of Tedster's current version of the templar, forgoing the equipped shield for the psionic shield ability, and providing the option of adding a ranged psionic 'bow' attack. As far as I understand, there are configurable options to use or omit the carried shield.

Templars for me are legit overpowered, and i exclusively play and have around 500 hours in just LWOTC ironman impossible, and I always over utilise the shield even before they made it EVEN better in this 1.1 patch of the mod. If you take sustain and crusaders rage, you get -8hp for wound timers, which most of the time till super late game is litterally your entire health bar, and if you get brawler for the -34% in close range, and nearly always infighter is available in the tactical tree for 40 dodge within 4 tiles with the -34% you can run him around in mellee range so long as youve scouted and wont activate additional pods, then shield up in their face and legit at all stages of the game till about october/FL 14 + he's always up, can bait shots and wound timers off of other soldiers and is litterally unkillable, slap a medkit on him, with sustain it's just like crazy.