ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I was considering taking flexible combat on my bulwark, but I wanted to check if flexible combat can proc on shield hits. I had an arcane blade winner with flexible combat, so I did some testing on the training dummy.

Flexible combat will not proc of either shield pummel or shield slam. It can proc however on the main hand hits of assault.

Is this a bug or is flexible combat intentionally weak for shield users?

Any takes on this? It seems really strange that shield hits wouldn't trigger flexible combat at all considering the description is: Each time that you make a melee attack you have a 60% chance to execute an additional unarmed strike.

Shield hits are considered melee for greater weapon focus, so I can't think of an intentional reason why it wouldn't trigger flexible combat, making it a bug.

I think it's because those talents you mentioned call attackTargetWith, rather than attackTarget. attackTarget is the 'master' function that calls attackTargetWith on your equipped weapons, whereas shield combat talents bypass that. Maybe it's a bug? Looks intentional, if a bit weird.

you do not automatically attack with shields, so the prodigy probably wasn't made with that in mind.