All good, lesson learned :D
On the other topic - would there be an easy way to display the icon used for whatever shield is equipped on top of battle actors when blocks occur?
There isn't currently an easy way to do that. I don't do enough work with sprites to know how to define and draw one like that, unfortunately. I used battle animations for that reason.
However, since every block effect is custom defined, you can modify the definition in the plugin parameters to do anything you want it to. So if you (or someone else) can figure out how to draw an icon at a specific battler's position on the battle scene, based on the iconId of the icon of the shield currently equipped, you can put that into the block effect and have it happen. I don't really have the slightest clue how easy or hard that would be, though, but it's a good place to start, or have someone else start for you.
~Ramza