Drawing a weapon...

[Dakhran the Dark]

The Combat Actions section of the SRD says it's a full-round action... And the PHB says "special standard action". Quite the contradiction, eh?

If you go with the "special standard action", I'd be more likely to lean toward being able to draw a weapon, since a "normal movement" is part of a standard action, and as Caliban says, Charging simply places restrictions on the movement.

If it's really a full-round action, then its not so clear that the movement is "normal movement".

Yes, my call on this one recently was that a full charge consists of both a move action and the special charge standard action, and that you could draw on the move action. My justification for this was the existence of a Partial Charge action -- if you couldn't charge on a partial action, then I could see how it would be restricted to a Full Action and exclude a normal MEA move. But since you can, I just ruled that a Full Charge just imposes restrictions on the move action, but does not replace it.

The in-game scenario was this... A rogue/fighter wielding two (currently sheathed) shortswords (with Ambi and TWF) surprises an enemy. He makes a partial charge (while drawing his swords) against the nearest enemy to get in a Sneak Attack, and so that he can get Sneak Attacks on his Full Attack the next round while they are still flat-footed, if he wins initiative (high Dex and Imp. Init.).

However, here we have a completely different scenario. It's a Partial Charge, which includes movement as part of it's definition, but does not actually allow a "normal" MEA move, by virtue of being a Partial Action. I'd say that on a Partial Charge, you wouldn't be able to draw and attack unless you had Quick Draw.