Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AlViking" data-source="post: 9617119" data-attributes="member: 6906980">I should explain that for a while I did follow the rules of the game fairly strictly and I was trying to explain why I stopped.  Paladins can ignore the rules for the most part because only a handful of their spells that will be cast in combat have somatic components, at least in 5e.  So that primarily leaves clerics and rangers that are penalized.  But many builds of cleric don't use weapons and rangers frequently use bows. So the question is, do you really need to enforce the rules for that small subset? Because the easiest solution as a player is to not use a shield if using weapon.  Which then narrows it down even more, likely to clerics that usually cast spells but occasionally wantIf you're using the 2024 rules, the glossary clarifies in the attack action that you can equip or unequip a weapon as part of the attack. With previous editions it was a bit murkier but in most cases there was an option to stow or worst case drop a weapon if you need a free hand.  So I'm not sure what extra rules you would want or what you're trying to add to the game that would require any new rules since the game already has rules for this even if they vary a bit from edition to edition.  It's a pretty niche thing to be concerned about because of realism considering that most of the game puts ease of play and fun over realism which is something many if not most games of all kinds do.  But if you do follow the rules a character that wants to make a difficult climb needs to have both hands free to climb or switch from melee to a bow.  If they don't have a shield equipped it can usually be done for free or with an object interaction.  Equipping or unequipping a shield is going to take an action for a lot of things but that's usually going to be a judgement call.The rules we have work fine without any specific house rules.  They're annoying for the minority of players that it affects but I don't know that there's anything to fix.  If I did still strictly enforce the rules I'd give someone climbing I'd make with a shield equipped, I'd make them stow their weapon and have disadvantage on their athletics check but that's about it.</blockquote>

Verification