Light Shield and consumable items

[Shin Okada]

PHB P.214 says,

Light Shield: You need to use your shield hand to wield a light shield properly. You can still use that hand to hold another item, to climb, or the like. However, you can’t use your shield hand to make attacks.

So when wielding a light shield, it is clear you can hold an item in your shield hand. Also it is clear you can use that hand for climbing. And you cannot attack with that hand. Fine.

But can you retrieve and use a consumable item with a shield hand when wearing a Light Shield?

Assuming you are using a weapon and a Light Shield, do you need to sheath a weapon or stow a shield to retrieve, say, a Potion of Healing from your backpack and drink?

 

[Starfox]

Per the example quote, as long as the consumable is not used to attack with, it can be used in the same hand as the light shield.

That's my reading anyway.

 

[Ebylon]

They're already using a minor action to use the potion. They should be perfectly capable of tugging it out of their bag or belt or something if they have a shield equipped. If you're a hardass DM you could say they need to drop something, but that's just silly.

 

[vagabundo]

By RAW it looks like you can do a few things with items in your shield hand; like maybe throw a potion across the room to an ally, but not attack with an item in that hand.

I think consuming a potion includes any fiddly hand movements or equipment maneuverer - such as storing you large shield in your arm pit or whatever - this is all part of the minor action.

I don't think the originally quote rule is meant to cover the retrieving and consuming of potions; that maneuver has it's own rule.

 

[TheClone]

I'm not that deep into 4e rules, but is it an action to pass your weapon from your main hand to your shield hand? Because holding the weapon in your shield hand seems to be no problem. So just put the weapon temporarily in your shield hand, drink the potion and put the weapon back to the main hand and hit someone over the head.

 

[Karmic_vegeance]

I'm not that deep into 4e rules, but is it an action to pass your weapon from your main hand to your shield hand? Because holding the weapon in your shield hand seems to be no problem. So just put the weapon temporarily in your shield hand, drink the potion and put the weapon back to the main hand and hit someone over the head.

I'd expect it to be a minor action, falling under the "Draw or Sheathe a Weapon" action.

 

[Marauder_POV]

If you can hold something in your shield hand why not a torch or sunrod?

 

[Starfox]

If you can hold something in your shield hand why not a torch or sunrod?

These would be typical, except out characters generally put sunrods on their helmets or hang them on their chest on or on the front side of their shields instead. If the string breaks, no biggie; the rod glows just as brightly on the ground. One of my female character actually used a sun rod as a hair pin.

With no heat, a sundrod is really easy to use.

 

[Nichwee]

I'm not that deep into 4e rules, but is it an action to pass your weapon from your main hand to your shield hand? Because holding the weapon in your shield hand seems to be no problem. So just put the weapon temporarily in your shield hand, drink the potion and put the weapon back to the main hand and hit someone over the head.

Technically I believe this is a free action (or a string of them). I recall it is a free action to "change grip", i.e. One-handed to Two-handed or vice versa.
As such: you can be holding your weapon in one hand, switch to two-handed (holding not wielding) using your shield hand as well, then switch to one-handed such that the weapon is left held, but not wielded, in your shield hand. Use your newly free hand to do whatever you want then reverse the process to get your weapon back where it belongs - wielded in your main hand.

I doubt any DM who cares about "free hands" would let you use this many free actions to shunt your weapon about in a single turn but it is RAW I believe (but I am not at my books atm - nor am I a very good rules lawyer - so if someone can say otherwise, please do).