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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Medicine Man" data-source="post: 5128930" data-attributes="member: 88924">Shadowsong666's case with the Swordmage Warding is a much more interesting.A similar circumstance is dealt with in the Martial Powers 2 book regarding Brawler Style Fighters. This particular build has quite a few martial exploits that require a free hand to execute. WotC has this to say regarding Brawler Fighters and versatile weapons:MP2 p6 -- "If you use a versatile weapon, switching your grip from one hand to two hands is a free action. However, if a power requires you to have a hand free, you must keep that hand free for the entire attack or until you use the hand for something that is part of the attack, such as grabbing an enemy."This clarification is intended to prevent a player from switching from two-handed to one- or one-handed to two- in the middle of a martial exploit that uses a combination of grab/strike or pummel/strike in order to get the extra +1 to damage on the strike component of the exploit. Fair enough.One possible implication of this caveat is that freeing a hand (via free action) prior to using a martial exploit is legitimate. Another possible implication is that book-ending an exploit with two free actions, freeing a hand and then filling it again, is also legitimate. If you apply the same principle to Shadowsong's min-maxing of the Swordmage Warding then his tactic is also legitimate.Fascinating but none of this of this is plainly stated, just subject to interpretation.****WotC says this on FGPG p25 -- "You'll want to keep a hand free to get your AC bonus from Swordmage Warding class feature, so you should use a one-handed weapon such as a longsword or a scimitar."This is a fairly explicit statement of how WotC intended a Shielding Swordmage archetype to play; which makes it reasonable to conclude that book-ending a Swordmage Power with free actions to stack otherwise exclusive bonuses is a violation of the spirit of the rules, although not the literal letter of them.Not that I blame Shadowsong666 for exploring the possibilities. He acknowledges himself that the tactic is a bit gamey, at best, but I find the whole thing a bit amusing. Consider for a moment how many of the likely weapons a Swordmage will use are versatile... a very common trait for swords; yet WotC missed this one.****What do you do, as a DM, if you don't want to allow this bit of munchkin behavior but also don't want to resort to house rules (ie. you're a rules purist).PH p267 -- "The DM can restrict the number of free actions in a turn."No house rule needed. Just say you don't allow book-ending a martial exploit or arcane power with free actions and move on.</blockquote>

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