So, I just want to clarify something. Does "wielding" (green box in inventory, putting the weapons into "Active items") mean "on your person and ready to use at a moments notice", or "in your hand/actively in use".
In other words, could l "wield" a crossbow and 2 daggers at the same time, to quickly switch between the two during combat, or would l have to drop the crossbow then unsheathe the daggers to "wield" them?
On a dndbeyond character sheet, ticking that box means a weapon shows up in your available attacks. Most folks probably tick that box for all their weapons.
In the rules, however, wield is very important, and means something like “hold in your hand in a way that has combat significance.” You can’t wield a sword without holding it, but you can hold a sword without wielding it. That’s not normally something that comes up, but it’s important when say... you’re holding a greatsword in one hand (totally fine, even though you need both hands to wield it), or you’re a monk that picks up someone’s dropped weapon to carry it (but don’t want to wield it and lose martial arts), or you’re holding your crossbow in one hand and wielding a dagger in the other (can’t wield the crossbow until both hands are free to use it).
The D&D Beyond character sheet allows all sorts of strange things that are practically impossibly. It can show you wearing multiple suits of armor, for example. That's practically impossible, so you need to be careful to tick which suit you have on, and which you are just carrying around in your pack.
You'll want to know the stats for all the weapons you carry around. You end up with more weapons than hands. A neat trick there is that you can click on any entry under Attacks to Customize the entry. Click your favorite weapon to use while dual wielding, Customize it, you can show that you are in fact dual wielding it, and what's more, which hand you have it in. The secondary weapon, same thing. Customize, and you get it to show up under the Bonus attacks with the right stats. That's great because people forget that you don't get a bonus to damage from your scores on your off hand.
Unarmed strikes show up under Attacks. If you don't typically use them, you can click on the entry and move it down into the Bonus attacks then it is out of your way.
It does mean it is actively in use (armor and shield donned, weapons wielded). Naturally you can't normally wield 3 weapons at a time, but there is usually no harm in having them all prepared as long as you check a couple of things:
Not using shield with a 2-handed weapon or while dual wielding.
That you have customized the weapon and turned on dual wielding if you are.
That dual wielding turns off dueling fighting style.
That you are properly using your item interactions or a full action to switch weapons.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So, I just want to clarify something. Does "wielding" (green box in inventory, putting the weapons into "Active items") mean "on your person and ready to use at a moments notice", or "in your hand/actively in use".
In other words, could l "wield" a crossbow and 2 daggers at the same time, to quickly switch between the two during combat, or would l have to drop the crossbow then unsheathe the daggers to "wield" them?
Does it even matter?
On a dndbeyond character sheet, ticking that box means a weapon shows up in your available attacks. Most folks probably tick that box for all their weapons.
In the rules, however, wield is very important, and means something like “hold in your hand in a way that has combat significance.” You can’t wield a sword without holding it, but you can hold a sword without wielding it. That’s not normally something that comes up, but it’s important when say... you’re holding a greatsword in one hand (totally fine, even though you need both hands to wield it), or you’re a monk that picks up someone’s dropped weapon to carry it (but don’t want to wield it and lose martial arts), or you’re holding your crossbow in one hand and wielding a dagger in the other (can’t wield the crossbow until both hands are free to use it).
That kinda stuff.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
The D&D Beyond character sheet allows all sorts of strange things that are practically impossibly. It can show you wearing multiple suits of armor, for example. That's practically impossible, so you need to be careful to tick which suit you have on, and which you are just carrying around in your pack.
You'll want to know the stats for all the weapons you carry around. You end up with more weapons than hands. A neat trick there is that you can click on any entry under Attacks to Customize the entry. Click your favorite weapon to use while dual wielding, Customize it, you can show that you are in fact dual wielding it, and what's more, which hand you have it in. The secondary weapon, same thing. Customize, and you get it to show up under the Bonus attacks with the right stats. That's great because people forget that you don't get a bonus to damage from your scores on your off hand.
Unarmed strikes show up under Attacks. If you don't typically use them, you can click on the entry and move it down into the Bonus attacks then it is out of your way.
<Insert clever signature here>
It does mean it is actively in use (armor and shield donned, weapons wielded). Naturally you can't normally wield 3 weapons at a time, but there is usually no harm in having them all prepared as long as you check a couple of things: