I'm trying to understand how the 2024 PHB Attack Action actually works. Please explain.
Let's use an imaginary scenario:
I start my turn with no weapon in my hands.
I then DRAW my weapon as part of an Attack I make using the Attack Action.
After I attack can I now STOW/SHEATHE that same weapon in the same turn? (using the same rule)
IF I cannot, can I instead use my "Free Object Interaction" to STOW/SHEATHE that weapon?
In this scenario the character wants to make an Attack with their Action but needs to have both of their hands free to do something else after the Attack. How can they do that?
I'm trying to understand how the 2024 PHB Attack Action actually works. Please explain.
Let's use an imaginary scenario:
I start my turn with no weapon in my hands.
I then DRAW my weapon as part of an Attack I make using the Attack Action.
After I attack can I now STOW/SHEATHE that same weapon in the same turn? (using the same rule)
You cannot. (But see below.) Attack gives you only one weapon interaction for each attack you make, and drawing and stowing are each one interaction.
IF I cannot, can I instead use my "Free Object Interaction" to STOW/SHEATHE that weapon?
This, you can do. The free interaction includes weapon interactions.
In this scenario the character wants to make an Attack with their Action but needs to have both of their hands free to do something else after the Attack. How can they do that?
As long as they aren't using their free interaction for something else, like the thing they want their hands free for, they can use their free interaction to either draw or stow the weapon, and the Attack action's additional weapon interaction to do the other.
There are several other very recent active threads where the interpretation for this rule is debated. I interpret it the way that you are saying -- one interaction per attack. Under this interpretation you can indeed draw, attack, attack, stow.
Ah, I love when core game mechanics for massively successful games developed by massive corporations are left up to interpretation. 10/10 PEAK BASED game writing
Ah, I love when core game mechanics for massively successful games developed by massive corporations are left up to interpretation. 10/10 PEAK BASED game writing
To be fair, writing complex rules clearly enough that most people interpret them the same way id really hard. Doing it so that everyone does is impossible. English is too ambiguous.
One particular way people misread rules is "I don't think the rule should be this way, so that must be the wrong reading", which I think we see a fair amount of in the weapon-juggling discussions. (To be clear, this does not mean people are arguing in bad faith.)
I think if the writers were just more direct with what you can and cannot do in each feature and mechanic description, and had more foresight as to what the changes they make will do to the overall game, this would happen a whole lot less.
I made this thread to understand the topic because of the ridiculous nature of another feature/mechanic I'm trying to use in a way that should be intuitive but the rules make it a pain in the rear.
I have a Soulknife rogue with 5 levels in Fighter for Extra Attack. The Psychic Blade feature is now very weak compared to using normal weapons because of additions like the Nick Weapon Mastery. Regardless, I wanted to find a way to get the maximum number of attacks and still use the feature instead of just ignoring it to be optimal in combat, which feels awful.
With what you told me this should work RAW:
Start with 1 normal dagger in my Right hand and my Left hand empty.
Use the Attack Action, creating a Psychic Blade with my Left hand to attack with. Apparently this has to be the Attack Action and can't be on an Extra Attack. That's if you read the feature very very strictly, like someone who hates fun.
Then after the Psychic Blade has disappeared my Left hand is now free so I can DRAW a second normal dagger with my Left hand as I make an extra attack with that dagger according to the new attack rule.
I can then trigger Nick with that attack to allow another attack with the dagger I was already holding in my Right hand. Nick and all other weapon masteries can be triggered on any attack that is APART of the Attack Action, including Extra Attacks.
Now that I've made an attack with the dagger in my Right hand I can STOW it using the new rule (or use my free object interaction if the DM has a different interpretation). This then frees up my Right hand.
I can now use my Bonus Action to do a weaker Psychic Blade attack with my Right hand since it is now free and a different hand from the one I used for the first Psychic Blade attack.
Jumping through all of those hoops gets me roughly the same amount of damage as just making all 4 attacks with 2 normal daggers and completely ignoring the Psychic Blades feature, which I'm now encouraged to do because of WotC's shoddy writing and lack of foresight. It's also still less damage than just using two normal scimitars. This is what I'm talking about. The 2024 PHB is full of stuff like this.
And because of how it's all written I'm gonna have someone out there argue that this can't be done in this way or any other way. Why? Because "I don't think the rule should be this way, so that must be the wrong reading". FUN
I think if the writers were just more direct with what you can and cannot do in each feature and mechanic description, and had more foresight as to what the changes they make will do to the overall game, this would happen a whole lot less.
I made this thread to understand the topic because of the ridiculous nature of another feature/mechanic I'm trying to use in a way that should be intuitive but the rules make it a pain in the rear.
I have a Soulknife rogue with 5 levels in Fighter for Extra Attack. The Psychic Blade feature is now very weak compared to using normal weapons because of additions like the Nick Weapon Mastery. Regardless, I wanted to find a way to get the maximum number of attacks and still use the feature instead of just ignoring it to be optimal in combat, which feels awful.
With what you told me this should work RAW:
Start with 1 normal dagger in my Right hand and my Left hand empty.
Use the Attack Action, creating a Psychic Blade with my Left hand to attack with. Apparently this has to be the Attack Action and can't be on an Extra Attack. That's if you read the feature very very strictly, like someone who hates fun.
Then after the Psychic Blade has disappeared my Left hand is now free so I can DRAW a second normal dagger with my Left hand as I make an extra attack with that dagger according to the new attack rule.
I can then trigger Nick with that attack to allow another attack with the dagger I was already holding in my Right hand. Nick and all other weapon masteries can be triggered on any attack that is APART of the Attack Action, including Extra Attacks.
Now that I've made an attack with the dagger in my Right hand I can STOW it using the new rule (or use my free object interaction if the DM has a different interpretation). This then frees up my Right hand.
I can now use my Bonus Action to do a weaker Psychic Blade attack with my Right hand since it is now free and a different hand from the one I used for the first Psychic Blade attack.
Jumping through all of those hoops gets me roughly the same amount of damage as just making all 4 attacks with 2 normal daggers and completely ignoring the Psychic Blades feature, which I'm now encouraged to do because of WotC's shoddy writing and lack of foresight. It's also still less damage than just using two normal scimitars. This is what I'm talking about. The 2024 PHB is full of stuff like this.
And because of how it's all written I'm gonna have someone out there argue that this can't be done in this way or any other way. Why? Because "I don't think the rule should be this way, so that must be the wrong reading". FUN
Ultimately, this is going to fall on how your personal GM rules this, unless you are the GM and just want advice on how to rule it.
Where is the fourth attack supposed to be coming from?
#1 attack with soul knife #2 attack with nick weapon #3 attack with nick #4 ?
AND finally #4 Soul Knife itself gives you a new bonus attack
I see my error, as the nick property will move the attack to the attack action, and soul knife gives you a bonus action attack. Mea culpa. Though, the question then is, where is the bonus attack coming from? As it's moved using nick. You would need another feature to give you a second bonus action attack that isn't "moved" by nick. Which is what you are trying to gain from "juggling" weapons.
In my opinion, this doesn't work, as I do not read an endless number of weapon interactions as long as you have attacks to make. Why don't you just use the Soul Knife as the light attack using the free right hand?
And, for reasons that boggle the mind, the soul knife isn't light. A super strange choice. As a DM, I would allow you to add "light" to the weapon properties of soul knife, long before "juggling" weapons into and out of sheathes, as reading the rule that way doesn't make sense. But I think I see what they are doing here now.
For clarity, just using two mundane knives will not give you four attacks. And I think the balance is meant to be that the soul knife is much better than plain daggers, to which I can understand there being some debate about.
EDIT the many: Not being familiar with Soulknife, there were several things from the class I was missing, which made this post a mess as I went and read exactly how Souldknife works.
I think if the writers were just more direct with what you can and cannot do in each feature and mechanic description, and had more foresight as to what the changes they make will do to the overall game, this would happen a whole lot less.
I made this thread to understand the topic because of the ridiculous nature of another feature/mechanic I'm trying to use in a way that should be intuitive but the rules make it a pain in the rear.
I have a Soulknife rogue with 5 levels in Fighter for Extra Attack. The Psychic Blade feature is now very weak compared to using normal weapons because of additions like the Nick Weapon Mastery. Regardless, I wanted to find a way to get the maximum number of attacks and still use the feature instead of just ignoring it to be optimal in combat, which feels awful.
With what you told me this should work RAW:
Start with 1 normal dagger in my Right hand and my Left hand empty.
Use the Attack Action, creating a Psychic Blade with my Left hand to attack with. Apparently this has to be the Attack Action and can't be on an Extra Attack. That's if you read the feature very very strictly, like someone who hates fun.
It is implied, though it's also written for the rogue, who doesn't get extra attack.(Sloppy) It's in ask-your-GM-land, but given the ephemeral nature of the blades, it's not unreasonable to rule this way.
Then after the Psychic Blade has disappeared my Left hand is now free so I can DRAW a second normal dagger with my Left hand as I make an extra attack with that dagger according to the new attack rule.
You could also draw it after the psychic blade attack
I can then trigger Nick with that attack to allow another attack with the dagger I was already holding in my Right hand. Nick and all other weapon masteries can be triggered on any attack that is APART of the Attack Action, including Extra Attacks.
Now that I've made an attack with the dagger in my Right hand I can STOW it using the new rule (or use my free object interaction if the DM has a different interpretation). This then frees up my Right hand.
I can now use my Bonus Action to do a weaker Psychic Blade attack with my Right hand since it is now free and a different hand from the one I used for the first Psychic Blade attack.
This seems to be correct.
Jumping through all of those hoops gets me roughly the same amount of damage as just making all 4 attacks with 2 normal daggers and completely ignoring the Psychic Blades feature, which I'm now encouraged to do because of WotC's shoddy writing and lack of foresight. It's also still less damage than just using two normal scimitars. This is what I'm talking about. The 2024 PHB is full of stuff like this.
And because of how it's all written I'm gonna have someone out there argue that this can't be done in this way or any other way. Why? Because "I don't think the rule should be this way, so that must be the wrong reading". FUN
Part of the point of soulknife is not that you have better weapons, but that you always have weapons, and Vex is a good mastery for rogues because you want to have advantage every round. Because of sneak attack, the actual damage you do from your weapons gets fairly buried by the time you're even 8th level. 1d6+X and 1d4+X and 4d6 compared to 1d6+X, 1d6+X, 1d6, 1d6+X, 2d6? (Scimitar instead of dagger) Yes, you're slightly better off, but only slightly, and only if you ignore all the other rogue stuff you're delaying by taking so much fighter.
Obviously, it's your character and you can build them how you want, and you do get things from fighter as well, but you aren't clearly improving your damage output by doing it this way.
Because Barb has Reckless Attack the value of the Vex mastery is significantly diminished when it comes to optimizing your damage. Weapon Masteries run into this issue a lot actually, where they're made almost irrelevant by a class/subclass feature or by the loadout of your character (using two Nick weapons doesn't give you any benefit). Kind of another example of a lack of developer foresight imo.
Either way, the point isn't the damage, it's the design. In many instances in 5e you'll find your options very limited because of a single word which was seemingly placed there without consideration for all the things the player might want to do.
I'm using the Psychic Blade feature because it's the most obvious. When you read the rule strictly you're limited to only using a Psychic Blade attack ONCE per action, and it's all because of 1 word.
"Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can manifest a Psychic Blade in your free hand and make the attack with that blade."
Why do this? The developers know that people multiclass in this game. They know you might have Extra Attack. But with this one word they essentially make the extra attack feature irrelevant for the subclass when using this feature. Anyone can do the DPR calculations to see that they clearly did not do this for balance purposes. The 2024 PHB addition of "or make an Opportunity Attack" seems to imply that they intended for the feature to be less limited from the start but that single word they happened to add limited the feature greatly. They didn't write the feature with foresight in Tasha's, and now they've failed to do so again.
If you know of the options that exist for players and there's no balance concern with letting them use those options, why limit the players arbitrarily by writing things this way? It lacks reason imo. It's especially weird when you consider a Wizard can rewrite reality at Level 17 but the wording of this signature subclass feature seems to really not want the Rogue to stab someone with a weapon that doesn't scale an extra time..... wtf? It's nonsensical, that's my point.
I mean, if your complaint is that two separate class features aren't synergizing then well, that's kinda why they're features on separate classes and part of the trade-off for multiclassing is you get stuff like that.
This, you can do. The free interaction includes weapon interactions.
Is this official or just interpretation? Does the rule for free interactions state that it can be used for equipping or unequiping weapons. Asking as someone is saying that it can't be used for this and I can't see anything saying it explicitly in PHB
Because Barb has Reckless Attack the value of the Vex mastery is significantly diminished when it comes to optimizing your damage. Weapon Masteries run into this issue a lot actually, where they're made almost irrelevant by a class/subclass feature or by the loadout of your character (using two Nick weapons doesn't give you any benefit). Kind of another example of a lack of developer foresight imo.
Either way, the point isn't the damage, it's the design. In many instances in 5e you'll find your options very limited because of a single word which was seemingly placed there without consideration for all the things the player might want to do.
I'm using the Psychic Blade feature because it's the most obvious. When you read the rule strictly you're limited to only using a Psychic Blade attack ONCE per action, and it's all because of 1 word.
"Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can manifest a Psychic Blade in your free hand and make the attack with that blade."
Why do this? The developers know that people multiclass in this game. They know you might have Extra Attack. But with this one word they essentially make the extra attack feature irrelevant for the subclass when using this feature. Anyone can do the DPR calculations to see that they clearly did not do this for balance purposes. The 2024 PHB addition of "or make an Opportunity Attack" seems to imply that they intended for the feature to be less limited from the start but that single word they happened to add limited the feature greatly. They didn't write the feature with foresight in Tasha's, and now they've failed to do so again.
If you know of the options that exist for players and there's no balance concern with letting them use those options, why limit the players arbitrarily by writing things this way? It lacks reason imo. It's especially weird when you consider a Wizard can rewrite reality at Level 17 but the wording of this signature subclass feature seems to really not want the Rogue to stab someone with a weapon that doesn't scale an extra time..... wtf? It's nonsensical, that's my point.
I’m confused and maybe I’m mistaken but what does the one word “action” have to do with the issue? And I’m not sure, in the example of Soulknife, how the topic of the “new” Attack action is relevant. The issue, in the quote above, stems from the Soulknife feature “The blade vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target, and it leaves no mark if it deals damage.” This makes the Extra Attack feature “irrelevant” not the 1 word, “action” or the Attack action
I do agree, that it’s weird any not OP to allow the knife to stay until the end of the Attack action so you can attack more than once if you have extra attack. Or even to stay until you dismiss it (no action required). I also don’t see the need for the reduced damage on the BA attack. But that’s just me.
Is this official or just interpretation? Does the rule for free interactions state that it can be used for equipping or unequiping weapons. Asking as someone is saying that it can't be used for this and I can't see anything saying it explicitly in PHB
No it doesn't explicitly mention equipping/unequipping but then again the only thing that's explicitly mentioned is opening a door and I think we can be quite sure that the free interact can be used for more things that just opening a door.
The rules says;
You can interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or action.
Is this official or just interpretation? Does the rule for free interactions state that it can be used for equipping or unequiping weapons. Asking as someone is saying that it can't be used for this and I can't see anything saying it explicitly in PHB
No it doesn't explicitly mention equipping/unequipping but then again the only thing that's explicitly mentioned is opening a door and I think we can be quite sure that the free interact can be used for more things that just opening a door.
The rules says;
You can interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or action.
And a weapon definitely is an object.
Exactly.
Also, it'd be exceedingly odd if you couldn't put your weapon away without attacking.
Might also mention that the 2014 rules for the free interact did give equipping/unequipping a weapon as an example and the new 2024 Attack Action allows for equipping/unequipping a weapon as part of an attack. This might make some come to the conclusion that the intention is that the time for when you can equip/unequip has moved but I don't think that is the intention, we have just gotten more possibilities for when a character can equip/unequip.
While not directly referring to free object interaction, there's a play example showing a character dropping a weapon and pulling another before attacking with it, which isn't possible if not using Time-Limited Object Interaction in addition to Equiping & Unequiping Weapons. (PHB 31)
14. Russell. I drop my sword and pull out my warhammer. Time to break some bones!. My first attack is 21 to hit for 7 bludgeoning damage.
14. Vulnerability. An attack that deals bludgeoning damage is deadly to skeletons. Shreeve knows this from past experience, which is why she drops her sword and switches to a Bludgeoning weapon. She rolls only 7 damage, but the DM knows the skeleton actually takes 14 damage.
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I'm trying to understand how the 2024 PHB Attack Action actually works. Please explain.
Let's use an imaginary scenario:
In this scenario the character wants to make an Attack with their Action but needs to have both of their hands free to do something else after the Attack. How can they do that?
You cannot. (But see below.) Attack gives you only one weapon interaction for each attack you make, and drawing and stowing are each one interaction.
This, you can do. The free interaction includes weapon interactions.
As long as they aren't using their free interaction for something else, like the thing they want their hands free for, they can use their free interaction to either draw or stow the weapon, and the Attack action's additional weapon interaction to do the other.
That's unfortunate, but I'm glad there's a way.
Also: "Attack gives you only one weapon interaction for each attack you make". Does that mean with Extra Attack I could do this?
draw --> 1st attack --> 2nd attack --> stow
Yes
There are several other very recent active threads where the interpretation for this rule is debated. I interpret it the way that you are saying -- one interaction per attack. Under this interpretation you can indeed draw, attack, attack, stow.
Ah, I love when core game mechanics for massively successful games developed by massive corporations are left up to interpretation. 10/10 PEAK BASED game writing
To be fair, writing complex rules clearly enough that most people interpret them the same way id really hard. Doing it so that everyone does is impossible. English is too ambiguous.
One particular way people misread rules is "I don't think the rule should be this way, so that must be the wrong reading", which I think we see a fair amount of in the weapon-juggling discussions. (To be clear, this does not mean people are arguing in bad faith.)
That said, 5e does not have a good track record.
I think if the writers were just more direct with what you can and cannot do in each feature and mechanic description, and had more foresight as to what the changes they make will do to the overall game, this would happen a whole lot less.
I made this thread to understand the topic because of the ridiculous nature of another feature/mechanic I'm trying to use in a way that should be intuitive but the rules make it a pain in the rear.
I have a Soulknife rogue with 5 levels in Fighter for Extra Attack. The Psychic Blade feature is now very weak compared to using normal weapons because of additions like the Nick Weapon Mastery. Regardless, I wanted to find a way to get the maximum number of attacks and still use the feature instead of just ignoring it to be optimal in combat, which feels awful.
With what you told me this should work RAW:
Jumping through all of those hoops gets me roughly the same amount of damage as just making all 4 attacks with 2 normal daggers and completely ignoring the Psychic Blades feature, which I'm now encouraged to do because of WotC's shoddy writing and lack of foresight. It's also still less damage than just using two normal scimitars. This is what I'm talking about. The 2024 PHB is full of stuff like this.
And because of how it's all written I'm gonna have someone out there argue that this can't be done in this way or any other way. Why? Because "I don't think the rule should be this way, so that must be the wrong reading". FUN
Ultimately, this is going to fall on how your personal GM rules this, unless you are the GM and just want advice on how to rule it.
Where is the fourth attack supposed to be coming from?#1 attack with soul knife
#2 attack with nick weapon
#3 attack with nick
#4
?
AND finally #4 Soul Knife itself gives you a new bonus attack
I see my error, as the nick property will move the attack to the attack action, and soul knife gives you a bonus action attack. Mea culpa.
Though, the question then is, where is the bonus attack coming from? As it's moved using nick. You would need another feature to give you a second bonus action attack that isn't "moved" by nick.Which is what you are trying to gain from "juggling" weapons.In my opinion, this doesn't work, as I do not read an endless number of weapon interactions as long as you have attacks to make.
Why don't you just use the Soul Knife as the light attack using the free right hand?And, for reasons that boggle the mind, the soul knife isn't light. A super strange choice. As a DM, I would allow you to add "light" to the weapon properties of soul knife, long before "juggling" weapons into and out of sheathes, as reading the rule that way doesn't make sense. But I think I see what they are doing here now.
For clarity, just using two mundane knives will not give you four attacks. And I think the balance is meant to be that the soul knife is much better than plain daggers, to which I can understand there being some debate about.
EDIT the many: Not being familiar with Soulknife, there were several things from the class I was missing, which made this post a mess as I went and read exactly how Souldknife works.
Respectfully, wanting the max number of attacks but not optimizing is a contradiction in terms.
It is implied, though it's also written for the rogue, who doesn't get extra attack.(Sloppy) It's in ask-your-GM-land, but given the ephemeral nature of the blades, it's not unreasonable to rule this way.
You could also draw it after the psychic blade attack
This seems to be correct.
Part of the point of soulknife is not that you have better weapons, but that you always have weapons, and Vex is a good mastery for rogues because you want to have advantage every round. Because of sneak attack, the actual damage you do from your weapons gets fairly buried by the time you're even 8th level. 1d6+X and 1d4+X and 4d6 compared to 1d6+X, 1d6+X, 1d6, 1d6+X, 2d6? (Scimitar instead of dagger) Yes, you're slightly better off, but only slightly, and only if you ignore all the other rogue stuff you're delaying by taking so much fighter.
Obviously, it's your character and you can build them how you want, and you do get things from fighter as well, but you aren't clearly improving your damage output by doing it this way.
Oh I wrote Fighter. Sorry I meant Barbarian.
Because Barb has Reckless Attack the value of the Vex mastery is significantly diminished when it comes to optimizing your damage. Weapon Masteries run into this issue a lot actually, where they're made almost irrelevant by a class/subclass feature or by the loadout of your character (using two Nick weapons doesn't give you any benefit). Kind of another example of a lack of developer foresight imo.
Either way, the point isn't the damage, it's the design. In many instances in 5e you'll find your options very limited because of a single word which was seemingly placed there without consideration for all the things the player might want to do.
I'm using the Psychic Blade feature because it's the most obvious. When you read the rule strictly you're limited to only using a Psychic Blade attack ONCE per action, and it's all because of 1 word.
"Whenever you take the Attack action or make an Opportunity Attack, you can manifest a Psychic Blade in your free hand and make the attack with that blade."
Why do this? The developers know that people multiclass in this game. They know you might have Extra Attack. But with this one word they essentially make the extra attack feature irrelevant for the subclass when using this feature. Anyone can do the DPR calculations to see that they clearly did not do this for balance purposes. The 2024 PHB addition of "or make an Opportunity Attack" seems to imply that they intended for the feature to be less limited from the start but that single word they happened to add limited the feature greatly. They didn't write the feature with foresight in Tasha's, and now they've failed to do so again.
If you know of the options that exist for players and there's no balance concern with letting them use those options, why limit the players arbitrarily by writing things this way? It lacks reason imo. It's especially weird when you consider a Wizard can rewrite reality at Level 17 but the wording of this signature subclass feature seems to really not want the Rogue to stab someone with a weapon that doesn't scale an extra time..... wtf? It's nonsensical, that's my point.
I mean, if your complaint is that two separate class features aren't synergizing then well, that's kinda why they're features on separate classes and part of the trade-off for multiclassing is you get stuff like that.
Ima be real with you, sounds like you'd just enjoy Pathfinder better.
Is this official or just interpretation? Does the rule for free interactions state that it can be used for equipping or unequiping weapons. Asking as someone is saying that it can't be used for this and I can't see anything saying it explicitly in PHB
Thanks
I’m confused and maybe I’m mistaken but what does the one word “action” have to do with the issue? And I’m not sure, in the example of Soulknife, how the topic of the “new” Attack action is relevant. The issue, in the quote above, stems from the Soulknife feature “The blade vanishes immediately after it hits or misses its target, and it leaves no mark if it deals damage.” This makes the Extra Attack feature “irrelevant” not the 1 word, “action” or the Attack action
I do agree, that it’s weird any not OP to allow the knife to stay until the end of the Attack action so you can attack more than once if you have extra attack. Or even to stay until you dismiss it (no action required). I also don’t see the need for the reduced damage on the BA attack. But that’s just me.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
No it doesn't explicitly mention equipping/unequipping but then again the only thing that's explicitly mentioned is opening a door and I think we can be quite sure that the free interact can be used for more things that just opening a door.
The rules says;
And a weapon definitely is an object.
Exactly.
Also, it'd be exceedingly odd if you couldn't put your weapon away without attacking.
Yea, it would.
Might also mention that the 2014 rules for the free interact did give equipping/unequipping a weapon as an example and the new 2024 Attack Action allows for equipping/unequipping a weapon as part of an attack.
This might make some come to the conclusion that the intention is that the time for when you can equip/unequip has moved but I don't think that is the intention, we have just gotten more possibilities for when a character can equip/unequip.
While not directly referring to free object interaction, there's a play example showing a character dropping a weapon and pulling another before attacking with it, which isn't possible if not using Time-Limited Object Interaction in addition to Equiping & Unequiping Weapons. (PHB 31)