I had a player at my table this week who in his turn made me question it.
He had a sword in his hand which he dropped as a free action.
Then used his bonus action to disengage.
Moved a distance away
Pulled a bow from his back
and wanted to loose an arrow at target.
Its this last action which made me question if he done too many actions in one turn. As I looked at it dropping the sword was the first interaction with an object, however pulling a bow and readying an arrow is a second interaction with an object and would use up his standard action so therefore couldn't attack. Just for my own piece of mind who is correct?
It's fine. You can pick up or ready a weapon in tandem with your actual move and action. Bows aren't explicitly mentioned, but I think it'd be a bad idea to make an exception for them.
INTERACTING WITH OBJECTS AROUND YOU
Here are a few examples of the sorts of thing you can do in tandem with your movement and action:
draw or sheathe a sword
open or close a door
withdraw a potion from your backpack
pick up a dropped axe
take a bauble from a table
remove a ring from your finger
stuff some food into your mouth
plant a banner in the ground
fish a few coins from your belt pouch
drink all the ale in a flagon
throw a lever or a switch
pull a torch from a sconce
take a book from a shelf you can reach
extinguish a small flame
don a mask
pull the hood of your cloak up and over your head
put your ear to a door
kick a small stone
turn a key in a lock
tap the floor with a 10-foot pole
hand an item to another character
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
If he had stowed the weapon you'd be right but dropping isn't really meant to require effort, at least Jeremy Crawford claims. so the only interaction with an object is drawing the bow since drawing 1 weapon can be preformed as part if the attack he was all good to make that attack
Dropping something is free and isn’t considered an object interaction, but sheathing it would. My bigger question is did the PC have a class ability for the bonus action Disengage? Because without one, that would normally be an action
if they had that bonus action ability, the events seem like they could take place on a legitimate turn
All of the above and in a campaign I am running, there is a Rogue who maximizes the whole free drop thing. I will have to write it out next session for the process, but it involves dropping a dagger he's wielding at the start, then grabbing a different weapon, I think, related to 2 weapon fighting. Mechanically, I recall we read through all the rules and the process he was using and agreed it was RAW, albeit an odd way of doing it, and involved him having to pick up daggers at the end? Again, I will need to write out the exact process, because I am not good at recalling details.
All I am getting at is if players SEEM to be getting too much activity into a turn, a slow, methodical look can clarify. There are some weird combinations players can enact that meet RAW but make for a VERY busy turn for them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Dropping an item freely seems reasonable. If he's a Rogue or a Monk, he can use a Bonus action, but you only get those if you qualify for them. He hasn't done anything yet. That's why the call it a "Bonus" action. It's something you do after an Action. Reactions only happen when they are triggered by something.
He's pretty much used his entire turn to drop his weapon, move, and grab his bow. He can't shoot it unless they try to move away without using Disengage, and I think they only get an Opportunity Attack when the enemy gets out of their reach in melee or their range outside of that. For a Short Bow, that's 320 feet, for a Long Bow, that's 600 feet. If he wants to stand there long enough to use his Opportunity attack, he could grab the arrow and fire it I think. Unless they used their Disengage of course. At 30 feet per turn, they can move another 30 feet with a Dash action, so that's 60 feet per turn. There's not many classes that can do two Dash Actions per turn, Halflings can, but their base speed is 25, Monks can, and they are about the fastest things on land as player characters, and I think Barbarians can.
As for me, I'd have the enemy steal his weapon, since they could see where he dropped it and move there freely. He'd better hope they don't have a bow, they still have actions left to stand over it and shoot, then they could pick up his weapon.
Yeah this is one of those cases where RAW it's not really a thing, but RAI it is. I mean if you have something in your hand, it doesn't take any extra movement to drop the thing and grab something else compared to having an empty hand to start with. If it's ever a breakable item, like a lantern, you can do a roll to see if it breaks. The player made a big tactical error though. He should have moved first and then dropped his weapon. That way he still controls the area where the weapon dropped and can pick it back up again on his next turn if he wants. Now, like Geann said, you can have an adversary pick it up.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I had a player at my table this week who in his turn made me question it.
He had a sword in his hand which he dropped as a free action.
Then used his bonus action to disengage.
Moved a distance away
Pulled a bow from his back
and wanted to loose an arrow at target.
Its this last action which made me question if he done too many actions in one turn. As I looked at it dropping the sword was the first interaction with an object, however pulling a bow and readying an arrow is a second interaction with an object and would use up his standard action so therefore couldn't attack. Just for my own piece of mind who is correct?
It's fine. You can pick up or ready a weapon in tandem with your actual move and action. Bows aren't explicitly mentioned, but I think it'd be a bad idea to make an exception for them.
INTERACTING WITH OBJECTS AROUND YOU
Here are a few examples of the sorts of thing you can do in tandem with your movement and action:
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
If he had stowed the weapon you'd be right but dropping isn't really meant to require effort, at least Jeremy Crawford claims. so the only interaction with an object is drawing the bow since drawing 1 weapon can be preformed as part if the attack he was all good to make that attack
Dropping something is free and isn’t considered an object interaction, but sheathing it would. My bigger question is did the PC have a class ability for the bonus action Disengage? Because without one, that would normally be an action
if they had that bonus action ability, the events seem like they could take place on a legitimate turn
All of the above and in a campaign I am running, there is a Rogue who maximizes the whole free drop thing. I will have to write it out next session for the process, but it involves dropping a dagger he's wielding at the start, then grabbing a different weapon, I think, related to 2 weapon fighting. Mechanically, I recall we read through all the rules and the process he was using and agreed it was RAW, albeit an odd way of doing it, and involved him having to pick up daggers at the end? Again, I will need to write out the exact process, because I am not good at recalling details.
All I am getting at is if players SEEM to be getting too much activity into a turn, a slow, methodical look can clarify. There are some weird combinations players can enact that meet RAW but make for a VERY busy turn for them.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Dropping an item freely seems reasonable. If he's a Rogue or a Monk, he can use a Bonus action, but you only get those if you qualify for them. He hasn't done anything yet. That's why the call it a "Bonus" action. It's something you do after an Action. Reactions only happen when they are triggered by something.
He's pretty much used his entire turn to drop his weapon, move, and grab his bow. He can't shoot it unless they try to move away without using Disengage, and I think they only get an Opportunity Attack when the enemy gets out of their reach in melee or their range outside of that. For a Short Bow, that's 320 feet, for a Long Bow, that's 600 feet. If he wants to stand there long enough to use his Opportunity attack, he could grab the arrow and fire it I think. Unless they used their Disengage of course. At 30 feet per turn, they can move another 30 feet with a Dash action, so that's 60 feet per turn. There's not many classes that can do two Dash Actions per turn, Halflings can, but their base speed is 25, Monks can, and they are about the fastest things on land as player characters, and I think Barbarians can.
As for me, I'd have the enemy steal his weapon, since they could see where he dropped it and move there freely. He'd better hope they don't have a bow, they still have actions left to stand over it and shoot, then they could pick up his weapon.
<Insert clever signature here>
Yeah this is one of those cases where RAW it's not really a thing, but RAI it is. I mean if you have something in your hand, it doesn't take any extra movement to drop the thing and grab something else compared to having an empty hand to start with. If it's ever a breakable item, like a lantern, you can do a roll to see if it breaks. The player made a big tactical error though. He should have moved first and then dropped his weapon. That way he still controls the area where the weapon dropped and can pick it back up again on his next turn if he wants. Now, like Geann said, you can have an adversary pick it up.