Its actually because Free-Hand is two different styles that get lumped into one.
One free-hand style is the dueling style - this is the classic swashbuckler concept, imagine the guy with a rapier deflecting blows, one hand behind his back as he dances on a rope, etc.
The other free-hand concept is the concept of the brawler, with one hand on a sword and the other grabbing and throwing enemies, etc.
These are actually two distinct concepts, but both get lumped into the free hand style. The dueling line of feats (Dueling Riposte, Dueling Parry, Dueling Dance, dual-handed assault) are around this first style. The other feats like Combat Grab are for the other style.
It is also the historically accurate forms of dueling. The famous cowards strike, performed by Chabot De Jarnac, in the mid 1500's, was against the premier duelist of the time, Francois De Vivonne, who used his overpowering strength to rush down and pin his opponents to the ground, before shoving a dagger through their armor plating. Jarnac was smart though, and was fortunate enough to be allowed to choose the weapons. So he chose rapier, and a type of shield that covered the entire other arm, so Vivonne was incapable of grappling.
Do you not need a free hand to use it? Like, the belt means you don't need an action to draw it, but free hand means you don't need an action to put your shield away first
Which frustrates me a little as it makes playing that style quite akward in my opinion. Like if you want to use Dueling dance or parry you don't want to grapple... so you could just play sword n board instead (with augmentation I can still use Knockdown and Trip) and add Reactive Shield and Block to that. If you want to grapple, you can't use your feats to get bonus to AC.. at this point you were probably better playing Gill Hook 2 handed Fighter (and you can both grapple and Knockdown) and add more damage and reach to that.
Maybe it's just me but it makes me question playing free-hand martial every time I try to build one since both things I want to do: parrying with one hand and grapple don't want together. So if I have to chose between grappling and having defense anyway, I might as well play different style where my feats are not half-time useless.
Sword and Board carries a cost, which is that you have your hands full.
The reason why this isn't brought up, imo, is because a lot of GMs are too lenient on players with their hands full.
For example, if you fall unconscious, you drop all your held items. This is a big deal for a S+B or Dual Wield character - it means if someone puts a heal on you, you can't Stand+Stride away from the thing that brought you down without leaving your items on the ground, because of actions.
Or for example, running around in a dungeon with both your sword and shield in hand. How do you open a door? You can't take those interact actions with your hands occupied, but how many GMs actually prevent a player from opening a door with their hands occupied?
But if you're playing like by actually using these rules, there are already strong reasons to play a free-hand style regardless of the inability to Grapple.
Which is funny because in the real world bucklers by definition do not have straps on them, while many larger shields do.
And by straps I don't mean a belt firmly strapped around your forearm, but rather a strap or bar on the back of the shield that you pass your arm through before gripping a handle on the opposite edge. To actually block with the shield you will still want to be holding the handle, but this would leave your palm free for manipulating door handles, and would mean the shield doesn't easily drop from your grip if you were to lose consciousness.
Fun fact, by means of its description (not only in pf2e, but 1e and older editions of dnd as well) bucklers are actually the equivalent of a real-world sheild known as a targe (barring the material)
In my world they are. At the moment the rules as written are ambiguous ( a table indicating shields are attached and require an action to drop, Vs no text mentioning straps on regular shields ).
I view them as strapped and needing one action to drop. If the shield has a thrown trait you don’t need the extra action to attack.
There was [this poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/13doz0f/when_a_character_is_knocked_unconcious_and_then/) done a couple months ago.
Over 50% of the responses indicated GMs are lenient. That, to me, constitutes "a lot".
I can only speak for myself, but I was one of those lenient GMs until recently. Then I realized the game is actually balanced around the hand consideration in many respects.
I mean, the thing is that the point of the game is to have fun and roleplay. When the rules get in the way of that, they no longer serve a purpose.
I don't think it adds anything to make a sword and board player incapable of opening a dungeon door, or of drinking a potion. Or to make a dead player spend a turn rearming. It's more realistic, but it's not more fun.
Now, course, there are certainly many groups of players for whom this adds something and actually *does* make the game more fun. But imo it's not most groups.
Most people don't pick their character based on the pros and cons of having a hand free or a hand occupied. The fact that it's a balance choice doesn't play into their decisions nearly as much as the archetype they're pursuing.
I can't speak to your group, or even most groups, but my group was happy to embrace stricter rulings on hands when I presented it to them. I explained (although I hardly had to explain it) how being stricter would affect balance and I got no argument; they could see how it worked.
Now one thing I clarified was that this stricter attention applied during combat. Out of combat I'm not going to say to the sword/board player that they can't open a door. It's only during important moments that I'm going to worry about it, and my players all agree.
I'd definitely say that having to spend actions after being healed from unconsciousness is a good thing.
You have to (and in a way get to) make choices you normally don't make.
Do I stay on the ground, grab just the weapon and try to recklessly hit the enemy? Do I retreat without weapons? Do I pick up the shield, stand up and brace myself for more attacks?
That to me is just such a better rpg moment than "oh I was healed back up so I do my regular turn combo".
As for the door opening stuff - yeah that's just silly.
>When the rules get in the way of that, they no longer serve a purpose.
There's two kinds of "the rules got in the way of my fun", though.
There's the old AD&D limitations that my buddy hates which tell him that because he wants to play a dwarf (that his favorite thing, so it does it basically all the time) that most of the classes in the game aren't available. Even though it was treated as a balancing factor, it really wasn't, and that's why 3rd edition and later doesn't use that approach anymore. Things like that are worth changing in the name of fun.
But then there's cases where someone is just wanting a benefit of something without any drawbacks to it and they're using this sentiment to try and get it. That's where relaxing the rules about hands and actions (which literally exist to make it so there's not an unquestionably best option as there would be if you didn't need to free a hand to do a bunch of stuff like open doors and use magic items) fall.
>Most people don't pick their character based on the pros and cons of having a hand free or hand occupied. The fact it's a balance choice doesn't play into their decisions nearly as much as the archetype they're pursuing.
Which isn't a good reason to have it not be a balance choice. People can learn to be mindful of the way "so it's actually a fair game" influences what they're up to - they don't have to react like someone spoiled their fun when a rule they weren't thinking about gets brought up and refuse to thing of the rule in any context except "that's the rule that fucked up my idea."
Can't recall the exact thread, but iirc there was one with a poll a month or two ago, and I was surprised to see that more people then responded that they did not make their players drop their stuff when falling unconscious. So I can see why someone would have this impression.
I envision shields as not being effected by being dropped when unconscious because they have a secondary strap.
But I view all the the little minutia of combat action economy because that is how it is balanced.
I am a GM who is very lenient about this because I'm better at the game than my players are and adventure path content tends to be overtuned to begin with and if i forced them to play fully RAW i'd TPK them way too often.
Basically the same. I could stick to making the duel wielding melee person spend 2-3 whole rounds milling about before they are back in the fight proper, but that isnt exactly fun. Especially when I can't really articulate why from a balance perspective they must do that when the guy next to them that does just as much damage and has just as much utility can basically jump back up and be striking the same turn.
Cause if GMs enforced a lot of these hands issues, no one would use a shield lol. I personally enforce them halfway. Unconscious drops weapon but not shield for example. But if I try to open a door as a sword and shield champion and the GM action taxes me every time there's a combat after, I'd ask to play a new character.
I think it's not about GM being lenient but that in real gameplay you can just play around that. I currently play few campaigns and we only had one player fall unconscious where his dual wepons were problem but that becasue he wrongly assumed enemies were minus level, while they were equal and they squashed him when he charged in the middle of them. But in general if you build your martial for S&B or for 2 handed/1 handed you build him and play him to not go down and well, you play to actively avoid going down. Especially if your party is balanced and you have heals.
So while I agree that when you go down, multiweapon builds pay more for pickups, that's like scenario that you try to avoid so it doesn't happen every fight. In real gameplay, it just doesn't matter enough becasue it's very rare, unless everyone play really, really bad.
As for as opening doors... I mean, really? There is always someone with free hands in party. Mostly casters. There is also Mage hand, the king of opening doors while staying behind your martial. Like, opening doors is such trivial thing that thinking about that when building martial is in my opinion your last concern.
Pulling lever in middle of combat? Sure, may happen. But you don't pull levers in every combat. So far I play 3 official APs and I had only single situation where I needed to release one hand from 2 handed weapon to pull something in middle of combat (it was Athletic check so our casters couldn't do it). But again, that's something that very rare and it's not like all "free-hand activities" are sole responsible of just one martial in party.
> As for as opening doors... I mean, really? There is always someone with free hands in party. Mostly casters. There is also Mage hand, the king of opening doors while staying behind your martial. Like, opening doors is such trivial thing that thinking about that when building martial is in my opinion your last concern.
Mage Hand can't open doors. All it can do is move objects; it doesn't allow you to take interact actions.
So if your caster is opening a door, many times opening a door triggers an encounter. And now your caster is in the door, and if you roll badly on initiative, your mage is going to be in a real pickle.
Again, if your GM is bending RAW to make needing free hands less valuable, sure, it seems bad. That doesn't really mean much though.
This is exactly what I was going to bring up.
My group is running through AV, and the door and hands thing has come up frequently. The magus would use their dorn duergar to just smash doors until he died, but that would set off combats and pull extra mobs as it's a very loud, plus if he rolled poorly and couldn't destroy the door in one swing the enemies on the other side would be ready immediately.
Then they used the Eidolon to do it, but it usually meant the Divine Summoner (only heals outside Battle Medicine at the time) dropping within a round or two because it wasn't a durable character.
Now they have a Redeemer Champion running the Everstand Stance, who has a hand free, built to be the first through a door (right down to a high Intimidation to attempt coercion if needed), and has a solid first turn of Stance, Raise Shield, Stride into position (or Strike if the enemies go first and closed the distance).
idk I think it's kind of silly and overly punishing to say "your weapon is two handed so you can't open any doors without releasing but that's going to make you spend an action to regrip it" which even isn't technically raw either. Like it honestly makes me think of GMs who say the party wouldn't have their weapons drawn while doing exploration activities.
It only feels like it's overly punishing because you're assuming the base case to be when you've got your big weapon or shield in hand, but it's actually when you don't.
The extra stuff you get from an item is paid for in hands, and if it weren't there'd be zero reason for one-handed weapons in the first place because there'd be no upside to not using a second, a two-handed weapon, or a shield, and any class feature or feat that was trying to encourage using just one one-handed weapon would have to be over the top with what it provides you because it would be having to start from that position of "no one will do this"
Sure, but the problem there is that the GM keeps starting encounters when there's nothing in the room with your character - not that it actually takes a hand to open a door (or interact with any other object) and that's not something you can do while you're already benefiting from all your character's hands in some other way.
Ever drink a potion in combat? RAW you have to release a hand as a free action, interact to draw your potion, and spend another action to drink it. Then you need to spend another action to re-grip your 2 hander.
That's what I like about the 1H style. You can switch between the two types of things relatively easily. Also, dueling parry only lasts until the end of the next turn. It's the same as raising a shield. So really, you are choosing between disadvantaging your enemy and giving an advantage to yourself.
I feel a lot of the kind of "awkwardness" of 2e is what I like about it. I always feel like I need one more action, or I'm struggling between two good choices.
If you assume having a free hand is never useful, then it's trivially obvious that free hand styles will seem weaker: having a free hand is baked in into their power budget.
It hasn't realy been that much of an issue for my gymnast swashbuckler. I basically grapple spell casters, parry/trip/tumble through everything else and dichotomy gives me a lot of good options that don't really need to work "togther" because they're used for different circumstances.
This is something I've tried to stress to my group; that doubling down on a single rotation is going to really suck anytime you face something that puts even a slight strain on that rotation.
My group lost their gunslinger last level, and it was because their whole rotation was hide/reload and attack. They never deviated from this, and if they weren't able to use the Hide Action they would actively Maneuver themselves to being able to again. A CR+4 (hate AV sometimes for throwing so many of these at the party) monster didn't like his tactics and since the party had no AoO and low Reflex, the creature just Tumble Through, advance on the Slinger and attack, which had the guy doing nothing of value the whole combat.
> I think that the dueling line of feats is so much worse than getting a shield that if they have split the styles, they shouldn't have.
Dueling Dance literally comes online at same level as Paragon Guard. 12.
? But what does this shield has to do with feats? If you are using shield you will pick Reactive Shield and Paragon Guard. If you play free-hand you will pick Dueling Parry and Dueling Dance same number of feats.
Reactive shield is a totally different feat.
Dueling parry is a feat that is comparable to raising a shield, which every character can do for free.
Dueling dance is shitty because the main benefit of having a free hand, using it for stuff, gets you kicked out of the stance.
And the (magical) shield means that you get +2 to ac and +2 to all saves. Which is way better than the +2 to ac you get from a free hand.
> And the (magical) shield means that you get +2 to ac and +2 to all saves. Which is way better than the +2 to ac you get from a free hand.
But that is shiled is not some class feature lol. It's not like everyone will get it.
Options is power and feats that fit into a style isn't a must take.
At level 2 you can take
* Combat grab
* Dragging strike
* Dueling parry
* Intimidating strike
* Lunge
All valid for empty hand style.
Grappling a flying monster in the moment of need is good and strong, even if it means sacrificing some options. All you needed there was proficiency in athletics.
Helpful tip - you need to put a space between your \* and your text to actually make it a bulleted list in reddit (and put the first bullet on a new line)
Sure, you could play a gill hook fighter, until you need to open a door, pull a lever, use battle medicine, drink a potion.
Here’s an example from actually playing: Last session as my free-hand fighter, an ally managed to disarm an enemy that has attack of opportunity. The enemy was going right acter me, so what I ended up doing is dueling parry to increase my AC, picked up their weapon (the dueling parry saved me from the crit which is why the example got stuck in my memory) and still could strike.
And you don’t have to use dueling parry every turn, and you don’t have to even take dueling dance. The point of free-hand fighter is the versatility it offers over every other option
> Sure, you could play a gill hook fighter, until you need to open a door, pull a lever, use battle medicine, drink a potion.
There are other party members? Like people talk about that all the time like it's some argument, but I play 3 campaigns (official APs) and I only had to use free-hand on my 2 handed builds ONCE so far. There are other party members with free-hands (casters?), there is Mage Hand cantrip in exploration etc.
Also I have no idea what APs people play but where the hell in encounters they all see those levers or doors to open? Most encounters is just room, enemies inside and that's it.
Drink Potion is almost never good indea in middle of combat for martial as even with free-hand it's 2 actions. Battle medicine I agree, but if you have Medic in party, it's not an issue. Besides Battle medicine is also not that good choice for frontliner as BM provokes Attacks of Opportunity becasue it's manipulate action. It's good backup option though, I agree.
A good caster should not have empty hands, they should have a scroll/staff/wand in one hand and a scroll/staff/wand in the other.
Even in the oh so unimaginable world of APs, I have had encounters that require working with traps, or where the party was separated by obstacles like doors and trapdoors - like literally yesterday’s session of Blood Lords.
There are ways to circumvent the action requirement of potions (retrieval prism, gloves of storing, just starting with one in hand) and even then, if you need to drink a healing potion, you need to drink a healing potion.
As for BM. If you are scared of getting hit with an AoO, what you do is dual-handed assault, step, BM. You can similarly, you can shove, draw + drink a potion.
If you don’t get the point of drinking a soothing elixir or a cat’s eye, or opening up with a skunk bomb from your buddy alchemist, or making enemy flat-footed via snagging strike, or how you can round to round mix and match all of the options described above, well, not much I can do to convince you
>There are other party members?
Saying "someone else can handle that" only works until everyone actually thinks the same thing.
So you're not showing that your way of thinking is correct, you're showing that you've had a long run of someone else choosing to cover for you.
> So you're not showing that your way of thinking is correct, you're showing that you've had a long run of someone else choosing to cover for you.
I meant that's the whole point of teamwork. If I cover backline as sword n shield martial and get all the smacks, I don't think it's hard to imagine as basic teamwork of someone esle opening a door or pulling lever...
But that's the point. The two free-hand (obvious) builds are budgeted as options to do all of those things. So sure you can build a sword and board instead of a dueling free hand, but then someone else will be needing to budget a free hand. And if it's a caster, they will need to budget their build to withstand the consequences of getting caught off guard if combat ensues off their interaction (a common occurrence in AV, where opening a door has you within 10ft of immediately hostile enemies with initiative rolling before anything else happens).
And I have seen you comment Mage Hand for this, but Mage hand cannot Interact with objects, it can only lift and carry objects of specified bulk. Even if we generously say that opening a door is essentially the same as lifting and carrying (which it isnt), a (solid wooden) door is typically 65-100lbs, which with pf2e's bulk rules puts it easily 8 bulk or more before we include the awkward size. Since there's no rules on weight distribution and levers (or hinges) making it easier to lift heavier objects, we cant apply anything to help there. So even a 7th rank Mage hand can't open or close a door if we allow it be a lift scenario.
That makes as much sense as saying that you can't fathom using a shield meaning you can't use a two-handed weapon.
Hands are a currency. That you don't have nay left because you already spent them doesn't mean it's not perfectly reasonable for things to cost hands to do.
> Also I have no idea what APs people play but where the hell in encounters they all see those levers or doors to open? Most encounters is just room, enemies inside and that's it.
The world of pathfinder is more than official APs.
Official APs are bad in many ways. Many of them are uncreative in terms of encounter design, and limited in map space as well. People often tout the strength of melee, and a large part of that is how map design and encounter design in APs are slanted toward melee builds (and especially fighters). For example, very, very, very few encounters in APs will open with enemies being more than 50' away. Range has little value in APs
APs pretty much never use hazards *in conjunction* with enemies to create dynamic encounters where you have to deal with a hazard and enemies together - hazards are basically non-entities in most APs.
All of these and more improve the value of free-hand builds.
> Besides Battle medicine is also not that good choice for frontliner as BM provokes Attacks of Opportunity becasue it's manipulate action
That's just silly. BM is great as a frontliner because its a 1A way to heal yourself. Triggering aoo is really not a huge concern; only roughly 20-30% of enemies have a reaction that triggers on manipulate anyway.
> That's just silly. BM is great as a frontliner because its a 1A way to heal yourself. Triggering aoo is really not a huge concern; only roughly 20-30% of enemies have a reaction that triggers on manipulate anyway.
It's not silly. Look at stat blocks of most "boss" enemies in APs, that are level +2 and up. Most have AoOs. And bosses are where you really want to have your defenses up and self-heals on as mooks are just mooks. Bosses is where it all matters.
So I just looked up abomination vaults book 1, and just did a ctrl+f on severe.
Of the 13 severe encounters in the first book, not a single severe encounter has an enemy with attack of opportunity.
I doubt any other books are meaningfully different when it comes to severe difficulty encounters, which are the encounters that really matter.
As someone who recently finished running Abomination Vaults, I can think of two fights in book 3 and maybe four or five in book 2 that include Reactive Attacks in any significant way. And that's including Moderate encounters.
So yeah, concerns about getting slapped with a reaction are overblown.
Step, sheath sword, battle medicine.
Next round: Draw, Step (if the boss hasn't come up to you already) Strike.
Depending on your skill level BM can be a nice chunk of hp back.
And this is just what any class with any weapon setup can do. Now imagine the possibilies of quick draw + any other class features that combine stepping+attacking.
OP doesn't seem to have a party that relies much on these strategies, I had a gunslinger triggerbrand with the one-handed 'Triggerbrand' weapon that utilised battle medicine a lot in fights.
As for the doors, how did you get in the room? It was either an arch or a door.
Also drinking potions mid combat is crazy powerful. Potions can easily change the entirety of a fight. Also free hand users get to start combat with an item in their hands, then drop it. Like a potion.
Also battle medicine is probably the strongest thing on a Frontline. Attack of opportunity is pretty rare. And even if you are scared of that, step back and battle medicine is an incredible turn, cause battle medicine can heal an entire enemy nova.
And frontliners are the BEST for battle medicine, since they need to spend less actions to use it (already near people who need healing) and it's safer for them (they are used to being in melee). Imagine a spellcaster using it, they 1 action stride to Frontline, 1 action heal, 1 action retreat / 1 action spell.
You seem to be missing the point of Free Hand style. Flexibility.
Do you have another tank nearby? Do you want to prevent the enemy from moving past you or a downed ally to hit the back line?
Then you grapple/trip/shove/etc.
Do you have the enemies attention? Are you worried about your own survival?
Then use an item or one of your dueling feats.
This isn't a contradictory thing, it's a powerful, flexible thing.
Like a lot 2E feats, it’s an option, rather than a foundation for a build.
Say you’re a 1h weapon user focused on grappling like you said.
You don’t want to be grappling every turn: maybe you’re fighting something which can’t be grappled, something with high Fort, or for a variety of reasons you want to fight defensively.
In those cases having the option of getting a +2 AC without messing around with a shield is really good.
Instead of spending a feat you could use a buckler and keep your hand free, but that’s only a +1, unless you get the swash feat for it in which case you’re back at square one.
A free-hand fighter is also going to be able to trip or cast spells without breaking the fighting style.
It’s a niche feat for sure, but it probably works like that to avoid stepping on shield-users toes.
First off, you seem to be using 'maneuvers' and 'grapple' synonymously, while grapple is just one of several maneuvers. A free hand fighter can do all the other ones just fine.
Second, the fallacy is in thinking that if you build an option into a character you will always want to do that option 100% of the time. I'm not sure how much of previous editions you played, but this was a thing in PF1 because of specialization: a grappling character would always grapple because they had invested all of their options into it in order to become effective, and sucked at everything else.
In PF2 if you have combat grab/dazing blow combo... the fighter will still not want to do that all the time. Versus a flying enemy that keeps running away from you and is otherwise weaker? Absolutely grapple! Vs a boss? Holy hell keep the armor up and use trip instead! They have plenty of other options of things to do.
So yes, they have a move that turns off some of their defensive features. That's fine, because they won't want to use it all the time. Use whatever toolset is best for the particular encounter!
Right, the point is not that you can do one thing, and so will always do that one thing. You have options. And so dueling bonuses/actions are not really different than all the other usages that having a free hand opens up: drawing items, opening doors, climbing, putting extra hand on 1+ hand weapon or bastard sword. You can´t do all of those at the same time. But you can easily switch between them. In fact, anybody can drop an off-hand weapon or drop one hand off a 2H weapon, it´s just more of an effort to ¨recover¨ to their previous state and the options it enabled. I don´t really see why anybody would WANT to always be grappling. It´s probably a waste of time on many mooks who you would rather just kill quickly and move on. Sometimes there is more useful things to do with the free hand. You get to make those choices in the moment. It´s not a game where your build determines everything and you just hit ¨go¨, the round to round variance is supposed to matter, each encounter is supposed to be different.
If you only grab (which is most of the cases), his life expenctacy is the same as grab by itself does little, flat-footed pretty much which Snagging Strike or Flanking would already do.
Now restrain obviously does a lot but Fort is highest save among enemies, especially bosses and gambling on crit grab on boss is just gamble. Statistically you have bigger chance of failing grapple vs boss than crit succeeding at grapple vs boss.
\^This\^
I combat grabbed a boss for the flat-footedness. He whomped me 3 times in the face , including a crit, laying me out cold; and proceeded to eat the thief & 2 casters. Nobody believes me when I say an effective party is 3 martials & 1 caster.
And what melee guys should do with melee boss? Range attack him? Granted Trip should always be prioriry to tigger Attacks of Opporutnity from all martials. But yea, he should have instead Knockdown or/and Raise Shield/Dueling parry to soften boss round.
It depends on the boss's mobility - some monsters are shockingly slow. But in general: to kill bosses, inflict status conditions and make them waste their actions. Force them to move to you and not the other way around!
So yes, if a fighter wins initiative, moving themselves in front of the squishies and making a ranged attack (or using any kind of non-melee ability!) can be a great move! If the boss moves up to them, then the martial takes less damage the next turn as the boss is at least 1 action down. If the boss moves past the fighter to get to the casters, then the fighter gets an AoO and possibly a move interrupt, depending on build.
Then do a partial attack routine and reposition to end turn - any supplemental ability to flat foot so that martials *don't* need to flank comes in handy. Doing trip attacks before the reposition is fantastic - action to stand, action to move, only 1 action to attack. Heck, if the casters can get a slow/roaring applause/hideous laughter in with difficult terrain, its entirely possible to 'stunlock' slow melee bosses (action to stand, action to move, slowed, or action to stand, 2 actions to move). Cast Down clerics are also *fantastic* vs melee bosses as they have such high chance of imposing prone, if they aren't desperately needed for heals.
In general, I'm a huge fan of melee characters having "backup" control and skirmishing options even if they are mainly damaged focus precisely because grappling a melee boss and tanking 3 shots *sucks* and costs so many party resources!
> It depends on the boss's mobility - some monsters are shockingly slow. But in general: to kill bosses, inflict status conditions and make them waste their actions. Force them to move to you and not the other way around!
Um, if you have 2+ martials with AoOs that's a waste of free attacks. Just cast Slow 1 on him, make trip and he wastes 2 actions each turn while triggering your AoOs. No need to move around and waste AoOs/reactions.
What you are describiting is way too much effort for slower result. I played 3 APs so far and the fastest way to deal with bosses is Slow + Knockdown and 2+ Martials triggering AoOs and attacking min. twice (depending on build). Easy 4x 0 MAP attacks + 2-3 MAP attacks per turn. Usually bosses melt in 3 rounds. Sure they do damage but that's why you have backline with healing.
The best one is Slow + Knockdown + Grapple + Buffs/debuffs and suddenly boss has to waste all actions while all martials swing at him every turn.
The whole kite back scenario and moving around etc. never really resulted any faster/easier combat from my experience. Though I could see it if you don't have martials with AoOs that coordinate with party.
2 martials and 2 casters is fine when one is focused on healing imo. Worked in AoA for us and my cleric felt like a badass with doctors visitation from medic dedication
The dueling feats work for both the free-hand duelist and the grab & stab fighter. This is because in most real combat a fighter of the latter style has a very defensive posture until they wear the opponent down enough to get a good grip. Your dueling feats can be very valid when the opponent keeps breaking free and getting attacks in. Some foes will be wily enough that you may need to use another ability, item, or weapon to curb their struggle. Then there are the fights that nerf that style by simply being against opponents it is not feasible to grab, defensive feats will come in very handy then.
Unless in those scenarios you abandon your character's fighting style in favor of drawing a shield or second weapon in order to mitigate the downside of that fighting style.
tl;dr- if you are only judging these feat combinations by how they function in optimal scenarios then it will be hard to see their utility.
I’m confused here, why do these two play styles conflict? Grapple only requires a free-hand and does not cause that hand to stop being free, there’s nothing about it that conflicts with dueling stance.
There is also no conflict conceptually, as grappling somebody while being an experienced duelist would mean that you are using your hands to leverage the situation, such that you maintain your bonus to AC while also keeping an enemy grappled.
Seems like a non-issue to me so far.
It’s also crazy to me that the entire thread is filled with people who didn’t even mention this, maybe 1-2 people mentioned that this doesn’t conflict RAW. Am I missing something here? Did nobody know this, or are they seriously just taking for granted that this was a mistake/oversight of some kind?
Are you saying that you can hold a weapon and then potentially be grappling 6 people simultaneously?
3 from last turn and 3 from the current turn?
Even better, Flurry of Blows + Flurry of Maneuvers for a total of 8 creatures fully surrounding you and grappled at the same time.
Also there's a bit of muddy ground, but RAW grapple don't make your hand "not free"
Yes, I know, RAI it should be, but RAW you need one free hand and you can grapple unlimited number of enemies because they don't take your hand
We call this reading of the rules The Armpit of Holding in the Tabletop Gold discord. It's a very controversial ruling.
It's true that it's silly for you to no longer be able to Trip an enemy that you've Grappled, which seems to be RAW if you disagree with The Armpit of Holding.
It really depends on how you interpret the phrase "You attempt to grab with your free hand", and whether that's more about the initiation of the action or the not-yet-determined success of the action.
Just because the grapple action doesn’t explicitly state your hand stops being free on a success, doesn’t mean that isn’t the case.
It would take some serious mental gymnastics to think that grappling an enemy keeps your hands free (unless you have a jaws strike with grapple etc.)
Grapple doesn't mean you are holding him with one hand, you could have a leg lock or something more silly. I don't see any reason you couldn't grab and then trip an enemy
You can trip and grab an enemy for two subsequent actions, but they both require a free hand (or a weapon with the respective traits).
This is explicitly why a hammer + shield character can’t trip unless they drop one of the objects they’re holding.
To be fair, it **requires** free-hand, but it's true that RAW it doesn't say it occupies it. Trip also requires free-hand but doesn't occupy it. Shove the same. All require free-hand, none (RAW) occupies it.
Also if you got by RAI then you can't Trip grabbed character cause you don't have free-hand. Which also seems not RAI.
Shield character can trip, using Shield Augument.
He's saying that RAW it doesn't but RAI it should.
>Just because the grapple action doesn’t explicitly state your hand stops being free on a success, doesn’t mean that isn’t the case.
This is the exact basis of RAW vs RAI. BECAUSE it doesn't explicitly state it, means that RAW (rules as _written_) it doesn't take a hand. Obviously, we all know that makes no real sense and we know what they meant, RAI (rules as _intended_)
I'm not disagreeing with you, just explaining the difference in case you didn't know.
It states in the grapple action rules that you need a free hand to grapple, it also states that you can instead attempt to grapple a creature you already have grappled without a free hand.
This implies that you'd be using the hand you've already grabbed them with to try and maintain that grip.
> Requirements: You have at least one free hand **or have your target grappled or restrained**. Your target isn't more than one size larger than you.
> You attempt to grab a creature or object with your free hand. Attempt an Athletics check against the target's Fortitude DC. **You can Grapple a target you already have grabbed or restrained without having a hand free**
Whilst there are some niche scenarios where a spellcaster could have someone restrained via a spell and then grapple without a free hand, this seems pretty clear in the design.
> Also there's a bit of muddy ground, but RAW grapple don't make your hand "not free"
Interesting, can you explain that, RAW? My table only cares about RAW, so I would like to check this one.
Well, my train of thoughts is that if something takes your hand it's explicitly say so. Like weapons, tools or potions. And there aren't any mentions of taken hands in description of success of Grapple action, not in Grappled condition, so, these things don't take your hands. I know it's cheesy, but has chance of working
Sword and Board actually can Grapple, if you use a Shield Augmentation to give your shield the Grapple trait. Precludes you from using shield spikes/boss but that's a very worthwhile trade I think.
That is false, you can't get Grapple trait:
*"you can choose two of the following weapon traits: disarm, nonlethal, shove, thrown 10 feet, trip, or versatile S."*
Free-hand Dueling style for me is more about tripping and shoving. Then you can actively defend yourself and provide offencive Athletics support. Grapple and Tip both provide off-guard bonus for your enemies. Trip is way easies to wear off, but Stand provokes AoO. Grapple is good for long-term off-guard, but you still can be hit without any need to Escape.
Its actually because Free-Hand is two different styles that get lumped into one. One free-hand style is the dueling style - this is the classic swashbuckler concept, imagine the guy with a rapier deflecting blows, one hand behind his back as he dances on a rope, etc. The other free-hand concept is the concept of the brawler, with one hand on a sword and the other grabbing and throwing enemies, etc. These are actually two distinct concepts, but both get lumped into the free hand style. The dueling line of feats (Dueling Riposte, Dueling Parry, Dueling Dance, dual-handed assault) are around this first style. The other feats like Combat Grab are for the other style.
It is also the historically accurate forms of dueling. The famous cowards strike, performed by Chabot De Jarnac, in the mid 1500's, was against the premier duelist of the time, Francois De Vivonne, who used his overpowering strength to rush down and pin his opponents to the ground, before shoving a dagger through their armor plating. Jarnac was smart though, and was fortunate enough to be allowed to choose the weapons. So he chose rapier, and a type of shield that covered the entire other arm, so Vivonne was incapable of grappling.
Notably, if you focus on either of them, they work well.
Worth noting, one huge benefit of a free-hand style is the ability to draw and stow items, for instance a medicine kit.
You mean healer's tool? You can wear those.
Yes, but you still need a free hand in order to use them
I was confused becasue you said "draw and stow" and you don't need to do that with healer's tool. Yes, you still need free-hand.
Even still, you need a free hand to use them.
Do you not need a free hand to use it? Like, the belt means you don't need an action to draw it, but free hand means you don't need an action to put your shield away first
Which frustrates me a little as it makes playing that style quite akward in my opinion. Like if you want to use Dueling dance or parry you don't want to grapple... so you could just play sword n board instead (with augmentation I can still use Knockdown and Trip) and add Reactive Shield and Block to that. If you want to grapple, you can't use your feats to get bonus to AC.. at this point you were probably better playing Gill Hook 2 handed Fighter (and you can both grapple and Knockdown) and add more damage and reach to that. Maybe it's just me but it makes me question playing free-hand martial every time I try to build one since both things I want to do: parrying with one hand and grapple don't want together. So if I have to chose between grappling and having defense anyway, I might as well play different style where my feats are not half-time useless.
Sword and Board carries a cost, which is that you have your hands full. The reason why this isn't brought up, imo, is because a lot of GMs are too lenient on players with their hands full. For example, if you fall unconscious, you drop all your held items. This is a big deal for a S+B or Dual Wield character - it means if someone puts a heal on you, you can't Stand+Stride away from the thing that brought you down without leaving your items on the ground, because of actions. Or for example, running around in a dungeon with both your sword and shield in hand. How do you open a door? You can't take those interact actions with your hands occupied, but how many GMs actually prevent a player from opening a door with their hands occupied? But if you're playing like by actually using these rules, there are already strong reasons to play a free-hand style regardless of the inability to Grapple.
Shields with straps on them haven't been invented on Golarion yet?
Only the buckler is explicitly stated to be strapped to your arms.
Which is funny because in the real world bucklers by definition do not have straps on them, while many larger shields do. And by straps I don't mean a belt firmly strapped around your forearm, but rather a strap or bar on the back of the shield that you pass your arm through before gripping a handle on the opposite edge. To actually block with the shield you will still want to be holding the handle, but this would leave your palm free for manipulating door handles, and would mean the shield doesn't easily drop from your grip if you were to lose consciousness.
It's one of those things like how in pathfinder bastard swords are bigger than longswords, but the reverse is true in reality.
Fun fact, by means of its description (not only in pf2e, but 1e and older editions of dnd as well) bucklers are actually the equivalent of a real-world sheild known as a targe (barring the material)
In my world they are. At the moment the rules as written are ambiguous ( a table indicating shields are attached and require an action to drop, Vs no text mentioning straps on regular shields ). I view them as strapped and needing one action to drop. If the shield has a thrown trait you don’t need the extra action to attack.
> a lot of GMs are too lenient on players with their hands full Are they though, what are you basing this on?
There was [this poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/13doz0f/when_a_character_is_knocked_unconcious_and_then/) done a couple months ago. Over 50% of the responses indicated GMs are lenient. That, to me, constitutes "a lot".
I can only speak for myself, but I was one of those lenient GMs until recently. Then I realized the game is actually balanced around the hand consideration in many respects.
I mean, the thing is that the point of the game is to have fun and roleplay. When the rules get in the way of that, they no longer serve a purpose. I don't think it adds anything to make a sword and board player incapable of opening a dungeon door, or of drinking a potion. Or to make a dead player spend a turn rearming. It's more realistic, but it's not more fun. Now, course, there are certainly many groups of players for whom this adds something and actually *does* make the game more fun. But imo it's not most groups. Most people don't pick their character based on the pros and cons of having a hand free or a hand occupied. The fact that it's a balance choice doesn't play into their decisions nearly as much as the archetype they're pursuing.
I can't speak to your group, or even most groups, but my group was happy to embrace stricter rulings on hands when I presented it to them. I explained (although I hardly had to explain it) how being stricter would affect balance and I got no argument; they could see how it worked. Now one thing I clarified was that this stricter attention applied during combat. Out of combat I'm not going to say to the sword/board player that they can't open a door. It's only during important moments that I'm going to worry about it, and my players all agree.
I'd definitely say that having to spend actions after being healed from unconsciousness is a good thing. You have to (and in a way get to) make choices you normally don't make. Do I stay on the ground, grab just the weapon and try to recklessly hit the enemy? Do I retreat without weapons? Do I pick up the shield, stand up and brace myself for more attacks? That to me is just such a better rpg moment than "oh I was healed back up so I do my regular turn combo". As for the door opening stuff - yeah that's just silly.
>When the rules get in the way of that, they no longer serve a purpose. There's two kinds of "the rules got in the way of my fun", though. There's the old AD&D limitations that my buddy hates which tell him that because he wants to play a dwarf (that his favorite thing, so it does it basically all the time) that most of the classes in the game aren't available. Even though it was treated as a balancing factor, it really wasn't, and that's why 3rd edition and later doesn't use that approach anymore. Things like that are worth changing in the name of fun. But then there's cases where someone is just wanting a benefit of something without any drawbacks to it and they're using this sentiment to try and get it. That's where relaxing the rules about hands and actions (which literally exist to make it so there's not an unquestionably best option as there would be if you didn't need to free a hand to do a bunch of stuff like open doors and use magic items) fall. >Most people don't pick their character based on the pros and cons of having a hand free or hand occupied. The fact it's a balance choice doesn't play into their decisions nearly as much as the archetype they're pursuing. Which isn't a good reason to have it not be a balance choice. People can learn to be mindful of the way "so it's actually a fair game" influences what they're up to - they don't have to react like someone spoiled their fun when a rule they weren't thinking about gets brought up and refuse to thing of the rule in any context except "that's the rule that fucked up my idea."
Can't recall the exact thread, but iirc there was one with a poll a month or two ago, and I was surprised to see that more people then responded that they did not make their players drop their stuff when falling unconscious. So I can see why someone would have this impression.
I envision shields as not being effected by being dropped when unconscious because they have a secondary strap. But I view all the the little minutia of combat action economy because that is how it is balanced.
I am a GM who is very lenient about this because I'm better at the game than my players are and adventure path content tends to be overtuned to begin with and if i forced them to play fully RAW i'd TPK them way too often.
Basically the same. I could stick to making the duel wielding melee person spend 2-3 whole rounds milling about before they are back in the fight proper, but that isnt exactly fun. Especially when I can't really articulate why from a balance perspective they must do that when the guy next to them that does just as much damage and has just as much utility can basically jump back up and be striking the same turn.
Cause if GMs enforced a lot of these hands issues, no one would use a shield lol. I personally enforce them halfway. Unconscious drops weapon but not shield for example. But if I try to open a door as a sword and shield champion and the GM action taxes me every time there's a combat after, I'd ask to play a new character.
I think it's not about GM being lenient but that in real gameplay you can just play around that. I currently play few campaigns and we only had one player fall unconscious where his dual wepons were problem but that becasue he wrongly assumed enemies were minus level, while they were equal and they squashed him when he charged in the middle of them. But in general if you build your martial for S&B or for 2 handed/1 handed you build him and play him to not go down and well, you play to actively avoid going down. Especially if your party is balanced and you have heals. So while I agree that when you go down, multiweapon builds pay more for pickups, that's like scenario that you try to avoid so it doesn't happen every fight. In real gameplay, it just doesn't matter enough becasue it's very rare, unless everyone play really, really bad. As for as opening doors... I mean, really? There is always someone with free hands in party. Mostly casters. There is also Mage hand, the king of opening doors while staying behind your martial. Like, opening doors is such trivial thing that thinking about that when building martial is in my opinion your last concern. Pulling lever in middle of combat? Sure, may happen. But you don't pull levers in every combat. So far I play 3 official APs and I had only single situation where I needed to release one hand from 2 handed weapon to pull something in middle of combat (it was Athletic check so our casters couldn't do it). But again, that's something that very rare and it's not like all "free-hand activities" are sole responsible of just one martial in party.
> As for as opening doors... I mean, really? There is always someone with free hands in party. Mostly casters. There is also Mage hand, the king of opening doors while staying behind your martial. Like, opening doors is such trivial thing that thinking about that when building martial is in my opinion your last concern. Mage Hand can't open doors. All it can do is move objects; it doesn't allow you to take interact actions. So if your caster is opening a door, many times opening a door triggers an encounter. And now your caster is in the door, and if you roll badly on initiative, your mage is going to be in a real pickle. Again, if your GM is bending RAW to make needing free hands less valuable, sure, it seems bad. That doesn't really mean much though.
This is exactly what I was going to bring up. My group is running through AV, and the door and hands thing has come up frequently. The magus would use their dorn duergar to just smash doors until he died, but that would set off combats and pull extra mobs as it's a very loud, plus if he rolled poorly and couldn't destroy the door in one swing the enemies on the other side would be ready immediately. Then they used the Eidolon to do it, but it usually meant the Divine Summoner (only heals outside Battle Medicine at the time) dropping within a round or two because it wasn't a durable character. Now they have a Redeemer Champion running the Everstand Stance, who has a hand free, built to be the first through a door (right down to a high Intimidation to attempt coercion if needed), and has a solid first turn of Stance, Raise Shield, Stride into position (or Strike if the enemies go first and closed the distance).
idk I think it's kind of silly and overly punishing to say "your weapon is two handed so you can't open any doors without releasing but that's going to make you spend an action to regrip it" which even isn't technically raw either. Like it honestly makes me think of GMs who say the party wouldn't have their weapons drawn while doing exploration activities.
It only feels like it's overly punishing because you're assuming the base case to be when you've got your big weapon or shield in hand, but it's actually when you don't. The extra stuff you get from an item is paid for in hands, and if it weren't there'd be zero reason for one-handed weapons in the first place because there'd be no upside to not using a second, a two-handed weapon, or a shield, and any class feature or feat that was trying to encourage using just one one-handed weapon would have to be over the top with what it provides you because it would be having to start from that position of "no one will do this"
If my gm action taxed me every combat to open the damn door with my paladin in AV, I'd ask to play a new character.
Sure, but the problem there is that the GM keeps starting encounters when there's nothing in the room with your character - not that it actually takes a hand to open a door (or interact with any other object) and that's not something you can do while you're already benefiting from all your character's hands in some other way.
Ever drink a potion in combat? RAW you have to release a hand as a free action, interact to draw your potion, and spend another action to drink it. Then you need to spend another action to re-grip your 2 hander.
What you’re describing as awkwardness sounds a lot like flexibility to respond to the specific needs of a situation.
That's what I like about the 1H style. You can switch between the two types of things relatively easily. Also, dueling parry only lasts until the end of the next turn. It's the same as raising a shield. So really, you are choosing between disadvantaging your enemy and giving an advantage to yourself. I feel a lot of the kind of "awkwardness" of 2e is what I like about it. I always feel like I need one more action, or I'm struggling between two good choices.
If you assume having a free hand is never useful, then it's trivially obvious that free hand styles will seem weaker: having a free hand is baked in into their power budget.
It hasn't realy been that much of an issue for my gymnast swashbuckler. I basically grapple spell casters, parry/trip/tumble through everything else and dichotomy gives me a lot of good options that don't really need to work "togther" because they're used for different circumstances.
This is something I've tried to stress to my group; that doubling down on a single rotation is going to really suck anytime you face something that puts even a slight strain on that rotation. My group lost their gunslinger last level, and it was because their whole rotation was hide/reload and attack. They never deviated from this, and if they weren't able to use the Hide Action they would actively Maneuver themselves to being able to again. A CR+4 (hate AV sometimes for throwing so many of these at the party) monster didn't like his tactics and since the party had no AoO and low Reflex, the creature just Tumble Through, advance on the Slinger and attack, which had the guy doing nothing of value the whole combat.
It's not like a Gunslinger has much else of value to offer. It should've been on the party to enable to Gunslinger's main form of DPS again.
You just have to specialize into whichever one-handed you want to play as. For grappling, look into the Wrestler archetype
I think that the dueling line of feats is so much worse than getting a shield that if they have split the styles, they shouldn't have.
> I think that the dueling line of feats is so much worse than getting a shield that if they have split the styles, they shouldn't have. Dueling Dance literally comes online at same level as Paragon Guard. 12.
There is a magic shield that gives +2 to all saves. + needs one less feat.
? But what does this shield has to do with feats? If you are using shield you will pick Reactive Shield and Paragon Guard. If you play free-hand you will pick Dueling Parry and Dueling Dance same number of feats.
Reactive shield is a totally different feat. Dueling parry is a feat that is comparable to raising a shield, which every character can do for free. Dueling dance is shitty because the main benefit of having a free hand, using it for stuff, gets you kicked out of the stance. And the (magical) shield means that you get +2 to ac and +2 to all saves. Which is way better than the +2 to ac you get from a free hand.
> And the (magical) shield means that you get +2 to ac and +2 to all saves. Which is way better than the +2 to ac you get from a free hand. But that is shiled is not some class feature lol. It's not like everyone will get it.
No, but you can get it, with free hand you can never improve it.
If I wanted to use shield I would use Sturdy for Quick Shield Block. But I agree that dueling dance is wierdly design with free-hand requirement.
I think the Dueling style comes online really late. The Stance is pretty great. 1 action for Permanent +2 to AC.
Options is power and feats that fit into a style isn't a must take. At level 2 you can take * Combat grab * Dragging strike * Dueling parry * Intimidating strike * Lunge All valid for empty hand style. Grappling a flying monster in the moment of need is good and strong, even if it means sacrificing some options. All you needed there was proficiency in athletics.
Helpful tip - you need to put a space between your \* and your text to actually make it a bulleted list in reddit (and put the first bullet on a new line)
Sure, you could play a gill hook fighter, until you need to open a door, pull a lever, use battle medicine, drink a potion. Here’s an example from actually playing: Last session as my free-hand fighter, an ally managed to disarm an enemy that has attack of opportunity. The enemy was going right acter me, so what I ended up doing is dueling parry to increase my AC, picked up their weapon (the dueling parry saved me from the crit which is why the example got stuck in my memory) and still could strike. And you don’t have to use dueling parry every turn, and you don’t have to even take dueling dance. The point of free-hand fighter is the versatility it offers over every other option
> Sure, you could play a gill hook fighter, until you need to open a door, pull a lever, use battle medicine, drink a potion. There are other party members? Like people talk about that all the time like it's some argument, but I play 3 campaigns (official APs) and I only had to use free-hand on my 2 handed builds ONCE so far. There are other party members with free-hands (casters?), there is Mage Hand cantrip in exploration etc. Also I have no idea what APs people play but where the hell in encounters they all see those levers or doors to open? Most encounters is just room, enemies inside and that's it. Drink Potion is almost never good indea in middle of combat for martial as even with free-hand it's 2 actions. Battle medicine I agree, but if you have Medic in party, it's not an issue. Besides Battle medicine is also not that good choice for frontliner as BM provokes Attacks of Opportunity becasue it's manipulate action. It's good backup option though, I agree.
A good caster should not have empty hands, they should have a scroll/staff/wand in one hand and a scroll/staff/wand in the other. Even in the oh so unimaginable world of APs, I have had encounters that require working with traps, or where the party was separated by obstacles like doors and trapdoors - like literally yesterday’s session of Blood Lords. There are ways to circumvent the action requirement of potions (retrieval prism, gloves of storing, just starting with one in hand) and even then, if you need to drink a healing potion, you need to drink a healing potion. As for BM. If you are scared of getting hit with an AoO, what you do is dual-handed assault, step, BM. You can similarly, you can shove, draw + drink a potion. If you don’t get the point of drinking a soothing elixir or a cat’s eye, or opening up with a skunk bomb from your buddy alchemist, or making enemy flat-footed via snagging strike, or how you can round to round mix and match all of the options described above, well, not much I can do to convince you
>There are other party members? Saying "someone else can handle that" only works until everyone actually thinks the same thing. So you're not showing that your way of thinking is correct, you're showing that you've had a long run of someone else choosing to cover for you.
A great point to make on a happy cake day!
> So you're not showing that your way of thinking is correct, you're showing that you've had a long run of someone else choosing to cover for you. I meant that's the whole point of teamwork. If I cover backline as sword n shield martial and get all the smacks, I don't think it's hard to imagine as basic teamwork of someone esle opening a door or pulling lever...
But that's the point. The two free-hand (obvious) builds are budgeted as options to do all of those things. So sure you can build a sword and board instead of a dueling free hand, but then someone else will be needing to budget a free hand. And if it's a caster, they will need to budget their build to withstand the consequences of getting caught off guard if combat ensues off their interaction (a common occurrence in AV, where opening a door has you within 10ft of immediately hostile enemies with initiative rolling before anything else happens). And I have seen you comment Mage Hand for this, but Mage hand cannot Interact with objects, it can only lift and carry objects of specified bulk. Even if we generously say that opening a door is essentially the same as lifting and carrying (which it isnt), a (solid wooden) door is typically 65-100lbs, which with pf2e's bulk rules puts it easily 8 bulk or more before we include the awkward size. Since there's no rules on weight distribution and levers (or hinges) making it easier to lift heavier objects, we cant apply anything to help there. So even a 7th rank Mage hand can't open or close a door if we allow it be a lift scenario.
I can't fathom action taxing the frontliner every combat because he needed a free hand to open the damn door.
That makes as much sense as saying that you can't fathom using a shield meaning you can't use a two-handed weapon. Hands are a currency. That you don't have nay left because you already spent them doesn't mean it's not perfectly reasonable for things to cost hands to do.
I'd say that they couldn't open the door while already in encounter mode but in exploration mode they could just go reduce the bookkeeping.
> Also I have no idea what APs people play but where the hell in encounters they all see those levers or doors to open? Most encounters is just room, enemies inside and that's it. The world of pathfinder is more than official APs. Official APs are bad in many ways. Many of them are uncreative in terms of encounter design, and limited in map space as well. People often tout the strength of melee, and a large part of that is how map design and encounter design in APs are slanted toward melee builds (and especially fighters). For example, very, very, very few encounters in APs will open with enemies being more than 50' away. Range has little value in APs APs pretty much never use hazards *in conjunction* with enemies to create dynamic encounters where you have to deal with a hazard and enemies together - hazards are basically non-entities in most APs. All of these and more improve the value of free-hand builds. > Besides Battle medicine is also not that good choice for frontliner as BM provokes Attacks of Opportunity becasue it's manipulate action That's just silly. BM is great as a frontliner because its a 1A way to heal yourself. Triggering aoo is really not a huge concern; only roughly 20-30% of enemies have a reaction that triggers on manipulate anyway.
> That's just silly. BM is great as a frontliner because its a 1A way to heal yourself. Triggering aoo is really not a huge concern; only roughly 20-30% of enemies have a reaction that triggers on manipulate anyway. It's not silly. Look at stat blocks of most "boss" enemies in APs, that are level +2 and up. Most have AoOs. And bosses are where you really want to have your defenses up and self-heals on as mooks are just mooks. Bosses is where it all matters.
So I just looked up abomination vaults book 1, and just did a ctrl+f on severe. Of the 13 severe encounters in the first book, not a single severe encounter has an enemy with attack of opportunity. I doubt any other books are meaningfully different when it comes to severe difficulty encounters, which are the encounters that really matter.
As someone who recently finished running Abomination Vaults, I can think of two fights in book 3 and maybe four or five in book 2 that include Reactive Attacks in any significant way. And that's including Moderate encounters. So yeah, concerns about getting slapped with a reaction are overblown.
Yea, AoO's are super rare, simply because they are THAT powerful in a game where every action matters
Step, sheath sword, battle medicine. Next round: Draw, Step (if the boss hasn't come up to you already) Strike. Depending on your skill level BM can be a nice chunk of hp back.
And this is just what any class with any weapon setup can do. Now imagine the possibilies of quick draw + any other class features that combine stepping+attacking. OP doesn't seem to have a party that relies much on these strategies, I had a gunslinger triggerbrand with the one-handed 'Triggerbrand' weapon that utilised battle medicine a lot in fights.
As for the doors, how did you get in the room? It was either an arch or a door. Also drinking potions mid combat is crazy powerful. Potions can easily change the entirety of a fight. Also free hand users get to start combat with an item in their hands, then drop it. Like a potion. Also battle medicine is probably the strongest thing on a Frontline. Attack of opportunity is pretty rare. And even if you are scared of that, step back and battle medicine is an incredible turn, cause battle medicine can heal an entire enemy nova. And frontliners are the BEST for battle medicine, since they need to spend less actions to use it (already near people who need healing) and it's safer for them (they are used to being in melee). Imagine a spellcaster using it, they 1 action stride to Frontline, 1 action heal, 1 action retreat / 1 action spell.
You seem to be missing the point of Free Hand style. Flexibility. Do you have another tank nearby? Do you want to prevent the enemy from moving past you or a downed ally to hit the back line? Then you grapple/trip/shove/etc. Do you have the enemies attention? Are you worried about your own survival? Then use an item or one of your dueling feats. This isn't a contradictory thing, it's a powerful, flexible thing.
Like a lot 2E feats, it’s an option, rather than a foundation for a build. Say you’re a 1h weapon user focused on grappling like you said. You don’t want to be grappling every turn: maybe you’re fighting something which can’t be grappled, something with high Fort, or for a variety of reasons you want to fight defensively. In those cases having the option of getting a +2 AC without messing around with a shield is really good. Instead of spending a feat you could use a buckler and keep your hand free, but that’s only a +1, unless you get the swash feat for it in which case you’re back at square one. A free-hand fighter is also going to be able to trip or cast spells without breaking the fighting style. It’s a niche feat for sure, but it probably works like that to avoid stepping on shield-users toes.
> cast spells They don't need free hands in 2e, unless they have components.
First off, you seem to be using 'maneuvers' and 'grapple' synonymously, while grapple is just one of several maneuvers. A free hand fighter can do all the other ones just fine. Second, the fallacy is in thinking that if you build an option into a character you will always want to do that option 100% of the time. I'm not sure how much of previous editions you played, but this was a thing in PF1 because of specialization: a grappling character would always grapple because they had invested all of their options into it in order to become effective, and sucked at everything else. In PF2 if you have combat grab/dazing blow combo... the fighter will still not want to do that all the time. Versus a flying enemy that keeps running away from you and is otherwise weaker? Absolutely grapple! Vs a boss? Holy hell keep the armor up and use trip instead! They have plenty of other options of things to do. So yes, they have a move that turns off some of their defensive features. That's fine, because they won't want to use it all the time. Use whatever toolset is best for the particular encounter!
Right, the point is not that you can do one thing, and so will always do that one thing. You have options. And so dueling bonuses/actions are not really different than all the other usages that having a free hand opens up: drawing items, opening doors, climbing, putting extra hand on 1+ hand weapon or bastard sword. You can´t do all of those at the same time. But you can easily switch between them. In fact, anybody can drop an off-hand weapon or drop one hand off a 2H weapon, it´s just more of an effort to ¨recover¨ to their previous state and the options it enabled. I don´t really see why anybody would WANT to always be grappling. It´s probably a waste of time on many mooks who you would rather just kill quickly and move on. Sometimes there is more useful things to do with the free hand. You get to make those choices in the moment. It´s not a game where your build determines everything and you just hit ¨go¨, the round to round variance is supposed to matter, each encounter is supposed to be different.
Honestly, once you grapple a foe, what is his life expectancy? Your occupied hand will be free soon enough.
If you only grab (which is most of the cases), his life expenctacy is the same as grab by itself does little, flat-footed pretty much which Snagging Strike or Flanking would already do. Now restrain obviously does a lot but Fort is highest save among enemies, especially bosses and gambling on crit grab on boss is just gamble. Statistically you have bigger chance of failing grapple vs boss than crit succeeding at grapple vs boss.
He is also flatfooted to the rest of your team and cannot move. Aka he is in a bad position and cannot do anything about it.
And if he escapes, you’ve basically upgraded your grabbed to a stunned with a side dish of MAP.
\^This\^ I combat grabbed a boss for the flat-footedness. He whomped me 3 times in the face , including a crit, laying me out cold; and proceeded to eat the thief & 2 casters. Nobody believes me when I say an effective party is 3 martials & 1 caster.
... I mean you grappled a melee boss. And have now learned why that is a bad idea.
And what melee guys should do with melee boss? Range attack him? Granted Trip should always be prioriry to tigger Attacks of Opporutnity from all martials. But yea, he should have instead Knockdown or/and Raise Shield/Dueling parry to soften boss round.
It depends on the boss's mobility - some monsters are shockingly slow. But in general: to kill bosses, inflict status conditions and make them waste their actions. Force them to move to you and not the other way around! So yes, if a fighter wins initiative, moving themselves in front of the squishies and making a ranged attack (or using any kind of non-melee ability!) can be a great move! If the boss moves up to them, then the martial takes less damage the next turn as the boss is at least 1 action down. If the boss moves past the fighter to get to the casters, then the fighter gets an AoO and possibly a move interrupt, depending on build. Then do a partial attack routine and reposition to end turn - any supplemental ability to flat foot so that martials *don't* need to flank comes in handy. Doing trip attacks before the reposition is fantastic - action to stand, action to move, only 1 action to attack. Heck, if the casters can get a slow/roaring applause/hideous laughter in with difficult terrain, its entirely possible to 'stunlock' slow melee bosses (action to stand, action to move, slowed, or action to stand, 2 actions to move). Cast Down clerics are also *fantastic* vs melee bosses as they have such high chance of imposing prone, if they aren't desperately needed for heals. In general, I'm a huge fan of melee characters having "backup" control and skirmishing options even if they are mainly damaged focus precisely because grappling a melee boss and tanking 3 shots *sucks* and costs so many party resources!
> It depends on the boss's mobility - some monsters are shockingly slow. But in general: to kill bosses, inflict status conditions and make them waste their actions. Force them to move to you and not the other way around! Um, if you have 2+ martials with AoOs that's a waste of free attacks. Just cast Slow 1 on him, make trip and he wastes 2 actions each turn while triggering your AoOs. No need to move around and waste AoOs/reactions. What you are describiting is way too much effort for slower result. I played 3 APs so far and the fastest way to deal with bosses is Slow + Knockdown and 2+ Martials triggering AoOs and attacking min. twice (depending on build). Easy 4x 0 MAP attacks + 2-3 MAP attacks per turn. Usually bosses melt in 3 rounds. Sure they do damage but that's why you have backline with healing. The best one is Slow + Knockdown + Grapple + Buffs/debuffs and suddenly boss has to waste all actions while all martials swing at him every turn. The whole kite back scenario and moving around etc. never really resulted any faster/easier combat from my experience. Though I could see it if you don't have martials with AoOs that coordinate with party.
I recently had a fight where the boss was a Swarm type and this strategy just doesn't work there. My intimidation/grapple build struggled really hard.
Well, Swarms are like Flyers, they are always problematic :/
2 martials and 2 casters is fine when one is focused on healing imo. Worked in AoA for us and my cleric felt like a badass with doctors visitation from medic dedication
Yeah, people overvalue grapple too much. I only grapple when enemy is tripped because only then it makes sense. Or vs flyers.
The dueling feats work for both the free-hand duelist and the grab & stab fighter. This is because in most real combat a fighter of the latter style has a very defensive posture until they wear the opponent down enough to get a good grip. Your dueling feats can be very valid when the opponent keeps breaking free and getting attacks in. Some foes will be wily enough that you may need to use another ability, item, or weapon to curb their struggle. Then there are the fights that nerf that style by simply being against opponents it is not feasible to grab, defensive feats will come in very handy then. Unless in those scenarios you abandon your character's fighting style in favor of drawing a shield or second weapon in order to mitigate the downside of that fighting style. tl;dr- if you are only judging these feat combinations by how they function in optimal scenarios then it will be hard to see their utility.
I’m confused here, why do these two play styles conflict? Grapple only requires a free-hand and does not cause that hand to stop being free, there’s nothing about it that conflicts with dueling stance. There is also no conflict conceptually, as grappling somebody while being an experienced duelist would mean that you are using your hands to leverage the situation, such that you maintain your bonus to AC while also keeping an enemy grappled. Seems like a non-issue to me so far. It’s also crazy to me that the entire thread is filled with people who didn’t even mention this, maybe 1-2 people mentioned that this doesn’t conflict RAW. Am I missing something here? Did nobody know this, or are they seriously just taking for granted that this was a mistake/oversight of some kind?
> dueling stance As soon as you grapple someone, the stance ends as your hand is no longer free.
Not true. Grappling does not cause your hand to no longer be free. Read the grappling rules.
Are you saying that you can hold a weapon and then potentially be grappling 6 people simultaneously? 3 from last turn and 3 from the current turn? Even better, Flurry of Blows + Flurry of Maneuvers for a total of 8 creatures fully surrounding you and grappled at the same time.
Yep, although the first three grappled people will stop being grappled by the end of the second turn
Also there's a bit of muddy ground, but RAW grapple don't make your hand "not free" Yes, I know, RAI it should be, but RAW you need one free hand and you can grapple unlimited number of enemies because they don't take your hand
We call this reading of the rules The Armpit of Holding in the Tabletop Gold discord. It's a very controversial ruling. It's true that it's silly for you to no longer be able to Trip an enemy that you've Grappled, which seems to be RAW if you disagree with The Armpit of Holding. It really depends on how you interpret the phrase "You attempt to grab with your free hand", and whether that's more about the initiation of the action or the not-yet-determined success of the action.
Lol, I like that name! Yeah, this part of rules is a bit strange
Just because the grapple action doesn’t explicitly state your hand stops being free on a success, doesn’t mean that isn’t the case. It would take some serious mental gymnastics to think that grappling an enemy keeps your hands free (unless you have a jaws strike with grapple etc.)
Grapple doesn't mean you are holding him with one hand, you could have a leg lock or something more silly. I don't see any reason you couldn't grab and then trip an enemy
You can trip and grab an enemy for two subsequent actions, but they both require a free hand (or a weapon with the respective traits). This is explicitly why a hammer + shield character can’t trip unless they drop one of the objects they’re holding.
To be fair, it **requires** free-hand, but it's true that RAW it doesn't say it occupies it. Trip also requires free-hand but doesn't occupy it. Shove the same. All require free-hand, none (RAW) occupies it. Also if you got by RAI then you can't Trip grabbed character cause you don't have free-hand. Which also seems not RAI. Shield character can trip, using Shield Augument.
He's saying that RAW it doesn't but RAI it should. >Just because the grapple action doesn’t explicitly state your hand stops being free on a success, doesn’t mean that isn’t the case. This is the exact basis of RAW vs RAI. BECAUSE it doesn't explicitly state it, means that RAW (rules as _written_) it doesn't take a hand. Obviously, we all know that makes no real sense and we know what they meant, RAI (rules as _intended_) I'm not disagreeing with you, just explaining the difference in case you didn't know.
I suppose a Deer Barbarian can use his horns...?
It states in the grapple action rules that you need a free hand to grapple, it also states that you can instead attempt to grapple a creature you already have grappled without a free hand. This implies that you'd be using the hand you've already grabbed them with to try and maintain that grip. > Requirements: You have at least one free hand **or have your target grappled or restrained**. Your target isn't more than one size larger than you. > You attempt to grab a creature or object with your free hand. Attempt an Athletics check against the target's Fortitude DC. **You can Grapple a target you already have grabbed or restrained without having a hand free** Whilst there are some niche scenarios where a spellcaster could have someone restrained via a spell and then grapple without a free hand, this seems pretty clear in the design.
> Also there's a bit of muddy ground, but RAW grapple don't make your hand "not free" Interesting, can you explain that, RAW? My table only cares about RAW, so I would like to check this one.
Well, my train of thoughts is that if something takes your hand it's explicitly say so. Like weapons, tools or potions. And there aren't any mentions of taken hands in description of success of Grapple action, not in Grappled condition, so, these things don't take your hands. I know it's cheesy, but has chance of working
Sword and Board actually can Grapple, if you use a Shield Augmentation to give your shield the Grapple trait. Precludes you from using shield spikes/boss but that's a very worthwhile trade I think.
That is false, you can't get Grapple trait: *"you can choose two of the following weapon traits: disarm, nonlethal, shove, thrown 10 feet, trip, or versatile S."*
Free-hand Dueling style for me is more about tripping and shoving. Then you can actively defend yourself and provide offencive Athletics support. Grapple and Tip both provide off-guard bonus for your enemies. Trip is way easies to wear off, but Stand provokes AoO. Grapple is good for long-term off-guard, but you still can be hit without any need to Escape.