It always comes up with fighters who are switching between sword/ shield or duel wield to bow.
One example is the fighter has his bow out. He used his action and bonus action to attack an ogre but did not kill it. On the ogre’s turn, it moved into melee to attack the fighter. The fighter has a higher AC when he has his sword and shield out and want to know if he can switch from long bow to sword and shield as a bonus or reaction. In this case I said no. Your turn is over and all your actions have been used.
Another example was again with a fighter who wanted to put his duel wield weapons away, pull out his bow, then move his 30 feet and shoot the bow at a goblin running away. This I thought was totally fine.
But this general scenario seems to come up a lot with characters switching between ranged and melee. I have been DM for lots of games in lots of different systems and I am confused by how D&D handles it.
KaliRA73 wrote:
My Paladin does a lot of changing between Rapier and Whip. I drop the one I'm holding in my square and wield the other. At the end of the fight, I have to go get my stuff before we leave. So far my DM has not had a problem with it.
I haven't had to change between bow and rapier due to Team Monster getting in my face (yet - I hope my DM doesn't read this). As pointed out above but I've been neglecting 
, my AC should go down while I have the bow out and I can't prep-up Smite Spells; I mounted my spell focus on my shield.
edit: I should learn to type and to proofread before I hit 'Submit'...
KaliRA73 wrote:
Yes, I rule each unequip/equip to be one trivial action. You can do one trivial action per turn. If you want to do a second, you need to use your action slot for that.
Example:
Fighter With Bow Equipped
Turn 1:
- Attack with bow (action)
- Unequip bow (trivial action)
Turn 2:
- Equip shortsword (trivial action)
- Attack with shortsword (action)
Turn 3:
- Attack with shortsword (action)
- Equip shield (trivial action)
Turn 4:
- Unequip shortsword (trivial action)
- Unequip shield (action)
Turn 5:
- Equip bow (trivial action)
- Attack with bow (action)
Turn 6:
- Unequip bow (trivial action)
- Equip shield (action)
Basically the smartest practice is to unequip your bow at the end of the turn if there is a risk that something attacks you in melee until your next turn. In that case you are able to melee attack, right on your next turn (see Turn 1-2). Otherwise you will waste a whole turn just swapping equip. If you are using a one-handed weapon and a shield, then swapping weapons takes quite a bit, so for ranged/melee hybrid fighters, it's much better to use a two-handed weapon instead (I think that's why the starter set fighters also use two-handed weapons). Unequipping both your weapon and your shield takes a whole turn (see Turn 4). And you can't equip the shield right away after swapping from bow, but you can add the shield on your next turn (see Turn 3). Generally not having anything equipping at the start of your turn gives you the most options (see Turn 5). If you just have equipping a weapon and attacked on a turn, you can however not end that turn unequipped (see Turn 5-6). In that case, when you have to waste a turn to swap equip, it's usually better to equip the shield first for defensive advantage (see Turn 6) or just not equip anything for now, to react on the events (if you have a shield equipped you can't quickly switch to a two-handed bow).
Rya.Reisender wrote:
Yikes, totally forgot about that. Should watch over that in my own games too.
Then there's even more reason to use two-handed weapons if you want to switch between bow and melee.
Rya.Reisender wrote:
Versatile weapons don't really help much since you still need your action to equip and unequip the shield and consequently can't attack on that turn.
Rya.Reisender wrote: