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You are accustomed to fighting with your shield.

Prerequisite(s): Shield Focus, base attack bonus +6 or fighter level 4th, proficiency with bucklers.

Benefit(s): You still gain a buckler’s bonus to AC even if you use your shield hand for some other purpose. When you wield a buckler, your shield hand is considered free for the purposes of casting spells, wielding weapons, and using any other abilities that require you to have a free hand or interact with your shield, such as the swashbuckler’s precise strike deed or the Weapon Finesse feat.

Special: A monk with this feat is not considered to be using a shield for the purposes of his AC bonus, fast movement, or flurry of blows.

Hello all, I came aross this feat in the Armor Master’s Handbook yesterday, and its wording seems extremely confusing. The first part,"You still gain a buckler’s bonus to AC even if you use your shield hand for some other purpose.", is fine, but what does the rest mean?

Say you have a buckler, strapped onto your left arm, you can nevertheless use your left hand to cast a spell, wield weapons, or "use any other abilities that require you to have a free hand" even without this feat. You only lose the shield AC if you use a weapon wielded by that hand. If you are a swashbuckler, you can use the precise strike deed regardless of whether you have this feat or not.

Does this feat mean that your shield hand is considered free even if it's otherwise occupied? For example, can I take the unhindering shield feat, and start TWF with precise strikes, spell combat with slashing grace, or cast a spell with somatic components even if both of my hands are occupied?(Since, after all, one of my hand has a buckler and is considered "free"?)

If not, what is this feat's intended usage? It seems that half of what this feat does is already a given. If possible, I would like to hear both RAW and RAI intepretations.

hello all,

as the title says, I'm currently playing a lvl1 melee-oriented wyrm singer skald with the community-minded trait. In the next session or so we are expecting to level up, and I just wanna ask whether it's worth it to delay my skald class progression by 1 level for bloodrage.

Right now I'm looking at the id rager archetype, specifically the anger focus. It nets me power attack and intimidate focus (compliments cornugon smash quite well). With draconic rage, bloodrage, and Atavistic Avatar all active, I get a +2/+2 morale on atk roll/dmg, +4 morale on strength, and +2 untyped str from strength focus.

If I calculated this correctly, then it's a total of +5/+5 on ab and damage. However, my ac also gets a -4 penalty... Is this a good trade(also considering that I'm one level late at getting rage powers for teammates)? If it is, how do I build up my ac with minimal investment to mitigate the loss? (I'm using a greataxe and wearing chainmail)