Actually, the shields do have listings in the weapons. They refer you to the armor section. Seems fine to me, because as weapons there's nothing special, it's only when also using one for armor that you have to consider anything unique about them.
So it's listed under both. It even has values in the tables for both. So your point really doesn't go anywhere. It's still covered by the weapons rules as a general rule, and the specific rules for how to handle them as off-hand weapons with regard to how they interact when using their AC bonus. The specific adds to the general...it doesn't replace it unless it says so, which means they can still be used to make main-hand attacks as well.
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Well color me ashamed, there they are, but instead of being just another weapon for any attack, they are mentioned to be able to make a bash attack and to see a particular page for the information on that attack. Which leads to it being called out as an off hand as per the description of shield bash. Any other weapon doesn't have such a restriction (at least as far as skimming them right now). Again, the shield bash is a "special case" and has more restrictive wording via the description of the action (which is even pointed to by the text of the weapon listing).
| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
I now feel obligated to resurrect this old thread with new information, both for the sake of smugly gloating as well as for marking this thread for the FAQ:
James Jacobs has kindly clarified what "off-hand" means in this thread.
I quote:
The ONLY time an attack is considered an off-hand attack is when you make an attack with a second weapon in the same round you make an attack with a first weapon.
If you have a longsword in your right hand and a shield in your left, and you only attack with a shield bash in a round, that shield bash is NOT considered an off-hand or secondary attack for that round.
So, right hand, left hand, one hand, two hand (hmmm, I sound like Dr. Seuss there), as long as you only attack with that hand, then shield bashing is a PRIMARY attack and not an off-hand attack.
Problem solved.
Sense 1, nonsense 0 (this is a reference to an earlier post in this thread).