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Ah, I see, because RAI they're assuming your arm with the buckler also holding the off-hand weapon - otherwise the entire thing falls apart, IMO.
Exactly!
The normal situation for shields is that if you attack with the shield arm then you lose that shield's AC bonus for that round.
It's the same with the buckler, but written with the assumption that it's strapped to your non-dominant hand (which was a thing in 3.0 when the description was written).
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Is this just not a similar confusion, due to assumptions, like the shield bash, as noted in this FAQ?
I don't understand what you are asking here.
Let's say right hand is primary and is wielding a longsword. left hand is off-hand/non-dominant and is wielding a short sword. If you attack with both right and left hands you lose the buckler AC bonus regardless of which arm it is on.
Please explain what I am missing here since I have seen BBT on the boards enough to know you aren't a newbie.
Say you use a L.S. in your main hand and you have a buckler in your off. You also wield a boot blade/armor spikes/other non hand based offhand. Does taking an attack with those make you lose the buckler bonus?
Or at least I think that's the question.
I don't understand what you are asking here.
Let's say right hand is primary and is wielding a longsword. left hand is off-hand/non-dominant and is wielding a short sword. If you attack with both right and left hands you lose the buckler AC bonus regardless of which arm it is on.
Please explain what I am missing here since I have seen BBT on the boards enough to know you aren't a newbie.
He's not asking because he doesn't know how it should work, he's asking because the rules are ambiguously written and he wants an FAQ request to make them airtight.
I wonder if they knew what they were in for when they opened that whole can of worms with the armors spikes thing... And of course I FAQ'd.
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As the devs have pointed out, the rules are written to be read by real people; they are not worded like a computer program.
They also are written with several assumptions: that you have two hands, that you hold weapons in your hand(s), that if you TWF you use one weapon in each hand and they are either light or one-handed, that you strap shields (including bucklers) to your non-dominant (i.e. the fluff 'off hand') hand.
But none of these are actually rules!
You can have more than two hands. (alchemist, non-standard races)
Weapons aren't always held in your hand; they can be worn (gauntlets). Some don't require a hand at all (armour spikes, boot blade, boulder helmet, UAS)
In TWF, you can use a weapon which doesn't require a hand, and there is no rule which actually says that you can't use a 2HW in TWF. There are the rules which say that the weapons that require hands to be used may make some combinations logistically impossible, but not against the rules. If you can get the correct number of hands where you need them for each attack, that's all the actual rules require.
As made clear in the FAQ BBT linked, although the assumption is that your shield bash will be your designated off hand attack, this is not a rule.
The description of the buckler is written with the assumption that it is strapped to your non-dominant hand, and the rules modifiers are worded with that assumption. But, just like any shield, if you use the arm to which it is strapped to make an attack then you lose its AC bonus, and if you don't, you keep the AC bonus.
Sometimes, you have to use your thinky bits.
I would think that it would be interpreted to mean that if you cannot wield both a weapon and a buckler with the same arm, no matter what arm that may be. Keep in mind the definition of ‘wield’.