Doed crane wings need a fre hand or a free "hand"?

[Nicos]

I know, I know I should feel bad for this, but this actually important for a build.

Can I TWF with a light shield in one hand and armor spikes and at the same time benefits from crane wings?

[Kolyarut]

Bump. I was just about to ask if you can make use of Martial Arts Style feats if you aren't using unarmed combat. Some of them specifically say you need to use Unarmed Strike/have a free hand, but for those that don't, can I use the style in full armor and with a sword and shield?

[MrSin]

There's a joke here about knowing the back of your own hand, but I just can't find it.

[David_Bross]

Absolutely you could use crane wing. You attack with your shield in your main hand (1 handed attack) then your armor spikes make an off hand attack. You've used both hands, but as a free action you stop "wielding" the armor spikes in your off hand at the end of your turn. You end your turn with a free "hand" and hand.

[Driver 325 yards]

The answer is obvious. You need a free hand

[Taenia]

Are you holding your armor in your other hand and hitting people with it? If not you have a free hand.

I of course think this would be an awesome way to wield armor spikes.

[ShadowcatX]

RAW it feels like it should work. I personally find it distasteful (as I do most uses of armor spikes) but c'est la vie.

[Nicos]

The real question is, does Crane wings needs a free hand or a free off-hand? The first is fine with TWF with shield and armor spikes, the later do not.

[Driver 325 yards]

I think you need to change your question. There are three possibilities.

1)Having a free off-hand is needed (that does not necessarily have to be a hand).

2)Having a free literal hand is needed.

3)Having a free literal hand and a free off-hand is needed.

Is there a ruling out there that makes you think that the answer is not #2? Is it the logic used in the two-handed weapon/two-weapon fighting ruling (i.e. the effort logic)?

[MrSin]

Driver 325 yards wrote:

Is there a ruling out there that makes you think that the answer is not #2? Is it the logic used in the two-handed weapon/two-weapon fighting ruling (i.e. the effort logic)?

As I understood it you could use a one handed weapon, use it in two hands for a full attack, then take one hand off and still threaten with a one handed weapon and have a hand free for crane wing. To be perfectly honest though I think the effort thing is silly and confuses things more than clarifies.

[Kazaan]

There's some precedent to be had with the Blade of the Sword Saint. A Monk wielding the weapon is counted as unarmed even if wielding the weapon with both hands which allows him to use feats and abilities that require "a free hand". It gives examples of Deflect Arrows and Snatch Arrows, and that would extend to Crane Wing. So, to the matter at hand; does it require a physical hand, or an available off-hand, or both?

1) It requires an available off-hand: If this were the case, then even if you had a longsword in one hand and a shield in the other, and only fought with the sword, you'd still have an unused off-hand attack; but it's generally accepted that you can't count a hand occupied with carrying a shield as "free". Moreover, lacking a restriction of having an actual hand available, it gives the impression that you could deflect with your foot, head, or even just a dagger carried in the other hand, but not used for an actual attack. Furthermore, your extra attack from FoB "counts as" an off-hand attack even though it has its own exceptional rules; you can't stack it with normal off-hand attacks via the TWF feat chain. So one can extrapolate that this is incorrect, though it isn't explicitly stated. By extension, this also cuts out possibility 3, that you need both an off-hand and an available grasping hand.

2) It requires an available hand: Wielding the BotSS counts as being unarmed which, on the face of it, definitely allows one to wield the Katana in one hand (with EWP, of course), and any other valid weapon in the other hand (ie. a dagger, longsword, etc). and the Katana wielding hand counts as "free" in the case of abilities that require a free hand (ie. Crane Wing, Deflect Arrows). The explicit limitation is that it doesn't allow you to use that free hand for "holding" so you can't catch and "hold" a ranged weapon via Snatch Arrows, but you can simulate "catch and return" by *ping*ing it off your weapon. The more succinct question here is whether wielding the Katana two-handed still counts as doing so subsumes your potential off-hand attack. So this one is plausible.

Between the 3 possibilities, option 2, that it requires an actual "hand" hand is the most plausible. If it required an off-hand, either alone or in conjunction with an actual "hand", that would mean that you can't utilize the ability when you TWF or FoB with unarmed strikes because you subsume your off-hand attack in both cases.

[ShadowcatX]

Nicos wrote:

The real question is, does Crane wings needs a free hand or a free off-hand? The first is fine with TWF with shield and armor spikes, the later do not.

The only time an "off hand" exists is during TWF. You cannot TWF when it is not your turn, so this idea isn't supported at all in the RAW.

[Devilkiller]

A build I've had in mind for a while is a Monk/Magus who fights with a one-handed weapon and uses Crane Wing for defense. I wonder if the same hand can count as "free" for both spell combat and Crane Wing during the same round. Barring an official ruling to the contrary I think that the answer should be yes.

I don't think that casting a spell with your hand or even making an attack with it prevents it from being "free" for the purposes of Crane Wing or Deflect Arrows any more than it prevents it from being free for the purpose of picking up an object or drawing a weapon later in the round (though at that point it would stop being free)

[Artanthos]

If your going monk/magus be aware, you cannot combine fighting defensively with spell combat.

Fighting defensively requires attacking with either a standard action or a full-attack action. Spell Combat is neither.

[blackbloodtroll]

Oh, where is Crash to shove metaphorical hands, and wielding points, and off-hands into everything, even spellcasting, item creation, and poison?

[Devilkiller]

Artanthos - You sank my Battleship! I'm glad I became aware of that before starting to play a PC only to find out that it won't work.