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A friend of mine was reading this thread and got it into his head to create a fighter that could hurl an arbitrarily large amount of shields in one turn.
What bothers me about that thread is that assuming everything is true and you indeed can throw your shield as a free action and you can carry an arbitrarily large amount of shields somehow, what is your attack bonus?
I know there is a FAQ that limits free actions a turn to "reasonable" numbers. 5 seems to be reasonable. But for now let's eschew that and assume reasonable is an arbitrarily large number say one million. I know it's not reasonable, but it serves my purposes for what I will say next.
You see, the way I read it is that the shield simply allows itself to be thrown as a free action as opposed to a standard action for a one-handed weapon or a full round action like a two-handed weapon. But you still have to have an attack available to do that.
For example, I have a fighter with Quick Draw and a BAB of +6 so normally he gets two attacks, one at +6 and one at +1 (not including strength or dex bonuses). He could hit someone with his sword with his +6 attack and then Captain America his shield with his +1 attack. But he could not then quick draw his backup shield and get a free attack.
Am I interpreting the combat rules correctly? Or am I missing something and you can in fact make unlimited free action attacks by RAW? If so, are they all at your highest base attack bonus? How does it work? And where are the rules supporting this?
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Yes and I'm trying to provide him with an explanation that is not just "because I am the GM and I said so." Likewise, if my reasoning is not sound, I'd like to know that as well.
Well, there is Rule Zero, and it is noted under the description of free actions "Free actions don't take any time at all, though there may be limits to the number of free actions you can perform in a turn.".
So, you are the one that has to set that limit.
It's all supported by RAW.
You can never make more attacks than your BaB and Feats (Rapid Shot, Two-Weapon Fighting) allow.
You can chuck two shields, or smack someone with a sword and shield bash, or kick someone in teh face and slash with a sword, etc. but you can't just say "I'm gonna throw 5 shields, swing my sword, and then punch, punch, kick, and kick".