Drawing a weapon as part of a move


Rules Questions


The core rule book reads "if you have a base attack bonus of +1 or higher, you may draw a weapon
as a free action combined with a regular move' {p.187}. What is meant by regular move? One of the players in my campaign believes that he can draw a weapon as part of a full attack action as a free action. I believe that move means movement as in walking, running, flying, or charging, and the only way to draw a weapon and get more than one attack is with the quick draw feat.
Also, can a character normally draw a weapon as a free action and as part of a regular move while swimming or climbing? Finally, is a 5-foot step and actions that are considered a 5-foot
step {such as step up p.135 core} considered a regular move for purposes of drawing a weapon as
a free action?


In the combat chapter of the CRB there are tables of common actions organized by type. On the list of "Move Actions" (move as in the action type, not movement) there is an action called "move." This is a regular move.


Quick Draw wrote:
Normal: Without this feat, you may draw a weapon as a move action, or (if your base attack bonus is +1 or higher) as a free action as part of movement. Without this feat, you can draw a hidden weapon as a standard action.

From the looks of it, it doesn't have to be the "move" action; it just has to be movement, which includes things like 5-foot step, withdraw, run, crawl, charge, and so on. The method of movement doesn't matter either--you can be moving on land, flying, swimming, or climbing--so long as you have a hand available to draw the weapon, anyway.

I'm not certain a 5-foot step was intended to count for this purpose, though. I am pretty confident that the rest were intended to apply.


The charge rules contain the following:

If you move a distance equal to your speed or less, you can also draw a weapon during a charge attack if your base attack bonus is at least +1.

Which is one of the bits that leads me to think the free draw with a move is the specific move action.

Dark Archive

A "regular move" seems like pretty unambiguous wording and that it's pretty clearly supposed to be a move action spend to move your character. Pathfinder doesn't actually have a word for that so "regular move" is the closest we'll get.
(Honestly, it should be called the Move Action, and what we currently call a move action should be called something like a Minor Action, but that's a different discussion)

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