Hi Everyone,
I'm playing Pathfinder 2 from a few months now and, session after session, some questions are rising.
Some of this are about shields.
Quoting from the core rulebook
A shield can increase your character’s defense beyond the protection their armor provides. Your character must be wielding a shield in one hand to make use of it, and it grants its bonus to AC only if they use an action to Raise a Shield.
and
Raise a Shield is the action most commonly used with shields. Most shields must be held in one hand, so you can’t hold anything with that hand and Raise a Shield. A buckler, however, doesn’t take up your hand, so you can Raise a Shield with a buckler if the hand is free (or, at the GM’s discretion, if it’s holding a simple, lightweight object that’s not a weapon). You lose the benefits of Raise a Shield if that hand is no longer free.
If my character is wielding the shield but NOT using it (so he is not using the Raise Shield action) can he draw (and hold or use) a potion? A scroll? Can he use an interact action with that hand?
It seems to me that if you have a shield (unless it is a buckler) your hand is not free and, for example, a sword and shield warrior can't draw a potion to heal himself unless he sheats his weapon first. Am I right about this?
Thank you for your answers and I hope my question is clear.
Marco.
You are correct. If you are wielding an item, any item really that doesn't either have the Free-Hand weapon trait or is a buckler, you cannot draw or hold another item in that hand at the same time.
So if you have a Steel Shield in your off hand, that hand is dedicated to that Steel Shield even if you aren't currently raising said shield. After all, you are eligible to make a Shield Bash with the shield right?