Question about Manacles (Minor Spoiler)


Age of Ashes


In one of the books a hostile has an NPC that uses manacles in combat. I am trying to understand why. From what I can tell the manacles only make a dc 5 flat check on a manipulate action (if on hands) and reduce speed to 15 (if on legs). As far as I can tell the best usage is to shackles the PC's legs. As otherwise the manacles won't effect combat (RAW). I am going to home brew it to say you can't use both hands unless you are doing a 2 handed weapon? I am really not sure. I suppose I could do a constant grab effect?


The thing you're missing about shackling hands is that every single time a spellcaster PC tries to cast a spell, they are doing a manipulate action (unless the spell lacks somatic components, which is very rare). So a 25% chance of losing a spell slot and accomplishing nothing. Add to it the fact that picking a lock during combat would be highly cumbersome (someone has to spend an action grabbing their thieves' tools, then two actions to Pick a Lock, with the more complex locks requiring multiple successes). It's not bad at all.

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