Continued over from a side conversation in this thread:
Do you think that a character can use fire an arrow from a short bow with a standard shield in their other hand, using the feat Nimble Shield Hand?
Relavent rules text:
Some weapons require one hand to wield, and others require two. A few items, such as a longbow, list 1+ for its Hands entry. You can hold a weapon with a 1+ entry in one hand, but the process of shooting it requires using a second to retrieve, nock, and loose an arrow. This means you can do things with your free hand while holding the bow without changing your grip, but the other hand must be free when you shoot. To properly wield a 1+ weapon, you must hold it in one hand and also have a hand free.
Weapons requiring two hands typically deal more damage. Some one-handed weapons have the two-hand trait, causing them to deal a different size of weapon damage die when used in two hands. In addition, some abilities require you to wield a weapon in two hands. You meet this requirement while holding the weapon in two hands, even if it doesn’t require two hands or have the two-hand trait.
You are so used to wielding a shield that you can do so even while using the hand that's holding it for other purposes. The hand you use to wield a shield counts as a free hand for the purposes of the Interact action. You can also hold another object in this hand (but you still can't use it to wield a weapon). This benefit doesn't apply to tower shields, which are still too cumbersome.
My reading of these texts is that you would only be able to use the free hand from nimble shield hand to perform an interaction action or hold an item, not use that free hand as part of a strike, which is what is required by a 1+ handed weapon.
Some people argue that the archer is only using the free hand to reload the shortbow with with a reload of 0 so I will include the reload text as well:
While all weapons need some amount of time to get into position, many ranged weapons also need to be loaded and reloaded. This entry indicates how many Interact actions it takes to reload such weapons. This can be 0 if drawing ammunition and firing the weapon are part of the same action. If an item takes 2 or more actions to reload, the GM determines whether they must be performed together as an activity, or you can spend some of those actions during one turn and the rest during your next turn.
An item with an entry of “—” must be drawn to be thrown, which usually takes an Interact action just like drawing any other weapon. Reloading a ranged weapon and drawing a thrown weapon both require a free hand. Switching your grip to free a hand and then to place your hands in the grip necessary to wield the weapon are both included in the actions you spend to reload a weapon.
What do you think? At the very least, this conversation seems like a separate rules question than a general discussion about what might happen with the repeating trait.
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I asked the same basic question about using Battle Medicine with Nimble Shield Hand, and the consensus was that the hand is only free for the activities covered in the feat's description.
I, personally, think that's too narrow of an approach, but concede that the feat would need Errata to function as a true "free hand".
You can use the shield hand as a free hand for interact, so that's good enough for me for allowing bow usage. You can already use a buckler and bow. Spending a feat on a dedication to upgrade that to a shield doesn't seem game breaking to me.
I think the confusion comes from people reading the reload section and thinking that the act of drawing an arrow (the interact part of strike action) is the only thing you are using that free hand for. But when you are firing a bow, you are definitely using both hands to make the attack action as well.
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Agree with Unicore and Themetricsystem on this one. Reloading the bow is part of the attack action, but you're still making an attack action.
The rules for 1+ handed weapons say you need a free hand full stop to wield them properly. Nimble Shield Hand doesn't give you a free hand, it just allows you to treat that hand as free for specific actions. By holding the shield you're no longer eligible to make attacks with the shortbow.
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Nimble Shield Hand explicitly says you can't use it to wield a weapon. A bow is effectively treated as a 2-hand weapon while firing it. Thus, you cannot use it to wield a bow.
If you only needed to Interact to draw the arrow and reload the bow before firing, then yes, but you need that second hand as part of the Strike with a bow. Nimble Shield Hand would let you use a hand crossbow (and reload it) with a shield, but a bow is out of the question.
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A hand crossbow would be fine though, yes? Since you wield the hand crossbow in one hand and only need a second hand for the interact action to reload it.
