A bit hard to understand what I am trying to get at with the thread title so let me explain. I want to suggest an alteration to the primary and secondary weapon slots where you can have the same shield on both slots or the same weapon if desired. Sort of how the light source slot works. The reason being is cause while using a cleric PC I did find it annoying I couldn't set up a slot specifically for spellcasting but with a shield still equipped. I could do it with a weapon (kind of) by removing the torch/candle in the light source slot and just having the weapon equipped or using a ranged weapon in one slot but plenty of times I would prefer keeping the shield out for the AC bonus and the only way I can do that is manually equipping the weapon from the inventory screen and re-equipping later when I want it back.
It isn't just spell casting either. There was a point where I wanted my fighter to have both their starting axe for slashing damage but also wanted to equip a warhammer as a secondary to deal with skeletons. But cause I could only have the one shield they had in one slot I would need another shield should I want to keep the shield AC bonus.
I would think it would be possible to clone the primary slot in a way that you can do such things. I mean you do it with the light source slot.
An alternate implementation would be to allow the same weapon/shield to be equipped in both weapon slots.
This differs from the light source slot in that you leave the light source off-hand empty (correct?), whereas in this implementation your shield would show up in both slots.
It's astounding we even have to ask for this...
I want my fighter to have main weapon + shield in primary configuration, and secondary weapon + shield in secondary configuration. Right now this requires that I have TWO shields, which is the dumbest thing ever.
This really needs to get fixed.
I just started playing and I found this thread and I'm astounded that this still hasnt been fixed..
Is this at least in the roadmap?
It's clumsy, but you can get around this by just going into inventory and swapping out the weapon there in order to use a single shield with multiple weapons.
Yeah, but that’s really clumsy. And kinda frustrating since the torch slot shows it could be a thing, but with a more useful item than a torch. Right now, the torch slot is almost 100% useless, because mostly you’ll be bringing darkvision races and mostly you’ll use firebolt/sparkle to light sconces. I would *love* to be able to put my best shield in the torch slot and use that to seamless weapon swap. Or something.
Ok its a bit wierd, but what is the problem in carrying 2 shields, they are not that heavy, or? Far more annoying is that you have to switch the slot in order to cast, I know it's strikt to the rules but really who plays like this on a table? Even BG3 allows the cleric to cast without switching slots.
PS: A far more realistic approach would be that you can cast with weapon and shield but that you can't make an opportunity attack in this round with your weapon. Because I can sheathe my weapon, cast and draw it again next round with my free item interaction.
The problem with “just carry 2 shields” is that you’d have to have 2 copies of your best shield per character that wants to use a shield in order to have the full benefits of said shield. If could just put your shield in the useless torch slot it’d be better than today.
It's been a almost a year since release and it looks like this is still a problem? How is that possible? It's such a great game but this makes playing it very painful, early on.
Tabletop players tend to simplify or even ignore some of those technical issues with free hand to cast versus weapons/shield.
I tried micro-managing a Druid with a shield, it was doable, but I of course lost patience after 30 hours and turned off Somatic in settings.
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