Of bows and swords

[Kaeso]

I have a little question about the rules. As we all know, fighting with two weapons means you will incur some penalties, and you require the quickdraw feat (or +1 BAB and a move action) to draw your weapon as a move action. This made me wonder something. Imagine a bard and his party in the middle of an ambush. The bard, having a meagre d6 HD and a low BAB, decides to use his shortbow to defend himself, but a kobold attacks him with a melee weapon. If the bard uses his next move action to draw his rapier, can he use it to attack without dropping the bow in his off-hand? Technically he's wielding two weapons.

[Flying Elephant]

It doesn't matter what he is holding, if you only attack with one weapon you're wielding one weapon. It doesn't matter if you have a sword, torch, shield, bow, or stuffed animal in your other hand if you don't attack with it that turn.

[Diarmuid]

The elephant has the right of it. Think of the bow as a really crappy shield that provides no armor benefit =).

[Yuki Akuma]

Bards don't have low BaB...

[Mongoose87]

Nitpick: It doesn't require a move action to draw with Quickdraw. I believe it's a free action.

[AslanCross]

Even if you're wielding two weapons and only attack with one, you don't get the penalties for two-weapon fighting.

[ericgrau]

People got it right. Wielding and holding are too different things. You can hold a two handed anything in one hand even though you can't wield it that way. There is no penalty even if it happens to be a weapon that you might have the option to use, but aren't.

Your poor bard should be casting, btw, as there are many low level spells that are still useful and he has them. Or using a whip to trip/disarm since tripping doesn't require much BAB and disarming certain items is easy even if you suck at it. Or crafting with his full caster level. Or skillmonkeying with his 6+int skillpoints per level. Or using scrolls and wands of his many useful low level class spells, or even use magic device for the ones that aren't on his list. Medium BAB may not technically be poor, but you got the idea right. Unless you tack on some kind of bonus it's bad. If it were any worse you might not even bother carrying a weapon.

[John Campbell]

What the others said. My character does this all the time... I'm mainly a mounted archer, spend most of my time standing off on wolf-back machine-gunning things with my bow. Someone gets into melee range, or something looks like it really needs to be charged, I take a move action to draw my saber or lance and I'm ready to go. I even get my buckler AC automatically when I'm not using the bow without fiddling with that at all. Another move action to put the melee weapon away after I'm clear of targets (that one provokes if I'm not), or a free action to drop it if I'm really pressed for time, and I can go right back to shooting things.

(For extra fun, a mounted charge is the mount's full-round action, so I can draw lance or saber as a move action while my wolf charges, and then take my attack, with all charge benefits (Spirited Charge, go!), at the end.)

And, actually, it's more than even wielding two weapons that triggers the two-weapon fighting penalty... it only applies to full attacks where you take the extra attack(s) that wielding a second weapon allows. If you've got a melee weapon in each hand, and you take a standard action attack with one of them, no penalty. You take a full attack with one of them, no penalty. You take your regular iterative attacks using the two weapons alternately or in any other sequence, but don't take that extra attack, no penalty... though you'll take off-hand penalties on one of them (your choice as to which... 3.5 characters don't have a fixed off hand) if you don't have the TWF feat, and the reduced Str bonus on that one regardless. Take an AoO with either weapon, even in a round where where you made a full attack with bonus TWF attacks, no penalty (on the AoO... you do take it on the full attack, and off-hand penalties still apply as appropriate on the AoO).

(My last character was a TWFing Rogue/Ranger with a reach weapon, Combat Reflexes, and Improved Unarmed Strike. I spent a lot of time figuring out how all the various permutations worked. Just don't ask what the off-hand Str bonus is if you're two-weaponing a two-handed weapon and unarmed strike, and you designate the two-handed weapon as the off hand. I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.)