Allowing weapon sheathing as a free action ??

[martixy]

Recently my attention was drawn by a player to this particular bit of unaddressed-by-RAW minutia. Thinking of how to address it, I figure I might as well take the chance to make the Sleight of Hand skill a bit more useful in the process, by allowing its use to cover the sheathing of a weapon as a free action.

However I'm not entirely sure of the implications of such a change, and I might be missing some detail. I don't want to break things that don't need to be broken.

The most obvious consideration is of course, Iaijutsu focus. But given the existence of the gnomish quickrazor and the requirement for flat-footed-ness, I don't see it as particularly worsening the situation. (Now, let the game of tracking how many people read the actual post, and not just the title begin.)

Any other potential abuse I'm missing?

Lastly, the boring details: I was thinking of DC 20 for light weapons, DC 25 for 1H and DC30 for 2H. Harder, easier?
Quick reference: By L5, a Dex-based char could trivially have a +15 bonus, making for an 80% success rate with his most likely choice of weaponry and a Str-based is not far behind with some investment.

[Coidzor]

Iajutsu Focus and flat-footed exploits are the main thing to worry about.

But it's fairly simple to houserule to, say, oh, only one Iajutsu or counting a foe as flat-footed when drawing a sheathed weapon a round or in an encounter or per each foe in an encounter or something like that.


Lastly, the boring details: I was thinking of DC 20 for light weapons, DC 25 for 1H and DC30 for 2H. Harder, easier?
Quick reference: By L5, a Dex-based char could trivially have a +15 bonus, making for an 80% success rate with his most likely choice of weaponry and a Str-based is not far behind with some investment.

Seems in line with what the capabilities of L5-6 characters are capable of.

[Thurbane]

Seems like a fair and reasonable house rule to me.

[Necroticplague]

I find people usually don't sheathe their weapons when action costs matter enough for this to matter much. In a PF game, this might be handy to a pisto-dual-wielding gunslinger or a trench fighter in a 3.p game, but that's almost only marginally less narrow than your listed use. There's Mithral Current users as well, but they can already get stances that let them do this without a check.

[Deophaun]

Here's a simple one: darkness on a weapon.

PC turn: attack, draw darkness weapon.
Monster turn: attack with 20% miss chance.
PC turn: sheath weapon, attack, draw darkness weapon.
Repeat

You can do the same with silence.

That said, quickrazors already exist, so this is doable right now (and, in fact, is why quickrazors are standard equipment for my characters).

[OldTrees1]

Here's a simple one: darkness on a weapon.

PC turn: attack, draw darkness weapon.
Monster turn: attack with 20% miss chance.
PC turn: sheath weapon, attack, draw darkness weapon.
Repeat

You can do the same with silence.

That said, quickrazors already exist, so this is doable right now (and, in fact, is why quickrazors are standard equipment for my characters).

Quickrazors are an unbroken "draw -> attack -> sheath" chain so they would not work for the darkness or silence weapon tricks. However they would work for the other weapon.

@martixy
I think the emanation effects Deophaun mentioned are the largest impact of that rule change. They would widen the gap between martials & gishes but narrow the gap between gishes & casters. All in all it depends on your group.

[Darrin]

I'm not sure if this really addresses the OP, but if you dig into the RAW on the Sleight of Hand rules...

You can hide a weapon on your body as a standard action. However, you can do this as a free action by taking a -20 on the roll. The check is opposed by a Spot check. But there's a weird quirk here... if you're spotted hiding the weapon... it's still a free action, regardless of whether the check succeeds or not: "The observer's success doesn’t prevent you from performing the action, just from doing it unnoticed." So by the existing rules, you can already hide a weapon as a free action without introducing any house rules.

Now, hiding is not exactly the same as sheathing a weapon, although there aren't really a lot of explicit rules on sheathing. The biggest difference between a hidden weapon and a sheathed weapon is it's generally more difficult to draw a hidden weapon. If you don't have Quick Draw, drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action. With Quick Draw, it's a move action. However, the same Sleight of Hand trick works here as well... you don't care if you're spotted or not, you just want to put the object in your hand. There's two ways you can do this... either just make a Sleight of Hand check with a -20 penalty against an observer's Spot check, or you can use the "enterain" option to "lift a small object from a person". A person includes yourself, and a "small object" can be any one-handed weapon or smaller (PHB p. 113 covers how weapons are sized). The DC for the latter is 20, and making it a free action bumps this up to DC 40, but again, you don't care if you're observed or not so long as the action is still a free action.

[Doctor Despair]

Stuff

The commoner rail gun just got that much faster. They were using move actions before, right? And aren't free actions qualitatively faster? Oh wait -- important distinction -- is SoH something that can be used untrained? Might be a limiting factor.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I allow anyone with Quickdraw to also free action sheathe any weapon he has Weapon Focus with. I should go back to thinking up more such rules, I called them "feat synergy" bonuses.

EDIT: Noting that a least weapon crystal of return can give you Quickdraw w/ that weapon, so it's not that hard to get.

[Deophaun]

Quickrazors are an unbroken "draw -> attack -> sheath" chain so they would not work for the darkness or silence weapon tricks.
Nah shoots...

The DC for the latter is 20, and making it a free action bumps this up to DC 40, but again, you don't care if you're observed or not so long as the action is still a free action.
But you still have to hit the effective DC 40. There's two things being checked with a single roll: do you grab the item (DC 20) and are you spotted (Opposed). You don't care about your spot check, but you certainly care about grabbing the item. So you need to be able to hit that DC 40 (or DC 30, if you have Master Pickpocket... which has the added benefit of allowing you to literally steal the pants off of enemies).

[martixy]

I'm not sure if this really addresses the OP, but if you dig into the RAW on the Sleight of Hand rules...

You can hide a weapon on your body as a standard action. However, you can do this as a free action by taking a -20 on the roll. The check is opposed by a Spot check. But there's a weird quirk here... if you're spotted hiding the weapon... it's still a free action, regardless of whether the check succeeds or not: "The observer's success doesn’t prevent you from performing the action, just from doing it unnoticed." So by the existing rules, you can already hide a weapon as a free action without introducing any house rules.

Now, hiding is not exactly the same as sheathing a weapon, although there aren't really a lot of explicit rules on sheathing. The biggest difference between a hidden weapon and a sheathed weapon is it's generally more difficult to draw a hidden weapon. If you don't have Quick Draw, drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action. With Quick Draw, it's a move action. However, the same Sleight of Hand trick works here as well... you don't care if you're spotted or not, you just want to put the object in your hand. There's two ways you can do this... either just make a Sleight of Hand check with a -20 penalty against an observer's Spot check, or you can use the "enterain" option to "lift a small object from a person". A person includes yourself, and a "small object" can be any one-handed weapon or smaller (PHB p. 113 covers how weapons are sized). The DC for the latter is 20, and making it a free action bumps this up to DC 40, but again, you don't care if you're observed or not so long as the action is still a free action.

Oh, that is an interesting observation. And the penalties can be reduced, should the success of the check be required to complete the action(Master Pickpocket from City of Stormreach).
Though I'd rather handle it explicitly than rely on wonky RAW.
Speaking of explicit, PF does so. There's a couple of relevant bits I've been able to discover. First, it explicitly has a Quick Sheathe feat; Second, the Stamina and Combat tricks system from PF Unchained allows swift-action sheathing with as Quick Draw's combat trick.

If you introduce an explicit houserule and port over the PF feat, it allows both feat-starved skill-monkeys and feat-heavy, unskilled fighters to acquire the capability. This makes it accessible to a fairly wide range of builds.

Good analysis from OldTrees too. I think in my case at least, the shift in power is perfectly fine, as the rule would be used in an otherwise high-power game, where every martial is more or less a gish, the plethora of other buffs to plain martials notwithstanding.

Edit: Dang, ninja'd on Master Pickpocket.

[Darrin]

Nah shoots...

But you still have to hit the effective DC 40. There's two things being checked with a single roll: do you grab the item (DC 20) and are you spotted (Opposed). You don't care about your spot check, but you certainly care about grabbing the item. So you need to be able to hit that DC 40 (or DC 30, if you have Master Pickpocket... which has the added benefit of allowing you to literally steal the pants off of enemies).

That's only for stealing from another creature. Lifting an object from yourself doesn't change the owner. And the DC 20 to lift an object from a person is a separate kind of check... and here's the really stupid part. It's really a Perform check, so failure means... you don't get any money for the performance.

In short... the Sleight of Hand rules are an incoherent mess.

[Deophaun]

And the DC 20 to lift an object from a person is a separate kind of check.
No, no it's not. You're confused by the fact that the table comes after the paragraph about performing for an audience, but it's just the table for set DCs for the SoH skill in general. The Rules Compendium has better formatting, but that's all it is: formatting.

and here's the really stupid part. It's really a Perform check, so failure means... you don't get any money for the performance.
That check is just a straight d20 using the table under the Perform skill to determine what you've earned. Also, you've spent 8 hours juggling while combat was going on.