Diving into item swapping rules for 5e 2014 and 2024 and how you can take advantage of them.
Weapon and item swapping are a notoriously fiddly set of mechanics (which is why it’s often referred to as juggling). So much so that many tables simply gloss over, adapt or simply get these rules wrong. It’s sort of understandable that when trying to keep the game flowing nicely, that we don’t want to deal with little fiddly things like swapping items and weapons around. However, these mechanics are important for the balance of the game. You don’t want players swapping around shields for out of turn protection while dual wielding during their turn. This messes with the balance of the game and becomes too unrealistic.
At the same time, you do want players to have the flexibility to be able to swap weapons for tactical reasons or dual wield thrown weapons and be able to draw and throw these fluidly.
The 2014 and the 2024 versions of D&D handle this differently so in this article, I’ll tackle them separately too, explaining how these mechanics work, how you can use them and even some tips for optimising for them.
Benefits of item swapping
There are a bunch of benefits to swapping items including:
- Combining weapon attacks with spellcasting
- Mixing ranged and melee attacks
- Using different weapons for different enemies
- Using different weapon mastery properties (2024 only)
- Using magic items between other things like weapon attacks
- Being able to throw multiple different weapons
If you want to be using any of these tactics, then you’ll need to be thinking about item swapping.
Item juggling mechanics in D&D 5e 2014
Let’s start with how these mechanics work. Really were talking about drawing or stowing an item and there are 3 mechanics that affects this:
- Free action: As part of your movement or action, you can make a sort of free action which can include drawing or stowing a weapon or item.
- Action: If you want to interact with more than one object in a turn, then you can use an action to do so. This is the case if you sheathe a weapon and then want to draw another, you could use a free action for the first and an action for the second (though this isn’t great).
- Drop an item/weapon: Dropping an item takes no time so you can drop a weapon or item if you want your free action available to draw an item. This isn’t ideal if you want to use the item again later, but is friendlier on your action economy.
PHB 2014: p190
How this works in practice
Let’s say you are wielding a longbow and shooting an enemy in turn 1 but in turn 2, they’re now quite close to you and you want to draw your greatsword to fight in close combat, there are mechanically a few ways to do this:
- Stow your bow with a free action then draw your greatsword with an action so you’re ready to attack on turn 3.
- Stow your bow after your attack in turn 1 using a free action then on turn 2, draw your greatsword with your free action and attack with your action on turn 2. When using this approach, just beware that you won’t have a weapon in hand between turns 1 and 2 for opportunity attacks (obviously this doesn’t work with a longbow, but if you started with a melee weapon in hand, this might be a consideration).
- Drop your longbow in turn 2 which takes no time, then draw your greatsword with your free action and you’re able to attack in turn 2.
What you can’t do is use 2 free actions in turn 2 to draw with a free action then stow with another free action.
What about thrown weapons?
This becomes a little more complicated when you start dual wielding thrown items which is one of the other main use cases for item juggling. Let’s say you’re a level 5 barbarian with 2 attacks and a pair of handaxes as thrown weapons. This might look like the following:
- Turn 1 you have handaxes in your hands and you throw one with your attack action
- Then use a free action to draw another handaxe and throw it with the extra attack portion of your attack action
- Because you’re dual wielding, you use your bonus action to throw a handaxe with your offhand
- Now you have no handaxes in hand and no way to draw them until turn 2
- You can draw one weapon on turn 2, but you won’t be able to throw 3 handaxes this turn. Maybe you could grab that greataxe off your back and charge into melee, but continuously throwing 3 axes in a turn won’t work.
If you want to make a thrown weapon build work, you’ll probably need to grab the thrown weapon fighting style as this lets you draw a weapon as part of attacks with weapons with the thrown property. This situation is improved a lot in the 2024 rules.
Shields and item swapping
One thing to be aware of is that when it comes to item swapping, shields occupy a unique place as they require an action to don or doff (so no free action to do this for them).
What about Spellcasters?
Great point! They’ve got things to juggle too. You’ve got a spellcasting focus, material and somatic components of spells and possibly weapons and shields too. How does this look?
The same rules apply here too. Let’s say you’re a paladin. You’re attacking with a longsword and a shield. Your spellcasting focus is on your shield so you can use that. But let’s say you want to cast banishment. This is a great level 4 spell. You’d need to stow your longsword so you’ve got a free hand for your material components. This can easily be done with a free action but will mean you don’t have a weapon in hand for any potential opportunity attacks.
We can complicate this further by adding in somatic components in spellcasting. This means using gestures to cast the spell. You must have a free hand to do this with nothing in it unless that’s a material component or a spellcasting focus (then you can use the somatic components with the same hand as the material components or spellcasting focus).
As it happens, banishment needs a somatic component, but you can use the same hand as the material components for this. But if you need to use a somatic component, you can’t normally do this with a shield so would still need to stow that weapon first.
What else can affect item juggling?
There are other features and feats that can affect item juggling and make this process easier.
- Dual wielder feat: Allows you to draw or stow two one handed weapons when normally you could only do this with one weapon. Unsurprisingly useful for dual wielders.
- War caster feat: Allows you to use somatic components of spells even when you have a weapon or shield in one or both hands.
- Thief rogue’s fast hands feature: Allows you to use the interact with object actions as a bonus action.
- Thrown weapon fighting style: Allows you to draw a weapon as part of the attack you made with that weapon. This means you can throw and draw as many weapons as you have attacks allowing you to throw maximum numbers of weapons each turn.
- Eldritch knight fighter weapon bond – This allows you to summon a bonded weapon to your hand using your bonus action which can possibly help a little with item swapping.
- Artificer returning weapon infusion – A weapon infused this way returns to the wielder when thrown after each attack, bypassing the need to draw additional thrown weapons.
- Classes features that can use a weapon as a spellcasting focus – This is the case for subclasses like the armorer artificer and college of swords bard.
Item juggling mechanics in D&D 2024
Equipping and unequipping as part of an attack
Weapon swapping becomes a lot more fluid in D&D 2024. Now, whenever you make an attack as part of the attack action, you can also equip or unequip a weapon at the same time. This means that if you have the extra attack feature you can equip or unequip once as part of each of those attacks (PHB p391).
Free object interaction
On top of this, there is also a free action that can be used when making a movement or action that can be used to interact with an object (with a weapon counting as an object (p20 PHB 2024). It’s not definitively clear that these rules work alongside the attack equipping unequipping. However, in an example of combat on p31 of the 2024 Player’s Handbook, there’s an example in entry 14 where a character uses an object interaction to drop a weapon (which would normally count as an object interaction in the 2024 rules) and draw a warhammer as part of their attack action which would imply that these rules can be used together.
Examples in play
Let’s say a paladin with the extra attack feature has 2 attacks. They’re wielding a battleaxe for the topple mastery and want to also use a warhammer for the push mastery. They can:
- Topple with the battleaxe using attack 1
- Unequip the battleaxe using attack 1
- Equip the Warhammer using attack 2
- Attack with the Warhammer with attack 2 to push them.
This also shows part of the reason weapon juggling has been made easier in D&D 2024. So that characters with multiple weapon masteries can more easily swap between weapons to use different weapon mastery properties.
In a similar way, if you’re using a longbow and want to switch to a greatsword, this is now much easier using the free object interaction. You can:
- Unequip longbow using free object interaction
- Equip the greatsword as part of attack 1
- Make 2 attacks with your greatsword
What about thrown weapons?
Weapons with the thrown property have a unique set of drawing rules that allow you to draw the weapon as you make the attack. This seems to be independent from the drawing and stowing rules above. This means in theory, you can combine these, but it also means you can draw a thrown weapon as part of a bonus action or possibly even a reaction.
This only works as part of a ranged attack so you couldn’t use a reaction to draw the thrown weapon for an opportunity attack, but there are some rare instances where a reaction might let you make an attack and this would allow you to draw and throw that weapon for those purposes.
Spellcasters and object swapping
The rules for object swapping and spellcasters work exactly the same as in the 2014 rules. When casting spells, you need hands free for the following:
- Spellcasting focus: You need a hand holding your spellcasting focus
- Somatic components: If there are somatic components to the spell, you must have a hand free for this.
- Material components: If there are material components, you must have a hand free for this but it can be the same hand that performs the somatic components of the spell.
To cast a spell, you must have a hand free to use material components, but you do not need to use an item interaction to equip them like you would a weapon. So as an example, a ranger holding a longsword and a spellcasting focus and wanting to cast conjure barrage can:
- Unequip their longsword using a free object interaction
- Use their free hand to access material components and perform the somatic components of the spells
By doing this though, the ranger’s longsword is now unequipped and not available for opportunity attacks for example.
If the ranger was wielding a longsword and a shield, they wouldn’t be able to unequip both of these in one turn and would be limited to spells that only require a single hand to cast.
What else can affect item juggling in D&D 2024?
Dual wielder feat: Allows you to draw or stow two one handed weapons when normally you could only do this with one weapon. Unsurprisingly useful for dual wielders.
War caster feat: Allows you to use somatic components of spells even when you have a weapon or shield in one or both hands.
Thief rogue’s fast hands feature: Allows you to use the utilise object actions as a bonus action which could mean equipping or unequipping an item.
Eldritch knight fighter weapon bond – This allows you to summon a bonded weapon to your hand using your bonus action which can possibly help a little with item swapping.
Classes features that can use a weapon as a spellcasting focus – This is the case for subclasses like the armorer artificer, battle smith artificer, valor bard and a bladesinger wizard.
Why do there need to be limitations on item swapping?
If there weren’t any limitations on item swapping, then it would be too easy to switch between load outs and benefit from more than one loadout at a time. For example, if a shield could be unequipped or equipped with free actions, then you could attack with a greatsword, equip your shield and longsword and switch between the 2 quite easily gaining the benefits of a shield and those of a two handed weapon.
Equally, some very powerful spells require 2 free hands. Having the benefits of a shield alongside this could be deemed as too powerful. As fiddly as item juggling can be, these limitations do try to limit combing the benefits of builds that shouldn’t combine together.
Personally, I would love for the item juggling rules to be a bit simpler and less spread out in the rule books. As it stands, they’re tricky to work out and tricky to find. However, I do think that D&D 2024 improves on what was allowed in the 2014 rules and makes weapon and item swapping a bit easier.
