[RPG] Can you take free actions during attacks of opportunity

dnd-3.5efree-actionopportunity-attack

I have read some claim that free actions cannot be taken during attacks of opportunity. However,

Free Action

Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally. However, there are reasonable limits on what you can really do for free.

Emphasis mine. Why would this exclude an Attack of Opportunity?

Speak

In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn’t your turn. Speaking more than few sentences is generally beyond the limit of a free action.

I've seen references to speaking, particularly, "when it isn't your turn". I've always understood that to mean you can speak out of turn, like an immediate action, not that all other free actions must be on your turn.

For example, you can yell out a warning, even when it isn't your turn, but you can't drop prone unless you were otherwise taking another action.

Is there another rule this comes from? Is it in the Rules Compendium?

Best Answer

The argument, basically, is that your actions are defined as things you can do during your turn:

When a character’s turn comes up in the initiative sequence, that character performs his entire round’s worth of actions. (For exceptions, see Attacks of Opportunity and Special Initiative Actions.)

(emphasis mine)

Since free actions are defined as one of the sorts of actions you can take during the round, and the default rule says you take all your actions for the round during your turn in the initiative process, that means free actions can only be performed during your turn.

Speaking gets a special exception:

In general, speaking is a free action that you can perform even when it isn’t your turn.

which is taken as an exception-that-proves-the-rule: this wouldn’t be here if free actions could normally be performed outside your turn, as it would be redundant. Speaking gets a special exception, and other types of free action don’t, and so they are limited only to your turn.

Rules Compendium does not repeat the first quote, leaving out a default definition of an action as something you do on your turn. Rather, it merely says that you can perform these actions “during a normal round,” (pg. 7). However, the definition of free actions includes

You can perform one or more free actions during your turn.

(Rules Compendium, pg.7)

Nowhere in the rules are free actions addressed specifically with respect to attacks of opportunity, however. Given that attacks of opportunity are, themselves, an exception to the rules, allowing you to act outside your turn, that may also extend to free actions—after all, as you say, “You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally.” But that isn’t spelled out anywhere.

Personally, I have always played with free actions allowed during attacks of opportunity, it has never caused problems, while I do see problems with disallowing it. I recommend allowing them.

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