[Infinite Dungeons] Shields suppress unarmed strikers' Flame Weapon

Ian579

If a creature companion whose Main Weapon is Unarmed equips a shield, the Flame Weapon spell won't work for it. Unequipping the shield fixes the issue and enables the spell to work.

Please note that, normally, creature companions are not able to equip shields because they don't have the Shield Proficiency feat. But when they equips equipments which grants the Shield Proficiency feat, they are then able to equip shields. That's how my creature companions were able to equip shields.

Symphony

This is kind of an odd situation, it's only an issue because you've customized your creatures but not customized them enough.

Each creature has two sets of equipment lists, creature equipment and humanoid equipment (normal equipment). When your creatures have "no weapons" and you cast flame weapon on them, and it works, it is because they don't don't have a weapon, they have a "creature weapon". If you took away their creature weapon too, the spell would not work either. Flame weapon bestows a temporary item property, so you have to target an item (weapon).

When your creatures use a shield, they are no longer using the "creature" page of equipment as their active weapon, and are therefore becoming "unarmed" for the first time.

I'm not sure why you are giving shields to your creatures, I assume in this case they are invisible, that these creatures don't have a left hand model equip node to render the shield on, and if you're okay with giving them non-creature handheld equipment, like shields, that don't render, your issue would be solved by giving them a non-creature handheld item like a dagger. If you did that you would be able to cast flame weapon on them, so that it could apply to the dagger.

Using creature weapons and normal weapons at the same time isn't something I'd consider to be a desired feature, it would probably cause a lot of problems with attacks per round and physical damage types, etc. Probably also cause issues with stacked properties like attack bonus as well.

If you are looking for this level of customization, I suggest you make your own creature items that act like humanoid items that you want to use (shields) or make your own humanoid items that act like the creature items you wanted to keep using (equippable claw/bite?).

Ian579

@Symphony Thanks for the elaboration. I let them equip shields just for increasing their AC. And sometimes shields, like other equipment, might have useful special properties.

But it isn't a serious issue for now.