A TWF revision?

jaelis · Jul 16, 2018

I've been working on tweaking up a sort of personal 5.1 edition, with houserule fixes for the things that bug me. One of those is the TWF rules; I know that I am not alone in this. Here are things I don't like:
- Unlike other styles, a TWF fighter must use their bonus action every round to achieve their baseline performance.
- The standard rules don't work well with extra attack, causing TWF damage to fall behind (way behind for high level fighters)
- Maybe to make up for that, the TWF fighting style is much stronger than other styles. But that makes a low level TWFer do too much damage, while a high level one still lags.
- You need a feat to do a simple things like draw two weapons, or to use the mechanically balanced and historically accurate combination of rapier plus dagger.
- Fighting with two rapiers or two battleaxes seems kind of stupid to me.

I'd like to address these without introducing more complexity, and not letting the number of attacks per round get too large.

Here is a fix. I'm pretty happy with everything but worry about the feat. Is there some combo I haven't considered that breaks it?

Changes to base rules:
If you have two free hands, then you can draw two weapons whenever you can draw a weapon.

If you have the Extra Attack ability, then you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack obtained when fighting with two weapons.

Changes to fighter class:
At level 11, you can make three attacks when you take the attack action on your turn. If you are using two-weapon fighting, you can make two attacks as a bonus action, but add your ability modifier to the damage of only the first attack.

At level 20, you can make four attacks when you take the attack action on your turn. If you are using two-weapon fighting, add your ability modifier to the damage of both bonus-action attacks.

TWF Fighting Style:
You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren’t light. As long as one of them is light, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.

TWF Feat:
- You can make any extra attacks granted by two-weapon fighting as part of your attack action, rather than as a bonus action.
- While you are wielding two one-handed melee weapons, you gain an extra reaction that you can take once per round, which can be used only to make an opportunity attack with a melee weapon. You cannot take more than one reaction per turn.

cooperjer · Jul 16, 2018

I'm trying to understand your goals to the changes you recommend. The conflicts I see are:
1. TWF uses the bonus action to achieve "baseline performance" does not mesh well with keeping the bonus action requirement with TWF.
2. You state TWF fighter damage falls way behind at higher levels. What does it fall behind?

I have a player that has the same concerns you posted about rapier and dagger combination and the use of two battleaxes. He was also concerned about how the fighting styles didn't feel balanced. The Dueling fighting style would output more damage than the Two Weapon fighting style and still benefit from a shield. In the end, I understood his concern to be: 1) the Great Weapon fighting style should have the greatest amount of damage output, 2) the Dueling fighting style should have less damage output than the Two weapon fighting style. Does your concern boil down to nearly the same thing, or are there other significant factors that are driving you to a change?

The house rule I implemented is:
1. Great Weapon fighting style: When you are wielding a melee weapon, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.
2. Two Weapon fighting style: At level 11 you add 1d6 damage to one of your melee weapon attacks.
3. Dueling fighting style: When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon you are wielding with one hand, you can re-roll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must not have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.

Good luck. There has been a lot of discussion on this topic in the past. I've noted that the game designers were looking to have the fighting style feel appropriate in the game as a higher priority than having the damage balanced.

jaelis · Jul 16, 2018

cooperjer said:
I'm trying to understand your goals to the changes you recommend. The conflicts I see are:
1. TWF uses the bonus action to achieve "baseline performance" does not mesh well with keeping the bonus action requirement with TWF.

My thought was to use the feat to eliminate the bonus action requirement. I'm afraid that simply eliminating it across the board would be too useful for rogues.

2. You state TWF fighter damage falls way behind at higher levels. What does it fall behind?

2H fighting in general, or dueling style as you note.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 16, 2018

Your proposed solution is very complicated, given your stated goals. I haven't run the numbers for expected damage output, given the complexity, because of the way in which your bonus attacks would scale by level and ability modifier.

My counter-proposal:

When dual-wielding, add the damage from both weapons together and treat them as one weapon. "Two shortswords" is a two-handed finesse weapon that deals (2d6 + Dexterity modifier) piercing damage.
The relevant fighting style grants +1 to hit and damage while wielding two weapons.

That should solve all of your issues:
- It doesn't take your bonus action to use your main attack.
- You can draw both weapons at once.
- It scales correctly with Extra Attack.
- Rogues don't benefit disproportionately. They actually miss out on getting two chances to sneak attack, but they benefit from keeping their bonus action to Dash or Disengage.

The reason to use two shortswords instead of a greatsword is because you're Dexterity-based. You miss out on the good Strength-based feat, but you make up for it with Dexterity being superior to Strength in so many other ways.

Krachek · Jul 16, 2018

At level 11 a greatsword fighter deals 3 x 8+5 for 39
The twf dex fighters deals 4x d6+5 for 34 damage. Considering he can make good ranged attack and that dex is more useful to skills the lower damage is fine.

Tallifer · Jul 17, 2018

Anything which nerfs Drizzt is all good by me. I would prefer the Rolemaster (early 1980s game) way of handling two weapons: a main weapon to attack and a second parrying dagger which can be a back-up weapon (when space is too limited for a sword; when you want to stealthily use a small weapon in public, etc) and which is less bulky to carry than a shield. Also shields required skill to use well to block blows in Rolemaster, limiting them to Fighters and fighting Clerics.

jaelis · Jul 17, 2018

Krachek said:
At level 11 a greatsword fighter deals 3 x 8+5 for 39
The twf dex fighters deals 4x d6+5 for 34 damage. Considering he can make good ranged attack and that dex is more useful to skills the lower damage is fine.

Here's how I would estimate the damage, with the appropriate fighting style
Level 1 (18 stat):
2H = 12.3 (7 base + 4 state + 1.3 GWS)
TWF = 15 (7 base + 4 stat + 4 TWFS)

Level 5 (20 stat):
2H = 26.7
TWF = 25.5

Level 11:
2H = 40
TWF = 34

Level 20:
2H = 53.3
TWF = 42.5

I'd expect TWF to lag a bit further at higher levels, because of the need for two magic weapons.

If you think that being able to use Dex is a big enough benefit to make up for this, then that's fine, but wouldn't that mean you think TWF is horribly overpowered in levels 1-4, and overpowered in 5-10?

That said, my damage numbers do float a bit higher than the 2Her, which isn't really what I want.

jaelis · Jul 17, 2018

Saelorn said:
Your proposed solution is very complicated, given your stated goals. I haven't run the numbers for expected damage output, given the complexity, because of the way in which your bonus attacks would scale by level and ability modifier.

My counter-proposal:

When dual-wielding, add the damage from both weapons together and treat them as one weapon. "Two shortswords" is a two-handed finesse weapon that deals (2d6 + Dexterity modifier) piercing damage.

The relevant fighting style grants +1 to hit and damage while wielding two weapons.

That should solve all of your issues:
- It doesn't take your bonus action to use your main attack.
- You can draw both weapons at once.
- It scales correctly with Extra Attack.
- Rogues don't benefit disproportionately. They actually miss out on getting two chances to sneak attack, but they benefit from keeping their bonus action to Dash or Disengage.

The reason to use two shortswords instead of a greatsword is because you're Dexterity-based. You miss out on the good Strength-based feat, but you make up for it with Dexterity being superior to Strength in so many other ways.

That is certainly defensible. It lacks the feel of actual TWFing because you can't split your attacks, but maybe I should just give up on that.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 17, 2018

jaelis said:
That is certainly defensible. It lacks the feel of actual TWFing because you can't split your attacks, but maybe I should just give up on that.

Yeah, that's the trade-off for reduced complexity. If there's one major downside, it's that it is a little too similar to just swinging a greatsword. I'm mostly banking on the fact that you're wearing light armor rather than heavy, to differentiate the character concepts.

They differentiate further if you include feats, though. You can't power attack with this, and you would instead gain the benefit the other feat, which I expect you'd still want to re-write in order to remove the rapier thing. If you really felt like it, you could put attack-splitting back into the game as a feat benefit - attack two different targets, dealing half damage to each; and gain +1 AC while dual-wielding. I don't have much experience with feats, though.

FrogReaver · Jul 17, 2018

jaelis said:
I've been working on tweaking up a sort of personal 5.1 edition, with houserule fixes for the things that bug me. One of those is the TWF rules; I know that I am not alone in this. Here are things I don't like:
- Unlike other styles, a TWF fighter must use their bonus action every round to achieve their baseline performance.
- The standard rules don't work well with extra attack, causing TWF damage to fall behind (way behind for high level fighters)
- Maybe to make up for that, the TWF fighting style is much stronger than other styles. But that makes a low level TWFer do too much damage, while a high level one still lags.
- You need a feat to do a simple things like draw two weapons, or to use the mechanically balanced and historically accurate combination of rapier plus dagger.
- Fighting with two rapiers or two battleaxes seems kind of stupid to me.

I'd like to address these without introducing more complexity, and not letting the number of attacks per round get too large.

Here is a fix. I'm pretty happy with everything but worry about the feat. Is there some combo I haven't considered that breaks it?

Changes to base rules:
If you have two free hands, then you can draw two weapons whenever you can draw a weapon.

If you have the Extra Attack ability, then you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack obtained when fighting with two weapons.

Changes to fighter class:
At level 11, you can make three attacks when you take the attack action on your turn. If you are using two-weapon fighting, you can make two attacks as a bonus action, but add your ability modifier to the damage of only the first attack.

At level 20, you can make four attacks when you take the attack action on your turn. If you are using two-weapon fighting, add your ability modifier to the damage of both bonus-action attacks.

TWF Fighting Style:
You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren’t light. As long as one of them is light, you gain a +1 bonus to AC.

TWF Feat:
- You can make any extra attacks granted by two-weapon fighting as part of your attack action, rather than as a bonus action.
- While you are wielding two one-handed melee weapons, you gain an extra reaction that you can take once per round, which can be used only to make an opportunity attack with a melee weapon. You cannot take more than one reaction per turn.

I think you need to keep the bonus action to make hunter's mark and such spells not only be good with two-weapon fighting. Otherwise getting an extra attack you can always add hunter's mark to is really strong.

I agree with the drawing and sheathing. You should be able to do that without a feat.

Personally I would change TWF style to do these things:
1. If you have two free hands, then you can draw two weapons whenever you can draw a weapon.
2. Your attacks granted by TWF gain +1 damage. (you do not get stat mod damage)
3. Instead of just one attack you get a number of extra attacks equal to however many attacks you can make with your attack action.
4. TWF remains requiring a bonus action.

The new math
Level 1 = 1d6+3 & 1d6+1 = 11 dmg
Level 5 = 2*(1d6+4 & 1d6+1) = 24 dmg
Level 11 = 3*(1d6+5 & 1d6+1) = 39 dmg
Level 20 = 4*(1d6+5 & 1d6+1) = 52 dmg

Compared to a GWF style fighter
2d6+3+1.3 = 11.3
2*(2d6+4+1.3) = 24.6
3*(2d6+5+1.3) = 39.9
4*(2d6+5+1.3) = 53.2

If you just want the damage to be about the same while making TWF feel different mechanically then I think this will do the job even better than what you suggested. I'm just not sure what to add in for the feat.

A TWF revision?

jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

cooperjer

Explorer

jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Krachek

Hero

Tallifer

Hero

jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

The Crimson Binome

Hero

FrogReaver

As long as i get to be the frog

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