The lance’s primary purpose is that rule. The rapier’s primary purpose isn’t to be used in dual wielding.
I don’t see why that should rule out the option of including (hypothetical) exceptions to the normal rules that apply to a rapier in the rules for the rapier.
Yes, I know what the rule allows and what the point of the thread is. TWF with a rapier is irrelevant to any rapier user that ain’t TWF, so the rule should be in the part of the game it is most relevant to.
The light property on any weapon is irrelevant to anyone who isn’t using it for two-weapon fighting. And I would argue that the rapier entry
is the part of the game that the rules for how rapiers work is most relevant to.
The rules for TWF need to establish either the rapier specifically, or the dagger specifically, as breaking the normal rule restriction. If we want daggers to work with flails, fine, call out the dagger. If we want rapiers to be viable TWF options without a feat, specify that rapiers can be used even tho they aren’t light.
On this we are in agreement. We are only disagreeing over whether the exception should be included in the two weapon fighting rules, or in the rules for the weapon in question. In my opinion, it is clunky and inelegant to try to write a rule in such a way as to call out all of its own exceptions. Better to have the general rule stand on its own, and have exceptions call themselves out in the place they are most relevant. This “exceptions-based design” is pretty much the standard in D&D. We don’t call out in the general rules for Critical hits that half-orcs get to roll an extra die on them, we put that in the half orc race entry.
Or just open up basic TWF to any light or finesse weapon, or combine light and finesse into one trait. Whatever.
Sure, you could. That change would have certain consequences, which some DMs will find acceptable and others won’t. Personally, I don’t. I would rather allow the specific combination of rapier and dagger only than allow any combination of two finesse weapons.
it isn’t inelegant at all. It is the opposite of that.
I disagree, for the reasons I’ve given above.
“Mismatched” weapons is a superior form to matching weapons.
First of all, even if we accept that that’s true in real life, I don’t consider that a good enough reason on its own for it to be so in the game. Lots of stuff in the game is “unrealistic” for balance reasons, or for design aesthetic reasons, or any number of other reasons. For me, dual-wielding mismatched weapons being strictly superior to dual-wielding paired weapons is not an acceptable outcome. Any change to dual-wielding that leads to that outcome is not an acceptable change for me.
Second of all, it’s not true in real life.
And we’ve been discussing rather a broad range of components of TWF in this thread. That specific point was in repsonse to worries that certain wordings would make daggers too good, or otherwise make them never a good choice to go with a rapier.
A solution for that, would be to open up TWF, and give some manner of boost to using a dagger as one or both weapons.
Sure. But my argument is that a better solution is simply to add a new d4 weapon that can be dual-wielded with a rapier. This solution has the smallest footprint on the rest of the system. It allows exactly what is desired (dual-wielding a rapier with a d4 weapon) without any consequences that affect the rest of the system, such as making mismatched weapons objectively better than paired ones or making daggers objectively better than other simple weapons.