D&D 5E Improving Two-Weapon Fighting

FrogReaver · Jun 13, 2019

Anyone looked at having a feat allow 2 bonus action attacks instead of 1 for twf?

If if you take off mod damage from fighting style I think this could work.

Mod damage age comes from dual wielded feat.

Fighting style adds adds a small amount of Dana age per attack. Might scale up to +2. I don’t think adding 1 more attack drastically throws off balance of anything.

Xeviat · Jun 13, 2019

If the fighting style allows you to wield non-light weapons, it works out to +2 damage, just like the duelist feat. At Extra Attack, it would fall behind unless offhand attacks continue to scale.

TwoSix · Jun 13, 2019

Double post.

TwoSix · Jun 13, 2019

What about this?

1) The base rule stays as-is. Two light weapons, you gain a possible BA of a no stat-mod light weapon attack.
2) The fighting style lets Extra Attack classes use two weapons to do about equal damage to heavy weapon users, no BA required. if your class/subclass gives you a better BA, great. If not, you can use the dual-wield bonus action. This keeps things equivalent in featless games.
3) The Dual Wielder feat buffs up the dual-wield BA to be competitive with PAM and XBE in games with feats. A feat that gives damage scaling to one-handed weapon users is added.

Xeviat · Jun 13, 2019

TwoSix said:
What about this?

1) The base rule stays as-is. Two light weapons, you gain a possible BA of a no stat-mod light weapon attack.
2) The fighting style lets Extra Attack classes use two weapons to do about equal damage to heavy weapon users, no BA required. if your class/subclass gives you a better BA, great. If not, you can use the dual-wield bonus action. This keeps things equivalent in featless games.
3) The Dual Wielder feat buffs up the dual-wield BA to be competitive with PAM and XBE in games with feats. A feat that gives damage scaling to one-handed weapon users is added.

My questions/issues:

1) Still costing a BA for no gain, except for the rogue and other characters that stack on hit effects (raging barbarian). Is this okay to you? If the BA was only to split damage (fighting two opponents), I might be more inclined.
2) How are you proposing this? I'm sure you're not saying Action equal to GWFer, bonus action for more?
3) I'm down with this. Personally, I hate that Sharp Shooter and Great Weapon Master can be stacked with Crossbow Expert and Polearm Master; to me, the -5/+10 is for two-handed weapons, and squeezing the extra attack out feels like turning a two-handed weapon into a double weapon to use 3E terms (Power Attack was -X/+X, except with two-handed weapons where it became -X/+2X, and I think that's more fair).

CapnZapp · Jun 13, 2019

Again, please consider using these two features as the base:

1. The TWF fix is offered thru a feat. (Feat-less games unaffected; no cascade effects)

2. The TWF fix allows you to use your Bonus Action on other things. (No minmaxer choose TWF since it makes you unable to later utilize any of may magic effects and items) Ideally from the get go but at level 11+ at the very least.

TwoSix · Jun 13, 2019

Xeviat said:
My questions/issues:

1) Still costing a BA for no gain, except for the rogue and other characters that stack on hit effects (raging barbarian). Is this okay to you? If the BA was only to split damage (fighting two opponents), I might be more inclined.
2) How are you proposing this? I'm sure you're not saying Action equal to GWFer, bonus action for more?
3) I'm down with this. Personally, I hate that Sharp Shooter and Great Weapon Master can be stacked with Crossbow Expert and Polearm Master; to me, the -5/+10 is for two-handed weapons, and squeezing the extra attack out feels like turning a two-handed weapon into a double weapon to use 3E terms (Power Attack was -X/+X, except with two-handed weapons where it became -X/+2X, and I think that's more fair).

Yea, this is more of a list of possible criteria to hit, not really a proposal yet.

I'm still debating. I'm starting to go back to the beginning of this discussion, and I'm thinking that there should be some baked in scaling in the base rule, no style or feat required. Turn the fighting style into a small damage bonus (like Dueling), and use the DW feat to enable the BA attack (to parallel PAM and XBE). Add in a feat to allow one-handed weapon damage to scale, much like GWM. This would benefit both DWers and SnBers.

The "followup attack on a miss" concept might be a good concept for the base rule. Less max damage than a 2H weapon, but more consistency.

Xeviat · Jun 13, 2019

TwoSix said:
Yea, this is more of a list of possible criteria to hit, not really a proposal yet.

I'm still debating. I'm starting to go back to the beginning of this discussion, and I'm thinking that there should be some baked in scaling in the base rule, no style or feat required. Turn the fighting style into a small damage bonus (like Dueling), and use the DW feat to enable the BA attack (to parallel PAM and XBE). Add in a feat to allow one-handed weapon damage to scale, much like GWM. This would benefit both DWers and SnBers.

The "followup attack on a miss" concept might be a good concept for the base rule. Less max damage than a 2H weapon, but more consistency.

Honestly, I was getting ready to fight and then what you said seems really interesting.

2d6+3 at 65% hit is 6.85 with crit. 1d6+3, reroll miss (without ability mod) at 65% hit would be 5.2575 with crits. Leaving the ability modifier on would up it to 5.94, which is still lower than great weapon but not significantly so. It fits into an image of TWFing that I think people can get behind. I'd allow default to just attack two separate targets for 1d6+3 instead.

Style could allow for use of non-light weapons.
Feat could grant a bonus action attack and an AC boost.

I'm not sure I'd want a separate one-handed weapon feat for -5 to hit/+10 damage. I'd like to leave that in the hands of the two-handers (light crossbows are two-handed since you need a loading hand still). I'd like one-handed weapon wielders (sword and board and TWFers) to have a different feat they pick up for that.

The rogue would gain big here, so we'd want to address that. The monk may gain too.

I kind of like this. It's different from just having TWFing deal equal damage with GWFing, and it avoids stacking issues with on-hit effects (it still favors once per turn on hit effects, since you have more chances for it to proc, but those gains drop rapidly once you have 2 attacks: 65 for one attack goes to 87.5 for two goes to 95.6 for three.

Would you let them get this reroll for each attack from extra attack? I'd say yes. It kind of works like psudo advantage (but doesn't stack well with advantage). I'd even suggest players roll 2d20 and pick the highest, but that would enable critfishing.

FrogReaver · Jun 13, 2019

In a featless game without mod damage to offhand a +1 damage per attack isn’t enough to keep up with a GWF style fighter.

Xeviat · Jun 14, 2019

FrogReaver said:
In a featless game without mod damage to offhand a +1 damage per attack isn’t enough to keep up with a GWF style fighter.

In a featless game, missed attack gets a reroll offhand with ability modifier is only slightly behind greatsword.

Though I can see a player asking if they can reroll a shield bash, punch, or kick and I can't come up with a good reason to say no if I'm letting someone with two weapons do it.