D&D 5E Consensus about two-weapon fighting?

dnd4vr said:

I am glad to see you revised your answer, because I got 171.5 (roughly), only 1 point away from perfect potential IIRC. I remember someone saying the math was hard... guess not LOL.

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I'd be curious to know whether you used the same method I did, or came up with something equivalent but simpler. The way I set it up:

Divide attack rolls into three bins: outside the precision triggering range, inside the range with dice available, and inside the range with dice used up. Then assuming 69 attacks per day (20 rounds x 3 attacks/round + 3 action surges), divided in thirds between short rests, calculate the total damage for each possible distribution of 23 rolls into bins, and average, weighted by the probability of that allocation (the allocation is determined by the total number of rolls in the triggering range, which has a binomial distribution).

Two weapon fighting:

When you make attack with your mainhand onehanded weapon as a part of your Action, you can make one attack with offhand weapon as a Bonus action.
Off hand weapon must be light. You add only half(round down) ability modifier to that attack.


Two weapon fighting style: off hand weapon can be any one handed weapon and you add full ability modifier to weapon damage roll.


Dual wielder feat removed.


New feats added:

Martial training:
you gain +1 to str, dex or con score, to a max of 20.
You gain proficiency in one weapon.
You gain one fighting style of your choice. It cannot be a fighting style you already have.


Improved two weapon fighting(as suggested): requirement, Extra attack feature, Two weapon fighting style.
+1 to str, dex or con to max of 20
You can make 2 attacks with your off hand weapon as a Bonus action.

Esker said:

I'd be curious to know whether you used the same method I did, or came up with something equivalent but simpler. The way I set it up:

Divide attack rolls into three bins: outside the precision triggering range, inside the range with dice available, and inside the range with dice used up. Then assuming 69 attacks per day (20 rounds x 3 attacks/round + 3 action surges), divided in thirds between short rests, calculate the total damage for each possible distribution of 23 rolls into bins, and average, weighted by the probability of that allocation (the allocation is determined by the total number of rolls in the triggering range, which has a binomial distribution).

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I used combinatorics and probability distributions. Yeah, you have to break it up into cases. I just assumed the 60 attacks with expected rolls of 3 1's, 3 2's, 3 3's, etc. up to 3 20's. Thus the 15 rolls of 3's through 7's will use up the 15 superiority dice. The 1's automiss, of course, and the 2's aren't needed to be considered because with only 15 dice, there are none left to even attempt to improve them out of 60 rolls.

Then I ran a 1,000,000 trial sample to verify the numbers and I got the 171.5 (or so).

Horwath said:

Two weapon fighting:

When you make attack with your mainhand onehanded weapon as a part of your Action, you can make one attack with offhand weapon as a Bonus action.
Off hand weapon must be light. You add only half(round down) ability modifier to that attack.

Two weapon fighting style: off hand weapon can be any one handed weapon and you add full ability modifier to weapon damage roll.

Dual wielder feat removed.

New feats added:

Martial training:
you gain +1 to str, dex or con score, to a max of 20.
You gain proficiency in one weapon.
You gain one fighting style of your choice. It cannot be a fighting style you already have.

Improved two weapon fighting(as suggested): requirement, Extra attack feature, Two weapon fighting style.
+1 to str, dex or con to max of 20
You can make 2 attacks with your off hand weapon as a Bonus action.

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You DARE try to get this thread back on track! Shame, shame, shame... j/k

I like the Martial Training idea. It would work well for the Wizard who wants to learn a single weapon, but a stat, and learn to use the weapon with some style (pun intended). I am not sold on Imp TWF simply because I don't like requirements like that in 5E.

dnd4vr said:

I used combinatorics and probability distributions. Yeah, you have to break it up into cases. I just assumed the 60 attacks with expected rolls of 3 1's, 3 2's, 3 3's, etc. up to 3 20's. Thus the 15 rolls of 3's through 7's will use up the 15 superiority dice. The 1's automiss, of course, and the 2's aren't needed to be considered because with only 15 dice, there are none left to even attempt to improve them out of 60 rolls.

Then I ran a 1,000,000 trial sample to verify the numbers and I got the 171.5 (or so).

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Interesting, so it's not quite the same, since you're using the average distribution of rolls. I actually find that if you don't use a die when you roll a natural 2, your extra damage goes down to 152; the reason being that you're now more likely to have fewer opportunities than 15 to use them (and more likely to miss when you don't).

Esker said:

Interesting, so it's not quite the same, since you're using the average distribution of rolls. I actually find that if you don't use a die when you roll a natural 2, your extra damage goes down to 152; the reason being that you're now more likely to have fewer opportunities than 15 to use them (and more likely to miss when you don't).

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Hmm... Why would you think there are fewer opportunities to use them? For all 15 are used on the 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in each set of 20 rolls (5 misses out of the 7 in each set). If you can use it on a natural 2 to make it a hit, you would also use it on a 3 through 7 for the same impact.

Regardless, I think both our respective methods show in this scenario, Precision attack is vastly superior to increasing damage output than the maneuvers that simply add 5.5 avg damage on the hits.

I wouldn't want to patch TWFing with a feat. After all of the talk lately, the 11+ Fighter is the one who really needs the TWFing help. While I would love to get rid of the bonus action, that would imbalance the Rogue and Monk.

Xeviat said:

I wouldn't want to patch TWFing with a feat. After all of the talk lately, the 11+ Fighter is the one who really needs the TWFing help. While I would love to get rid of the bonus action, that would imbalance the Rogue and Monk.

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It would make them stronger; I don't know if it would make them too strong. Although I'm coming from the standpoint that I don't consider the PHB baseline to be super balanced anyway.

dnd4vr said:

Hmm... Why would you think there are fewer opportunities to use them? For all 15 are used on the 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in each set of 20 rolls (5 misses out of the 7 in each set). If you can use it on a natural 2 to make it a hit, you would also use it on a 3 through 7 for the same impact.

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Because there won't always be 15 in that range; sometimes there will be more and sometimes fewer. If there are more, you're worse off on average than the case you examined, since any rolls after the 5th in that range automatically miss. If there are fewer, you're a bit better off, since the shortfall are more likely to be hits than nat 2s and 1s, but it's not a guarantee. The two cases (>= 15 and <= 15) don't balance out exactly; on average the outcomes that aren't exactly 15 are a bit worse than the outcomes that are exactly 15.

The same is true if you use your dice on 2s, but two things differ. The downside is that on rolls when you use a die, you're hitting a bit less often on average than if you held back on a 2. But the upside is that on the rolls when you don't use a die, you've removed 2 from the set of possibilities that miss, so you are hitting more often then. It turns out that the effect of the latter outweighs the effect of the former, and so you're better off spending a die if you roll a 2.

Regardless, I think both our respective methods show in this scenario, Precision attack is vastly superior to increasing damage output than the maneuvers that simply add 5.5 avg damage on the hits.

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Yes, as it should be, since its only effect is to add damage to an attack (from zero to possibly not zero), whereas the other maneuvers have other effects. Sometimes those other effects will be worth more than the additional damage you get from precision attack. Take lunging attack, for example. In a vacuum it looks bad, since you have to spend the die before you know you hit, and so you only have a chance of adding even the 5.5 damage to that attack. But why would you use lunging attack if you don't need it? The times when you would consider using lunging attack are likely times when your movement isn't enough to close with the enemy (you could use it defensively too, to allow you to move back away after attacking without taking an AoO, but we can't assign a damage value to that). In that case, the difference isn't attack for regular damage vs attack for extra damage; the difference is not be able to attack at all vs attack for extra damage, so the lunge is buying you (dph + 5.5) * to_hit in that circumstance, which could easily be worth more to your daily damage than saving the die for a future precision attack.

TwoSix said:

It would make them stronger; I don't know if it would make them too strong. Although I'm coming from the standpoint that I don't consider the PHB baseline to be super balanced anyway.

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PHB baseline is definitely not balanced. In another discussion elsewhere, we identified Hex/Hunter's mark and other per hit effects to potentially get in the way of rebalancing efforts. You can rebalance the Fighter perfectly and then have a Ranger or Bladelock come in and mess it up; also, balanced fighter can break the monk, and at least one way of balancing the fighter makes TWFing the option for high level Barbarians.

SkidAce said:

I am in the minority, and am inclined to keep it as a bonus action.

I understand the drawbacks, but look at them more as tradeoffs for versatility. IMO.

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I guess my gaming group is in the minority also. None of us has complained about it being "broken" or needing adjustment, not even the TWF ranger or the Hexblade. Nothing to fix, as far as we are concerned.