D&D 5E CoS removed bonus action to two weapon fighting on attack my thoughts.

[Lord Twig]

Well, but you said you wouldn't let the TWF PM idea work due to your death stare

So you're OK with it working for monk, what about barbarian berserker frenzy?

And the TB/SM build using his shield as a TWF weapon and still getting his free shove?

I guess the point is: are you playing that it is cool to just combine the TWF attack with whatever other bonus action attacks you can come up with? Or are you really restricting the bonus action to non-attacking things like cunning action etc.

Because if you just let TWF stack up then I think some of the highest DPR characters in the game will get better.

Actually it was my scorn stare, and it isn't that effective.

As for frenzy, sure. How many resources is being dumped into it? With no level dips or feats it is 1d6+Str+2 twice and and extra 1d6+2 for the off-hand attack. That is still less than a two handed sword that does 2d6+Str+2 twice. If he takes a level of Fighter and the Dual Wielder feat it is 3d8+3+2 x3, but he is giving up stuff to get it.

I honestly don't know what the TB/SM build is. I get Shield Master? But how do you Two Weapon Fight with a shield in your hands? I guess that has something to do with the TB part?

Really I haven't seen anywhere where the increased damage from stacking Two Weapon Fighting with something else isn't still out damaged by some other combination that is already in the game. Or if it is, you are giving up other things in order to do just a few points of damage more.

 

[Helldritch]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]
Thanks for the info.
But what is so broken about xbow expert?
From my point of view, it is not that OP.
1) It lets you attack with no disadvantage in melee (the fact that it also applies to attack spells is probably the problem in here, I would have stated only ranged weapon are affected by it.)

2) You ignore the loading quality of xbow (now they work like a normal bow)
3) You can shoot once more with a hand xbow already loaded if you have it hand if you attacked with a one hand weapon. (strange, I just noticed that it doesn't specify one hand melee weapon... Thx CapnZapp )

Other than the first case, I really see no reason to put that feat on the hate list, even then it is not such a big change; unless I have missed something?

 

[Lord Twig]

[MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]
Thanks for the info.
But what is so broken about xbow expert?
From my point of view, it is not that OP.
1) It lets you attack with no disadvantage in melee (the fact that it also applies to attack spells is probably the problem in here, I would have stated only ranged weapon are affected by it.)

2) You ignore the loading quality of xbow (now they work like a normal bow)
3) You can shoot once more with a hand xbow already loaded if you have it hand if you attacked with a one hand weapon. (strange, I just noticed that it doesn't specify one hand melee weapon... Thx CapnZapp )

Other than the first case, I really see no reason to put that feat on the hate list, even then it is not such a big change; unless I have missed something?

Well you can think of it this way. Let's say you want to fight with a shortsword and there is a feat called Shortsword Expert. It allows you to make a Bonus Action attack with your short sword when you use the Attack Action, you can add your Dex bonus to the damage, and you can hit anyone with your shortsword up to a range of 30' or 120' with Disadvantage.

That is basically what Crossbow Expert does. Why fight with two shortswords when fighting with one hand crossbow is so much better?

 

[Helldritch]

The problem is not the feat. It's the dmg of the hand xbow. It should've been 1d3 as it was in 1st edition (1d2 vs large). But I do see your point.

 

[Horwath]

Off hand attack should be with the Action that you do to make mainhand weapon attack.

If you take fighter lvl5. No feats just a boost from 16 to 18 strength.

greatsword vs. 2 shorswords, GW style vs. twoweapon style

greatsword damage 24,66 per round(if counting 100% hit), 2 shortswords; 23,5 dpr.

Now yes, while shortswords have less damage, they can be more consistent in damage(2 attacks vs 3) and less chance of an overkill, but greatsword has stronger AoO.

Also while magic weapons are rare, +1 comes here and there. Greatsword user needs only one magic weapon, whil dualwielder needs 2 to keep up in hit rate/damage.

 

[Helldritch]

@Horvat
If I were to use 2 short swords I'd use a rapier and a short sword instead. This would raise dmg to 25 dpr if counting 100% hit.

And yet. I still see no real problems with the xbow expert feat. (nor do I see any with GWM and SShooter for that matter). Maybe it's just the way that I run my campaings. Almost every options in the DM books is used. From facing/flanking to hero points. And yet, it is very hard to survive in my games as I run monsters (intelligent ones) with... cunning. This leads to fights in which players often take the dodge action, where the cleric use the warding bond on front melee characters and mages and archers are attempting to blast the enemy from the safety of the back line. That is until reinforcement comes in... No 5mwd in my campaings so they try to keep their ressources at a maximum. It is not rare to see an exciting battle lasting 10 or more rounds.

 

[Horwath]

@Horvat
If I were to use 2 short swords I'd use a rapier and a short sword instead. This would raise dmg to 25 dpr if counting 100% hit.

And yet. I still see no real problems with the xbow expert feat. (nor do I see any with GWM and SShooter for that matter). Maybe it's just the way that I run my campaings. Almost every options in the DM books is used. From facing/flanking to hero points. And yet, it is very hard to survive in my games as I run monsters (intelligent ones) with... cunning. This leads to fights in which players often take the dodge action, where the cleric use the warding bond on front melee characters and mages and archers are attempting to blast the enemy from the safety of the back line. That is until reinforcement comes in... No 5mwd in my campaings so they try to keep their ressources at a maximum. It is not rare to see an exciting battle lasting 10 or more rounds.

you cannot use rapier and shorsword without a feat, as both weapons need to be light.

 

[Helldritch]

Anyways... 1.16 dmg is not that big of a difference.

Still an other shabby rule. If you get the feat, then you'd go dual rapier. Always did the off hand must be light, period. Otherwise you'll never see the dual rapier/dagger (short sword, scimitar and whatever else...) that we so often see in litterature and movies. Mouser, The three musketeers and even the samurai are using long and short blades as dual wielding. It is such an iconic style that go ask anyone who doesn't know Dritzz and he'll mention the samurai or the musketeers. He won't have any dual rapiers in mind (unless you count a light saber as a rapier style weapon...).

Another case of either bad wording or badly written rule. PHB 5.5 soon?

 

[jaelis]

Looking at the math of it, I don't see that the TWF + bonus attack combination is ever effective enough to worry about, except for the monk. It does basically give the monk a good free attack in exchange for two levels of fighter, and two levels of fighter is already fairly decent. I don't think upping monk damage is going to break anyone's game, but I don't so much like the extra incentive to multiclass.

And I also don't like how it removes the tension between TWF and cunning action for a rogue.

So I don't know if I'd use this myself, but it's an interesting idea.

 

[Phazonfish]

Dual hand x-bows aren't particularly overpowered, since the Crossbow Expert feat effectively lets you dual-wield with a single hand x-bow rules as written.

That is, Crossbow Expert is broken and bad in many ways; but the specific act of allowing a character to dual wield hand x-bows is
a) not (more) broken
b) cool as hell
c) should have been allowed by the rules already!

I agree with all of this, just wanted to clarify that one cannot simply pick up two crossbows and get the bonus action attack for free.