jaelis
Oh this is where the title goes?
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.
- 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.