Okay. I was thinking of all the actions and conditions which come off as rulesy.
If this is more natural, that's good but not good if it's confusing. Seems to be a lot of confusion already. Here's hoping this is more clear once the book hits general release.
Yeah, I think it’s coming across more confusing than it is because we’re not seeing the rules in context ourselves, we’re working off of the analyses of people with the early access to the books, many of whom are big optimizers and strongly motivated to find exploitable technicalities.
The relevant rules are quoted in the opening post, and they’re just not that complicated. The attack action says that when you make an attack as part of the attack action, you can draw or stow one weapon before or after the attack as part of the same action. The Light property says when you attack with a Light weapon as part of the attack action, you can make another attack with a different Light weapon as a bonus action, and you don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack unless it’s negative. The Nick mastery says when you make the extra attack of the Light property, you can do it as part of the attack action instead of as a bonus action, but you can only make that attack once per turn. The Dual Wielder feat says when you attack with a Light weapon, you can use a bonus action to make an attack with another weapon that lacks the two-handed property, and don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack unless it’s negative. It also says that when you draw or stow a weapon as part of the attack action, you can draw or stow two weapons instead of one. And the two weapon fighting style says when you make an attack as a result of using a Light weapon, you can add your ability modifier to the damage.
None of these things individually are any more confusing than they were in 2014. It’s all pretty straightforward, in my opinion. What’s causing confusion is mostly the change from only being able to draw or stow one weapon per turn (or two with Dual Wielder) as a “free interaction,” drawing and stowing weapons is tied to attacks, and you get one draw/stow per attack (or two with Dual Wielder). If you’re optimizer-brained, that change might stick out to you as exploitable, and you might start thinking of ways to use it to juggle weapons around to achieve weird results like keeping a shield in one hand while swapping between two different light weapons in your off-hand, or using both dual-wielder and the Nick property to end up making three attacks in one turn instead of two. But if you just read the rules normally, they’re not confusing. They say what they do and they do what they say.
