D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] No good reason to get rid of Ambidexterity...

[Sonofapreacherman]

Normal penalties for fighting with two weapons: -6 primary and -10 secondary.

The Ambidexterity feat reduced the secondary penalty by 4.
The Two-Weapon Fighting feat reduced both penalties by 2.
Using a light off-handed weapon reduces both penalties by 2.

Was this really too hard for people to understand?

I don't think so.

Now the Two-Weapon Fighting feat reduces the primary weapon penalty by 2 and the secondary weapon penalty 6.

One feat = +8 attack bonuses.

That's gotta break some balance rules. What the hell was Andy thinking? That D&D players couldn't do math?

 

[Alejandro]

Without hit locations, handedness is primarily flavor. Feats are precious. I support the change, and feel that it is good.

 

[whatisitgoodfor]

The issue with changing TWF from two feats to one come primarily from the fact that WotC managed to balance TWF too well.

It didn't make sense for a character to be forced to spend two feats (one of which had some pretty stout pre-reqs) for flavor and then deal very nearly the same amount of damage as the character that just went out and bought a great sword.

In 3.0 virtually the only characters that benefited greatly from TWF were rogues (and to a lesser extent rangers) because of their additional non-str damage.

In short, there is too little difference between TWF and THW to justify a two feat cost for the fighting style.

 

[Sonofapreacherman]

whatisitgoodfor.

I hear what you're saying about flavor, and I understand the greatsword arguement. The thing is... they fixed something that wasn't broken, and failed to fix something that was.

To explain, Ambidexterity didn't need to be removed. The Strength damage for off hand weapons needed to be calculated "straight up". Meaning, strength bonuses for off-hand weapons should be unmodified (not reduced by 1/2). That's the fix that was really called for.

Ambidexterity worked fine.

Edited because I can't spell worth a damn.

 

[The Souljourner]

You wanted to keep it two feats and make it better, we want to make it one feat and keep it the same. Basically the same concept. I like this way better, because it means if you want to fight with two weapons for style reasons, you don't have to waste a ton of feats to do it (I have a character in a campaign who is doing just that - he's a human who took at first level, TWF and Exotic WP: Fullblade... normally he'd fight with dual shortswords, only switching to the fullblade when he felt someone was a "worthy" opponent).

The problem with making the off hand full damage, is that it unbalances the style with two handed weapons, which are already at a disadvantage since they only get "Extra" damage once (specialization, sneak attack, flaming, etc). That's ok, because they don't have to use a feat to use that style. If you then make two weapon fighting even better, no one's going to want to bother with two handed weapons.

I think it's fine as is, and I applaud WoTC for finally making TWF balanced.

-The Souljourner

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Sonofapreacherman, I don't agree.

Simply put, TWF was almost always worse than fighting with one big weapon, and cost two feats. For any non-fighter character, this was a huge investment.

Now, at least you only have to pay 1 feat for what is still a weaker style for any non-rogue. (Made very, very clear by the new 3.5 Power Attack. )

 

[Sonofapreacherman]

The act of two weapon fighting was only imbalanced because the law of averages dictated that greatswords were more effective damage dealers than two weapons. You simply stood a greater chanced of hitting *once* with a greatsword than *twice* with each of your two weapons.

Average greatsword damage with 18 strength (with 1 successful hit required) = 11 points.

Average longsword and short sword damage with 18 strength (with 2 successful hits required) = 13 points.

Those two extra points of damage simply weren't worth "two" feats. Agreed.

Take away the 1/2 damage penalty for off-hand weapons and that gap widens from 2 points to 4 points. When you consider that the Weapon Specialization feat offers a bonus of +2 damage for 1 feat (actually two feats with the Weapon Focus prerequisite), then two weapon fighting becomes worth two feats. And that's only for fighters. Anybody can take Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting.

Problem solved. Ambidexterity didn't need fixing. Off-hand weapon damage did.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I'm glad they removed Ambidexterity. It makes fighting with two weapons easier to understand (for newbies).

Only issue I see is that now it only takes one feat to get two attacks with melee weapons but it takes two feats to get two attacks with a ranged weapon.

So, I think the next change will see Rapid Shot moved to the head of its own feat chain.

Instead of Point Blank Shot being the gateway to all archery feats, I think we'll see PBS be the gateway to precision feats (precise shot, far shot, etc.) and Rapid Shot be the gateway to multiattack feats (manyshot, etc).

-z

 

[totoro]

I think they just forgot to reduce the penalty for fighting with 2 weapons without the feat. -6/-10 seems pretty far out of proportion with reality. -2/-6 is a bit better.

 

[RandomNPC]

In reference to the extra melee attack being only one feat and the extra ranged attack costing two, I think it works out fine considering the benefit of PBS.