D&D 5E 5e Fighters, two-weapon fighting and extra attacks

[CapnZapp]

I'm curious, but nobody seems to like the Dual Wielder feat despite it giving you a non-light secondary weapon with a d8 + STR damage. I think the idea of a Battle Axe in one hand and a Warhammer in the other is kinda badass...

Lots of ideas are cool. Its how they're realized in the game that matters (to these people).

The Dual Wielder feat can only be as popular as the choice to fight with two weapons. And that choice is currently considered not that effective, which must limit the feat's appeal. Not to go into those details here again, but the basic thing is: you end up reserving your bonus action for your regular combat routine. Each time you use your bonus action for cool stuff, you're dialing down your regular combat routine. There's a lot of cool stuff for that bonus action, so many want to keep it free for that use. Not having your regular combat routine hog it. In short: for a TWFer, any bonus action isn't really a bonus action, it's just an alternative use for one third of your offense. TWFers pay one third of their offense each time they use a bonus action.

When it comes to specifics, actually it isn't the feat that gives you the "+STR damage" for your secondary weapon. That you have to take two-weapon fighting style for. Which has the opportunity cost of not taking any of the other fighting styles. Getting your ability modifier to what in practice is one attack per round is not as attractive as the other styles. (Regardless of where you stand on the weapon-hand-usage discussion, we can all agree that you gain one more attack from TWF, and all the others give you your ability modifier just fine, so the style really only adds your ability modifier for the one extra attack)

The feat gives you the upgrade to d8 weapons in both hands. Which is more of a baseline to make TWF effective than a real boon. Taking a feat to shore up a weak option is usually not as hot as taking a feat to make a strong option even stronger (at least for minmaxers). The AC bonus is nice. The third benefit is again just "bring up to baseline". The feat... lacks something. If it allowed you to use your secondary weapon as a kind of "Shield" (the spell), that'd be cool. If it allowed you to make a disarm attempt, that'd be cool. Or something! But no.

A comparison to "dual-wielding" hand crossbows is illustrative. I say "dual" within quotes because in practice you use a single hand crossbow, but you still get one more attack out of your bonus action the same way TWF works. Except with Crossbow Expert, the weapon style that gives you your DEX to the off-hand attack is built-in, freeing you to take another weapon style (such as Archery style) and stack the effects of both. Something like that is a little extra, and something a little extra is what is missing from Dual Wielder.

Hope that provides the basics of why "nobody seems to like the Dual Wielder feat"

 

[Weathercock]

It's also worth noting that the other big bonus action abilities (Crossbow Mastery and Polearm mastery) also play well with their respective -5/+10 feats, allowing them to pump up damage to ludicrous degrees with incredibly strong power attacks on the bonus action too (even 1d4 starts to look really big when you stick a +15 modifier on the back of it). On the other hand, TWF just caps itself with a mundane, normal attack with no extra frills.

Personally, I think this should be rectified so that the bonus attacks granted by those feats do not work in unison with -5/+10 feats, especially in the case of polearm mastery (I have a real hateboner for that feat, such easily accessible reaction AND bonus attacks is criminally powerful), but such is the state of this mad, cruel world that we live in.

 

[Psikerlord#]

This is where I think they dropped the ball on the Dual-Wielder feat, it just doesn't do much. I would've loved to see some kind of option to allow for a dual-weapon strike with both light weapons at the same time(I wouldn't allow it with longsword-sized weapons, probably), maybe allow that as one regular attack per Attack action(the physicality of it seems too awkward for multiple strikes per Attack action). And I would rule that the attack roll would be made using the lower to-hit modifier of the two weapons, just to keep it simple. Perhaps even some variant of the Sharpshooter/GWM trade-off, but less severe. -2 to-hit for +5 damage on the dual-strike attack in addition to each weapon's usual damage rolls, that sort of thing? The full -5/+10 seems a bit much for light weapons, but then again you can get it with a single arrow using Sharpshooter...

In my experience it's the -5/+10 of GWF and SS that is broken. If you change that to +1 stat instead, TWF is competitive. As well as thief SA, monk damage, and so on...