Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
5e Fighters, two-weapon fighting and extra attacks
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6745995" data-attributes="member: 12731"><p>Lots of ideas are cool. Its how they're realized in the game that matters (to these people).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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)</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Hope that provides the basics of why "nobody seems to like the Dual Wielder feat" <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 6745995, member: 12731"] 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" :) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
5e Fighters, two-weapon fighting and extra attacks
Top