Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Deset Gled" data-source="post: 3382209" data-attributes="member: 7808">I can say that it's one of the oldest&nbsp; most discussed ambiguities of the 3.5 ruleset, right up there with monks and INA, Polymoph and HP, sunder and AoOs, etc.&nbsp; There are many previous threads here on the subject.My cut-and-paste answer from a previous thread:There is a long term debate surrounding what penalties are associated with making an AoO with an off hand weapon. Some people maintain that if you take an AoO with your off-hand weapon, you must take the TWF penalties (I will refer to this as Side 1). Others claim you only take the penalties if you use the full attack action to get extra attacks using the off hand weapon (I will refer to this as Side A).Once you get down into the debate far enough (i.e. looking only at the core info), the arguements hinge on the following text:&nbsp;If you take &quot;in this way&quot; to mean whenever &quot;you wield a weapon in your off hand&quot;, then you are on Side 1. If you take &quot;in this way&quot; to mean whenever you &quot;get one extra attack&quot;, then you are on Side A.If you are trying to be consistent, these two different interpretations have a pretty wide number of side effects. For example, with Side A's POV, a character can wield daggers in both hands and interchange attacks between the daggers as desired, as long as they only get the normal number of attacks. With Side 1's POV, this would require taking penalties, regardless of whether or not the character makes any extra attacks. This makes Side A seem better from a balance/options standpoint. OTOH, Side A's side allows a character to sit around 24/7 with a reach weapon just to take AoOs and never take any penalties. Side 1's view stops this. This makes Side 1 seem better from a balance perspective.Note that the ruling from the 3.0 FAQ answers a question about Defending weapons that supports Side 1. There is an RotG article (<a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041102a" target="_blank">http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041102a</a>) that explicitly supports Side A. I personally am on Side 1.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Deset Gled, post: 3382209, member: 7808"] I can say that it's one of the oldest most discussed ambiguities of the 3.5 ruleset, right up there with monks and INA, Polymoph and HP, sunder and AoOs, etc. There are many previous threads here on the subject. My cut-and-paste answer from a previous thread: There is a long term debate surrounding what penalties are associated with making an AoO with an off hand weapon. Some people maintain that if you take an AoO with your off-hand weapon, you must take the TWF penalties (I will refer to this as Side 1). Others claim you only take the penalties if you use the full attack action to get extra attacks using the off hand weapon (I will refer to this as Side A). Once you get down into the debate far enough (i.e. looking only at the core info), the arguements hinge on the following text: If you take "in this way" to mean whenever "you wield a weapon in your off hand", then you are on Side 1. If you take "in this way" to mean whenever you "get one extra attack", then you are on Side A. If you are trying to be consistent, these two different interpretations have a pretty wide number of side effects. For example, with Side A's POV, a character can wield daggers in both hands and interchange attacks between the daggers as desired, as long as they only get the normal number of attacks. With Side 1's POV, this would require taking penalties, regardless of whether or not the character makes any extra attacks. This makes Side A seem better from a balance/options standpoint. OTOH, Side A's side allows a character to sit around 24/7 with a reach weapon just to take AoOs and never take any penalties. Side 1's view stops this. This makes Side 1 seem better from a balance perspective. Note that the ruling from the 3.0 FAQ answers a question about Defending weapons that supports Side 1. There is an RotG article ([url]http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20041102a[/url]) that explicitly supports Side A. I personally am on Side 1. [/QUOTE]

Verification