You can't have it both ways. Your post is simultaneously arguing that RAW should not be given significant weight in favor of letting the GM finish the system and that RAW is explicit on another matter because of what is not actually in the wording of the base or errata'd version.
it doesn't say it's not a spell either so by the logic of "doesn't say 1/turn, so it's not 1/turn" it's a spell because it doesn't say that it's not a spell either. What is not in the plain reading of RAW an impossible & infinitely deep rabbit hole to make judgements on.
Yes it does say it's not a spell, because it's not listed in the section on spells, isn't on any spell lists, and doesn't list casting time or components.
Who is declaring a GM to be the bad guy for making a houserule? I've only seen that happen when the house rule is designed to screw the players, or when the players want to make a houserule that would screw someone or something else and the GM refuses to do so.
It's definitely a feature, not a bug. 3x had too many rules that bogged everything down. It's not "lax," its there to prevent unnecessary over-tuning. Plus, the more rules you have, the easier it is to mess something up by accidentally breaking it.
(And I say this as an autistic person who really likes to have her rules written out plainly.)
From the paladin description: "Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon's damage." Compare to the rogue's description of sneak attack: "Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll." So it's pretty clear in saying that you're not limited to one smite a turn. Paladins can nova the hell out of a target if they want to and have the slots to do so. Rogues... can't.
Nothing is being read into your post, you can't have it both ways.
If there's no ruling on a matter, then there's no RAW on the matter. If there is a ruling on a matter, then there is a RAW. It's pretty simple.
Yes it does say it's not a spell, because it's not listed in the section on spells, isn't on any spell lists, and doesn't list casting time or components.
Who is declaring a GM to be the bad guy for making a houserule? I've only seen that happen when the house rule is designed to screw the players, or when the players want to make a houserule that would screw someone or something else and the GM refuses to do so.
When these sort of bonkers RAW writings are almost always phrased in ways that force either adversarial gm vrs player style gm'ing or a gm having a significant number of houserules that "nerf" player toys to keep those things from breaking their game. That makes them the bad guy. And your right that there is no ruling from wotc on it, which is why I noted exactly that earlier but that lack of ruling exacerbates the problem. 5e has a long laundry list of things where plain reading of RAW says $bonkers & everyone agrees it's bonkers but wotc refuses to errata or rule on it because 5e is deliberately poorly worded to "allow" the gm do change things & doing that might save the gm from needing to in the first place.
Your really getting off topic & far from "does smite make twf dual wielding good" & I've tried to steer back to that a couple times now, so you win if this other tangent about how many smites are allowed per round is something you want to continue.[/spoiler]
It's definitely a feature, not a bug. 3x had too many rules that bogged everything down. It's not "lax," its there to prevent unnecessary over-tuning. Plus, the more rules you have, the easier it is to mess something up by accidentally breaking it.
(And I say this as an autistic person who really likes to have her rules written out plainly.)
From the paladin description: "Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can expend one spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target, in addition to the weapon's damage." Compare to the rogue's description of sneak attack: "Once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll." So it's pretty clear in saying that you're not limited to one smite a turn. Paladins can nova the hell out of a target if they want to and have the slots to do so. Rogues... can't.
Nothing is being read into your post, you can't have it both ways.
Uh, those two posts don't have anything to do with what you're saying. I never claimed that 5e had too many rules, or not enough rules, or no rules--so the fact that there are rules for something is completely beside the point.
When these sort of bonkers RAW writings are almost always phrased in ways that force either adversarial gm vrs player style gm'ing or a gm having a significant number of houserules that "nerf" player toys to keep those things from breaking their game.
Right, here's your problem, right here. These people aren't creating rules to fill in blank spots left behind. They're changing existing rules to penalize players. Those are two very different things.
There's a huge difference between saying "my interpretation of these rules is such-and-such" and "rogues do too much damage so now they only inflict half damage on a sneak attack." (I grabbed that example from a random reddit post).
You can interpret paladins as being only able to smite once per turn, because that's what rogues do (so there's precedent), or you can interpret them as being able to smite once per attack (because that's fairly clearly RAI), and neither of those would be considered antagonistic or bad GMing. Unless you have really naughty word players, or you put that restriction on only one member of the party but not another one with the same or similar ability, or you otherwise do it to screw a player.
I have absolutely no idea if smiting makes TWF good or not, because I haven't played a paladin in ages and I wasn't addressing that argument.
Smite makes TWF better because smite makes all melee paladins better. TWF paladin sounds like a pretty cool concept thinking about it. And the shortest work day in all the game.
I'd say TWF is par right now. If you made it part of the attack action it would be too strong without first nerfing the two-weapon fighting style. I could even go for making the fighting style 'you can do it as part of your attack' instead of adding ability modifier to damage. I do like the ideas in this thread that I'm gonna play with without changing any other rules:
Two Weapon Fighting
When you attack while wielding one melee weapon in each hand you may make an additional attack with your offhand weapon or set to parry as a bonus action. You may only perform these techniques if both weapons have the 'light' property or one of the weapons is a dagger. If you attack using your bonus action you do not add your weapon's ability score modifier to its damage. If you parry add 1 to your Armor Class until the beginning of your next turn.
Adds a little versatility to TWF. Allows for rapier/longsword+dagger without changing the overall damage (though actually may change overall damage since you could treat it as a 1-h rapier plus half a shield if you were playing a character without shield proficiency. Personally fine with that as a rogue with parrying dagger seems like a cool thing.) TWF Fighting Style is still great. TWF feat is even better with the potential AC bonus.
That being said, at least in-play I tend to have a two-weapon player in all of my games and haven't seen a rogue who isn't two-weapon. Don't think it's underpowered or overpowered, but it has a niche that it seems to fill pretty well.
