D&D 5E Concept for Dual Wielder feat revision

[clearstream]

Dual Wielder
You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand.
Attacks you make with a melee weapon you’re holding in your other hand, as part of two-weapon fighting, don’t use your bonus action. You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one handed melee weapons you are wielding aren’t light.
You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one.

So the added text is - "Attacks you make with a melee weapon you’re holding in your other hand, as part of two-weapon fighting, don’t use your bonus action." Why? The downside of this change is that it doesn't add damage, leaving TWF still lagging behind other fighting styles. The upside is that it makes the feat work in interesting ways with other things that use your bonus actions, for example Beast Masters, Hand Crossbows, Hunter's Mark or Hex relocation, Cunning Action or Vanish.

What do you think?

 

[Mephista]

Assuming lvl 5 warrior type with Polearm Mastery versus .... let's go with lvl 5 Ranger comparison. The ranger needs to take the FS that does offhand damage. A fighter or paladin will take Defence or Great Weapon Fighting. Barbarian gets extra damage from Rage. For the sake of argument, i will pretend these are equal.

Hunter Ranger sets Hunters Mark (Concentration spell in melee dies quick), gets three attacks with rapiers. 3d8+3d6+1d8+9. Beastmaster Ranger (revised) gets 2d8+2d6+6+2d6+4. Battlemaster Fighter gets 3d10+12+1d4+martial dice+action surge. Paladins gets 3d10+1d4+12+2d8 smite. Barbarian gets 3d10+1d4+20 at advantage. Monk gets 4d6+16 and +1 defence, plus stunning+prone. Potential damage for everyone is - 37, 32, 31+MD+AS, 40, 39 and 30.

Result? Using resources, the Hunter Ranger does comparable damage, but also slightly less in a way - most every one can inflict Conditions or have advantage. Beastmaster does less damage, but has pet abilities to get Conditions or advantage. Monk falls behind in dpr, but that is a separate issue.

Compare TWFing Fighter. The main advantage is getting another attack when action surging, which I cannot see as significant when compared to Polearm Mastery. So what if you can Second Wind along with TWF? Or Commander Strike? A nice dps bump, but very niche and other online comparisons still show Polearm and Great Weapon Materies doing better individually, let alone together.

Bards are the third TWFing class, but honestly? Valor needs all the help it can get (still better off with Shield Mastery or a bow imho), and we'll see what College of blades is like in the future; currently there is no issue since this college is designed to not get in the way of bonus action TWFing.

Lastly, we have rogues. This let's you use two weapons and Cunning Action instead of having to pick. In theory, you can get advantage and two attacks to really increase your chances of hitting, but it works out to about a +12% increase of hitting in a niche situation, or a +2 to hit every once in a while. Too small and too niche for a melee rogue in my opinion. The big difference is when you can two weapon fight and Cunning Action, giving you more chance to hit in melee and mobility. That is going to be table dependant, but I can't think too badly of it myself.

 

[Mephista]

Personally, I'd recommend dropping the dual wielding rapiers and longswords, and put in something else. The weapon die increase is kinda negligable long term, and doing something else could broaden the feeling of the style. Like two attacks during an OA or other reaction attack, one per hand. Or gain a new FS (either TWFing or Defensive).

 

[clearstream]

Assuming lvl 5 warrior type with Polearm Mastery versus .... let's go with lvl 5 Ranger comparison. The ranger needs to take the FS that does offhand damage. A fighter or paladin will take Defence or Great Weapon Fighting. Barbarian gets extra damage from Rage. For the sake of argument, i will pretend these are equal.

Hunter Ranger sets Hunters Mark (Concentration spell in melee dies quick), gets three attacks with rapiers. 3d8+3d6+1d8+9. Beastmaster Ranger (revised) gets 2d8+2d6+6+2d6+4. Battlemaster Fighter gets 3d10+12+1d4+martial dice+action surge. Paladins gets 3d10+1d4+12+2d8 smite. Barbarian gets 3d10+1d4+20 at advantage. Monk gets 4d6+16 and +1 defence, plus stunning+prone. Potential damage for everyone is - 37, 32, 31+MD+AS, 40, 39 and 30.

Result? Using resources, the Hunter Ranger does comparable damage, but also slightly less in a way - most every one can inflict Conditions or have advantage. Beastmaster does less damage, but has pet abilities to get Conditions or advantage. Monk falls behind in dpr, but that is a separate issue.

Compare TWFing Fighter. The main advantage is getting another attack when action surging, which I cannot see as significant when compared to Polearm Mastery. So what if you can Second Wind along with TWF? Or Commander Strike? A nice dps bump, but very niche and other online comparisons still show Polearm and Great Weapon Materies doing better individually, let alone together.

Yes, this tweak is decidedly not focused on competitive damage, but on tactical benefits by relieving the action economy problems. Damage is important of course, but at the table other things can matter. I wanted to create an incommensurable: a benefit that couldn't be compared 1:1 with damage. Also to enable creative play. For example, with TWF not using the bonus action, one could attack twice with a 1H-melee weapon and then twice with hand crossbow in the other hand.

Lastly, we have rogues. This let's you use two weapons and Cunning Action instead of having to pick. In theory, you can get advantage and two attacks to really increase your chances of hitting, but it works out to about a +12% increase of hitting in a niche situation, or a +2 to hit every once in a while. Too small and too niche for a melee rogue in my opinion. The big difference is when you can two weapon fight and Cunning Action, giving you more chance to hit in melee and mobility. That is going to be table dependant, but I can't think too badly of it myself.

Exactly, you could attack twice, Cunning Action to Disengage, move, attack something else. If nothing else, it should increase the certainty of getting Sneak Attack damage.

 

[clearstream]

Personally, I'd recommend dropping the dual wielding rapiers and longswords, and put in something else. The weapon die increase is kinda negligable long term, and doing something else could broaden the feeling of the style. Like two attacks during an OA or other reaction attack, one per hand. Or gain a new FS (either TWFing or Defensive).

Don't you think though, that all too often we just add damage? One thing I seriously dislike about TWF is that it dampens creative play.

 

[Xeviat]

The Dual Wielder Feat should really be as good as +2 Strength. I like the bonus action removal idea, as it does allow for more interesting actions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Xaelvaen]

This is precisely what we use in my homebrew games. I also include a talent system which later allows an extra attacker to use their bonus action in conjunction with this feat to make a second attack with their offhand weapon, so that they can make four attacks in a round with a one-handed weapon. I've found this dps rather comparable to Great Weapon Master in the long haul.

I'm also a bit more lenient with this; I've allowed players to use it as a sort of a 'Sword and Fist' style, using the 'off-hand attack' as more of creative outlets; grappling your enemy so they can't get away from you, tripping them, etc.

 

[Mephista]

Don't you think though, that all too often we just add damage? One thing I seriously dislike about TWF is that it dampens creative play.

It's not "just" damage, at least in the case of OAs. It's an incentive to fight in a certain way and develop tactics that resonate.

But other than that? There is a limit to ideas you can have with TWF. You can party things, you can attack more, you can.... What, whirlwind dervish? Putting aside that's a Ranger ability, it's also a classic sword/shield maneuver. What other things can you do?

 

[clearstream]

It's not "just" damage, at least in the case of OAs. It's an incentive to fight in a certain way and develop tactics that resonate.

But other than that? There is a limit to ideas you can have with TWF. You can party things, you can attack more, you can.... What, whirlwind dervish? Putting aside that's a Ranger ability, it's also a classic sword/shield maneuver. What other things can you do?

I thought about something like - when you make an AoO you can attack once with each melee weapon you are holding. I cut it because I'm finding AoOs are more or less DM discretion and vary a lot how frequently they come up. It could be mildly interesting due to the option to combine with Sentinel or Sneak Attack, but not much else I believe.

So I started to think about why quite a few people take DW even though it is strictly worse than +2 Dexterity? Maybe for them it's not just damage, but panache. So I asked myself what could add panache? I think removing the bonus action cost unlocks the most. Think about Beast Master - by removing the bonus action cost your 7th level feature works with (instead of against) TWF. Beast Helps, giving advantage, swish-swish-swish. Or Arcane Trickster. Legerdermain improves.

So that was my thinking - panache.

 

[CTurbo]

I like dual wielding. It's great at low levels. The best at low levels when down right, but it's obviously lacking at high levels. I wish there was a way to have it scale better. I have house ruled a way for it to scale better in one of my campaigns.

Dual Wielding Master
Prerequisite: Dual Wielder

When you use your Bonus action to make an attack with an off-hand weapon you are holding, you can attack an equal number of times as your Attack Action.
When you use your reaction to make an AoO, you can make one attack with each weapon you are holding.





So yeah it's simple, you need TWO feats to get there so that's a lot of tax to pay, but I think it brings the Dual Wielding option back into the competitive fold with GWM if not even a little better at times.

Yes, a 20 level TWF Fighter would get 8 attacks per round with potentially 2 more with AoO. Let's do some math.

Lets assume level 20, 20 Str Fighter with the TWF style, and two battle axes. Both DW feats and no magic.
8d8+40 damage per turn with a possible 2d8+10 more = 76 + possible 19 more = 95

Now lets assume a level 20, 20 Str Fighter with GWF and GWM and a Greataxe.
4d12+20 damage per turn without the -5/+10 with a possible 2d12+10 more = 46 + possible 23 more = 69 (rerolls 1 and 2s would add ~5-7 damage total)
4d12+60 damage per turn WITH the -5/+10 with a possible 2d12+30 more = 86 + possible 43 more = 129 (rerolls 1 and 2s would add ~5-7 damage total)


As you can see, my Dual Wielding house rule puts it square in the middle of the GWF with and without GWM's -5/+10. Of course this assumes all hits and we know the -5/+10 user will not hit quite as much bringing that 129 damage down a little bit but probably still keeping it above the 95 from having 8 attacks. This is the most extreme case for this Dual Wielder too.


For the record, I don't think the Dual Wielding feat is THAT bad on it's own. It gives you +1 to AC, and basically +1 to damage per attack. That's not terrible on characters with the TWF style. Wouldn't even consider it for any other character though.