Damage Reduction vs. Two Weapon Fighting

[RisnDevil]

But don't you think that with identical progression it should have a feat then? Else that may be slightly overpowered......

 

[RisnDevil]

How about this then.

2HF- You get douple your PA, of course no feat required.

2WF- You get double your Attacks, no feats required, no special attacks (Ie Sneak Attack) with off-hand. ALSO, receive no negatives, unless A) one weapon is Medium/One-handed (This will give a -2 to OFF-HAND only) or B) two weapons are Medium/One-handed (This will give a -4 to OFF-HAND only), and these minuses CANNOT be gotten around with feats.

I think that would make it balanced, but what about the poor S&B then....?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

How about this then.

2HF- You get douple your PA, of course no feat required.

2WF- You get double your Attacks, no feats required, no special attacks (Ie Sneak Attack) with off-hand. ALSO, receive no negatives, unless A) one weapon is Medium/One-handed (This will give a -2 to OFF-HAND only) or B) two weapons are Medium/One-handed (This will give a -4 to OFF-HAND only), and these minuses CANNOT be gotten around with feats.

I think that would make it balanced, but what about the poor S&B then....?

You are nearly recreating 2e TWF, which would not be a good thing without a big boost to sword & board.

A few things I think get lost in the shuffle in these discussions:
(1) TWF is perfectly reasonable as is at low levels, and comparable in effectiveness to sword & board and THF. Rolling more weak attacks is an effective hedge against runs of bad luck that are the bane of low level characters.
(2) TWF is perfectly reasonable as is at high levels.
(3) If TWF is hosed by DR then so is sword & board.
(4) Certainly you could carry a buckler to hedge your bets and thereby switch fluidly between offense vs. defense. This is an efficient option, especially on rounds you do not get a full attack.
(5) I am not all that happy about variants that strongly favor two light weapons. There is already a strong incentive to hyperoptimize by chooseing Focus+Specialization in short swords. Long sword + short sword should not be at more than a minor disadvantage, at worst, compared to short sword + short sword.
(6) There is a hidden cost of THF at high levels: the loss of a magic item slot. A TWF or sword & board fighter could have a weapon or shield in the off hand with a special power(s) (e.g. Shield of Flying, an intelligent weapon).

 

[Scion]

(2) TWF is perfectly reasonable as is at high levels.

I disagree to some extent with a few of your comments ridley this one most of all.

twf takes a minimum of 3 feats to use at all, vs thf 0.

twf feats have large requirements, like dex of 19+. That means you will need a very high dex and str, or yet another feat on weapon finese but putting yourself even farther behind in damage. These feats all represent diminishing returns also.

There are more things on both sides.. but I think that the high feat and stat requirements say a lot right there.

 

[Shadowdweller]

I really haven't run the numbers on this, but it seems to me that there very well might be other circumstances that balance the effect of DR and PA discrepancies with respect to TWF vs THF.

Consider, for instance:
- Using two vorpal weapons
- Two weapons of speed (does this even stack wrt the two weapons?)
- Two weapons of wounding
- Two weapons of any other enchantment that causes an effect from simply hitting(disruption) or from a critical hit

I've seen analyses showing how the overall damage from the crits doesn't favor TWF, but one would think that any effect caused by simply hitting/attacking or by making a crit THREAT would favor TWF to an extent.

 

[Hypersmurf]

- Two weapons of speed (does this even stack wrt the two weapons?)

No. Only one extra attack on a full attack action, even if you're wielding six of them.

-Hyp.

 

[jgsugden]

...

The most that you (or the 3.5e designers) are able to assert is that allowing power attack to effect light weapons was disproportionately effective for TWF characters vis a vis THF characters. ...

Demonstrating brokenness is very different from merely demonstrating a disproportionate effect.

Balance has to take into account a lot of issues that are campaign specific. For instance, if there is only 1 weapon in the entire campaign setting, two weapon fighting is pretty useless.

However, demonstrating a disproportionate effect that significantly modifies expected damage per round in common melee situations that are likely to be found in most camapigns (for example, characters of X level versus CR X monsters from the MM analyzed over a spectrum of levels/CRs 1 - 20) can show an imbalance in games that tend to use MM monsters of CR = party level.

That analysis was done back in the 3.0/3.5 transition period. I read a number of them and worked a few examples up myself. They were far from scientifically perfect, but they were good enough to show the trends.

My point was not to challenge anybody's ability to do math. My point was to say that most people don't notice the cumulative effect that power attack and two weapon fighting created because the damage per attack was not ludicrously high. It was only the cumulative effect of the attacks that made the damage unreasonable.

 

[Shadowdweller]

No. Only one extra attack on a full attack action, even if you're wielding six of them.

-Hyp.

Do you have a specific 3.5 reference for this ruling?

While I have a vague recollection to this effect, I can find no definite supporting statement in either the FAQ or text of the speed enchantment. While it states that the speed enchantment is not cumulative with similar effects, such as the haste spell, using another weapon of speed would not truly be cumulative in that it would not be granting another attack with the FORMER weapon. In other words, given two weapons, A and B, neither would be able to grant the other (A to B, or B to A) an extra attack if it had the speed enchantment. Since this is the case, it could be reasoned that two speed enchantments used in such a manner would NOT be cumulative, and thus not illegal as per the rules.

Have to say that I've noticed a lot of really subtle changes like this thing could potentially be between 3.5 and 3.0

 

[jgsugden]

DR is supposed to mess with 2 weapon fighters more than 2 handed fighters. Each style has strengths and weaknesses. One weakness of two weapon fighting is that it deals less damage per attack ... and thus has more trouble beating DR.

Does this mean that a two weapon fighter is helpless against DR monsters? No.

If the TWF fighter goes up against DR that he can't beat, he can always draw a two handed weapon. A character that prefers TWF styles is not limited to them.

The TWF in 3.5 that has power attack can still get a 1 for 1 transfer from attack to damage with his one handed weapon.

In fact, if he uses 2 1 handed weapons (-4 to hit with each), he can get a PA bonus with each. My epic melee rogue has done this a few times when facing creatures with DR, bad ACs and immunity to critical hits. normally, using 2 medium weapons is a bad idea, but doing so with PA against creatures with DR is sometimes a smart decision.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Do you have a specific 3.5 reference for this ruling?

The answer's from the 3E FAQ, not 3.5, but it's hardly invalidated.

Speed: When making a full attack action, the wielder of a speed weapon may make one extra attack with it. The attack uses the wielder’s full base attack bonus, plus any modifiers appropriate to the situation. (This benefit is not cumulative with similar effects, such as a haste spell.)

If I understand your reading, you're suggesting that if I have a longsword, a shortsword of speed, and a haste spell, then I can make my normal iterative and feat-based attacks, plus an extra attack with the longsword (haste), plus an extra attack with the shortsword (speed) - since neither haste nor speed are granting extra attacks with the same weapon, and therefore I'm not really gaining a "cumulative benefit".

Have I understood your position correctly?

-Hyp.