D&D 5E (2024) Dual wielder feat got worse?

[Lojaan]

This was a surprise. Sure you get an ASI but now you can only wield one non light weapon and it's lost the boost to AC. It seems like it's gone from very average to pretty bad.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Yup. Overall TWF is significantly better, especially for rogues and rangers (as it no longer uses a bonus action so doesn't clash with Cunning Action or Hunter's Mark). But the feat's now pretty useless.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Wielding only one non-light weapon is sensible -- two rapiers never made sense, and the effective difference is ~1 hp damage per round.

Losing the AC boost is a knock-on effect from every fourth level feat having a +1ASI. There are a handful of new feats where they've taken something away and given an ASI that has broader but shallower impact, and this is one of them. If they decide to relent on the design principle, losing the +1 Dex/Str and regaining +1 AC would make good sense.

(The other one I feel strongly about is spell sniper not giving an attack spell any more; I'd happily lose the ASI to get that back.)

 

[TwoSix]

The value of the feat is highly dependent on the amount of randomness in the campaign's magic item drops. The feat gets a lot more valuable if you're dual-wielding focused and a bunch of magic longswords, rapiers, or battleaxes start dropping.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Wielding only one non-light weapon is sensible -- two rapiers never made sense, and the effective difference is ~1 hp damage per round.

(I still think it's funny and nonsensical that you can wield a Lance and dual wield it with a light weapon under our current version of the weapon. Only works if you're mounted, though, and is definitely better than the "dual wield TWO lances" from original 5e.)

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I'm not a big fan of two-weapon fighting, but I feel like, given that the most developed real life form was rapier with an offhand dagger or similar weapon, that you shouldn't need a feat for that. Two full sized weapons, a thing basically only done historically by weapons masters showing off, is the thing that should be locked behind a feat.

And yes making an already lackluster feat lamer is just a weird joke. While I never would have built a character around getting the old feat, I did have one fall into it as there were two excellent one handed weapons in the party and he was the only weapons guy. Now it would require basically having both an excellent primary weapon and an excellent weapon that happened to be light to be worth considering.

 

[DeviousQuail]

It's even worse. With the new rules in the playtest anyone can draw and attack with a light weapon and then draw and attack with an off-hand light weapon in the same turn. The Quick Draw feature is unnecessary for dual wielders now unless you regularly switch between 3+ weapons during a fight. Replacing it with the +1 AC feature would make it almost respectable.

 

[Branduil]

Most of the stuff in the feat should just apply to everyone, like the drawing two weapons part.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

It wasn't an exciting feat, and they chose to make it worse (while other, more popular feats just got the +1 stat slammed on top of them). It is utterly pointless to pick now (get +1 average dmg with one of your weapons). Even if we ignore this playtest's weird 'draw/stash a weapon before/after every attack' bit, needing a feat just to draw both your weapons was always a terrible idea.

TWF was fine for lv1-4, and still is. But then... it doesn't scale, other fighting styles are given actual lv4 weapon feats, only one magic weapon is not enough for your lifestyle, there is a chance that they'll clarify that drawing during attack still counts as your item interaction for that turn... it's been meh for a decade, why stop now.

 

[rules.mechanic]

Agree, needs the +1 AC to be worth taking now. An interesting idea that fits with historical use would be to routinely allow you to omit the second light weapon attack to gain +1 AC until the start of your next turn, or +2 AC if you have the feat.