Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (not the feat)

[airwalkrr]

Do you think game balance would be thrown completely out of whack if I rolled the benefits of Improved Two-Weapon Fighting and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting into Two-Weapon Fighting? It just seems to me that fighting with two weapons is usually inferior to using a two-handed weapon and all these feats have such an opportunity cost that the two-handed weapon fighter is using to improve his ability to fight. Basically, I would word the Two-Weapon Fighting Feat like this:

TWO-WEAPON FIGHTING [GENERAL]
You can fight with a weapon in each hand. You can make extra attacks each round with the second weapon.
Prerequisite: Dex 15.
Benefit: Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6. If you have a high enough base attack bonus for extra attacks, you may make extra attacks with your off hand as you do with your primary hand.
Normal: If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon. When fighting in this way you suffer a –6 penalty with your regular attack or attacks with your primary hand and a –10 penalty to the attack with your off hand. If your off-hand weapon is light the penalties are reduced by 2 each. (An unarmed strike is always considered light.)
Special: A 2nd-level ranger who has chosen the two-weapon combat style is treated as having Two-Weapon Fighting, even if he does not have the prerequisite for it, but only when he is wearing light or no armor.
A fighter may select Two-Weapon Fighting as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Honestly, I do not see how this would really cramp anyone's style. Two-weapon fighters are seen as inferior by everyone I know. Some people do it for style or to look like Drizz't, but power-gamers always choose the two-handed weapon. Has anyone else done this before? Results?

 

[Ilium]

I've been considering it myself. It will make dual-wielding rogues very happy, of course, since they are short on feats already compared to fighters. That's the biggest "abuse" I see: an 8th-level rogue will get up to 4 attacks (or more with magic) and if they're all sneak attacks he'll be doing a LOT of damage.

 

[airwalkrr]

I've been considering it myself. It will make dual-wielding rogues very happy, of course, since they are short on feats already compared to fighters. That's the biggest "abuse" I see: an 8th-level rogue will get up to 4 attacks (or more with magic) and if they're all sneak attacks he'll be doing a LOT of damage.

Assuming he hits. 8th-level rogues only have a BAB of +6. Unless the invested in Weapon Finesse, they will have a much lower attack bonus than the fighter.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

The original feat already gives a large effective "bonus" and actually covers what was once 2 feats in 3.0, TWF and the now forgotten Ambidexterity. I suppose you could make the case that TWF penalties are too punitive, though. I think it's a good feat already, although Improved and Greater don't seem worthwhile. I figured a good solution to fix those two feats, as well as fix TW Defense, was to change TWD as follows:

Benefit: When fighting with two weapons or a double weapon, you gain a shield bonus to AC equal 1 x the number of attacks you can make with the off-hand. When fighting defensively or using the total defense action, the shield bonus is equal to 2 x the number of off-hand attacks.

Thus, TWD need only be taken once, improves on its own, and offers extra incentive to take greater and improved TWF. It's also Ranger-friendly, while your variant forces a re-working of the class. If you still think this is too weak for two-weapon fighters, then maybe just introduce another feat, with mid-level prerequisites, to eliminate the remaining -2/-2 penalty from TWF. I really don't think this should be catered to rogues, but rather to fighters and rangers. Rogues can never even take greater TWF and with their lower BAB, I really don't see why they'd bother with improved.

 

[Exen Trik]

I like it, personally. It leaves it a little on the strong side, but having a chain of feats to get a couple attacks that hardly ever hit doesn't make any sense to me. It is just another method of attack like using two handed weapons or sword and board, and you don't need multiple feats to get full use of them at 20th level.

Negating the two weapon penalties with ITWF and GTWF sounds good, my first thought was reduce all the penalties by 1 with each feat, but decided this was more themey:

Improved Two Weapon Fighting: Negates the -2 penalty to hit for your main weapon
Greater Two Weapon Fighting: Negates the -2 penalty for your off hand weapon

Different concepts or builds might not care so much about their offhand attacks, such as one using shields, unarmed strikes or just going for defense, and this way its a good fit for them. It makes sense too, that being better with the offhand is trickier than with the main.


...On a side note though, the original rationale for making two weapon fighting difficult is because, in reality, it is quite difficult. I wouldn't propose this change for a campaign aiming for realism, but its perfect for one with a swashbuckling theme, or where Drizzt clones are the norm.

 

[airwalkrr]

Fighting with two weapons is difficult to the untrained individual, but having witnessed martial arts tests where two-weapon fighting is quite common, I am led to believe that with practice it is not relatively difficult. Bear in mind these are individuals who have practiced two-weapon fighting, but I don't think it is too much of a stretch to see it as a bit easier than the D&D rules portray.

Actually, I am considering allowing all characters to make a full attack with their off hand even without the feat (taking all sundry penalties of course so as to virtually nullfiy the chances of such attacks hitting) and let Two-Weapon Fighting simply reduce the penalties. Then Improved Two-Weapon Fighting would negate the penalties. In my mind all it would do is allow a two-weapon fighter to actually be the equal of a two-handed fighter. Critical hits (the only big advantage to two-weapon fighting) have a lower relative value in 3e where modifiers to damage are king so I really cannot see it as being unbalancing to take two feats to be a little bit better than a two-handed fighter.

 

[Palladion]

Just to throw some confusion in, consider something like this...

Improved Two-Weapon Fighting does not require Two-Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting does not require either feat as a prerequisite.

This would mean characters get a choice whether to spend a valuable feat early on to get the extra attack or wait till later to not "waste" a feat. In a campaign where character rebuilding is allowed (PHB II), then characters can swap out an earlier Two-Weapon Fighting feat after they take a superior one. (Remember, they cannot just swap out the inferior Two-Weapon Fighting feat directly for a superior one, since they would not have qualified for the base attack bonus requirements at that level.)

This same thought can be applied to Two-Weapon Defense, though generally an animated shield (DMG page 218) renders that feat (and its subsequent feats) useless.

As for damage potential, the only way Two-Weapon Fighting damage potential is greater than two-handed weapons is in "extra damage" effects that apply to both weapons, such as Weapon Specialization (or similar feats, PHB II has a few), sneak attack, or ability damage (i.e. wounding weapons), to name a few.

Generally, two-weapon fighters should not try to match two-handed weapons in damage, but go for abilities that allow more interesting effects, such as the Style feats in Complete Warrior (though they are feat intensive). Even Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting (CAdv page 111) and Power Attack cannot exactly match Power Attack and a two-handed weapon (though you can squeeze a little more out of armbands of might).

But of course, two-weapon fighting just looks cooler. My 2 cents.

 

[Machiavelli]

And that is why two weapons is far superior to one huge weapon: it's cooler. It says "hey, I don't have to compensate for a negative self-image by wielding an eight-foot phallic symbol. I'll spin and weave and just generally be awesome instead."

The phallic symbol, of course, says "haha, look at you, with your multiple profusely bleeding pieces! How ya gonna fight me now that your sword arm is laying over there, little man?"
What it lacks in slick awesomeness, it makes up for with sheer volume of gore.


Also, your feat idea is neat, airwalker. I like it alot, though I currently have no complaints about the TWF, ITWF, GTWF feat chain. Still, I suspect my opinion of the current state of D&D dual-wielders is heavily tainted by my infatuation with the image of D&D dual-wielders. They could suffer greatly from their mechanics, and I might not notice.