Improved Unarmed Strike and 2H weapons

[Hypersmurf]

However, in a surprise round, you do no have the option of making an extra attack.

Right, so you're ill-advised under my reading to wield the second weapon in your off-hand in the surprise round, since the penalties would not be countered by significant potential benefit.

In much the same way that you can use the Power Attack feat while wielding a light weapon, but it's generally a poor strategy.

-Hyp.

 

[pawsplay]

I find it a little difficult to believe that holding a dagger in your left hand would cause you to backstab very poorly with your rapier. And as I've noted above, I definitely would not call that "fighting in this way."

 

[Hypersmurf]

I find it a little difficult to believe that holding a dagger in your left hand would cause you to backstab very poorly with your rapier. And as I've noted above, I definitely would not call that "fighting in this way."

Well, neither would I. Of course, as I've noted above, that's 'cos I distinguish between holding a dagger in your left hand, and wielding a second weapon in your off-hand.

-Hyp.

 

[glass]

Ahem. You were the one bringing up keeping the game in line real life. So don't accuse me of bringing up the straw man.

I never said anything about keeping the game in line with real life (in fact, I specifically said the opposite), I said you shouldn't add extra rules to make mundane aspects of the game more out of line than they already are. SoD is not an infinte resource; I just cannot compehend wasting it on how you can hold a dagger or a quarterstaff. I'll save mine for giants and dragons and spells, thank you!

The only complexity I'm looking at is someone holding a weapon in a way that is clearly unusable like holding a two-weapon hand in one hand or hanging on to a sword by the blade (for some undefined reason, perhaps you're admiring the sheen of a well-polished blade). I'm not the one making a distinction between holding a dagger by the hilt so you can attack with it (using TWF) and holding a dagger by the hilt so that you cannot and then have to spend a free action rearranging it.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no distinction between the latter two. That's less complexity. Not more.

You: 'The prince seems to admire your new dagger'

Player: 'I pass it him for a closer look'

You: 'On seeing that, the prince's guardsdraw their weapons and move to attack'

Player: 'WTF?'

You: 'You're wielding a dagger right next to the prince, he's in your thretened area; are you surpirsed that the guards don't like that?'

Player: 'I'm not wielding it, I am just holding it'

DM: 'Sorry, my houserules don't allow you to do that'

Player: (again) 'WTF?'


glass.

 

[jasin]

You: 'The prince seems to admire your new dagger'

Player: 'I pass it him for a closer look'

You: 'On seeing that, the prince's guardsdraw their weapons and move to attack'

Player: 'WTF?'

You: 'You're wielding a dagger right next to the prince, he's in your thretened area; are you surpirsed that the guards don't like that?'

Player: 'I'm not wielding it, I am just holding it'

DM: 'Sorry, my houserules don't allow you to do that'

Player: (again) 'WTF?'

Do the real world rules allow that? In the real world, do you think many people were/are allowed to draw weapons near rulers at all, and do you think that the guards usually make the distinction between who is allowed and who isn't based on whether they're "holding" or "wielding" the weapon? Or rather things like whether this person is someone who can be trusted?

 

[glass]

Do the real world rules allow that? In the real world, do you think many people were/are allowed to draw weapons near rulers at all?

OK, there is a possibility that the PC would not even be allowed to have the dagger withing reach of his prince, but that is not really the point. And, who said anything about drawing weapons?

According to billd91's rule, it is impossible to hold a weapon without threatening with it. That either means you threaten with it even if it is still in its sheath, or you can't hold it in your hand in its sheath at all. Either is non-sensical, which is what I was trying to demonstrate in my example.

and do you think that the guards usually make the distinction between who is allowed and who isn't based on whether they're "holding" or "wielding" the weapon? Or rather things like whether this person is someone who can be trusted?

Well, no guard should be too trusting of anyone drawing a dagger next to their prince. Would their reaction depend on whether the person in question remopved the dagger, still sheathed, from their belt and offered it hilt-first to the prince, or drew it and started waving it around? Hell, yes, it would!


glass.

 

[billd91]

According to billd91's rule, it is impossible to hold a weapon without threatening with it. That either means you threaten with it even if it is still in its sheath, or you can't hold it in your hand in its sheath at all. Either is non-sensical, which is what I was trying to demonstrate in my example.

Well, no guard should be too trusting of anyone drawing a dagger next to their prince. Would their reaction depend on whether the person in question remopved the dagger, still sheathed, from their belt and offered it hilt-first to the prince, or drew it and started waving it around? Hell, yes, it would!


glass.

Now who's throwing around straw men? Just because I don't think there is or should be a distinction in the rules between holding and wielding (because enforcing some kind of free action to change that status is unnecessarily complicated), now just by drawing the weapon the PC is clearly threatening the prince.

Role playing should be used to determine whether or not the PC is really ready to stab the prince. That and a good sense motive check by the guard.

And besides, in your own idea of the rules and holding vs wielding, all it takes is a free action on the PCs turn to go from holding to wielding and there's no way the guards can prevent it. So the situation in the throne room is really moot. By drawing the dagger in the first place, no matter how it is held, by the rules, that prince could be in as much jeopardy whether you make a distinction between holding and wielding... not that the RAW has any such explicit rule in the first place.

 

[billd91]

SoD is not an infinte resource; I just cannot compehend wasting it on how you can hold a dagger or a quarterstaff. I'll save mine for giants and dragons and spells, thank you!

This is one of the main reasons I don't bother with how the weapon is held. That's the gist of the rule I'm talking about. Making a distinction for how the weapon is held, barring something clearly not wieldable (like having one hand on a two-handed weapon), is pointless and unnecessary.

 

[Artoomis]

This is one of the main reasons I don't bother with how the weapon is held. That's the gist of the rule I'm talking about. Making a distinction for how the weapon is held, barring something clearly not wieldable (like having one hand on a two-handed weapon), is pointless and unnecessary.

No, its not. Whether or not it has a point depends upon how you read the rules, of course.

In any case, it certainly seems to me that the key thing is to ensure you only get the benefits of extra weapons if you also pay the penalties, and the only way to reasonably achieve that is to make a distinction between "wielding" and "holding" - but that distinction is trivial to make and takes no extra game time in actual play (as proven by experience).

 

[mvincent]

In particular, this quote from the RotG seemed to resolve the "when fighting this way" debate for me:
"If, after you made two-weapon attacks with your sword and torch, a foe later provokes an attack of opportunity from you that same round, you can strike that foe with your longsword with no two-weapon penalty at all."