Races and Classes, Two-Weapon Fighting?

[mach1.9pants]

I am no martial artist, but isn't in rl TWF.... hard to pull out, and finaly a bit overrated?

probably true but it looks cool in the pictures and sounds fun to describe your character that way. And as 4E is going for cool and fun rather than traditional and realistic I reckon TWF is in....but not until PHB2 as a viable option. I know we think of the fighter as a jack of all trades martial guy but I don't think this will the case in 4E. Like everyone else he will have his area to excel and that will be armoured with sword&shield or 2handed weapon. Some other class (maybe the ranger but I don't think so) will have TWF -likely lightly armoured- as its area of expertise, and it'll be in PHB2 IMHO

 

[A'koss]

I am no martial artist, but isn't in rl TWF.... hard to pull out, and finaly a bit overrated?

In a fantasy game it doesn't really matter. But IRL there are plenty of two weapon styles of fighting, particularly in asian marital arts (typically with smaller weapons though). Two sword fighting styles - Musashi-ryu (katana & wakizashi) and various chinese sword styles for example. But even on the Euro side we have common fencing styles with the rapier & main gauche, rapier and cloak...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Having sparred against people proficient with TWF, I can say that it can be dang tricky to oppose them with only a single weapon in my hand.

Essentially, you're talking about an opponent who can attack or defend from any angle, usually better on "O" than someone with a "sword & board" mentality, but relatively worse at "D."

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

In Races and Classes, it is mentioned that fighters currently do NOT have two-weapon fighting as an avenue of expertise. Nor have I personally seen any reference to two-weapon fighting with either the ranger or the rogue (at least for the first PHB).

Under Rangers on P. 84 it says "Arrows fly from your bow as quickly as your blades flash..." which could be a hint. The elf ranger on that page has two weapons as well. But like you say there are a lot of pictures of dual-wielding rogues. Almost all of the them. Perhaps TWF is mainly a striker thing?

 

[Gloombunny]

I am no martial artist, but isn't in rl TWF.... hard to pull out, and finaly a bit overrated?

It's not that hard. The thing to remember is that almost all TWF styles use the off-hand weapon primarily for defense. It's not all that different from using a shield.

Overrated? Maybe. It's more that shields tend to be severely underrated, than the alternatives being overrated.

 

[Li Shenron]

Was it in 3.x ? (for straight figther)

Absolutely.

 

[Voss]

I think he meant viable as in effective. Which it wasn't particularly. Between the attack penalties, half strength modifier on the off-hand weapon, inability to power attack with a light weapon and all the feats you had to dump into, it was very much not viable when compared to a two handed weapon, or even sword and board.

 

[OakwoodDM]

TWF could be very similar in its acquisition in 4e to 3.5e, in that Rangers get it for free, and everyone else has to spend a feat on it. The only difference could be that things have been cleaned up a bit and the feat you need is Ranger Training, not a separate TWF feat.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The most common 2-weapon fighting style, is fighting with two fists.

Followed by fighting with two sticks.

 

[Frostmarrow]

The tricky thing about TWF that is tricky is the notion it grants +1 attack. In 4E the designers try to speed up the game by reducing #attacks to 1. If TWF is allowed from first level and it grants +1 attack all that work is moot.

Occam's razor tells us TWF won't grant +1 attack.

Maybe the rule will say you can hold any combination of weapons in your hands but you must chose which one to attack with each and every round. This might work as different weapons have different schticks (at least for fighters).