Replacement TWF Feat?

[Bleoberis De Ganis]

Two-Weapon Fighting

Prerequisite: Dex 13
Benefit: While holding a melee weapon in each hand, you may make an additional Basic Melee Attack with your offhand weapon as a Move Action.


Unless this could be Improved Two-Weapon Fighting with TWF feat as a prerequisite.


Anyone see a problem with this? It doesn't seem that powerful to me and is a lot better than a +1 to damage.

You have to sacrifice movement to do it. A rogue could use it to double his chances at sneak damage, but can't run off to do it. A ranger could do 3 attacks in one round, but again cannot move. Fighters would sacrifice big damage from a 2HW or AC from a shield. None strength based combatants find it hard to hit with it unless they take Melee training.


Any ideas?

 

[Bleoberis De Ganis]

Hang-on how about?


Improved Two-Weapon Fighting

Prerequisite: Dex 17
Benefit: While holding a melee weapon in your offhand, you may make an additional Basic Melee Attack with your offhand weapon as a Move Action with a -2 penalty to the attack roll.

(Changed it as well so you can have an implement in your main hand.)

 

[Iron Sky]

The main reason they supposedly removed it in the first place was to make multiple attacks rare. This also gives melee classes far more DPS than ranged and makes a TWF ranger get 3 attacks per round to, say, a warlock's one.

How about: While wielding a weapon in each hand, you roll the damage dice of both weapons and take the higher total.

So, if you had a bastard sword +2 and a short sword +1 with a 2[W] power, you'd roll 2d10+2+etc and 2d6+1+etc and take which ever total was better.

It would increase average damage by raising the floor without raising the ceiling (so to speak). Disadvantage is you're rolling, adding, and comparing two sets of dice per attack.

Right now, TWF is an ok option, mostly for the feats it opens up. Beef up TWF any more and suddenly all the melee'ers in any group will suddenly be taking it. My primary character is a TWF ranger and I think I do enough damage without TWF being the-win like it could be in 3.x and in many other RPGs.

 

[Mengu]

One of the design decisions to get rid of multiple attacks was that in 3.5 it was much more advantageous to stand in one place and swing as many times as you could. Sacrificing movement for an extra attack is like going back to the 3.5 design of more static combat.

I wouldn't give an at-will attack as a move action. I'd at least try to make it more conditional in some way, like:

Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
Prerequisite: Two-Weapon Fighting
When you score a critical hit with a melee attack using your main hand weapon, make a free basic melee attack against the same or different target using your off-hand weapon. Do not add any attribute bonuses to the damage.

or

Improved Two-Weapon Defense
Prerequisite: Two-Weapon Defense
When a non-minion adjacent enemy scores a critical hit against you with a melee attack, make a free basic melee attack against the target using your off-hand weapon. Do not add any attribute bonuses to the damage.

Additional attack as a move action with no conditions attached is way too powerful. For the rogue it's twice the chance to apply sneak attack fdamage, for the ranger it's three times the chance for hunter's quarry damage. Such powerful abilities are best reserved for class powers, not feats.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I will even go further than Mengu on this. Multiple attack capabilities are BROKEN. They add a huge amount of attack power to anyone that has them. Twin Strike, Dual Strike, Rain of Blows, etc are ALL broken powers already. Adding another way to make multiple attack rolls only increases the breakage to the whole game.

There is really no logic whatsoever for the concept that multiple weapons in hand should double someone's attack capability. There is no argument from realism. Having some basic experience with melee combat will quickly inform anyone that an off-hand weapon adds at best some minuscule amount to your offense, at best. There is no argument from game balance since, as I said above, ALL multi-attack granting game mechanics in 4e are already considered broken.

The only argument for it is a bad one, which is that earlier editions of D&D worked this way. It was broken in earlier editions too. Players may expect it, but they can live with their disappointment IMHO. TWF and TWD are actually a pretty elegant solution already. You get a very minor bump to using two weapons, if you expend some feats.

 

[DMingNicholas]

I agree with what others have said about the drawbacks of adding more attacks. However, if you want to go down that route with two weapon fighting, I suggest that you incorporate some limitations for the size and use of the weapon. With your feat as it is now, there is nothing to stop someone from dual wielding spears or flails. That seems pretty absurd to me.

 

[Bleoberis De Ganis]

Fair enough.

My main reason for trying to do this is I want a 2WF rogue build.

I'd be happy with an at-will for those times when he hasn't got combat advantage.

Perhaps a rogue class feature or class specific feat.

If a rogue is weilding 2 light blades he may make 2 Basic Melee attacks. Sneak damage may not be applied to either attack.

I don't know, something like that.

For some reason WOTC have it in for the dual weilding rogue, while even the fighter can do it now and the ranger - well what can't the ranger do?

 

[Mengu]

My main reason for trying to do this is I want a 2WF rogue build.

TWF and TWD are pretty good feats for a rogue, so I don't see the problem with such a build. But I guess you're not happy with that since you seem to be looking for other solutions.

If you want to use the hybrid class playtest article, you can build a Ranger/Rogue to do something very close to this concept. As a matter of fact, it seems like a perfect fit. You would pick twin strike, and when you use that, you would only get hunter's quarry damage, no sneak attack damage. And when you have combat advantage, you would use something like piercing strike, which would only get sneak attack damage, no hunter's quarry damage.

Or another hybrid option would be to go with a fighter/rogue, and pick dual strike as one of your powers. When you use dual strike, you wouldn't be getting sneak attack damage.

 

[Bleoberis De Ganis]

TWF and TWD are pretty good feats for a rogue, so I don't see the problem with such a build. But I guess you're not happy with that since you seem to be looking for other solutions.

If you want to use the hybrid class playtest article, you can build a Ranger/Rogue to do something very close to this concept. As a matter of fact, it seems like a perfect fit. You would pick twin strike, and when you use that, you would only get hunter's quarry damage, no sneak attack damage. And when you have combat advantage, you would use something like piercing strike, which would only get sneak attack damage, no hunter's quarry damage.

Or another hybrid option would be to go with a fighter/rogue, and pick dual strike as one of your powers. When you use dual strike, you wouldn't be getting sneak attack damage.

Actually, that seems like it would be really good with the hunter's quarry - didn't think about that. Thought about multi-class with ranger but it took too many feats and messing just to get twin strike with a couple of daggers while losing too much from other feats.

Unfortunately I'm not subscribed to DDI so my knowledge of hybrid characters is sketchy at best.

 

[Mengu]

To get a broad sketch of the character, I think all you need to know is:

For at-will/encounter/daily/utility powers you have to keep them as even as possible. If you have 1 rogue encounter attack power, your next encounter attack power has to be ranger.

rogue/ranger would have:
12+con hp, 6+con surges, 4 hp/level. (I'd be tempted to houserule to 5 hp/level)
start with leather armor prof, and all weap prof's for rogue and ranger
6 trained skills, 2 from rogue, 1 from ranger, 3 from either.
Quarry damage only with ranger powers, sneak attack damage only with rogue powers, nada with basic attacks.
Access to Hybrid Talent feat - pick a class feature from either class.

sorry about abbreviations and bad format, trying to type fast.