D&D 5E Two-Weapon Fighting alteration

Yes this turns high-level dual-wielding from bad to good, but since you still can't benefit from GWM or PM feats, there's nothing to worry about.

There is when he takes 3 levels of ranger and is suddenly dealing an extra 5d6+1d8 damage per round (or 8d6+1d8) with action surge. He also has enough superiority dice to spam one on every single attack if he wanted a +6d10 nova strike on top of that.

9d8+6d10+8d6+40 isnt bad damage.

Better hope to god he doesnt get paired flametounge swords. Thats another 16d6 fire.
 

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My own house rule

Two Weapon Fighting Fighting Style allows the use of non-Light one handed weapons, normally on the Dual Wielder Feat. Dual Wielder allows you to add your str/dex mod to the damage of the offhand attack(s).

I rewrote Fighter and Ranger(Hunter) a bit to accomodate the ability to gain a 2nd offhand attack.

Fighters gain a second offhand attack at 11th level as a part of Extra Attack(2), I bumped Extra Attack(3) down to 17th? level I believe, and gave them a capstone at 20th similar to the Barbarian, but allows you to choose any two between Str, Dex, Con, or Int.

Hunter Rangers gain a 3rd option instead of Volley or Whirlwind Attack at 11th level to get 2 offhand attacks, or an "always on" BA attack with a great weapon, so that there was plenty of options no matter how you choose to fight.

I hanged whirlwind attack to add +1d8 to the damage of each attack that hits.

Volley stays the same.
 

No offence mate, but thats not true.

At 3rd level a Hunter ranger is dealing 1d8+1d6+3 with his main hand (hunters mark), plus 2d8+1d6+3 (hunters mark plus Colossus slayer) with his off hand.
Ehh... that's kind of deceptive here. In the first place, Colossus Slayer applies whenever the creature is below max hp. So, if ANYONE has damaged the critter in question, then it would be on the first strike; and you DO need at least one turn to apply the Mark without that extra attack. As well, Hunters Mark, like Hex, requires a bonus action to apply, which can lead to some very odd action-economy issues, as well as potential Concentration issues. I don't see Marks shifting every "three or so rounds," and that's on top of losing it due to Concentration checks. Your presented ideal case doesn't come up very often in my experience, so I'm just going to have to disagree with you there.

What about a Vengance Paladin 11/ Fighter running hunters mark?
A bit more stable, due to the presence of Concentration Save boosts, but we're still running into the simple fact that you could just Polearm Master it and not need the fighter level at all, plus have additional Reaction attacks and Reach. And you'll only need one magic weapon instead of two (assuming they're used in this game). I suppose you could have a game that disallows feats but allows multiclassing, but I've rarely seen that particular case. To put it simply, there are better options than a TWFing paladin.

Mathematically two attacks is better than one with advantage
Actually not how math works. More reliable hit with a good +DEX bonus rather than hitting with offhand and no +DEX damage bonus makes a larger difference than you realize.

I'll conceed on a case of the party reliably granting advantage, however.
 
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Ehh... that's kind of deceptive here. In the first place, Colossus Slayer applies whenever the creature is below max hp. So, if ANYONE has damaged the critter in question, then it would be on the first strike; and you DO need at least one turn to apply the Mark without that extra attack.

The creatue will be below max hit points after the first attack, so it applies on the first attack you land after that on your turn.

You then get to use Riposte for an attack on its turn, again applying the 1d8 for colossus slayer, and 1d6 from hunters mark, plus the superiority dice, plus the weapon damage dice, plus your ability score modifier. (1d10+2d8+1d6+5).

Then you get to make 5 attacks, on your turn, each one at 1d8+1d6+5, with one of those 5 attacks getting an extra 1d8 from colossus slayer again.

Your standard 'kill it now' single target strike is (hunters mark) action surge 6 attacks (7d8+6d6+42) [Draw second sword] on turn one. On its turn, riposte when it misses you and deal another (1d10+2d8+1d6+5) damage to it. Then take your turn and attack it 5 more times, dealing another (6d8+5d6+30) damage.

Youre down an action surge, a 1st level spell slot, and a single Sup dice. Feel free to spam more to make it frightened or disarm it or knock it prone (adding 1d10 damage each do as well).

Probably land a crit in there somewhere as well.

Single target monsters die very fast. Unlike your GWM buddy, you hit at full proficiency plus Dex (no -5), so you're landing every attack

And yeah; youre wasting a bonus action laying on Hex every other round (you lose two off hand attacks, but gain an extra 3-6d6 damage from Hex, so its largely a wash when you do it, and then its one dead monster the following round. Meanwhile the DM is pulling his hair out dialing encounters up to quintuple deadly to challenge you.

If you really MUST buff TWF, I suggest allowing the Dual wielder to make an extra attack of opportunity per round (with the off hand weapon). That stops it from being OP in corneder cases, and makes dual wielders stickier.

I make TWF allowable with a single non light weapon (only off hand is light) but it draws disadvantage on the off hand attack unless both weapons are light.

Dual Wielder does what it does plus removes disadvantage on the off hand.

Bear in mind TWF and Ranger (Multiattack defence) also pairs pretty well with Defensive Duelist (as long as one of the weapons are finesse).

You parry the first attack with Defensive Duelist, and then the remaining attacks get -4 to hit you due to Multiattack defense kicking in.

Its a corner case fighting style that works OK for Rangers and Rogues (swashbucklers in particular). Its an option for Bards to up DPR in melee (seeing as they're not proficient in heavy weapons or for lore bards, shields). Corner cases.

Historically fighting with two weapons didnt happen all that often in any event becuase it was rubbish. Long pointy spear and shield was the way to go unless you were packing a specialist weapon of some kind. If you're wiedling a single handed weapon, then use a shield. They're better in every single way.
 
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Sorry to jump in here but I've read through most of the thread and I'm just looking for a little clarification. There are some interesting ideas in here but it's unclear to me what the actual goal is. I'm assuming it's not change for change's sake...

I haven't crunched the numbers or studied TWF all that much beyond RAW and theory-crafting some character builds. But nothing jumps out as me as problematic or under-powered. The only thing that jumps out at me is that there are a lot of things vying for a character's bonus action, but that's intrinsic to the core rules, not specifically TWF.

So what's the goal here?
 

Sorry to jump in here but I've read through most of the thread and I'm just looking for a little clarification. There are some interesting ideas in here but it's unclear to me what the actual goal is. I'm assuming it's not change for change's sake...

I haven't crunched the numbers or studied TWF all that much beyond RAW and theory-crafting some character builds. But nothing jumps out as me as problematic or under-powered. The only thing that jumps out at me is that there are a lot of things vying for a character's bonus action, but that's intrinsic to the core rules, not specifically TWF.

So what's the goal here?

Fighter 5th
TWFing 1d6+4 (7.5) x3, or 22.5 damage (only 15 on action surge)
GWFing 2d6*+4 (12.33) x2, or 24.66 damage (full on action surge)

Fighter 6th
TWFing 25.5 (17 on action surge)
GWFing 26.66 (full on action surge)

So, at these levels, TWFing is behind GWFing in damage and it costs a bonus action. It can be split to more targets, and it has a better chance of doing "some" damage against a single target.

At 11th level, it falls apart.

That's what we're talking about.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

So what's the goal here?
My personal goal was to understand why the existing rules exist the way they do. I believe that if you don't have a firm understanding of what the writers were trying to acomplish, any attempt to create houserules is just going to create more problems in another area. As things stand, I don't see anyone really benefiting from two weapon fighting in any realistic way, despite unrealistic white room attempts otherwise. Unhelpful on Fighter, unweildly on either Ranger subclass and the Bard, and "can't think of something better to do with my Cunning Action" for the Rogue, the four classic duel weilders of D&D.

From what I understand, TWFing was designated as a single off hand bonus action attack primarily because it would allow Rogues to have non-TWFing options be viable, whereas before there was no reason to not TWF as a Rogue. While it theoretically balanced out the Rogue so that TWFing has roughly the same damage as a attack-and-hide method (+/-0.5 DPR variation depending on DEX score) without feats, items or magic involved (which can radically change that +/-0.5), its basically made all other duel weilders problematic in the process.
 

There is when he takes 3 levels of ranger and is suddenly dealing an extra 5d6+1d8 damage per round (or 8d6+1d8) with action surge. He also has enough superiority dice to spam one on every single attack if he wanted a +6d10 nova strike on top of that.

9d8+6d10+8d6+40 isnt bad damage.

Better hope to god he doesnt get paired flametounge swords. Thats another 16d6 fire.
You say this as if it was especially impressive or a bad thing.

I say "let him". At least the rules no longer make Drizzt look weak.
 


Sorry to jump in here but I've read through most of the thread and I'm just looking for a little clarification. There are some interesting ideas in here but it's unclear to me what the actual goal is. I'm assuming it's not change for change's sake...

I haven't crunched the numbers or studied TWF all that much beyond RAW and theory-crafting some character builds. But nothing jumps out as me as problematic or under-powered. The only thing that jumps out at me is that there are a lot of things vying for a character's bonus action, but that's intrinsic to the core rules, not specifically TWF.

So what's the goal here?
I'm assuming it's to fix the situation where a dual-wielding Fighter is hosed around level 11, where two-weapon fighting starts to lag significantly behind other styles of fighting.

Edit: what Xeviat said
 

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