D&D General What is two weapon fighting good for?

[Olrox17]

D&D is not a simulator of anything other than the platonic ideal of D&D. If you want any kind of realism look at other games.

I wouldn't call myself a fan of heavy simulationism, or of "realism", but I like when game mechanics have their own orderly place. Right now, sword & board is defense, two hander is offense, and dual wielding is...another offensive style but with weird caveats? And somewhat defensive with the right feat? It's a bit of a weird no man's land, and if a bit of injected simulationism can help me justify a more clear niche for it, I'd be happy about that.

I would consider that due to 5E's game rules, attacking multiple opponents at once is generally a much worse strategy than focusing fire on one opponent at at time in order to bring them down. This is because, unlike in real life, wounding opponents doesn't decrease their combat effectiveness at all.

The main game advantage of dual-wielding in 5E is to give the character two chances to hit one opponent. A rules modification that nullified that would cause me personally to just not duel-wield. The class most hurt by this change would of course be the rogue.

I do worry about the potential rogue nerfing this change could bring, yes. However, I also don't really like that TWF is always the correct choice for non-ranged rogues (and with daggers, sometimes for ranged rogues too). The rogue would need some kind of compensation power-wise.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "historically".

Historically as in real-world history, two-weapon fighting was popular mainly for personal defense. Nobody wants to wear armor or carry a shield. That's battlefield equipment. It's simply not done. But any gentleman can carry a cane or rapier, and everyone carries a dagger or knife. It wasn't that it was better against multiple opponents. It was just that you could be expected to have those things on you.

Yeah, I meant real-world historical non-battlefield combat, which seems to be the closest RL analogue to what we do in D&D when we aren't burning spell slots.
Practicality was no doubt a big factor, but it's one that I don't think we can adequately represent in a game-mechanic way in D&D.

Historically as in 3e D&D, two-weapon fighting was terrible because of the [in hindsight now more clearly stupid] requirement that you needed a full-round action to attack more than once per turn, plus the fact that you needed two or more feats to be able to do it, plus the fact that iterative attacks already had severe penalties. In some cases like rogue's sneak attack the damage bonus meant all those penalties could be worth it, especially if you could dip for ranger to get all the feats. But in general it just didn't help often enough to matter. There were other things to spend feats on, and two-handed weapons were just a better choice because you'll often only be able to make one attack anyways.

I'd agree that 3E TWF was a bad idea on a random non-dedicated build, but on the right character (obviously on sneak attackers, not not just) it was possible to crank out some rather insane damage. It just wasn't the kind of thing you could mindlessly slap on any random warrior PC.

 

[Olrox17]

Heck, let's just try writing down an House Rule, and see what ya'll think.

Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand, but you can't use this bonus attack to target a creature you already attacked during your Attack action. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
If you have the Extra Attack feature, you can make as many attacks with your Two-Weapon Fighting bonus action as you can make with your Attack action.
If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.

 

[Burnside]

I don't like it, tbh. It's a hard nerf with nothing to compensate for it. If I've got a melee weapon in each hand and I'm engaged with only one opponent, I literally can't attack that opponent with my off-hand weapon? I realize it's about mechanics and not realism, but that feels like a very unnatural restriction to me.

The bonus action multi-attack for characters with the Extra Attack feature is I guess situationally good IF you have the Extra Attack AND are fighting a mob, but feels unnecessary tbh. And again, the deal is still terrible for rogues.

 

[Burnside]

I guess an overarching issue I have with it is that getting mobbed by multiple opponents is not a position I want to put my character in in 5E, even if I'm playing a martial character, and that situation being the only way to utilize the off-hand attack ability isn't enough to make me change my mind about that. I would just avoid the fighting style completely under this rule; AoE is still best left to casters by a considerable margin.

 

[Oofta]

Heck, let's just try writing down an House Rule, and see what ya'll think.

Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand, but you can't use this bonus attack to target a creature you already attacked during your Attack action. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
If you have the Extra Attack feature, you can make as many attacks with your Two-Weapon Fighting bonus action as you can make with your Attack action.
If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.

Umm ... I would hate that and wouldn't bother playing a two weapon fighter in a campaign that had that as a house rule. It makes no sense from a logic perspective, I can stab someone behind me but I can't stab the guy right in front of me? Why not? In general spreading damage around is pretty suboptimal as a tactic.

I'm not sure what perceived issue you're trying to solve here. As I said above, in my experience two weapon fighting works just fine.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's about looking cool as hell, which has a lot of appeal in games.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I agree for the most part, but I have to disagree about 3e two weapon fighting to a degree. Based on my personal experience, 2WF combined with high crit weapons could be devastating. Especially if you had supporting spells cast by other PCs. It was one of those builds that for a while was just decent but then went from average to an 11 on a scale of 1-10. Couldn't compete with high level casters after a while of course, but then again no one could.

That is true. There were undoubtedly specialized builds like crit fishers that could take advantage of TWF.

 

[Olrox17]

I don't like it, tbh. It's a hard nerf with nothing to compensate for it. If I've got a melee weapon in each hand and I'm engaged with only one opponent, I literally can't attack that opponent with my off-hand weapon? I realize it's about mechanics and not realism, but that feels like a very unnatural restriction to me.

The bonus action multi-attack for characters with the Extra Attack feature is I guess situationally good IF you have the Extra Attack AND are fighting a mob, but feels unnecessary tbh. And again, the deal is still terrible for rogues.

Umm ... I would hate that and wouldn't bother playing a two weapon fighter in a campaign that had that as a house rule. It makes no sense from a logic perspective, I can stab someone behind me but I can't stab the guy right in front of me? Why not? In general spreading damage around is pretty suboptimal as a tactic.

I'm not sure what perceived issue you're trying to solve here. As I said above, in my experience two weapon fighting works just fine.

I'd leave the rogue situation alone for a moment, I have already recognized they would require a separate buff to compensate.

Yeah, the more I think and talk about it, the more realize I really dislike the aesthetic of two weapon fighters flailing, swinging, or stabbing with both of their swords at the same time, in the same direction. I just can't help but picture it as a ridiculous thing. You'd always be better off two handing a weapon, power-wise and posture-wise.

I forgot to implement a off-hand weapon parry mechanic in the HR above, though. Perhaps something like this:

Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand, but you can't use this bonus attack to target a creature you already attacked during your Attack action. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
If you have the Extra Attack feature, you can make as many attacks with your Two-Weapon Fighting bonus action as you can make with your Attack action.
If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.
Alternatively, you can give up your bonus attack (or attacks) and use your other melee weapon to parry. If you do so, until the start of your next turn, you have a +2 bonus to AC against melee attacks.

I'm well aware that these kind of small circumstantial bonuses are against 5e's general design philosophy of keeping everything dirt simple, but eh, personally I don't mind.

 

[Burnside]

I'd leave the rogue situation alone for a moment, I have already recognized they would require a separate buff to compensate.

Yeah, the more I think and talk about it, the more realize I really dislike the aesthetic of two weapon fighters flailing, swinging, or stabbing with both of their swords at the same time, in the same direction. I just can't help but picture it as a ridiculous thing. You'd always be better off two handing a weapon, power-wise and posture-wise.

I forgot to implement a off-hand weapon parry mechanic in the HR above, though. Perhaps something like this:

Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand, but you can't use this bonus attack to target a creature you already attacked during your Attack action. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
If you have the Extra Attack feature, you can make as many attacks with your Two-Weapon Fighting bonus action as you can make with your Attack action.
If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.
Alternatively, you can give up your bonus attack (or attacks) and use your other melee weapon to parry. If you do so, until the start of your next turn, you have a +2 bonus to AC against melee attacks.

I'm well aware that these kind of small circumstantial bonuses are against 5e's general design philosophy of keeping everything dirt simple, but eh, personally I don't mind.

It’s now a shield but worse because it drains your bonus action to use it. Being able to parry as a Reaction would make more sense and be slightly less bad. Still worse than a shield though.

 

[Olrox17]

It’s now a shield but worse because it drains your bonus action to use it.

Yes, but with the added option to attack an extra target, instead (possibly several times if you have extra attack, especially the high level fighter version of extra attack). Do you believe that option to be completely inconsequential? I'm not being ironic or sarcastic here, just straight up asking.