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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 8994355" data-attributes="member: 6777737">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.Historically as in AD&D, two-weapon fighting was popular because you got extra attacks. A lot of extra attacks at higher level. And the -2/-4 attack penalty was offset by the Dex reaction adjustment, meaning high (16-18) Dex characters could reduce or negate it. And at higher level with supernatural strength and magic weapons, your attack bonus was so high you'd be hitting all the time anyways. Further, the benefits of a shield could be dubious, and two-handed weapons were not particularly appealing. Shields only provided a +1 AC bonus, and that bonus relied on facing rules. Shields sucked until they were magical. Additionally, 1e Ranger got some pretty crazy bonuses to damage against the most common enemies of the game, and more attacks is the easiest way to make flat damage bonuses better. Same reason that boots of speed were a top tier item. 2e Rangers lost that damage bonus, but instead gained a way to offset the attack penalty, meaning they were still encouraged to use the option. Finally, in AD&D magic weapons were often the best magic items in the game. They often got special powers, and being able to use multiple of them was extremely potent.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.</blockquote>

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