wielding two weapons... but not TWF

[Theo R Cwithin]

In your original post, you wanted to know if there was a penalty to using a weapon in your off hand. By the RAW, there is a -4 penalty for using a weapon in your off hand. You must account for handedness! If you choose to, but why would you ever choose to, you can attack with only your off hand (but again, there is a penalty). For AoO's, you can, again, choose which hand to use, your primary, or your off hand.

You know, you might be convincing me

I've been rationalizing that, as long as a character is only making the one normal attack in the round, he was merely holding the other weapon in his off hand and interchanging them at will. I wasn't thinking about what's entailed in actually doing this, however.

I recalled that un/sheathing a weapon is a move action, and switching weapons between hands is at least that much effort (if not more!). That action expenditure certainly looks sufficient to explicitly track off-hand penalties, even when making single attacks in a round.

And so, without burning a move+ action to explicitly switch hands, the character is stuck with whatever's in each hand, and the associated penalties. Not accounting for those penalties would be equivalent to giving the character a free move+ action.

 

[pawsplay]

Again, off hand is defined as the hand that you don't customarily use and is usually your left hand (Most people are right-handed). There is no accounting for ambidexterity in any way, shape, or form in the 3.5 game in RAW/SRD. You can't just say that you are and make it happen!

That's 3.0. In 3.5, your off-hand is whichever hand is not your primary hand. In 3.5, that is defined only in fighting with two weapons. The alternative, that you have a static off hand penalty, suggests that the -4 penalty should be applied in addition to the penalties for two-weapon fighting.

 

[Herzog]

There have been several references to having to take a -4 penalty on your off hand attacks.

Can anyone provide a rules quote or reference (preferably, one that doesn't concern TWF)

Furthermore, the only explicit references to 'off-hand' attacks outside of TWF i can think of are:

1. Shield bash explicitly states you can attack with your shield as if it were an off-hand weapon.
2. Monk states that for a monk, there is no such thing as an off-hand attack.

 

[Ashtagon]

Combat Statistics :: d20srd.org

Off-Hand Weapon When you deal damage with a weapon in your off hand, you add only ½ your Strength bonus.

Wielding a Weapon Two-Handed
When you deal damage with a weapon that you are wielding two-handed, you add 1½ times your Strength bonus. However, you don’t get this higher Strength bonus when using a light weapon with two hands

There's no question here that an off-hand weapon always only ever gains 1/2 the Strength bonus, regardless of TWF.


Special Attacks :: d20srd.org


Shield bashing is discussed in the context of TWF, and it seems reasonable to read it as saying that it is considered an off-hand weapon, with all the TWF penalties implied by that (assuming you have a regular weapon in your main hand). Shield bashing isn't discussed in the context of that being your only "weapon", but in that case, I'd consider it your primary attack (unless you use an "unarmed strike" from your other hand as your primary attack of course).


Aside from the Strength damage bonus penalty, I can't find anything regarding penalties for making a single attack with your off hand and no attack with your primary hand.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Can anyone provide a rules quote or reference (preferably, one that doesn't concern TWF)

Here's a Rules of the Game article introducing TWF basics, in which the definition of "off-hand" is cited from the PHB p311, which I believe is the definition that Aluvial referenced upthread.

Here's the full text, with an interesting bit underlined:[sblock] (from Rules of the Game at WotC's site)

Off Hand, Off-Hand Weapon:

When attacking with two weapons, the character must designate one of his hands as his off hand; the weapon held in that hand is treated as his off-hand weapon. The game rules don’t really care about whether you’re right-handed or left-handed, and it’s even OK to change your off hand designation from one round to the next.

​

Attacks with the off hand take a -4 penalty on the attack roll (see page 311 in the Player's Handbook) and only half the character’s Strength bonus (rounded down) applies to damage from the attack. Fighting with a weapon in each hand brings even bigger penalties.

​

When a character fights with a weapon in each hand, the weapon held in the off hand is called the off-hand weapon.​

[/sblock]They say it's ok to switch off-hand designation between rounds, but they don't indicate why by RAW. This, indeed, supports the "no penalty for wielding two weapons (as differentiated from TWFing)" camp, as Desert Gled noted upthread (his "Side A").

Also, from the 3.5 FAQ, they say nothing prevents a character from declaring a shield as the primary weapon, in which case the weapon becomes the secondary:[sblock] (From the 3.5 FAQ)

Can a character make a shield bash attack using the shield as a primary weapon or can it be used only as an offhand weapon?

While the rules describe a shield bash as an off-hand weapon, that’s simply an assumption (that your primary hand is holding a weapon). There’s nothing stopping you from declaring your shield bash as your primary weapon. Of course, that means that any attack you make with your other hand becomes a secondary weapon. [/sblock]

I'll take all that as an "official" ruling: a character can freely switch off-hand designation between rounds. It's not really logical, but this is D&D And it's certainly simpler that way.

However, I think also it's reasonable at a minimum to enforce off-hand on a per round basis, which impacts AoOs. I'll phrase it something like this:

A character can generally change off-hand designation each round, but that designation stays in effect for the full round. Thus, an AoO made with the off-hand designated for that round is made with off-hand penalties (-4 attack, +1/2 STR damage.)

 

[airwalkrr]

As to the issue of ambidexterity, most people are not ambidextrous, although it seems the designers decided between 3e and 3.5 that being ambidextrous alone was not worth an entire feat, and for the most part, I agree. Might I suggest making ambidexterity a trait? A character with ambidexterity uses the same bonus for attacks with his off-hand as with his main hand, rather than suffering a -4 penalty for attacks with his off-hand (as the rules of the game seem to me to imply). In exchange the character has some minor drawback, perhaps -1 to Initiative because the character has to make a split-second decision which hand to use.

Just an idea.

 

[Aluvial]

The only reference that I could find for off hand (and having to specify) is in the Glossary (in the back of the book) of the PHB.

Often times in rules discussions, I have found that just looking in the glossary for clarification usually lends some. In this case, in the glossary, in the back of the 3.5 PHB, they define what "off hand" is and the specification there is clear.

They specifically mention that a character has an off hand and that attacks made with it are at a -4 penalty.

For me, that's the end of the story. Pick a hand to be your primary hand during character creation. Attacks made with the other hand take a -4 penalty. TWF is another thing altogether with it's own rules and note that the full penalty for attacking with your off hand is -4 more than with the primary.

Since it is in the glossary as a definition of a DnD term, I believe it is in the rules. And, furthermore, it makes sense. You just aren't as adept (or strong) at swinging a weapon with your off hand. Try it at home...

Aluvial

 

[Nonei]

We play with the off-hand rule, but it doesn't really come up outside of TWF. I think the one time it did, we decided that switching weapons between hands was a free action, since it wouldn't take as much time as sheathing a weapon.

 

[pawsplay]

If it weren't for handedness in 3.0, off-hand would not even be in the glossary. The reason you can designate the off-hand weapon from round to round is because 3.5 eliminated Ambidexterity and, with it, handedness as a static trait.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

If it weren't for handedness in 3.0, off-hand would not even be in the glossary. The reason you can designate the off-hand weapon from round to round is because 3.5 eliminated Ambidexterity and, with it, handedness as a static trait.

On a related note, I suspect the only reason off-hand has conflicting text in the glossary is because they just copied and pasted the 3.0 entries into th 3.5 PHB. There are other examples of erroneously copy/pasting 3.0 material that's come up before. Just my hunch.