In what regards does MWF replace IWF?


Rules Questions


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

So, let's get this straight, please:

What exactly does the phrase "Special: This feat replaces the Two-Weapon Fighting feat for creatures with more than two arms." mean?

a) If four-armed, I cannot take TWF. I must take MWF instead. Since all the higher-up feats (ITWF, GTWF, Two-Weapon Rend, etc.) require TWF, I am abolutely unable to learn those, ever.

b) If four-armed, I must take MWF in place of IWF. MWF replaces TWF in all aspects, thus being a valid prerequisite for two-weapon rend (which would apply once per round if I hit with... what exactly? Main Hand plus one off hand? Any two different weapons?), ITWF (which would likely give me a single additional iterative from one off hand), drawing more than one weapon in a single move action (if so, how many?), and so on.

c) Actually, the design team never gave too much thought to this case, as multi-armed creatures who'd actually take these feats are pretty rare?

d) Something else altogether?

Mind, I am not asking for things like IMWF and the like, I'd just like a clarification how far the 'replacement' paragraph is intended to go... and so far, there have been about zero official responses... unless I missed something.


There was a topic some months ago. It's a grey area, a GM territory.

The special line can be read in various ways, as you described. For instance, I don't think we'll see a dev rule on this before some time (probably the Advanced Class Guide release).

I'm actually a GM with 2 kasathas (4-armed race), and each took MWF. We're talking about how to use/rule it, and I'll maybe house-rule the badass way, with MWF prerequisite for iTWF, which will give 1 more attack by off-hands, because they are 3 in a mythic campaign.

What's fun is I'm the most interested by that and my players fear that option, while I use to be a kind of "restrictive" GM.

I think you can go with MWF as prerequisite, and iTWF and mTWF give only 1 off-hand attack. You still need a high Dex build to get most of the benefits, and you don't close doors to very interesting options.

Edit: Ho, the dev team seems to go with new FAQ's, maybe there's a chance!


TWF is for fighting with two weapons. MWF is for fighting with more than two weapons, and since the game assumes you will do what is most beneficial they are telling you that the design intent is to take MWF. With that said any interaction between the TWF chain and a multilimbed creature will require house rules if you are using more than two weapons.

From the options given B seems like the most likely response.

If a player chose the TWF feats in my games I would restrict them to actually using two weapons for the sake of simplicity.

PS: An official response for things like two weapon rend, and double slice would be nice.

My opinion: As for two weapon rend I would say any two weapons. It calls out the main and off hand because the book was written from a PC-centric view. I could see them sticking with the main hand being required to hit, but that would not make much sense.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

I believe it means if you have more than two arms for any reason and two weapon fighting, it's replaced by MWF.

note, MWF works for creatures technically if you have two hands (barring it's prereq)

I believe there aren't IMWF due to the additional arms making it about even.

it also might be an advisement that if you don't have more than two arms this is the feat that this replaces.

by RAW, i think A) is the most appropriate but i wouldn't be surprised if you could easily get this house ruled to allow some of the more misc TWF feats.


There is not one monster in the game that I can find that uses it. Even the Xill and Maralith just have multiweapon mastery instead, but I take their examples and add the -2 to figure out what MWF would have given them.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
wraithstrike wrote:
There is not one monster in the game that I can find that uses it. Even the Xill and Maralith just have multiweapon mastery instead, but I take their examples and add the -2 to figure out what MWF would have given them.

they probably use MWM because it just keeps the numbers less complicated, they set them up with the correct numbers, and not add 2 so that the MWF can -2 from them.


In related news the Xill is using its dex to calculate the attack roll, but it does not have weapon finesse according to the PRD.

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