Off-Hand Weapons and Two-Weapon Fighting


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells

Liberty's Edge

So, TWF has been a contentious topic since the Playtest started, and for some decent reasons. As it stands now, TWF isn't a great option. It sucks up extra actions to draw the second blade and the benefit is lukewarm, at best. So, based on the assumption that real world two-weapon fighting was mostly a defensive practice and that we want fighting styles to feel viable and distinct without having to spend feats on them, I'd like to propose that the following basic action and reaction be added. I'd also like to propose a tweak to Interact.

(1 action) Offhand-Parrying Stance
You ready your offhand weapon to parry incoming attacks. You gain a +1 bonus to AC as a circumstance bonus (or +2 if the offhand weapon has the Parrying trait) and can use the Exploit Opening reaction.
Your Offhand-Parrying Stance remains until the start of your next turn.

(reaction) Exploit Opening
Trigger: An opponent misses you with a melee weapon attack or melee touch attack.
You make an attack with your offhand weapon against the triggering opponent. This attack is at -2 unless you are using a weapon with the Parrying trait.

For Interact, I would like to see the wording changed such that you can draw a number of weapons equal to your number of free hands. This would obviously help the TWFer, but it would help some classes that rely on thrown weapons, as well.


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Same bonus to AC as a heavy shield and a free attack at full attack bonus? Compared to the modest damage reduction at the cost of dents that shield offer, this seems quite powerful.

You should at least keep your MAP from your previous turn, same as if you had readied an attack. Most (if not all) weapons with the parry trait also have agile so the MAP would be lower for them.

I agree that the interact action should allow drawing an item in each free hand though.

Liberty's Edge

ThatGuySteve wrote:
Same bonus to AC as a heavy shield and a free attack at full attack bonus? Compared to the modest damage reduction at the cost of dents that shield offer, this seems quite powerful.

The penalty should probably be higher. Making it -4/-5 would probably be a little more acceptable.

Ideally, the AC should only be against melee attacks, but that's an extra layer of complication the system probably doesn't need. Still, the action cost and bonus would match up with the heavy shield for a parrying weapon. This, in turn, makes the more desirable weapon for AC be less desirable for damaging someone (since the listed Parry weapons are all 1d4 weapons).

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