While its an awesome part of fiction for people to be able to dual-wield weapons in reality its less effective. Using both hands ona single weapon is more effective rather than divide your strength and concentration.
Ingame the Two-handed fighting style is easy to use as it starts off quite good. Pick something like a Greatsword and you have very solid damage. Two-wielding is harder as you must have a particular set of equipment, feats, and just plain be able to make full attack actions to have a point.
It seems one-sided in favor of the two-handed weapons. So when does the Two-weapon fighting style match up or surpass?
Two-weapon Fighting is the most fundamental feat and even using two light weapons you still have a -2 hit chance, low damage per hit, and requires full attack actions. Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, and Greater Two-weapon Fighting grant additional attacks but its still not even. Double Slice increases damage to your off-hand attacks so now you effective have 100%+100%=200% strength value to attacks compared to a two-handed weapon which has 150% strength. Eventually if it can be afforded than multiple magic weapons being dual wielded can actually double the damage bonuses so two +3 weapons vs a +4 single two-handed weapon.
Is it possible for two-weapon fighting to actually be practical? It would require multiple bonus feats to at least have Two-weapon fighting 1, 2, and 3 to be relatively even.
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Shields offer a relatively small bonus in exchange for a large loss in damage. There are feats that could make a shield more useful but also require the Two-weapon fighting style feats to work.
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So between them Two-handed weapons seem the most practical. It doesnt require feats so they are useful powerups.
Two-weapon fighting style is awesome but impractical. You would have to take many feats and have specific powers like Pounce to be able to use multiple attacks at any time.
One-hand and shield can be useful but isnt that effective.
That is a good synopsis one would think with the huge feat investment that the two-weapon fighting would do more damage but that seems not to be the case. Do you have an idea at what level they even out?
The other thing is what would shields need to make them worth that hand.
so is the real question what the value of that off hand whether it be a 50% increase to str for weapon damage, Another attack at 50% str (with huge feat investment 100% str up to 3 more attacks), or an ac bonus varying between +1-+9 and some defensive enhancement.
The feat requirements are one major problem as every feat taken to make dual wielding closer to two-handed means the two-handed also has its own feats to further the gap. Basically its wasting feats to be cool.
Its only when static bonuses come into play that dual-wielding becomes effective. There are several class bonuses and spells that work better than with two-handed weapons.
Vanilla Barbarian has a strength boost from Rage but the Unchained Barbarian has a flat damage bonus that is more effective with dual-wielding and can actually learn Pounce to make an effective fighting style, that is if you can get past the high dexterity requirement. Rogue can do significantly more damage with dual-wielding for sneak attack damage. Investigator can use Studied Combat for a major bonus that again isnt split but multiplied for more attacks.
Any boost to damage instead of strength favors dual-wielding.
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Shields are just kind of forgotten. Extra Armor Class is nice but eventually every tier of magic items can also go to other items namely your body armor, amulet of natural armor, and ring of protection so a shield ends up providing only a small contribution to your overall Armor Class. A medium Breastplate gives +6 AC but a Heavy Shield gives +2.
Dual-wielding shields can, in theory, be awesome by combining multiple attacks while still keeping your AC bonus from your shield. In that case is taking Improved Shield Bash and using a low damage shield worth the AC bonus?
For Shields to be useful in the long-term you would require some kind of class features that actually benefit shields and nothing else. That is a kind of hyper-specialization I would avoid.
Do you have an idea at what level they even out?
That very much depends on the class.
The main problem apart from the relience of on a full attack is that you need a bunch of bonus damage to make TWF good, but the style actively hinders you at that. TWF requires you to split your attributes (or go Finesse, which means lower damage bonus from strength), split your weapon enchantments, and makes the game's default damage increasing feat, Power Attack, crap for you.
In order to stop 2H from being king of melee, we would need to either remove the 50% bonus damage from strength, or increase the attack rate of one-handed weapons (like giving them iteratives at each -3 BAB).
@ohokwy: Do a damage calculation.
Dual-wielding weapons just has too many feats to start using it before actual bonuses are taken into account.
1 Two-weapon Fighting just reduces your penalty to a -2 for using light one-handed weapons. Its a pretty nice feat to show you have to pay to get less.
2 Improved Two-weapon Fighting doesnt give an extra attack so much as equal the extra attack at 6+ BAB.
3 Greater Two-weapon Fighting, same as Improved, now the 11+ BAB attack.
And there is(as far as I know) nothing to deal with the missing attack at 16+ BAB.
Those try and fail to make you even.
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Double Slice actually gives a real benefit to your off-hand by increasing your overall strength bonus from 150% to 200%.
Power Attack has a penelty to your off-hand that can be removed. You dont really need any extra penalties to your hit chance.
Piranha Strike is basically Power Attack specifically meant for dual-wielding. It doesnt have the off-hand penalty but requires Weapon Finesse feat and basically shapes your stats and feat build.
Weapon Focus isnt much of a feat because of how specialized it is for one specific weapon. Weapon Specialization is also a one-weapon specialization, but provides a flat damage bonus.
In order to stop 2H from being king of melee, we would need to either remove the 50% bonus damage from strength, or increase the attack rate of one-handed weapons (like giving them iteratives at each -3 BAB).
That is hard to justify. Its just saying "I dont like two-handed weapons, so nerf them."
Focusing on using a non-light one-handed weapon with both hands free or a two-handed weapon at all means you focus your strength into your weapon with both hands as opposed to dividing your strength between two.
If I could house rule it maybe I would remove Improved and Greater Two-weapon Fighting. They should be just part of the extra attacks from BAB. So each milestone in BAB benefits both your weapons not just your main hand. Maybe alter the Two-weapon Fighting feat to reduce the penalties down to 0 for using two light weapons.
However I can see how that could quickly make dual-wielding too effective as every static bonus would be doubled. As a counter make all damage bonuses 50% better using two-hands?
As it is now Dual-wielding takes a long time to become useful and its entirely based upon having Pounce and static damage bonuses. Then it becomes quite powerful.
What about two handing two handed shield? Let's say this is done by a Bloodrager so he can cast enlarge person on himself.
Improved Shield Bash (keep AC) (Lvl 1 feat)
Power Attack Human (Lvl 1 feat)
Furious Focus (lvl 3 feat)
Weapon Focus (lvl 5 feat)
Dodge (lvl 7 feat)
Shield Focus (lvl 9 feat)
Improved Shield Focus (lvl 11 feat)
+2 Heavy Shield with bashing enchantment (1d6 becomes 1d8), then cast enlarge person (1d8 becomes 2d6)
Then enchant the shield spike
You now get the +5 AC from having a shield while still doing respectable damage. Can't crit fish but that's what you give up for extra protection. Tag on dodge, a mithril breastplate, a ring and an amulet for some pretty decent tanking.
Play either an urban or enlighted Bloodrager for no AC penalties while raging.
Pretty sure that there is a human only feat that gives +1 damage with shields and let's you share your shield bonus with an adjacent ally once a day.
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I changed the feat "Two-Weapon Fighting" to read as follows:
Prerequisite: Dex 13.
Each time you make an attack with your main hand you may also make an attack with your off hand. Off hand attacks from iterative attacks use the same base attack bonus as the iterative attack that produced it. Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6. (effective -2/-2 with light weapons)
I also have a bunch of other houserules that interact with both this and two-handed fighting to make them more even. TWF requires 1 feat to function, then has 2 others that are options to make it good (double slice, two-weapon rend). 2H fighting doesn't require a feat to work, but has PA as an option to make it good. TWF is a better idea if you have a bunch of static bonuses to damage and enough feats, otherwise use 2H fighting.
Generally it just works out that a more melee focused character will get TWF since there is a higher damage potential than with 2H fighting, and 2H fighting is easier for someone like a melee cleric to pick up.
A couple things to add to the analysis:
1) Critical hits. Because a character using two-weapon fighting has more attacks, there are more opportunities for realizing a critical hit; this is important because of additional effects that are activated by a critical hit (flaming burst, thundering, Critical Focus chain feats, etc.). Most TWF characters tend to be crit-fishers (other than TWF rogues or other classes that add Sneak Attack or the equivalent).
2) Two-Weapon Fighting with Weapon/Shield. It requires even more feat investment and does slightly less damage (due to the shield's poor critical statistics) than regular two-weapon fighting, but allows for a significantly higher AC. Also, Shield Slam gives a free bull rush with each shield bash, Shield Mastery removes the TWF penalty from shield attacks and allows use of the shield's AC enhancement bonus as the shield's weapon enhancement bonus, and Bashing Finish gives an extra shield bash (at full BAB) every time the character realizes a critical hit.
For maximizing damage, two-handed weapons are still in the lead in most cases. However, for certain specific cases, there may be other considerations that come into play or additional benefits that make other styles more desirable.
That is hard to justify. Its just saying "I dont like two-handed weapons, so nerf them."
I'd justify it with a little something called "balancing". And what makes you think I don't like 2H?
Power Attack has a penelty to your off-hand that can be removed.
Huh? How?
Because a character using two-weapon fighting has more attacks, there are more opportunities for realizing a critical hit; this is important because of additional effects that are activated by a critical hit (flaming burst, thundering, Critical Focus chain feats, etc.).
The crit chance per weapon, and that is what's important for those enchantments, doesn't increase by TWF. Also, Thundering, Flaming Burst et al. require a 64% crit chance (78% for thundering) for them to be worth more than another +1d6 enchantment. The highest possible crit chance I've seen is 51%.
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TWF is an interesting style. Inherently, it is both more expensive and weaker than 2-Handers. I think this is fair, because it actually scales much better than 2-handed fighting, so long as you can consistently get multiple attacks in a round (easier said than done).
Bardsong, Heroism, Studied Target, Smite/Challenge... these effects can push it over the top pretty handily, and I'm pretty sure that this is exactly why Paizo don't want TWF with dex-to-damage an easy or convenient thing.
If you compare archery, it makes sense. Archery does what TWF does, but cheats by getting to full attack at all times (clustered shots is nice as well).
Paizo IS starting to put in more support for it. Fighter AWT and Vigilantes both have new options that offset the loss of strength.
So, TWF can do more than get by but it does require some support from the party. It's just also frustratingly restrictive gimped by the feat system shoehorning everyone into exactly one kind of weapon. Shield users have it so much worse with the extra feats and different proficiencies/etc.
Personally? I just wish they made that damn weapon trick not require all those hoops - it should really be a base feature of TWF. Who on earth grabs Vital Strike with a TWF build? It's insulting!
Power Attack has a penalty to your off-hand that can be removed.Huh? How?
Because a character using two-weapon fighting has more attacks, there are more opportunities for realizing a critical hit; this is important because of additional effects that are activated by a critical hit (flaming burst, thundering, Critical Focus chain feats, etc.).The crit chance per weapon, and that is what's important for those enchantments, doesn't increase by TWF. Also, Thundering, Flaming Burst et al. require a 64% crit chance (78% for thundering) for them to be worth more than another +1d6 enchantment. The highest possible crit chance I've seen is 51%.
1 Sorry, typo. The word is "can't"
2 More chances to roll critical threat mean you still only do half damage and still have to actually confirm the criticals. Thats the drawback of any critical build. Criticals to me are interesting bonuses, but actually focusing on them is expensive and impractical.
3 A good two-handed weapon is just so practical and you can shape it in a build. Its not perfect. Martial two-handed weapons are noticeably better but for characters with only simple weapons a one-handed+shield build can be as useful.
Most character classes dont work well with dual-wielding because of how many feats you have to spend. Rogue is a class that benefits from that so long as you can somehow dual-wield and Sneak Attack in the same turn.
I dont know off the top of my head but a Double Weapon may be a cheaper option to effectively upgrade two one-handed weapons for half the cost. I might be wrong and you have to upgrade each half individually.
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I dont know off the top of my head but a Double Weapon may be a cheaper option to effectively upgrade two one-handed weapons for half the cost. I might be wrong and you have to upgrade each half individually.
You have to upgrade each individually.
They're still convenient in that you can whack people better while on the move and make better attacks of opportunity.
So double weapons arent an ideal weapon either?
One-hand and shield doesnt require feats to use it basic but the AC Bonus doesnt scale.
Two-handed weapons are the best? The other styles are circumstantial. They cost more, take a lot of feats and when you finally get everything setup magic is probably your best weapon.
As others have said, TWF shines when you have large bonuses that apply to every hit. The biggest examples of that are Sneak Attack and Smite (and Favoured Enemy to a lesser extent).
TWF also probably works best with a high critical threat weapon and a shield due to feats like Shield Master and Bashing Finish. High critical threat weapons work well regardless because even if you can't confirm the critical it's still an automatic hit.
Another way to make an interesting Two-Weapon Fighter is the Mindblade Magus taking advantage of discharging potentially up to 8 charges of a multi-charge touch spell in one round (3 iterative attacks, 3 Greater TWF attacks, 1 Haste attack, 1 Spell Combat (psychic spellcasting so you don't need your hands free), assuming you hit every time) along with your weapon attacks. They also save money on their weapons, since they scale with the Mindblade's level, so that ceases to be a weak point of TWF for them.
Also, If you're going into epic levels, I hear AM BARBARIAN will pick up TWF for DUAL-WIELDING RAGELANCEPOUNCE THAT AM PIERCE HEAVENS!
I find the real beauty of TWF can also come from AoO's. Let's say you're a Lore Warden, with Greater Trip, Improved Trip, Combat Reflexes, and Break Guard. You can combo lock opponents to knock them onto the ground, and hit them a bunch of times while rendering them helpless. Plus, when attacking with an AoO and double-weapon, you can two-hand it. I don't know what the damage would work out to be, but if it isn't the same or higher, you can still REALLY hurt people with trip and disarm.
My favorite weapon is the Dire Flail for this reason.
This may work better in some campaigns compared to others. The campaigns I like to run tend to have a lot of people and not as much magic or flying stuff. Of course, flying can ruin any melee build...
Caster/Martial Disparity.
So many line breaks... Anyways Warpriests are also something special. They get bonus feats that ignore their actual BAB for prereqs, which means they can realistically use TWF feats better than other 3/4 BAB classes. Plus, fervor doesn't require a free hand. Even better, Sacred Weapon damage totally makes dual Kukri a viable option for Crit Mayhem.
Edit: Oh yeah, and AoO's can help prevent a foe from moving or escaping, which with Lore Warden makes it really hard to pull off. Then you just keep smacking them.
To try to avoid a loop, can you show different builds where dual-wielding beats two-handed weapons from the start?
How can any class learn the all important Pounce ability or some equivalent? Barbarian can learn Pounce at level 10 and Avenger Vigilante learns Mad Rush at level 12.
More chances to roll critical threat mean you still only do half damage and still have to actually confirm the criticals. Thats the drawback of any critical build. Criticals to me are interesting bonuses, but actually focusing on them is expensive and impractical.Because a character using two-weapon fighting has more attacks, there are more opportunities for realizing a critical hit; this is important because of additional effects that are activated by a critical hit (flaming burst, thundering, Critical Focus chain feats, etc.).The crit chance per weapon, and that is what's important for those enchantments, doesn't increase by TWF. Also, Thundering, Flaming Burst et al. require a 64% crit chance (78% for thundering) for them to be worth more than another +1d6 enchantment. The highest possible crit chance I've seen is 51%.
@Derklord: The weapon abilities were examples, not necessarily recommendations. Anyway, +1d6 elemental damage on weapons quickly becomes less practical as levels increase and more opponents have resistances (or even immunities); thundering, because it's sonic damage and has a chance of deafening, might be a bit more "worth it" once the weapon is already at +5. The real benefit is with feats like Bleeding Critical, Staggering Critical, etc. Also, chances as in opportunities, not that the critical threat range per attack is greater.
@ChaosTicket: After about 7th-9th level (when +1 keen weapons are affordable or Improved Critical can be taken by a full BAB character), the highest DPR relies on "focusing on" critical hits. There's a reason that elven curve blade, falchion, nodachi, etc. are the "go to" two-handed weapons for mid- to high-level play, instead of greatsword. The math, once including keen or Improved Critical, overwhelmingly favors x4 or 18-20 weapons (or the 19-20/x3 falchion). Search the forums for the DPR threads for a more detailed analysis of two-handed vs. two-weapon pros and cons.
So lets say to bring two weapon fighting closer combine all the two weapon fighting feats into one progressive feat. add a feat that lets you attack with both weapons as a standard action (i think 3.5 had one of those) does that pretty well do it?
For the old sword and board If you except your not going to do as much damage as a the other two options which should be a given is the objection that the shield bonus does not make up for the lost of the offhand? AC is fairly important in the early game and even in late game there is still monsters that have to roll to hit you. Is the damage of one handed and shield that much worse that the bonus to AC and whatever shield enchantment you get is not worth the exchange?
Okay so any builds compatible with less physical classes like Inquisitor, Magus, Cleric, Rogue and so on?
From what Ive seen any dual-wielding build is based on characters classes that can handle it usually with bonus feats or taking classes and dumping all their feats into one hyper-specialized all-offense feat build.
Is the damage of one handed and shield that much worse that the bonus to AC and whatever shield enchantment you get is not worth the exchange?
Doing some sample math, I found that using a two-handed weapon instead of a one-handed weapon in one hand increases the total damage by over a third.
To try to avoid a loop, can you show different builds where dual-wielding beats two-handed weapons from the start?
I recently did some lvl4 pregens for a mini campaign I'm planning, and I tried to cover a wide variety of combat styles. The only TWF I managed to come up with a high enough average damage on a full attack to make it worth it required me to break the "no single item worth more than 50% of WBL" rule... and got nerved since then, because that item was a brawling armor (on a Brawler archetype Fighter with Ascetic Style and a Monk's Spade). UnRogue's damage during a Sneak Attack full attack isn't bad, but happens too rarely in my opinion.
Over a third that is good now what would shields have to do to match that would reducing (through ac and maybe some feats to enhance saves and negate crits) damage by a third be enough or half?
Over a third that is good now what would shields have to do to match that would reducing (through ac and maybe some feats to enhance saves and negate crits) damage by a third be enough or half?
I am having a hard time understanding you. I do not think English is your first language.
There are feats to improve shields' effectiveness. By themselves shields can make a weak attack in your off-hand. Its not effective by itself as it works like dual-wielding. If You take a Light Shield and the Two-weapon Fighting feat and other feats you can use is more effectively. It still has low damage though.
Improved Shield Bash is an essential feat as it allows you to keep the Armor Class provided by the shield while using it as a weapon. Shield Slam makes every Shield Bash attack have a free Bull Rush. That can allow you to position your enemies in ways to allow Flanking, knock your enemy over, or into pits or traps.
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So lets say to bring two weapon fighting closer combine all the two weapon fighting feats into one progressive feat. add a feat that lets you attack with both weapons as a standard action (i think 3.5 had one of those) does that pretty well do it?
I said it before but this is what you're looking for I think:
"Each time you make an attack with your main hand you may also make an attack with your off hand. Off hand attacks from iterative attacks use the same base attack bonus as the iterative attack that produced it. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6."
A feat that reads like that solves 75% of the issues with TWF. Still have double cost enhancements and DR to deal with, but I think those are offset by the bonus-per-hit advantage.
If that feat doesn't have a Dex requirement over 13 and the prereqs of followup feats are changed accordingly (including the Dex requirements), then yes.
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If that feat doesn't have a Dex requirement over 13 and the prereqs of followup feats are changed accordingly (including the Dex requirements), then yes.
Yeah, DEX 13 required for that version of TWF. Double Slice requires DEX 15. Two-Weapon Rend requires Double Slice and BAB +11. That's the entirety of the TWF feat chain as I have it in my houserules. (except two-weapon defense, but really...)
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Okay so any builds compatible with less physical classes like Inquisitor, Magus, Cleric, Rogue and so on?
From what Ive seen any dual-wielding build is based on characters classes that can handle it usually with bonus feats or taking classes and dumping all their feats into one hyper-specialized all-offense feat build.
I put together a really nice TWF Iconoclast Inquisitor build. It was a crit fisher because every confirmed critical hit required a fortitude saving throw for *each magic item possessed by the target* -- a single failed save makes them unable to use any minor magic item for 1d4 rounds. So the idea is to get as many crits as possible to shut down the character's equipment, while pouring on the damage with Double Bane.
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One-hand and shield can be useful but isnt that effective.
A couple things about this last point -
1. You're assuming that we're talking about a pure martial here. One-handed & shield is awesome for semi-combatants like melee bards & many divine full casters etc. Their main jobs aren't dishing out the damage in melee, so a reduction in damage is well worth the extra defense that the shield brings them.
2. You're ignoring the mix of shield & TWF. Even more feat intensive than normal TWF, but it is arguably the most powerful combat style in the game once you get to Shield Master. It's a smidge less damage than normal TWF, but it gains the defensive benefit of one-handed & shield. Especially nice for Slayers since they can grab Shield Master at 6 & have solid static damage which isn't weapon reliant.
Power Attack has a penalty to your off-hand that can be removed.Huh? How?
Because a character using two-weapon fighting has more attacks, there are more opportunities for realizing a critical hit; this is important because of additional effects that are activated by a critical hit (flaming burst, thundering, Critical Focus chain feats, etc.).The crit chance per weapon, and that is what's important for those enchantments, doesn't increase by TWF. Also, Thundering, Flaming Burst et al. require a 64% crit chance (78% for thundering) for them to be worth more than another +1d6 enchantment. The highest possible crit chance I've seen is 51%.1 Sorry, typo. The word is "can't"
Can, though I don't think Double Slice is worth it, though some might.
EDIT: Unless you meant the accuracy, in which case IIRC there *are* some feats from Horror Adventures for that, but I don't remember the exact names. Something about haunted hands.
Power Attack has a penalty to your off-hand that can['t] be removed.Can, though I don't think Double Slice is worth it, though some might.
We are talking about the 1:1 ratio Power Attack has for off hands, which means the average ratio across both hands is 1:1.5 - which is simply not worth spending a feat on (and can actually lower your average damage) unless your accuracy is crazy high.
In our current game, One of best players is one of the least like classes around here (fighter). He is a Sword and Board (Khopesh and shield) He is built around tripping and shield bash. The guy is so good at tripping, he once tripped a spider :D Though he isn't able to trip enlarged giants yet. There is that old phrase no one can keep a good man down. Except for our fighter :D
He may not have the ultra high damage, but the character is built well.
While its an awesome part of fiction for people to be able to dual-wield weapons in reality its less effective. Using both hands ona single weapon is more effective rather than divide your strength and concentration.
in reality, almost all fighting styles that used 2 weapons were intended for bodyguards or personal defence.
In europe there are records of two weapon fighting tournaments. It seemed to be a generally impressive feat to fight with 2 separate weapons.
the point is, while not great for battlefield conditions with several hundred adversaries, two weapon fighting historically has happened but is rare due to it's difficulty and focus on single combatant fighting.
Shield Brace negates the entire question. Use a two-handed weapon while getting full benefit from your shield.
The feat requirements are one major problem as every feat taken to make dual wielding closer to two-handed means the two-handed also has its own feats to further the gap. Basically its wasting feats to be cool.
If in the end, the player gets what he wants and contributes it's not a waste. The greater expenditure reflects the price of traveling a more difficult road.
That said, two weapon fighting can be effective. If you have two swords with handy powers, you have access to both... especially if one of them is Defending. You get more attacks, more chances to hit.
The real winners are those characters like rogues, paladins and inquisitors who can stack up sneak attack, smite, or judgement bane dice.
Fighters on the other hand can take extra feats to give them defenses, and additional damage such as Rend.
So yes, it is extra investment, but it does give you returns.