I was thinking, why not reduce the penalty for fighting with two weapons an additional 2 for the primary hand and 2 for the off hand if the character fights with two light weapons? With TWF feat it would be 0 penalty. Or at least reduce the primary hand by 2 so you end up with 0 penalty for the primary hand and -2 for the off hand.
Dual wielding two light weapons doesn't seem to be any more powerful than wielding a two-handed weapon.
If you use a greatsword, you do 2d6 + 1.5 x Str mod.
If you dual-wield two short swords you do (1d6 + Str Mod) + (1d6 + 1/2 Str Mod).
Also, you have to take the TWF feat to get around the massive attack penalties already so you're a feat behind. If the attack bonuses ended up being the same then dual-wielding two light weapons would still be slightly less powerful than a 2h weapon because you have to make 2 attack rolls to do the same damage.
The only instance that I can see it being a problem is with a Rogue's sneak attack so I can see keeping the -2 penalty for the off hand to help off set that.
Has anyone done this in their game?
Its more on the damage range based on hitting probability that balances the numbers I believe.
You mean with criticals? Twice the chance to crit over the 2h-fighter? If you play with fumbles would that balance out since they also have twice the chance to fumble?
Present your case to the DM, as it stands critical fumbles, where something very bad happens on a 1, is not actually in the rules. Thus need the -2/-2 balancing due to a better chance to critical hit since most of those weapons would be 19-20 anyways.
I guess the reason is that with all the weapon-specific feats such as weapon focus, you would want to wield the same weapon in both hands, thus your reason to wear both light would come from another direction and what you suggest would go in the direction of double dipping.
But with the PF Fighter one could argue that his class-bonuses already aid multiple weapons.
Still, I think the game suggests that your Fighter doesn't get a bonus with board and sword when wielding light, so why should he when changing the board to something else (that is more difficult to wield, thus should be light).
Ok, I'm with you on the fighting penalties. They do keep balance because of the potential from sneak attack and magic weapon effects, and the standard crit rules. I am working updating my critical hit/fumble tables to PF (haven't changed them since AD&D so just been ruling as we go) so the crit won't be so much of a balancing factor as they will have twice the chance to fumble.
OR roll the whole TWF tree into a single feat. Make it you get 1 offhand if your dex is 11, second when your dex is 15 and a 3rd when dex is 17.
This is a drastic houserulewe tried.
Seemed to fix things (given there is still a feat tax for Doubleslice, TWR and Two weapon pounce)
I am curious to learn more about how TWF chain as a single progressive feat has worked out for folks like Ardenup. Anyone else tried that? Does it present any power imbalances between TWF, SS, and 2H combatants?
I think the dexterity requirement may have been a balancing factor to prevent high Str characters from going that route unless they sacrifice somewhere else (con and mental stats) but I'm not so sure it's necessary.
My 2cp on a "scaling" version of the 2WF feat: Make it give new iterative attack based on Base Attack, not Dex.
TWF offer a benefit that bonus effects happen more often
e.g. 2h with haste = 5 attacks
haste + greater TWF = 8 attacks
using a +1d6 flamming weapon the 8 attacks theoritically have higher dmg output becuase they apply the 1d6 bonus 8 times vs the 5 a 2h can do
TWF also give higher chance of doing criticals per round which can be benefical with crit bonuses and crit feats