Drachasor, that is your implication, I didn't see it that way. I saw it as two people sharing a well known saying in the form of a joke. If anything, Vod was the one that indicated that productivity = baby. BBT just twisted it slightly as a play on words.
- Gauss
Light weapons can TWF without penalties, but do low damage.
One-handed weapons can both TWF and One-handed fight, but not as well as either.
Two-handed weapons do more damage on a single attack, but can't TWF.
If we had stuck with the old weapon speed rules, there might be more balance.
I would think in that case you have already used up your primary hand, correct?So, then using a two handed weapon, as an off hand weapon, is still allowed, as it only adds 0.5 strength to damage?
This falls in that reasoning.
Is a Primary attack available needed to make an off-hand attack?
If so, why?
I would say no, and to paraphrase a famous man in black, "I'm not 'off-handed' either."
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Oh, so now it's about left/right hand?
;)
Nope they did away with that, it is about Primary-Hand/Off-Hand.
And I don't think there is anything in the rules that prevent you from taking the penalties for attacking with your "off-hand" even if it is your only attack.
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I assume we're all agreed now that you can TWF with a one-handed weapon, armor spikes, and use any shield (including a Buckler) without any problem? We had some arguments about this maybe 10-15 pages ago.
Yes, then the dev answered out question, those of us who were wrong thanked the dev and we all moved on.
You know, how it is supposed to work...
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So just so I'm clear, does using a Two-Handed weapon use up just the off-hand or the off-hand attack as well?As I understand it, a Two-handed weapon uses up both the primary and off hand attacks. There are certain weapons, feats and other rules that provide specific exceptions to this.If that's so, how are iterative attacks with Two-Handed Weapons going to work? I'm only getting one off-hand attack a round unless I take Improved TWF/Greater TWF. Or does it just ignore it when my BAB is high enough?
Using a two handed weapon doesn't require you to have an "off hand" attack available, but uses one if you do. For iterative attacks you can continue to use your two handed weapon, but if you have Imp/Greater TWF those off hand attacks would not be available while you were two handed weapon fighting.
So you could while swinging a long sword with two hands, make a first attack at your highest BAB using two hands, this would use up both the primary and off hand attack at that BAB. You could then release one hand and make your iterative attack one handed, and an off hand attack using Improved TWF (with the TWF penalties).
This was one of the things I was asking about.
When you have multiple attacks, or extra off hand attacks, can the off hand attack, be used up, to two hand a weapon with one attack.
Meaning, two weapon fighting with two handed weapons is still an option, just requiring feats/BAB/class features to do so.
No.
In a fighting sequence you designate if you are or are not using your off-hand when you start, so you can indicate if the penalties apply.
If you are using a two-handed weapon to THF, you are using your off-hand in that sequence.
When you have multiple attack when you are +6/+1 involves no off-hand at all to just make two attacks, so you can make two attack. But when you use TWF to make off-hand attacks, you are then removing TWF as an option because the off-hand has been designating.
Wielding a two-handed weapon in your off-hand doesn't get you around this.
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Just out of curiosity: How many of these questions about hands and off-hands and usage and wielding and archetypes and PrC's and beards and bucklers and shields and two-handed weapons and one-handed weapons and light weapons and non-handed weapons and double weapons and natural attacks and unarmed strikes and unwritten rules and overall design philosophies and ... and .... and ..... and ......
... would just go away if they just recanted this FAQ and issued one that said, "Hey! Make a reasonable determination about the number of hands actually required to wield the weapons you are trying to wield, and determine your attacks based on the number of attacks permitted by the rules, knuckleheads!"???
I'm betting it's, like, all of them.
This is one reason why it is such a mess now. If they had noticed this when making PF, then they could avoided a lot of trouble. Now they have a ton of things leaning on this confusing and unclear language.
The Buckler/Two-handed weapon archetype was somewhat confusing already, and now I think is just incoherent.
No it isn't.
It makes perfect sense if you read it as using a one handed weapon that you can go back and forth between THF and TWF depending on which is better in a given circumstance.
Which it the main advantage of a one-handed weapon. Which is why it does less damage than a Two-handed weapon.
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If we had stuck with the old weapon speed rules, there might be more balance.Light weapons can TWF without penalties, but do low damage.
One-handed weapons can both TWF and One-handed fight, but not as well as either.
Two-handed weapons do more damage on a single attack, but can't TWF.
And bring back ThaCO! *dripping with sarcasm*
While there are areas in the rules that are unclear, will people stop acting like reading the rules so that you can kick and two-handed fight magically clarified everything in the world. Puppies never dies when I read it so you could THF and TWF at the same time.
The math came by, it showed it was better damage AND it didn't require an either or choice like light weapons and two-handed weapons do.
The rules were written with this assumption. If you have logical problems stemming from other assumptions you made based on this, it is no different than a math problem not working because you assumed "X" was a different number than it is.
I really do honestly wonder about the utility of this thread at this point.
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That's the problem with unwritten rules.
This is why this thread is due to be locked. Broken record falsehood.
The game is build on tons of underlying stuff. Light weapons do less damage than one-handed do less than two-handed. Light armor has worse AC than medium has worse than heavy.
Max crit range is 15/20. Max enhancement bonus is +6. Enhancement bonuses come in increments of +2.
It is a player and GM manual, not a developer manual. When in doubt, ask the people who design games professionally. Then...crazy I know, thank them and move on.
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I hope you're still not using your FAQ/Dev love/defense as an excuse for bad behavior.
It is the worst kind.
This thread is now over 1300 pages. Everyone seems to get it. Some people in the thread are asking legitimate questions about rules interactions. Some people are trying to find a way to show that they weren't incorrect and the Devs were.
If pointing out this thread is beating a dead horse is bad behavior, what is the actual beating of the dead horse?
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If pointing out this thread is beating a dead horse is bad behavior, what is the actual beating of the dead horse?
A sunder attack. A dead horse is treated as an inanimate object.
Those rules haven't had a sudden change in intent, as far as I know.
At this point, since these rules are so "obvious," let's just have a quick and dirty poll:
How many people here believe that this was a unanimous decision on the part of the Paizo Rules team?
How many of you believe that there was probably some division in the ranks on this decision and that either by majority, or by the relative level of authority of those who believe as the FAQ states, they made the ruling?
Paizo is too strong a company to allow division like this to show (and inflame an already controversial decision). So, we will only ever get a united front on this issue from them, until and unless they revisit the issue and make a new ruling. I'm just curious if other people suspect as I do, that this is not/was not ever, ever, EVER "obvious".
How many people here believe that this was a unanimous decision on the part of the Paizo Rules team?
Um, considering I'm fairly certain Jason said it was unanimous... Let me try and find the quote...
While I agree that it's good PR to show a united front, it's also bad PR to lie - so no, I don't believe Jason would have flat-out lied about that.
[edit]
I have to recant at this point, as I can't locate the post I thought I saw. It may have been in one of the other related discussions.
So let me instead say that if Jason stated that it was a unanimous understanding by the design team, then I do not believe it would be a topic he would fib about for the purposes of a 'united front'.
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Sorry Crusader but I have been using the rules in exactly this fashion the entire time that I have been running Pathfinder/Third Edition.
It is also worth mentioning that every other GM that I personally know uses them in precisely this fashion. That would be four other GM's with more than a decade of experience each (two with more than two decades each) and a new GM who just began running games this month.
As to your question regarding a conspiratorial "Unified Front" presented by the developers, my personal experience with the other GM's that I know personally interpreting the rules in the exact same fashion leads to believe that this is not a conspiracy to project a unified front.
I am not condemning your opinion. I am just explaining mine.
Good Day,
Weslocke of Phazdaliom
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How many people here believe that this was a unanimous decision on the part of the Paizo Rules team?Um, considering I'm fairly certain Jason said it was unanimous... Let me try and find the quote...
While I agree that it's good PR to show a united front, it's also bad PR to lie - so no, I don't believe Jason would have flat-out lied about that.
[edit]
I have to recant at this point, as I can't locate the post I thought I saw. It may have been in one of the other related discussions.So let me instead say that if Jason stated that it was a unanimous understanding by the design team, then I do not believe it would be a topic he would fib about for the purposes of a 'united front'.
Stephen did.
Are you saying Sean did?
You know the 3.5 designers didn't agree on this issue, else they wouldn't have gone back and forth on their version of this FAQ.
Do you think that every designer is going to agree with how a rule works?
A lie? No.
If a company makes a decision, everyone abides by it. You don't go out and announce how vehemently you did, and do, disagree with it. I don't know Paizo's decision-making process (nor WoTC's, for that matter). But, I suspect everyone involved gets a say, though some individuals' carries a bit more weight than others.
Regardless...
Execu-speak for "This is the company's decision that we all abide by." = "We are all in total agreement when it comes this ruling."
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Some of us thought it was clear.
In the section where it described primary and off-hand attacks, following two-weapon fighting being a total of 1 attack and a .5 off-hand was a two-handed attack, which was 1 plus .5
Could it have been clearer? Sure.
Do they spell out the +6 cap? Nope.
Underlying is another word for unwritten. But it sounds less conspiratorial...
Sorry Nicos, but Hindsight Bias does not explain how five different GM's (myself included) all individually and separately interpreted and ran these rules correctly for more than a decade before this ruling.
So does anyone have anything further constructive to say?
Note that arguing about how clear it was at any point - now or then - is not actually constructive.
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Sorry Nicos, but Hindsight Bias does not explain how five different GM's (myself included) all individually and separately interpreted and ran these rules correctly for more than a decade before this ruling.
And yet even the PF devs, including Jason and SKR, are unable to quote the rule that led to this ruling, leaving SKR to cite unwritten rules as the basis for it.
The truth is that there has always been a dislike of TWF+2HW on an emotional level as somehow 'wrong'; a gut feeling. But it never actually broke any (written) rules.
Many of those who hated the idea banned it, and tried to justify it later.
Although the 3.5 FAQ may have caused some 'gnashing of teeth', because of this emotional reaction, if there had have been an intellectual reaction it would have taken the form of pointing to rules that forbade it. There was no intellectual reaction, because there are no rules to forbid it.
The 3.5 FAQ didn't change how the printed rules work, it just described how to apply them to the case of greatsword+armour spikes. Those rules didn't change in PF, but the PF devs (some of them; not the ones who wrote the Thunderstriker archetype or the barbezu beard) still had an emotional reaction and, basically, invented a rule to specifically stop it.
Two rules actually: the new (as yet unwritten) 'hard cap' rule, and the new (as yet unwritten) 'two-handed weapons use two attacks' rule!
The result of making rules based on emotion rather than logic is that you make bad rules. Rules which have an unforeseen domino effect that change many other rules, to the detriment of the game.
The game works perfectly if you understand it as working in the way reflected in that 3.5 FAQ, but with this new FAQ it messes up many of the things that worked perfectly before.
Sometimes emotion dictates our actions more surely than logic.