The only way to apply dex is to get the agile enhancement, and that does not give full dex damage in the off-hand even with double slice.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Dex can be used for the attack bonus (but not damage) when using finesse-able weapons. In order to get Dex to damage you would need the agile enhancement. Otherwise you're still only getting half-strength modifier to damage (which for a dex based character is probably low).
The agile enchanement says you get half dex with off-hand weapons and can never get 1.5 dex where you would with strength. Double Slice does exactly what it says, and applies only to strength.
In a home game you might be able to cinvince you're DM to allow you to have a feat that works like Double Slice, but allows the use of dex instead of strength but only on weapons that have the agile enchantment. By RAW, no, it will never work. Personally as a GM I still wouldn't allow for the custom feat, there has to be drawbacks associated with using dex instead of strength because the abiility to negate the usefulness of strength altogether is too powerful to allow it to be replaced by a +1 enchantment and 1 feat.
I disagree with the first two posts. I believe that double slice combined with an agile weapon would indeed give you full dex mod to damage on your off-hand attack.
Agile:
Agile weapons are unusually well balanced and responsive. A wielder with the Weapon Finesse feat can choose to apply her Dexterity modifier to damage rolls with the weapon in place of her Strength modifier. This modifier to damage is not increased for two-handed weapons, but is still reduced for off-hand weapons.
Note the use of the word "still." This indicates that dexterity is used in the same manner as strength would normally be used.
Double Slice:
Benefit: Add your Strength bonus to damage rolls made with your off-hand weapon.
Normal: You normally add only half of your Strength modifier to damage rolls made with a weapon wielded in your off-hand.
I consider the cost to be more than "a +1 enchantment and 1 feat." Rather, it's the cost of 2 weapons with 2 +1 enchantments each and 1 feat. A fairly expensive proposition early on.
Now, I am not an expert, and normally I agree with Wraithstrike on things. So, I will sit back and wait for his smashing-my-face rebuttal.
It seems they went out of their way to restrict double-slice, and they never said strength is replaced completely(as in for the purpose of feats also).
They could have simply said:
"Your dex modifier replaces your strength modifier when determining damage for a weapon in all ways, except when using a two-handed weapon, in which case the modifier to damage is not increased."
That would let everyone know to use the dex mod exactly like you would the strength modifier, except where stated otherwise when it came to weapon damage.
It could be bad wording, but it seems to me like a deliberate attempt to restrict the off-hand weapon from using double slice.
Now personally I don't think it is overpowered to allow double-slice to apply since TWFer's are already using a lot of feats, and they still do less damage than a two-handed weapon user, but that assumes they use actual weapons, and don't go sword and board TWF'ing, which matters because the price of the shield being improved is a lot less than a second weapon, and the shield will eventually not suffer from TWF penalties.
I think why they did it is to balance the System Dex does so much already you are now putting str in a position as a dump stat for everyone at that point.
I think the ruling that it does not carry is a good one because this would basically tell everyone Str is worthless go Dex LOTS of DEX
I dont believe that should a good practice at all for any game, You would see Fighters with a 10 Str and a 22 Dex... its like Really?
They probably should have restricted it to finessable weapons.
@Reecy, yes, you might see some fighters that go 10 Str and 22 Dex, but not likely many or most. The Dex build is for finesse fighters/users. It has already been proven time and again how powerful a good THF build is vs TWF. The THF could not/would not use a Dex build.
While Double Slice is not restricted to just finessable weapons, agile is.
Thematically, it makes sense that a high Dexterity character with two Agile weapons can make use of Double Slice in this way. I'd go with RAI along the lines of letting it apply, since Double Slice was released way before the Agile enchant was a thing and sometimes the rules teams doesn't always explicitly spell out every little thing like this. After all, they're spending two feats and however much money to get a +1 enchant on both weapons, why shouldn't that pay off?