Fixed increased damage for using 2 hands on a weapon

[Celanian]

It seems strange to me that a person with less than 14 str gets no additional damage from using 2 hands on a weapon. I know personally that I don't have above average str, but I hit a lot harder using 2 hands with a bat or axe than with 1 hand.

My proposed house rule would be that using 2 hands provides a fixed +2 damage above your normal Str bonus. In addition, you would increase by +1 damage per 5 BAB you have. So a +20 BAB character maxes out the increase at +6 damage for using 2 hands.

Offhand or secondary attacks would get a flat -2 damage regardless of your BAB.

[Cap. Darling]

I dont Think it needs Fixing.

[kyrt-ryder]

For what it's worth, most bats or axes that you would use two hands on are designed for two-handed use to begin with. Using them in any other manner is penalizing yourself compared to the norm.

[Redneckdevil]

I always thought it was the case of rounding down correct?

[Celanian]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

For what it's worth, most bats or axes that you would use two hands on are designed for two-handed use to begin with. Using them in any other manner is penalizing yourself compared to the norm.

That would be the difference between a light or a 1 handed/2 handed weapon in game terms.

I think my rule would simplify things quite a bit for the game. Everybody would calculate their damage normally at 1X str modifier, and simply add a fixed amount if they use 2 hands or -2 if off handed/secondary attack used.

During play, you can +/-1 damage per 2 str increased/decreased from spells/buffs/poisons instead of having to recalculate if the str change brings you to a new bracket that requires different rounding.

It also seems to mesh with the str charts a little better. In game terms, X +5 str is twice the str (at least in terms of lifting capacity) as X str and gives +2 str mod compared to X str. A weapon designed to use 2 hands generally hits almost twice as hard as if used 1 handed so +2 damage seems to make sense in game terms.

[Cyrad]

If it were up to me, I'd do this:

1) You may optionally add double your Strength modifier (instead of 1.5) to damage with two-handed weapon attacks. However, gaining this bonus damage imparts a -3 penalty to the attack roll. This is called "power attacking."

2) Power Attack no longer adds damage to your melee attacks. Instead, it reduces the penalty of power attacking to -1.

3) Two-weapon fighting applies full Strength modifier to off hand attacks.

I don't like having to do decimal multiplication to figure out my damage bonuses.

[Coyote_Ragtime]

Minimum +1 bonus for two handing. Boom. No algebra required.

[Atarlost]

Cyrad wrote:

If it were up to me, I'd do this:

1) You may optionally add double your Strength modifier (instead of 1.5) to damage with two-handed weapon attacks. However, gaining this bonus damage imparts a -3 penalty to the attack roll. This is called "power attacking."

2) Power Attack no longer adds damage to your melee attacks. Instead, it reduces the penalty of power attacking to -1.

3) Two-weapon fighting applies full Strength modifier to off hand attacks.

I don't like having to do decimal multiplication to figure out my damage bonuses.

This is an enormous nerf to power attack and therefore to melee. It does bring TWF and two handed into balance if you ignore standard attacks, but does so at the expense of making melee really, really horrible.