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The Dual Onslaught feat from the Dual-Weapon Warrior archetype reads
When you lash out with both weapons, you leave no room for the target to escape your attack. When you use Double Slice, if you miss with both Strikes, choose one of the two weapons and apply the effects of a hit with that weapon. You can't choose a weapon if your attack roll with that weapon was a critical failure, meaning you still miss entirely if both attack rolls were critical failures.
Suppose you’re an Investigator who just rolled a 3 on Devise a Stratagem, or an Alchemist who really wants this next bomb to land. While this feat is meant to support dual-wielding, as written there’s nothing stopping you from burning an extra action on Double Slice to make your first hit almost certain to land… as long as you can make sure your second hit is a miss.
I’m not aware of anything in the rules that lets you deliberately fail an attack roll. (Why would there be? Normally, if you don’t want to hit you just don’t attack.) However, you can still pick a secondary weapon that minimises the odds of landing a hit. Ideally something you don’t have proficiency in, but failing that you can stack non-agile + no runes + shoddy + non-lethal attack + using lower of Str/Dex for a really pitiful modifier.
It’s mechanically sound, but now we’ve got a situation where your character earnestly decided that making a swing with the wrong end of a flickmace was the best thing to do, and that this somehow pays off in securing their other hit. It's an odd image, to say the least.
Firstly, am I reading this right? Secondly, if so, what do you think the appropriate response to this setup is?
Personally, I’m not sure whether it’s better to take it as supported by the rules and streamline by allowing an auto-miss (call it a telegraphed blow to draw the enemy guard, say), disallow it as clearly unintended behaviour, or make the player play it as written and explain what exactly they are doing with that tactical toothbrush.
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The Dual Onslaught feat from the Dual-Weapon Warrior archetype reads
When you lash out with both weapons, you leave no room for the target to escape your attack. When you use Double Slice, if you miss with both Strikes, choose one of the two weapons and apply the effects of a hit with that weapon. You can't choose a weapon if your attack roll with that weapon was a critical failure, meaning you still miss entirely if both attack rolls were critical failures.Suppose you’re an Investigator who just rolled a 3 on Devise a Stratagem, or an Alchemist who really wants this next bomb to land. While this feat is meant to support dual-wielding, as written there’s nothing stopping you from burning an extra action on Double Slice to make your first hit almost certain to land… as long as you can make sure your second hit is a miss.
I’m not aware of anything in the rules that lets you deliberately fail an attack roll. (Why would there be? Normally, if you don’t want to hit you just don’t attack.) However, you can still pick a secondary weapon that minimises the odds of landing a hit. Ideally something you don’t have proficiency in, but failing that you can stack non-agile + no runes + shoddy + non-lethal attack + using lower of Str/Dex for a really pitiful modifier.
It’s mechanically sound, but now we’ve got a situation where your character earnestly decided that making a swing with the wrong end of a flickmace was the best thing to do, and that this somehow pays off in securing their other hit. It's an odd image, to say the least.
Firstly, am I reading this right? Secondly, if so, what do you think the appropriate response to this setup is?
Personally, I’m not sure whether it’s better to take it as supported by the rules and streamline by allowing an auto-miss (call it a telegraphed blow to draw the enemy guard, say), disallow it as clearly unintended behaviour, or make the player play it as written and explain what exactly they are doing with that tactical toothbrush.
I personally just allow my players to automatically miss (though, granted, that would technically be covered by Feint, I suppose) and fail saving throws/skill checks. The times when allowing them to do so is actually beneficial are so minuscule that giving them the agency is a no-brainer.
In this instance though, and with Dual Handed Onslaught specifically, it's easy to at least flavor it as the Investigator being smart enough to know flailing wildly with his off-weapon will work for getting the enemy distracted enough to get shanked by the other strike.
However, also in this instance...would it really matter? Lets say it happens like you do, and you rolled a 3. Ok, too bad. However, you can choose what order you attack with in Double Slice so the smart play here isn't "ok, I use the miss on my good swing and then try to fail the other one" it's "ok, I have two weapons I'm ok with, I'll just use the miss on the one I want to hit with less and roll the other one normally". Since we're looking to avoid Critical Failures, and Dual Weapon Onslaught just lets us pick which weapon applies, better to roll the good one hoping for a hit or crit than roll the bad one hoping for a fail.
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The closest thing to auto-miss is the guidance from the gliminals:
Violent Healing:
"There aren't default rules for a creature choosing to be hit (to avoid exploding from a gliminal's healing), but you can allow an ally to improve their outcome by one degree of success against a willing target or allow the target to worsen the result of their saving throw by one step"
So the rough guidance is to still require a roll, but allow the character to worsen the result one step (either on a to-hit, or for a save)
However, also in this instance...would it really matter?
Strategic Strike only adds damage to the first attack after Devise a Stratagem, and it's enough to roughly double the expected damage. Since the first attack is that much stronger, hitting with the second strike is going to be less damage than you'd get from missing twice (unless you crit, probably).
(Assuming you read Strategic Strike as applying properly after Dual Onslaught. I see there's another thread going on about the exact nuance of Dual Onslaught, but I'll leave that debate to that thread.)
I confess I haven't actually calculated quite how much of an expected damage boost this strategy gives the Investigator, but I suppose if it ends up off-track then asking them to wield a secondary weapon they can't use normally would be one way of restoring balance. Dual-wielding already looks pretty good on an Investigator, but that would stop then using it "normally".
So the rough guidance is to still require a roll, but allow the character to worsen the result one step (either on a to-hit, or for a save)
Good point. I suppose it's a good idea to get the player to declare the downgrade beforehand, so they don't get to option select if the second attack rolls a Fatal crit...
Firstly, am I reading this right? Secondly, if so, what do you think the appropriate response to this setup is?
I can come up with no rules argument to prevent doing this.
However, that doesn't mean that I think it is the intended use for this feat. If a player wanted to do this, I would make them jump through all the necessary hoops to make it rules legal and they still have to roll the second attack and hope that it doesn't hit.
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I'm kind of struggling to see the issue. An investigator rolls badly on their Devise check then spends two extra actions to... use the dual onslaught feat in a completely normal fashion to try to salvage something out of their turn.
This isn't really any different than using the feat otherwise, except that you already know one of the attacks is going to fail.
I can't see any reason to shut it down, and I'm kind of surprised at some of the impressions that it's somehow super cheesy.
Thematically, it seems easy to flavor as a tactical feint or an unassailable flurry of attacks as the feat itself suggests.
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I'm kind of struggling to see the issue. An investigator rolls badly on their Devise check then spends two extra actions to... use the dual onslaught feat in a completely normal fashion to try to salvage something out of their turn.
This isn't really any different than using the feat otherwise, except that you already know one of the attacks is going to fail.
That is a usage I would allow. It follows the rules fine.
I can't see any reason to shut it down, and I'm kind of surprised at some of the impressions that it's somehow super cheesy.
The cheese is to decide to shortcut this and say that because Investigator that knows beforehand what their roll is and can get some benefit from Devise as a result of combining it with Dual Onslaught, then that means that we should allow all characters to use Dual Onslaught and decide to deliberately fail one of the attack rolls so that they can guarantee that the other attack succeeds.
Oh, that creature has a weakness to fire damage. Well, I'll just Dual Onslaught with my fist and fail the fist attack roll to guarantee that my flaming sword's attack hits.
Normally, you can Dual Onslaught with the fist attack, sure, but you have to roll the fist attack. If the fist attack hits, then you don't get to decide that the flaming sword hits instead.
Indeed, that's the essence of it.
Using Double Slice in a normal fashion: I have two weapons, and I want the best chance for each of them to hit.
Using Dual Onslaught in a normal fashion: I have two weapons, and I want the best chance for each of them to hit. On the low chance both rolls fail, I have insurance to change one of the misses to a hit.
Using Dual Onslaught in a strange fashion: I have one strike that I really want to land, enough that I will burn an extra action and wave around a second weapon I'm not using.
(I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations for the Investigator, and the Dual Onslaught routine looks to be equal or higher expected-damage-per-action than just a normal DaS + Strike, which is possibly a sign it's malignant/outside expectations.
As you might expect, the ratio favours Dual Onslaught more strongly the lower your base hit chance gets, which means you're more likely to be burning all three actions just to make one strike. Normally an Investigator has more free actions against high-AC foes (since they can read the bad roll and not attack) to do other stuff, so this might turn out to be a tactically bad idea anyway.)
I wouldn't allow it. It let's players choose which of the attacks will hit and let's them load up on that specific roll (sticky bomb for alchemist for instance) and it also avoids the scenario where you can get critical failures.
It goes against the spirit of the feat and is a flat power boost letting you entirely ignore AC.