Treantmonk's Video on Two Weapon Fighting: ruclips.net/video/kLEpbTc72_4/видео.html Our Google Doc Summary of the new rules: docs.google.com/document/d/1ZuZbqscx09T2eKqzFPmguB3_LqPj7aFama_lbteyqLg/edit?usp=sharing
I saw you guys reply there when he posted the vid. Would be really nice to have good mechanics for a future campaign if I wanted to play a Swashbuckler or Battlemaster dual wielding rapiers. Fürher Bradley from Full Metal Alchemist is another fun inspiration for two short swords.
I'm a little confused on Dual Flurry, isn't at already 2 attacks when you're dual wielding? So it's now 3 attacks due to Dual Flurry, and with extra attack it's 4 attacks?
It always seemed weird to me that the Duelist fighting style was incompatible with rapier + dagger, and that you need the dual wielder feat to even do it. It's a classic archetype, and is deeply embedded in D&D's own lore (eg Artemis Entreri), and yet it's not very accessible to players. As a DM, I'd be very open to homebrew something to allow it.
5e is not known for being consistent or even logic .. or really fun. I say home brew the hell out of it dude, to make your game more consistent and fun
Well its duelist not dualist. And it is a bit more historically accurate that duels were fought with one weapon and no shield. (In several places in history bucklers were outlawed to be carried in public because of duels. This led to the duelist cloak which is a weighted cloak almost made like a net to entrap or deflect.
@@Desdemona-XI this was not the case until the late Renaissance. Daggers and bucklers were very common as off-hand weapons and regularly used in dueling scenarios. You’ve proven this yourself by mentioning a law that forbade bucklers to curtail dueling. For most of human history, people fought with whatever weapon they had available, the notion of a formal duel setting with matched single weapons is a product of the popularity of the smallsword, which was the ancestor of modern fencing weapons and almost always used on its own. Rapiers were mainly used in accompaniment with an off-hand dagger, shield, lantern, cape, etc. so that the rapier could be always attacking. There are dozens of period works and manuals documenting this practice. Fun fact, swashbuckle is a portmanteau of swash (sword) and buckle(r), so a swashbuckler is one who fights with sword and buckler
It's an exception that does not belong in the rules as it would just make the rules too wordy but is just the sort of thing a DM could and should allow. It's not even overpowered, as 1d8+1d4 is the same damage as 1d6+1d6 from a pair of light finesse weapons.
I think a good middle ground for the Improved Weapon Fighting suggested style is removing the light restriction from the primary weapon only. Still strong but tempers the power scaling if the Bonus Action is no longer needed for the second weapon attack and adding the ability score mod to damage.
Changing a 1d6 > 1d8 is only a ~1 damage increase, which adds up via multi-attacks, but is ultimately small compared to if it was hampering someones build idea.
@@matthewmullin6042 Correct but having a (Not Light & Light) 1d8 + 1d8 +1d6 = 12.5 dpr vs (rapier)1d8 +1d8 = 9 dpr vs (2 short swords)1d6 + 1d6 + 1d6 = 11.5 dpr and still having a bonus action available. The idea offers some way to lower the power scale but I do agree with you that its going to lower the power scale by a total of 1 dpr hehe.
How about if the fighting style has a line like "if you also have the Dual Wielder feat, you can wield non-light weapons in both hands," and a similar line in the feat (but referring to the fighting style)? So if you have one or the other, you can wield one non-light and one light, like rapier & dagger, katana & wakizashi, etc. If you have both, you can wield non-light in both hands. That brings us back to what the dual wielder feat does now but requires a little more investment, which I dunno... might balance out the basic changes in this video (no BA req'd, adds ability modifier)? Obviously not tested at all, just thinking out loud :)
It's crazy this came up literally as I was thinking about this. I'm planning a campaign for the first time for my brothers who have never played a TTRPG and one of my brothers was ENAMORED with the concept of a paladin but dual wielding spears. Was trying to figure out how that'd work for weeks now but this video definitely helped give me some ideas!
How do you duel wield spears though? I think they should be a versatile weapon but theyre very similiar to bastard swords in that respect. (I know bastard swords arent in 5E but they should be)
@@green959 No idea, I asked if he was looking more for dual wielding short swords since spears would be more unwieldy but he was quite insistent on spears. I was happy to see the enthusiasm so I just said sure
"You can drop any or all objects you’re holding as a reaction." - I would remove that stipulation. I think dropping an object should be free, an doable at any time. Otherwise it will be a bit restrictive and conflict with things like _heat metal_ which specify "the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop the object if it can" (which will require the creature having its reaction available).
If a spell effect specifies an effect on a creature that effect takes place. If the spell does not specify “on their next turn” or “whenever possible” they take the action immediately as the effect takes place.
That little bit of heat metal that says "If they can" is referring to if the literally can drop the object. You can't just drop a suit of armor or a shield as both are attached to your body with straps, and so require more then just releasing your grip to drop them. Likewise something like a necklace with/made of metal can't simply be dropped if being worn. So the "Drops it if able" is a literal phrase, not a meta one.
@@demonzero677 Whether you could drop a shield or not would depend on the shield. That said, most shields are made of wood anyway with small bits of metal so aren't good targets for Heat Metal anyway.
I feel it's also a bit outside the intent for reactions. Reactions are generally a response to a triggering condition. That may sometimes sorta apply to dropping items, though not in a way that can be specifically codified in more detail than "something happens that makes you want to drop a thing". And you might not even be responding to an immediate condition. Maybe it's really heavy. You're not reacting to it suddenly becoming heavy. It's always been heavy. You're just done carrying it now. Being a free action works better. There's no need for an action economy here. Let gravity do its thing.
Yeah, reactions are NOT free and it's not abusable to be able to drop things out of turn. Nothing activates upon being dropped, ball bearings and caltrops need an action to be spread out over an area.
another thing that two weapon fighting shows up on: official D&D miniatures! you'd think that if every melee mini has either a big two-handed weapon, two one-handed weapons, or weapon/shield, they'd put more thought into two weapon fighting!
More thought? Current dual wielding rules is more efficient then archery from the second round and beyond, and about 33% more efficient then heavy weapon fighting, if you look at average damage. That you don't perceive something as balanced, doesn't mean it isn't balanced
*Off-Hand Attack (changed from "Two-Weapon Fighting" to avoid confusion between the bonus action available to anyone and the fighting style)* When you take the Attack action and attack with a light or finesse melee weapon that you are holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you are holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative. If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it. _Reasoning: Drawing and swinging two weapons is pretty difficult; it should require specialized training (i.e. a fighting style or a feat). Adding "finesse" to the restriction only on the primary weapon opens up the classic rapier & dagger style but prevents the wierd dual-rapier or dual-whip style that should again really require specialized training._ *Two-Weapon Fighting (fighting style)* You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one and you can add your ability modifier to the damage of an off-hand attack. When you gain the Extra Attack feature you may make one additional off-hand attack per turn as part of the Attack action. _Reasoning: This removes the need for Dual Wielder feat to make the fighting style work and lets it keep pace with damage from other fighting styles using heavier weapons._ *Dual Weilder (feat)* You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits: You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand. You can make an off-hand attack even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light or finesse.
Biggest issue i have with this suggestion isnt mechanics wise, but the reasoning provided for those mechanics. It is 'NOT' difficult to draw and swing and use two weapons in combat. it is just as easy to use two daggers as it is to use two rapiers or two axes, or two longswords. I speak from personal experience about this. These are classic fighting styles from modern and medieval history. Using a long weapon and a small weapon is a fighting style called Florentine. Your classic Sword and Dagger style. Using two long weapons is called a 'brace'. A Brace of rapiers, or Turkish Shamshirs was my preferred fighting style from 10+ years of Renaissance fencing. It is also incredibly common in the SCA as well and doesnt take much more then basic training with any weapon to accomplish. This misconception that duel wielding is difficult always annoys me. Which is why i actually completely agree with the video more so then this tiny change to existing duel wielding that doesnt remove the need for a fighting style AND a feat to make duel wielding viable. (which is two ASI's for a non-fighter, if Tasha's is being used for a fighting style in place of a feat. or 1 ASI for a fighter)
On the off hand, i would change it from not adding ability modifier to damage, to not being able to use the proficiency bonus for the attack. Reasoning, for non ambidexterous people, your offhand(or weaker hand) has less dexterity, and therefor is more difficult to hit with. And then being able to use the proficiency bonus after taking the fighting style, Reasoning when you have the style, you have spesific training/experience for the style. i would altso make the fightingstyle a possible feat for all classes with some dex and str requirements (possibly changed with the class abilities that enable you to use a different modifier for attack and damage rolls I.e Cha for warlocks)
Instead of doubling your stat with great-weapon fighting style, just have it add proficiency to damage. Maintains the damage buff it does in low levels and stays relevant with your late game changes
What I did after watching Treantmonk's video is just changed the dual wielding feat. All the other rules remain the same except now you can draw both weapons when you draw weapons. Dual Wielder: You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits: • You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand. • You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light. • Once per attack action, you can add an one attack with your off-hand weapon.
I think the removing the bonus action is a great idea, changes to the fighting style, and feat are all great ideas! Adding the modifier back to the damage is where I would say you are crossing the line. The others should be enough to strengthen the concept without tipping the balance too far in their favor.
Good luck, have fun, and remember the two most important rules of being ANY kind of GM: 1. No plan you make will ever survive unscathed upon contact with the players. They will find a way to mess with it, roll with it. Adapt and improvise 2. If your players are having fun and the game is consistent and balanced for everyone then you're doing it right, regardless of whatever that negative voice in the back of your head says.
Kelly and Monty are fantastic at giving advice on DMing and playing the game, and their live play series' are really entertaining and fun. Also Matt Colville has a great series of videos called Running The Game that gives amazing advice for new and experienced DMs alike (I've been DMing since 1979 and I learned quite a bit from his insights!).
One of my problems with shifting the light weapon exception to the fighting style is it would limit a class like barbarians from getting it. The massive brute class being limited to two small weapons while a ranger can use much heavier ones doesn’t make much sense
Agreed, that does severely limit non-light dual wielding to just the Fighter and Ranger. The only two class that get that Fighting style. So, your big raging Barbarian wanting to swing around two big battle-axes... is gonna have to try imagining the two small hand-axes to be big and intimidating. Oh, and your righteous Paladin wanting to Smite Evil with two gleaming Longswords... well have to settle for two much shorter versions of said swords. Unless of course they either dip into Fighter or Ranger for the Two-Weapon Fighting Style, or take the Fighter Initiate Feat for it.
They did say they'd add it to the fighting style, but didn't say to remove the feat (unless I missed it). I don't see why you wouldn't be able to keep the feat in the game as well.
@@lelandwhitehead56 but at that point you’re using an entire feat for what’s only part of the current feat, which already isn’t that great. If any part of the two weapon fighting setup would fit best in a fighting style, it’d be the +1 AC, as that lines up the most with what other fighting styles do.
Love the recent name dropping of d4: D&D Deep Dive and Treantmonk's Temple. These are my 3 favorite channels and you guys all working together is awesome. Building each other up!!
Maybe the Two Weapon Fighting style means that only your offhand weapon needs to be Light? That way you can do the classic "rapier and dagger" or "katana and wakazashi" weapon sets. Meanwhile, the Dual Wielder feat lets you ignore the Light requirement for your main hand weapon as well. I'd keep the Feat's +1 to AC but change it that, if you forgo making an attack with your offhand weapon, you can use your Bonus Action to give yourself an additional +1 to your AC until the start of your next turn.
I like this a lot. I think the x2 offhand attack (considering the extra damage they gave it) might get out of hand with on-hit damage effects like Hunters Mark or Spirit Shrowd.
I feel like that’s a pretty small bonus for a whole fighting style, though I like the idea. Maybe add another small benefit to it? I can’t think of something that would fit well
For the strength increase on two handed weapons, I recommend using something more like what they did in 3/3.5e. Two handed weapons added 1.5 times the strength mod (rounded down). So an 18 strength would be +6 instead of +4, or your suggestion of +8.
@@PorterPickUp I also just remembered, 3.5 didn't cap your abilities at 20. You could start with 20, and by level 8, have a 22 in strength. Level 16 can have a 24. That's without spells or items.
Historically an off-hand weapon tended to be mostly for defense and/or controlling the enemy's weapon rather than as another means of attacking; as such, I'd actually like to find some way of implementing an option that allows you to use a secondary weapon in place of a shield, maybe as a reaction.
Agreed. Admittedly, I kinda feel like there should be some kind of Two-Weapon Defense Fighting Style so you can parry an attack with an off-hand melee weapon if it is light akin to Protection.
Agreed, I don't think many people here have actually sparred with two weapons. I'd change basic Two Weapon Fighting to give +1 to AC instead and let the fighting style give you the extra attack. If you want more, the old AU Sword Feat gave you a reaction to add +2 to your AC whenever you were wielding a sword. Kensai Monk also have a nice feature where you get +2 AC if you are holding a weapon but attack with an unarmed attack. I'd say bring this in somehow, make it a Feat. Defensive Master: As a Bonus Action you take a more defensive stance, raising your shield or your offhand weapon ready to block incoming attacks. While you spend your bonus action this way(and that really is an opportunity cost for many classes) you gain a +2 to your AC until the start of your next round. (I feel like shield should give you more than sidearm, but I think people would freak out if it was more than a +2.)
Love this! One of my greatest DnD inspirations is Drizzt, and it never feels like actual DnD play feels at all similar to the book descriptions of his scimitars blurring and wheeling over one another.
i totally agree on that using two weapons should not use a bonus action and use to use modifiers, and ofc also the stowing of weapons change. BUT as one who use two weapons to fight with at LARP, i can say you have more defense with two weapons then you have with one, as you can parry with one weapon and counter with the other. so i would rather have that you gain +1 ac for the duel wielding fighting style and maybe with a reaction to counter attack if a melee attack misses you. and keep the feat as there is a big difference with fighting with two large weapons then with two light weapons. this would also make it so that all have to take a feat to use non light weapons, not giving Ranger and fighter the advantage of being able to duel wield non light weapons earlier and without a feat then as an example barbarian. :) the one with the heavy weapon and twice the str mod i like, but i think i would fit best as a feat.
I love all of these changes, specifically because it evens out the playing field for the majority of martial styles. As a small addition, I would still allow the additional +1 bonus to Armor Class from Dual Wielder while you have a weapon in each hand. That allows for the rapier and parrying dagger, one weapon focused mainly on offense and one weapon focused mainly on defense style of play, while still adding the flurry of attacks that is so iconic to Two-Weapon Fighting. I think I would add it into the Two-Weapon Fighting Style, where it would read along the lines of: ~ While you are holding a weapon in each hand, as long as at least one of those weapons is a light weapon, you gain a +1 bonus to your Armor Class.
I like this too. It forces one of them to be light to gain the +1 AC but if you want to just use two longswords or two battleaxes for more damage you forego the extra AC.
Absolutely, that should really be the main benefit of having two weapons. I like that you added one of them had to be light as it only makes sense to defend with.the shorter weapon and attack with the bigger.
i’ve been drawing on the Star Wars 5e rules for fighting styles and feats. they managed to come up with a fighting style for each kind of weapon, and standardized the weapon feats into corresponding Fighting Masteries, and added a feat that lets you pick up any fighting mastery. that’s mostly bookkeeping, but it now means there’s like, 24 sets of valid fighting styles and masteries for you to pick from. of course, half of them are specific to lightsabers and blasters, but the biggest thing they changed for two weapon fighting was: the two weapon fighting style lets you make two attacks whenever you take an opportunity attack. they also changed a fighter’s extra attack so that once you have 3 attacks, two weapon fighting lets you make two more attacks as your bonus action. this essentially keeps two weapon fighting as a 50% boost in number of attacks at minimum, which is neat.
I would add “+1 to AC while wielding a melee weapon in each hand” to the dual wielder feat in your proposed changes. Otherwise, all very solid changes from beginning to end.
Honestly with this revamped ruling the +1 AC is good but takes away from the shield fighting style. They are proposing that duel wielding should just be lots of swings while historicaly inaccurate its mechanically sound. I would leave the AC bump to shields so as to make that a good style. I posted a comment with reworked version of what was mentioned here it might help your thoughts out a bit. 😃
@@Zanderof Having two weapons helps with parrying, so in reality it makes sense to add something to AC. The first defence of any fighter is his own weapon to begin with.
The homebrew we're trying out at our table is that the drawing/stowing is just part of normal rules (as many others including you have already suggested), and that point of the Dual Wielder feat is replaced by "Your off-hand attack no longer requires your bonus action. It’s made as part of your Attack action." (Inspired by Treantmonk.) Then we added a new feat with a prerequisite of Dual Wielder feat (feat-tree style) that tacks on more benefits (including the additional off-hand attack with Extra Attack you mentioned) if you want to lean farther into Dual Wielding. I actually kind of like leaving the two-weapon fighting style the same. The idea that not everyone who picks up a second weapon can be as effective with their second weapon as their first appeals to me.
I'd love this to become a series! Going to underpowered or underutilized parts of the game, and buffing em up! Poisons! Potions! Classes and subclasses! :D so much potential for content!
Awesome quick, thought provoking, and inspirational video. As a life long DM since first edition D&D, I love the possibilities all these changes bring to 5e and our campaign. Already discussed with my group and we will be incorporating all these changes and recommendations into our homebrew rules at our next session. Thanks Dungeon Dudes!
I’m so glad to have found this video, I don’t know how I missed it and I have been tweeking two weapon fighting in my own campaign. For balance, I’ve essentially used reckless attack for inspiration. The two weapon fighting looks like this: the second weapon is restricted to finesse or small, the second weapon is essentially a free attack when you attack with your primary, however you have to have 13 dexterity, you lose the ability to cast anything that needs your hands and you take a knock to your AC of -2. It’s not perfect, but it works out pretty well.
I use something that the dungeon coach suggested in his video. Basically if you have 1 attack your roll your d20 once and if you hit, you roll your damage for hitting with both hands and only add your mod the one time. My table has used this for about 3 months now and its not op or anything, it just puts 2 weapon on par with using heavy weapons.
It's mechanically the same as heavy weapons but a bit worse, as you have both hands occupied. A Paladin with a greatsword can just get on with it; a TWF Paladin would require warcaster.
Great video, this problem definitely needs tackling. A few things to have in mind: *2 weapon f. is good from levels 1-4 as is, with this rules a lv1 dual w. Fighter is as a crossbow expert. *Rage damage adds very quickly on 4 attacks with advantage. *Shield master shove is intended to be one per turn or once per attack? *You guys are awesome.
2 handed weapon update that could be interesting. For all 2 handed weapons, if your player character is size large or larger (ie Enlarged, giants might etc.) it can wield 2 handed weapons in 1 hand.
If you are using giants might don't your weapons also increase in size? I think the wording specifies anything you are wearing but I would think your weapons would grow as well.
@@splunky5156 yes, currently it does. This was meant as a potential update to make 2 handed weapons more interesting. My apologies if that was not made clear.
always a joy listening to your considerations. I had a player (fighter one for two handed weapon style, barbarian berserker the rest up to 1/7) with the idea of a derwish. So he danced singing and raging into battle with two scimitars. I remembered then far to old books about a ranger with a (under)dark past, so he got two matching magical scimitars. One, his main weapon, dealt cold damage and gave on a crit vulnerability agains fire, the other dealt fire damage and gave on a crit vulnerability against cold damage. It was fun times and never felt overpowered or annoying. The only bad thing was barbarians do not getting a fighting style so he had to multiclass.
Something I think is more fair, and could be more interesting, is if once per turn you could draw OR stow any items needed to perform an action as part of that action, but discarding items is a free action. So you can change from your bow to your two swords in time to make an attack with those swords, but you'll have to throw your bow on the ground, unless you recognise you'll be changing weapons a round early. And once that bows on the ground you might need to move to pick it up and use again, or maybe an enemy might get there first if you move away.
This is how I manage this problem. Since rules already state you can draw a weapon as part of your movement action, the problem is with stowing something you already have in your hands. If my players don't want to spend time putting something away before getting something else out they have to drop it on the ground. You'd be surprised how well they remember that they're favorite bow or axe is on the ground and pick it up as soon as they can.
I saw a Tiktok the other day of someone explaining their idea for a versatile weapons feat where sword and shield allows extra damage and two handed use gives extra AC. It also allowed you to switch grips as a bonus action by donning/doffing a shield as a bonus action. Very cool.
I remember making an entire fighter subclass dedicated to changing the way two weapon fighting works, slowly getting more attacks with their "off-hand" weapon as they got their class features until at level 20 they could make 8 attacks with a single attack action, 4 with each weapon.
My simple solution. The two weapon fighting style doesnt let you add your modifier to the damage, but instead lets you attack with your off-hand weapon as many times as your attack action. So if you're 20th level, you have 4 attacks as your attack action and 4 attacks as a bonus action (no modifier). So attacking with two light d6 weapons puts you on par with attacking with a greatsword. So assuming all attacks hit and the modifier is +5 to damage on a 20th level fighter Greatsword: (2d6+5) × 4 = 48 Dual Wield: [(1d6+5) × 4] + [4d6] = 48
They kind-of-address that in the video, by stating that they prefer all the rolls that're part of the attack to use the same modifiers, for simplicity. Which is a choice that I'd say is preferential, so your approach is definitely not "worse". Something to keep an eye out is that Dual Wield will (as you've written it, at least) scale better with "every hit" damage bonuses like hunter's mark - Greatsword gets 4 of that, Dual Wield 8. This advantage has to be compared against other damage increases that are available only to Heavy Weapons.
I REALLY like this. Martial classes definitely lag behind casters. So by balancing these abilities on the more powerful side of things it helps to elevate martial classes a bit
I, myself, am hitting this issue headlong in my subclass homebrew. I've been attempting to take the flavor of the Lich King era Fury Fighter and roll it onto the Barbarian frame (dual wield 2 handed weapons). I used several of the ideas posted in the video to help streamline the process. Unlike the Dungeon Dudes, I left the bonus action attack and amped it up to compensate for the action economy. Reward usage but not punish for not choosing to use.
I think there is a barbarian subclass in the Arcanis campaign that does something with dual wielding larger than light weapon haven't looked at that book in a while so I am drawing a blank on details.
I’m sure you guys know but you do add your ability modifier to the off hand attack already just not to the damage. I think it makes sense because you might be just as skilled at hitting with your off hand but it might not be as strong
Love the video and love what you guys are doing!!! Keep up the great work! Here is how I run 2 Weapon Fighting. Untrained: No bonus action, 2 attacks in 1 action, Ability mod added 2nd attack if offhand weapon is light or finesse weapon, Main weapon does not need to be light. Trained (Fighter Fight Style): ability mod added to both attacks regardless of weapon type, +1 attack if dual wielding, +1 bonus to AC if Dual wielding Dual Wielded Feat: +1 bonus to AS if Dual wielding (stacks w/ Trained bonus), may fight with weapons of any type, +1 attack if dual wielding (stacks with Trained bonus) Played around with this a bunch and my players seem to really like it. Non-fighters still get some sweet advantages without stealing anything away from the Fighter class. The Trained classification really allows martial classes to fully reap the rewards and this is how it should be. Keep the dice rolling high!!!
Actually same, i wrote up a homebrew feat which is very similar to what they showed in the video, but instead of removing the bonus action restriction, the feat just allows you to attack twice with your bonus action
@@anthonyyates9003 The first time they bring it up they say "but then paladins can't use their smite spells". They just say "smite" or "smiting" after that, but I think we can safely assume they are refering back to when they said "smite spells".
Love the video. This has been a topic I have been working on myself. Was looking through the math a bit and I think it would make 2WF stronger than GWF consistently and with less investment. With the fury Feat, a Zealot Barbarian of level 5 who acquired hunters mark (however?) could use 2 Battle axes and achieve approx. 65.5 DPR while raging and attacking each turn (not including any reaction). A GWM PAM Zealot with Hunters mark would achieve 57.5 DPR if they cant use their reaction to PAM, if they can, 83.5 DPR. A paladin with TWF can use 2 battle axes, using 2 level 2 slots, and 2 level 1 slots, and a thunderous smite at level 5 can hit for 90 DPR. Add hex (however) and ends up being 97 DPR. Take a paladin with GWM and PAM using 2 level 2 smites, thunderous smite can achieve 75 DPR. if they can react and PAM and 1 level 1 smite, 102.5 DPR. The problem with this is that the 2H fighter has to get 2 feats PAM & GWM, take a -5 on ATK, and the TWF only needs 1 feat, doesn't take a minus to hit, and has more opportunities to crit just due to more d20s being rolled in character career. In the math, I assume every attack hits to achieve the desired numbers. If you include the lower chance to hit with take the -5 to ATK, it would lower the overall DPR as well. I would suggest allowing the free off hand attack with modifier and the feat, but you can't add effects like hunter's mark, hex, smite, etc. to the off hand attacks because that's where they jump in damage.
I mean a barbarian with hunters mark at level 5 can't rage (you can't concentrate on spells well raging), would have to be a variant human or custom lineage to have like fey touched or magic initiate(for hunter's mark) and dual flurry feat(? fury feat) and even then can only cast it once per day and it requires concentration which can be broken, They've given up ability boosts, the zealot barbarian's "divine fury ability"' only adds extra damage once per turn and at level 5 that is like 7 or 8 damage, it takes at least 1 round to set up hunters mark so that eats up your bonus attack from PAM(are you referring to the old version of PAM or the proposed one in the video), also your bonus attack from PAM gets eaten up by hunters mark eveytime you switch targets and how are they wielding two battleaxes barbarians don't get a fighting style, I am assuming no multiclassing at this point cause they have extra attack. Paladins don't currently get access to TWF style, spell slots are a limited resource especially at level 5, so anyway point I'll make, is none of this damage is sustainable and I don't think game breaking and all these really high damage builds were being constructed before using the old rules and don't really have much to do with the new rules proposed, power gamers gonna game game game game game! Fix smiting if it's a huge problem at your table don't keep TWF lousy
As for Shield Master I'd do what you guys did, but I'd add you could make a bonus action attack with your shield. Something like 1d4 plus your strength modifier.
Or the same level of investment as say a polearm build but with way less benefits than polearm master and sentinel. Not even to mention great weapon master extra damage
@@AnaseSkyrider If you have killed something, you probably will be pretty far from the next thing or have won the battle. Its nice yes, but its primary utility comes when fighting hordes of enemies.
My home brew fixes for the Dual Wielder feat. We kept the 2 weapons even not light, and the +1 to AC. So I added what I called arts. -Defensive Art, enemies can still do opportunity attacks on you, however because of your mastery, the first 4 opportunity attacks done on you are with disadvantage. -Offensive art, when you move to an empty space you can do an opportunity attack on any creature 5 feet away from said space using your proficiency.
For the heavy weapon, especially considering the recent trend, you might add proficiency bonus instead of double strength modifier. Not as much extra damage until level 17 or so, but it gives a consistent damage buff at each tier of play. Coupled with the lack of the -5 penalty to hit, I think it balances out but without the weird flavor that hitting harder means you're more likely to completely whiff. Or maybe even if you miss, you still add your proficiency or strength bonus, to reflect that even if you don't pierce the armor, you still don't entirely miss like you were casting a cantrip
cool ! i like ho you worked through the technical issues and offered different perspectives, not just for the two-weapon fighting but also for everything else that might be affected
House rule I've been running for some time has been that with the two-weapon fighting style, offhand attacks are made with advantage. The idea is that they still cost your bonus action when you can get them but that's because your character is using an attack with one hand to create an opening for the other (which is the entire point of dual melee weapons). This also makes the fighting style appealing for rogues to pick up, without being absolutely broken since its still just barely ahead of steady aim but requires a feat or class feature to pick up. Best of all: its simple.
this is almost exactly what i did at my table- i did not alter crossbow or the others you mentioned, but i'm fair convinced to do so after your presentation. i did upgrade Spell Sniper to add the players relevant attribute modifier to cantrip damage, and that has helped cantrips scale with other weapons.
I love the feel of this, especially the negating of BA and same rolls for all attacks. But I think this package is overpowered as-is. At low levels, +2Dex spellcaster with daggers would do more melee damage per attack (9 avg, 2d4+4) than a +2Str great-weapon wielder (8.5 avg,1d12+2), and far more than they would by casting a cantrip. And d6 weapon would come out far ahead with 11avg. Shields also look /a lot/ worse when you're giving up a full 2nd attack, albeit with a lighter weapon. And even when feats/styles are considered, until someone gets 3 attacks in a turn, I think dual wielders would have the best damage overall. Then there's unintended synergies like basic lvl1 warlocks being able to BA Hex, then do '4d6+2xDEX' on one turn without any abilities, feats, or friends. I think it could use some of this buff, but could use constraints like a minus to damage or removing a bonus to hit. I definitely like making this viable for BA-heavy classes. But great weapon builds have to give up shields and Dex to get there; dual-wielders shouldn't be able to get to the same base damage without some downside, whether that's reduction in raw damage, reduction to hit, or reduction to AC.
I think the simplest fix is to simply modify the attack modifier of dual-wielded rolls, a reduction from _each_ roll would start to move the expect damage of a dual-wielder inline with other playstyles (this could be a static -1 to your attack rolls with dual-wielded weapons, you only add half your proficiency modifier/STR/DEX modifier, idk that's more of a "determine what feels right via playtesting" kinda thing). Depending on your narrative interpretation of AC, this would also make sense as attacking with two weapons is less accurate/damaging than fully aiming and following through with a single weapon. E.g. The numbers you gave would require a -3 modifier to each attack roll (if I did my math right)
@TaleshicMatera that runs into trouble when you get more attacks. Either you (once again) need keep track of multiple types of attacks during your attack action or (if it applied to all attacks) using two weapons would be strictly worse than using a single weapon once multi attack was high enough.
@@ladaas9528 I was thinking it would be a debuff against your attack roll for all dual-wielded weapons (so applied to all attacks made when both weapons are used in the same action). It would have to solve for it, but there should be a debuff (static or scaling with level) that should maintain the expected damage as similar to single-weapon playstyles: (average damage dealt with alt playstyle per roll)*(probability of successful roll) = [(average damage dealt with dual-wielding playstyle, both weapons)*(probability of success)^2 + 2*(average damage dealt with dual-wielding playstyle, one out of two weapons)*(probability of success)*(probability of failure)], re-express the probability of dual-wielder success as probability of single-weapon wielder plus a modifier, math math math. I guess, we'd have to do the math, and it would only be a viable solution if the modifier was constant or scaled nicely with other attributes, otherwise it would be too clunky to implement. (also, it's a youtube comment, so I may very well have made an error in the formula, but the idea is still there)
Weird, I'm getting the modifier should be pretty much a static -5 or -6 to hit. It assumes that you're doing 9 vs 8.5 at levels without multi-attack and 9 vs 10.5 at levels with multi-attack, and that the dual-wielder get's "flurry of blows" at the same time another player gets Multiattack; but your mean, expected damage (MED) output would be roughly equivalent. There is the caveat, that this does have a scaling problem--the dual-wielder will have a MED greater than the single-wielder against lower AC enemies (>50% chance to hit, before the -5 to hit) but will have a lower MED for the inverse.
I have just finished running a campaign lvl 1 - 14 using these rule sets ( and I brought back the Monkey's Grip Feature allowing you to ignore the heavy property on weapons) so far I saw 0 imbalances and 1 character used a Greatsword, the other used 2 Longswords, and the last character used sword and board. They all did very similar damage. The Paladin loved more attacks, the Fighter Loved the shove action and then wild swinging, and the Bard loved the heavy hitting greatsword. 👌 good job guys.
This just sounds like DnD 5.5 edition at this point lol. All do respect I love the content you guys put out, just seems like a domino effect started to happen where we changed this to supplement this. Then had to change this for this, this for that, so on and so on. I mean at your table sure, homebrew away, but at this point this just sounds like a PowerPoint of why we need a .5 new edition written lol. And this is simply just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt.
We do need an update, but there are those that would love to dual wield and be competitive without having to wait for WotC to hopefully make it more viable.
@@TheBucketOfTruth I agree. I think most of this can be solved at the table with a conversation between the players and the DM. Which I understand they were just hypothesizing a way to get it done with homebrew rules. I just felt like the things they’re changing were so reliant on changing something else then something else that it felt like just a reboot or revision that would require a whole new edition revision
Yeah I think that by putting out rules like this is done as much to help people currently running games and also to let the designers know what rules need to change, there is a lot that could easily be better balanced when 5.5e comes out, so yeah I think this is mostly a call out to 5.5e designers, cause honestly the players I have played with like how simple the rules are for two-weapon fighting in 5e compared to how they were in 3.5e or pathfinder 1e, even if two-weapon fighting is lousy in 5e (and it is!)
@@admizr5416 true. I want to be clear I’m in a full favor of having a 5.5 come out with a complete rework of certain skills and whatnot. Just there will always be a time where a homebrew comes to the point of, okay lets just rework all of the skeletal structure of the game to fit how we think it’s gonna work for our table kinda thing lol ya know?
After crunching the numbers a couple years ago and the numbers line up with Monk unarmed vs DW Longswords as a Champion Fighter (at 20th level). Monk deals an average of 4 damage more per round with just main hand/offhand. So what I did as a new DM was this: -If you take the Dual Wielder Feat, you make BOTH hand attacks when you take the Attack Action. (Effectively moving offhand off Bonus Action, opening up the BA for other uses.)
"Guides for GMs" instead of "Game Masters" took me off guard haha I was just looking searching for homebrews for this rule a couple hours ago. Thank you for the video!
I think the two handed flurry is unnecessary. The problems i see is that it makes a person have endlessly long rounds, which can be boring for others. I think the other changes are already good enough and the original two handed feat can just be an option for classes that don't get a fighting style, don't you think?
I agree with not adding the flurry. I feel like removing the limitations for allowed weapons and allowing the stat bonuses feels right along with removing the bonus action economy issues. I do highly agree with a previous post that the two weapon fighting would flavor well providing either half of a shields protection at +1 ac. The issue with this of course in making the defensive fighting style redundant. But no one that optimizes really takes that anyway.
That solution seems a bit familiar! Beast Barbarian's got precedent that is nice to use for two weapon fighting "Claws. Each of your hands transforms into a claw, which you can use as a weapon if it's empty. It deals 1d6 slashing damage on a hit. Once on each of your turns when you attack with a claw using the Attack action, you can make one additional claw attack as part of the same action."
The ideas here are amazing omg and yeah if it is a bit too strong (starting w the phb rules) maybe you could give everyone their ability modifier to their off hand; change the fighting style to give you the extra attack without using a bonus action and then add in a slightly nerfed version of dual flurry into dual wielder, something like if you have extra attack you can make two off hand attacks rather than 1 i.e at level 5, 4 attacks (+2 attacks action surge); level 11, 5 attacks (+3 attacks action surge); level 20, 6 attacks (+4 attacks action surge)? I only suggest this because great weapon master and sharpshooter/crossbow expert are already really strong so if the suggestions you’ve made are too strong, instead of making everything else stronger it might be better to take two weapon fighter back a step again. But yeah this way classes that can take the two weapon fighting style get that no bonus action trait for free and can pick up dual wielder if they want but the classes that don’t have the fighting style might have to multi class or take the feat that gives them a fighting style w custom lineage or at level 4 which seems a bit more balanced? Also yeah shield master NEEDS to be given some more love. Keep up the great vids!
These are the rules I use, they are not as simple but i think it balances it better while keeping the image dual wielders in media give: Firstly, I want to explain what is the thought behind these changes. When I think of 2 weapon fighting, i dont think of multiple attacks with each hand, i think of doing a single hit with 2 weapons in harmony. So i wouldn't add attacks but instead change the damage values to add the second weapon. So the changes would be: -Fixing the silly rule of not letting you draw or stow two one-handed weapons. -Two-weapon fighting would keep the option to do the extra attack with a light weapon as your bonus action but in addition the default would add the ability modifier. -Two-weapon figthing style would now let you add a weaker version of the damage dice (d6 turns to d4 and d8 turns to d6) to your normal attack. this would emulate the feeling of hitting someone with your 2 weapons at once, being in rapid succession or as a single strike. This would keep the balance of damage as it would only be stronger than a heavy weapon if you take the dual wielder feat and would help differentiate damage types as you can dual wield different kind of weapons. -Dual Wielder Feat would stay the same as it increases your damage output and gives you AC. I want to try a new version of the feat but haven't had the chance to playtest it, I'll add it at the end. The math behind these changes would go as follows if we use a +3 strength for the examples: 1d6+1d4+3 = 9 in average for using two weapon fighting style with 2 shortswords. 1d8+1d6+3 = 11 in average for using the fighting style and the feat with 2 longswords. 2d6+3 = 10 for a greatsowrd with no feat or fighting style to improve the damage output, or 1d12+3 = 9.5 in average for a greataxe. This has worked well for me making two weapon fighting a valid option but never being the strongest. As to the change to the Dual Wielder feat i thought about, it goes like this: In addition to the previous 2 benefits, -Before you make a melee attack while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a penalty to the attack roll equal to the ability modifier. If the attack hits, you double the ability modifier added to the attack’s damage. (this would give a bonus similar to the Great Weapon Master feat, but capping at 5 and being more risk than reward as the feat already improves your damage output)
I like what you guys have here but I gotta say I disagree because I think there’s a far easier/ better way to fix this. All characters have the ability, when they are wielding a one handed weapon, to wield a weapon In their off hand with the light or thrown properties. When they make hit with an attack on their turn, they roll the damage dice for both weapons, adding their modifiers only once. I know it keeps them from adding hex or hunter’s mark a bunch but it also keeps them from smiting four times a turn at level 5. I just think this is easier to conceptualize and still fits the aesthetic. Plus, it’s basically like giving dex characters a great sword option, which is FINE because they won’t have a shield equipped when doing this.
What I love about changing mechanics to make characters more powerful and fun is that it also opens up the possibility to make powerful NPCs to test players' mettle.
You know, these changes would help out the Monk a great deal, since they would still be able to do an unarmed strike as a bonus action, allowing them to do 3 attacks at 1st level.
I think this catapults the Dual Wielding style really high up there without any drawbacks. You are no longer using your bonus action, you get full damage and there isn't even a to hit penalty as with the two other main damage dealing feats. I think if you are increasing damage on the off hand attacks you should be decreasing to hit to stay in line with the rest. Which is also thematically fitting.
Our approach was to hybridized a character class feature a couple of feats such as dual wield feat, martial adept mated to Bards; college of swords: Two weapon fighting style along with blade flourishes all into a nifty new feat. We remove bonus action requirements, an argument won by saying ok if your marilith attacks the party it can make one main hand attack and one off handed as bonus action and the rest of the arms flail about menacingly. This functionally allows a character to make two attacks,( three if they choose to use a bonus action to attack with either weapon or even cast a spell or use item.) Additionally they have a maneuver like ability that allows them to do a blade flourish giving feel of more attacks/Defense. Now critics will point out this is taking away from bard....yeah kinda, though to be fair they did make it possible through fighting initiate to steal fighters weapon styles. Plus using martial adept language and treating it as bardic inspiration and limiting it to two flourishes puts full bard classes ahead. I feel a good option is to let a bard also take this feat and gain an additional attack or more bardic inspiration equal to martial adept feat. Personally Two weapon fighting should never of not had ability to use str/dex mods makes no sense you've literally been training to use two weapons. Some Dms might think too much is thrown in here and might prefer the dual wield feat be taken separately I can kinda see that. We all agreed that this applies to players and any npc's sort of what's good for goose good for gander.
When I think of the two weapon fighting, I think of a couple of fantasies the beserking barbarian who swings his two axes, the two sword wielding samurai, the swashbuckling rogue, the monk with two sticks. We need more to do with the off weapon like parrying as a reaction. As well as no bonus attack. Two-weapon fighting style should allow you to cleave.
I think "parrying" is the idea for why the two weapon fighting feat gives you a +1 to AC. That +1 is the character using their offhand weapon to block the attack like they would with a shield
@@MonteCreations sure but for a feat it should at least be close to as effective as the shield spell, I'd rather it be a big boost to ac for one attack. Since it unlikely you would block another attack with it in 6secs. Shields should also be able to do this in addition to the ac they give already making it the premier defensive tool.
I love the Shield Master changes! Being able to shove someone every time you hit with an attack just brings to mind a relentless push forwards with a rain of blows. And yeah, makes sense you should be able to shield a Fireball!
The changes you guys are brainstorming are actually right along the lines of what I’ve been working on for my table! I’ve been meddling with my own system on the side on and off for a couple years now that aims to make these kind of changes and ideas more integral to the game and more streamlined, so I appreciate the insight you’ve offered.
The only problem I see coming up immediately is on rangers, or those with a starting Feat to get hunter mark. At lvl 1 let's say you have a 1d6 and the twf fighting style. You do 4d6+2xmodifier on turn one (casting hunters mark) then 6d6+3xmodifier (assuming the enemy survives and you don't need to change your hunters mark which at level 1 is a huge if) at level 5 you make 3 attacks on turn 1 and 4 attacks on turn two for a combined total of: 14d6+7xmodifier. You'd be a boss destroyer but of course making attacks to lesser minions wouldnt cause many problems since you need your BA to redo your hunters mark target.
So watching this a second time I now realize that the whole point of your change is to remove the bonus action part, not to give them an extra attack along side the bonus action attack. So I just misinterpreted these
I toyed around with the exact change you are proposing and found that the greatest beneficiary of the change was the rogue. The ability to make two attacks (to make certain their sneak attack lands) and then use Cunning Action to disengage proves very potent. The rogue having to decide between staying engaged and making that second attack or darting away to safety actually leads to interesting game play decisions. This led me to instead change the two-weapon fighting “style” to the following, instead of making a base change to the two-weapon fighting in general: Two-Weapon Fighting Style (enhancement) When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack. Additionally, once per turn, when you take the Attack action you can engage in two-weapon fighting as part of that action without requiring a bonus action.
I love a lot of this discussion and have implemented some of these changes in my game. If I could just rewrite I would do the following. 1) anyone with an off hand weapon can make 1 additional attack with the off hand as a free action and gets +1 AC. Main hand can be any 1 handed but off has to be a light weapon. Damage bonuses added to both. 2) heavy 2 weapon fighting style let's you use regular or heavy weapons in both hands 3) finesse 2 fighting gives an additional +1 to AC 4) give a select group of fighting styles to barbarians, paladins, rogues and monks so martial classes can just pick a tweek. 5) let shields in general add bonus to dex saves. 6) shield master let's you shove as a free action, additional +1AC to shield and adds proficiency to dex save bonus too. 7) feat improved 2 weapon fighting. Make 2 attacks with your off hand as a free action. 8) feat 2 weapon casting. You've trained to use your weapons as casting foci and can use them to trace somatic components of spells. Add 1 to cha, wis or int.
14:15 LOVE the addition to heavy weapons. This should be what the Great Weapon Fighting Style does (given the official one isn't very useful). This would mean removing the STR 15 prerequisite, but I think that's fine since, for a STR of 14 or lower, this is giving you +1/+2 damage at best.
However, that would be too similar to the Dueling fighting style. In my games we have a fix for GWF that is working well: you always throw an extra dice of damage and ignore the lowest.
@@TheBakerdoc Love your fix. I don't see how similarity to Dueling is a problem in itself, but I've also realised adding double STR mod would get kinda broken when you add Great Weapon Master. So I'll probably use your idea at my table, if you don't mind.
@@jacobrobinson884 Being similar to Dueling is not really a problem, it's just that I prefer the different options to be distinctive. Of course you can use that fix!
One additional thing my table does is allow unarmed fighting to benefit from anything that would be considered normally as two weapon fighting. This has proven for us to make the tavern brawler feat more valuable and appealing as well as give the monk a little extra nudge up
I think a good idea for that is kind of a fast hands feat that lets them use their bonus action for utility stuff like a grapple, shove or object interaction.
I love how you got this mechanic to work with the Swashbuckler. All I did was give them another attack on each of their Attack Actions, but the offhand weapon didn't get the modifier. *Didn't seem to break the game, they actually seemed to break-even with the damage output of the Champion Fighter.
I had watched Treantmonk's vid and really liked his initial proposal. I immediately implemented the "no bonus action" rule in my game. However, you guys lost me at "Dual Flurry". By allowing yet another attack it will cause a HUGE boost to those builds that have ways adding to damage PER attack (Hexblades, Spirit Shroud, etc.). This has the potential to really make those builds OP. In addition, you "arbitrarily" disallow dual-wielding during action surge, to fix the problem you just created. Action Surge currently doesn't disallow anything, including casting additional spells. Furthermore, the double strength is just going to increase the power creep. Rather than increasing dual-wield damage past the already powerful GWM build, the aim IMO should be to bring it on par with it (assuming you are using an equal number of feats). I actually like Chris' idea (he talks about in his own Homebrew rules that he uses) where he just allows everyone to use GWM and SS, removing them from being a "must take feat".
The way that I see the weapon feats like GWM/SS/CBE/PAM is that they tend to give you a free damage increase and a niche bonus action damage increase, with some asymmetry. I feel like instead of a whole new attack, it needs to be a circumstantial attack like GWM or a weak attack like PAM. I feel like circumstantial would be better, something like "When you successfully land an attack with your main weapon and your other weapon that you are two-weapon fighting with, you can use a bonus action to make another attack with either weapon."
The way I fixed it at my table is sorta similar, but the bulk of the changes are in the Dual Wielder feat rather than two-weapon fighting. For a lot of playstyles, the power fantasy really comes online with that first feat, whether it's PAM, GWM, Sharpshooter, Mounted Combatant or War Caster. I didn't want Dual Wielding to be any different. The Dual Wielder feat now reads as follows: -One of the two weapons used in two-weapon fighting may ignore the "light" property requirement -At level 5, the first time you take the attack action on each of your turns while wielding two weapons, you may make one additional attack with a light melee weapon you are wielding. This increases to two extra attacks at level 11 and 3 extra attacks at level 17. -While you are wielding two weapons, you gain +1 AC for each light melee weapon you are wielding. Other feats (GWM, Sentinel, XBow Xpert, and Sharpshooter) have also been tuned slightly to compensate, but two-weapon fighting remains unchanged. The drawing and stowing rules as written are ignored, so that anyone can draw and stow two weapons simultaneously.
Thank you for talking about the issue with two-weapon fighting in 5e! I was playing 2e up until last year, and I had loved the ranger class in that edition. One of its coolest features was that it was the only class that allowed two-weapon fighting without a penalty at lower levels, and you get both strikes on your turn. While I love a lot about 5e, I haven't played a ranger at all because who wants to lose a bonus action in order to get the obvious second strike? Makes no sense. I like your fix, but would be happy even if it was boiled down to simply removing the bonus action requirement if you take that fighting style.
I just remove the bonus action portion (and reallocate it as such below) and just allow it once for every attack action and add a reaction attack to a missed(you or opponent)/blocked attack. That would effectively recreate that Hollywood flow of attacks and responses. This would raise the value of 2WF related rules without having to rewrite them. The bonus action would be used to provide advantage to 1 attack OR a bonus to damage as the weapons force the opponent to track multiple weapon motions. That would give 2WF an Action, Reaction, and a better use of the bonus action, again without having to rewrite the rules and giving them more desirability. In the end, it's not that the other weapon fighting styles are too powerful really. It's just that 2WF needed to have a "restriction" removed and a stronger edge. Altering the other playstyles because you OP'd this system just makes more work and really ups the CR needed to challenge the players. We're just fixing the 2WF, correct? The others are already really powerful and don't need "boosters". Yes my proposal does not give the +10 damage bonus, but it doesn't have the -5 penalty. Instead it's balanced by a consistent attack option. Adding the Dual Wielder feat gives more oomph by allowing stronger weapon options. Two weapon fighting style gives bonus damage (and combined with the more frequent attacks gives the +10 damage output).
@@marcofavin8718 Well I see where you are going, but at the same time, the rogue already gets multiple sneak attacks per round. It's allowed a sneak attack every turn rather than every round. I think it's fair to consume a reaction (similar to polearm master) to one hit, but maybe restrict it to not be sneak attack damage?
Really clean fixes. This implementation is actually more straight forward and easier to use for newer players than the current rules. I tip my hat to you dudes. The only problem I see is the tier 1 damage (levels 1 to 4). A fighter dealing 2d8 + 2mod with their attack action at level 1 is a lot. It leaves all the other fighting styles way behind in damage per round. Maybe giving access to non light weapons as a fighting style is to much of a buff when you take into account that you also gave the old fighting style and bonus action use for free as part of the buff.
For my homebrew campaign I gave premade, preoptimized "heroes" to my players. I went on RPGBOT, chose a combination of blue (optimal) and yellow (almost bad) ranked subclasses from the same class and combined them. All PC start at Lvl 3. It's so cool to mix and match the same class subclasses features. A weak subclass adds a crazy amount of goodness to an already fantastic subclass. I was also considering two green (good) ranked subclasses but some don't have two greens or they don't match very well. An example I gave the Warlock Hexblade and Celestial, two weapon fighting and a bunch of unused feats to build his background and character. He is an actor! I had to give him the Fighting Style feat because he uses a chain (whip) with both hands.
I think that if you’re going to be changing sharpshooter and great weapon master, I think the -5 accuracy penalty makes more sense for GWM where you’re swinging a slow, heavy weapon that can be easily dodged, but deals a meaty hit if it connects. With sharpshooter, a sharpshooter is someone who is accurate with a bow, so why is it giving me an accuracy penalty? It doesn’t make much sense to me. I think sharpshooter should make your attacks more accurate like a buffed archery fighting style, and maybe change the archery fighting style to do trick shots around corners, negating half and three-quarters cover or something. I also love the shield master changes. It’s never made sense to me that my shield doesn’t help my saving throws against a dragon’s breath weapon, but it also protects me from the damage it deals. Either I’m holding up my shield to protect myself and blocking the damage or I’m not.
We have a simple fix for TWF. If you struck with one of your attacks from your attack action you gain advantage on the BA attack when you have the fighting style. Idk how effective this is but its a nic boost
Interestingly, the problems with 2 weapon fighting in D&D are similar the the problems with 2 weapon fighting irl. Its a large investment to get good at it for a pretty negligible advantage
@@JacobGrim Historically speaking it is. Fighting IRL with two weapons is TWICE the "mental space" being used for the ability to attack with one or the other weapon. When you compare that to single weapon fighting styles its kinda meh. With Martial power being decent it still only takes one blow to get sufficient gains. NO HIT POINTS IRL....
@@acetraker1988 you can parry the opponent's single blade and deal a lethal blow instantly. You have double the ability to counter attack with two blades. The only issue with dual wielding from what I've seen is when the opponent has reach, since single handed weapons generally are not as long as longswords or spears. Which is why dual wielding was virtually never used in warfare, only duels. Also, I think you're forgetting that you can use just one of the two weapons most of the time, like a primary one handed arming sword or rapier, and use the offhand weapon only when necessary or when you see an opportunity that would give you the advantage.
@@JacobGrim I won't pretend to be some kinda HEMA swordfighter or anything, just some dude that's heard some conflicting words and demonstrations from some halfway decent swordfighters. But wouldn't that primary and offhand weapon use just... be what you would use a buckler or some kinda shield for? If I'm some random idiot conscripted into a war, whether or not my enemies have spears or not, I'm reasonably sure I could do all of that with a small shield in my offhand and still have way better defensive options than with a dagger. Of course, that's also for me, random conscript who doesn't like getting stabbed. Being able to parry while stabbing simultaneously is super awesome, assuming that you don't screw up and get wrecked by an opponent using two hands to swing a weapon, or even just a slightly heavier weapon entirely. Parrying almost any sword with a dagger seems... fun. And of course I know that there are historical records of people dual wielding, and it genuinely has a lot of uses. But I think I see where OP was coming from with calling the advantage negligible. Probably a big advantage if you've got the skill and time to master it, but one that isn't useful at all in warfare. And your average dnd party probably isn't going around having noble duels, but are instead involved in lots of skirmishes. I won't even pretend that anything in dnd is remotely realistic, but the point that as is, it takes a lot of investment to just be able to even USE two full sized weapons in the first place, let alone master them, seems like it reflects reality sorta-okay.
We already do those first changes in our game (remove bonus action needed), with the addition that you can't make attacks with your bonus action if you use two-weapon fighting, to avoid PAM spear users to make 4 attacks while wielding 2 spears. It works. It's a westmarches game with 20+ people, so we had like 3 characters with dual wielding and it is just fine. Pretty much in line with PAM, GWF and Dueling. Only sidenote is that GWM and Sharpshooter are banned, so that may have helped it catch up with 2-handers and archers.
My personal houserules are a lot alike. A) you attack with the offhand as part of the attack action. B) the fighting style lets you add your asi(to me it feels correct, coz your offhand isn't as strong as your main hand unless you specifically train it to be), but i also do not restrict fighting styles to certain classes. If you get a fighting style as a class, you can pick any fighting style you want. C) The dual wielder feat lets you attack the same number of times as your main hand, and after you reach level 8 you can use non light weapons D) GWM gives you a minus=proficiency bonus and double that in damage instead of the flat -5+10. On the whole I've found that this really balances the idea of great weapons and dual wielding. Your damage output remains basically the same while be mechanically different. The only thing I still need is to make sword and shield more effective. And this change to shield expert seems awesome to me
Overall your running into the same problems I have when reworking two-weapon fighting, you change that, and you might as well change everything, since you must choose a specific power level for each fighting style and then they need to match. The problem is combining fighting styles such as Polearm master and GWF will always be more effective than any single one. My solution is to leave combining styles to masterful effect in the fighters wheelhouse thats what they should excel at above all others... Then you get a new problem on adjusting how fighting styles working in all martial classes. For 5e I say keep it simple, tweak two-weapon fighting until it feels cool enough to use compared to GWF, but fight the urge not to mess with the other options. 5E is not perfect, if you want perfect rewrite the system. Good Luck!
Agreed with all the homebrew fixes here for 2 weapon fighting and having played a version of them already in the past, i can say they are balanced (but this is comparing it to gwm and ss and casters, of course this makes single wielders feel left behind). my version had a few caveats/bonuses on top of what you guys suggested: 1. whenever you take the attack action with a light melee weapon in your main hand, you can make a single extra melee attack with your off-hand. the off hand weapon must be a light melee weapon. either attack can be a melee weapon attack or a ranged weapon attack with a weapon the thrown weapon property. If you take multiple attack actions in a turn, you can make this extra attack once per attack action (so yes we don't penalize action surge since it happens once per fight anyway. make the fighter feel heroic in that sequence). 2. your ability score modifier applies to the off-hand attacks. 3. free object interaction once per round is you can draw or sheathe any number of objects for every hand you have not holding anything. 4. two weapon fighting style allows you to wield a non-heavy melee weapon in each hand for two weapon fighting. this only applies to melee weapon attacks and doesn't apply to ranged weapon attacks with thrown weapons. 5. the dual wielder feat allows you to make an extra off hand weapon attack. they still gain a +1 to ac for dual wielding. I don't agree however with the nerfs to the gwm and ss styles. i think those nerfs aren't needed. i don;t mind reworking them though to make them feel distinct but the power level should be the same. i do like the rework for shield master though. if i was to rework everything to make them feel more distinct i'd divide the weapon types into the following categories: thrown-focused on dmg bonuses (either flat dmg or bonus dice, more object interactions for drawing, proficiency with improvised thrown weapons) dual wielding-focused on pumping # of attacks (extra attacks, minor ac boost) heavy melee-focused on battlefield control (reduced speed, forced movement, knocking prone) ranged-focused on improving accuracy (advantage, flat bonuses, removing penalties from cover or fighting in close quarters) one-handed + shield-focused on defensive bonuses (dex saves, good ac boost, dmg reduction for self or others)
Divine smite does not cost a bonus action. You just have to hit something with a melee weapon attack. Using spells like searing smite do but divine smite does not
Really nice to see that these problems are adressed! I like that video, especially because there is a player in our new DnD group who plays a dual wielder (a champion fighter dwarf with two handaxes/later battleaxes). I was already thinking about some homebrewing but trying to keep it as simple as possible because this player is also a dnd beginner: I would have just adjusted the dual wielder feat with the additional point that the "extra attack" feature also grants an extra attack on your two weapon fighting bonus action (if he uses it immediately after the attack action and is not moving between all those attacks). After this dwarf took the two weapon fighting style plus the dual wielder feat, he very specializes himself onto this technique, so he should get some more benefit from it! Besides that addition, everything else can stay the same and I don't think it makes him overpowered. I think, using the bonus action for his two weapon attacks isn't that kind of a problem, because - besides second wind - there is no more bonus action available... Additionally, we played a bit loosy around the "drawing and stowing" aspect... Everyone can draw the thinks he/she would like to use in his/her turn, but we never talked about this in detail. Furthermore we never did it a "written houserule". But these tips from your video shows some cool ideas to match this with other characters who would like to dual wield once in a while! Thanks!
Treantmonk's Video on Two Weapon Fighting: ruclips.net/video/kLEpbTc72_4/видео.html
Our Google Doc Summary of the new rules: docs.google.com/document/d/1ZuZbqscx09T2eKqzFPmguB3_LqPj7aFama_lbteyqLg/edit?usp=sharing
I saw you guys reply there when he posted the vid. Would be really nice to have good mechanics for a future campaign if I wanted to play a Swashbuckler or Battlemaster dual wielding rapiers. Fürher Bradley from Full Metal Alchemist is another fun inspiration for two short swords.
@@TheBucketOfTruth except that Bradly very clearly uses rapiers
greatsword: 2d6 + STR
2x short sword: 2d6 + DEX + DEX (and you even get a better armor class)
this kinda kill this house rule for me....
I'm a little confused on Dual Flurry, isn't at already 2 attacks when you're dual wielding? So it's now 3 attacks due to Dual Flurry, and with extra attack it's 4 attacks?
easy solution i think if just can attack agan if miss or get blocked long have 2 weapon
It always seemed weird to me that the Duelist fighting style was incompatible with rapier + dagger, and that you need the dual wielder feat to even do it. It's a classic archetype, and is deeply embedded in D&D's own lore (eg Artemis Entreri), and yet it's not very accessible to players. As a DM, I'd be very open to homebrew something to allow it.
5e is not known for being consistent or even logic .. or really fun. I say home brew the hell out of it dude, to make your game more consistent and fun
Well its duelist not dualist. And it is a bit more historically accurate that duels were fought with one weapon and no shield. (In several places in history bucklers were outlawed to be carried in public because of duels. This led to the duelist cloak which is a weighted cloak almost made like a net to entrap or deflect.
@@Desdemona-XI Rapiers and daggers being used together is common enough.
@@Desdemona-XI this was not the case until the late Renaissance. Daggers and bucklers were very common as off-hand weapons and regularly used in dueling scenarios. You’ve proven this yourself by mentioning a law that forbade bucklers to curtail dueling. For most of human history, people fought with whatever weapon they had available, the notion of a formal duel setting with matched single weapons is a product of the popularity of the smallsword, which was the ancestor of modern fencing weapons and almost always used on its own. Rapiers were mainly used in accompaniment with an off-hand dagger, shield, lantern, cape, etc. so that the rapier could be always attacking. There are dozens of period works and manuals documenting this practice. Fun fact, swashbuckle is a portmanteau of swash (sword) and buckle(r), so a swashbuckler is one who fights with sword and buckler
It's an exception that does not belong in the rules as it would just make the rules too wordy but is just the sort of thing a DM could and should allow.
It's not even overpowered, as 1d8+1d4 is the same damage as 1d6+1d6 from a pair of light finesse weapons.
I think a good middle ground for the Improved Weapon Fighting suggested style is removing the light restriction from the primary weapon only. Still strong but tempers the power scaling if the Bonus Action is no longer needed for the second weapon attack and adding the ability score mod to damage.
YES I completely agree. Rapier and a dagger instead of two rapiers for example
Changing a 1d6 > 1d8 is only a ~1 damage increase, which adds up via multi-attacks, but is ultimately small compared to if it was hampering someones build idea.
@@matthewmullin6042 Correct but having a (Not Light & Light) 1d8 + 1d8 +1d6 = 12.5 dpr vs (rapier)1d8 +1d8 = 9 dpr vs (2 short swords)1d6 + 1d6 + 1d6 = 11.5 dpr and still having a bonus action available. The idea offers some way to lower the power scale but I do agree with you that its going to lower the power scale by a total of 1 dpr hehe.
I actually really like that! It really leans into that idea of either keeping quick and nimble, or going one bigger weapon with a side weapon.
How about if the fighting style has a line like "if you also have the Dual Wielder feat, you can wield non-light weapons in both hands," and a similar line in the feat (but referring to the fighting style)?
So if you have one or the other, you can wield one non-light and one light, like rapier & dagger, katana & wakizashi, etc.
If you have both, you can wield non-light in both hands. That brings us back to what the dual wielder feat does now but requires a little more investment, which I dunno... might balance out the basic changes in this video (no BA req'd, adds ability modifier)? Obviously not tested at all, just thinking out loud :)
It's crazy this came up literally as I was thinking about this. I'm planning a campaign for the first time for my brothers who have never played a TTRPG and one of my brothers was ENAMORED with the concept of a paladin but dual wielding spears. Was trying to figure out how that'd work for weeks now but this video definitely helped give me some ideas!
I was literally looking up home brew for TWF last night. Crazy.
How do you duel wield spears though? I think they should be a versatile weapon but theyre very similiar to bastard swords in that respect. (I know bastard swords arent in 5E but they should be)
@@green959 No idea, I asked if he was looking more for dual wielding short swords since spears would be more unwieldy but he was quite insistent on spears. I was happy to see the enthusiasm so I just said sure
@@green959 Longsword would be the equivalent of a bastard sword.
@@2smexy4juu Super happy you've got a good game planned man, hope it all goes Well! Also, does your brother know what a spear is? 😂
"You can drop any or all objects you’re holding as a reaction." - I would remove that stipulation. I think dropping an object should be free, an doable at any time. Otherwise it will be a bit restrictive and conflict with things like _heat metal_ which specify "the creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or drop the object if it can" (which will require the creature having its reaction available).
If a spell effect specifies an effect on a creature that effect takes place. If the spell does not specify “on their next turn” or “whenever possible” they take the action immediately as the effect takes place.
That little bit of heat metal that says "If they can" is referring to if the literally can drop the object. You can't just drop a suit of armor or a shield as both are attached to your body with straps, and so require more then just releasing your grip to drop them. Likewise something like a necklace with/made of metal can't simply be dropped if being worn. So the "Drops it if able" is a literal phrase, not a meta one.
@@demonzero677 Whether you could drop a shield or not would depend on the shield.
That said, most shields are made of wood anyway with small bits of metal so aren't good targets for Heat Metal anyway.
I feel it's also a bit outside the intent for reactions. Reactions are generally a response to a triggering condition. That may sometimes sorta apply to dropping items, though not in a way that can be specifically codified in more detail than "something happens that makes you want to drop a thing". And you might not even be responding to an immediate condition. Maybe it's really heavy. You're not reacting to it suddenly becoming heavy. It's always been heavy. You're just done carrying it now. Being a free action works better. There's no need for an action economy here. Let gravity do its thing.
Yeah, reactions are NOT free and it's not abusable to be able to drop things out of turn. Nothing activates upon being dropped, ball bearings and caltrops need an action to be spread out over an area.
another thing that two weapon fighting shows up on: official D&D miniatures!
you'd think that if every melee mini has either a big two-handed weapon, two one-handed weapons, or weapon/shield, they'd put more thought into two weapon fighting!
I mean, same for Sword and Board too. the only thing even remotely for them is shield master and the dueling fighting style.
More thought? Current dual wielding rules is more efficient then archery from the second round and beyond, and about 33% more efficient then heavy weapon fighting, if you look at average damage. That you don't perceive something as balanced, doesn't mean it isn't balanced
*Off-Hand Attack (changed from "Two-Weapon Fighting" to avoid confusion between the bonus action available to anyone and the fighting style)*
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light or finesse melee weapon that you are holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you are holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative. If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.
_Reasoning: Drawing and swinging two weapons is pretty difficult; it should require specialized training (i.e. a fighting style or a feat). Adding "finesse" to the restriction only on the primary weapon opens up the classic rapier & dagger style but prevents the wierd dual-rapier or dual-whip style that should again really require specialized training._
*Two-Weapon Fighting (fighting style)*
You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one and you can add your ability modifier to the damage of an off-hand attack. When you gain the Extra Attack feature you may make one additional off-hand attack per turn as part of the Attack action.
_Reasoning: This removes the need for Dual Wielder feat to make the fighting style work and lets it keep pace with damage from other fighting styles using heavier weapons._
*Dual Weilder (feat)*
You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits: You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand. You can make an off-hand attack even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light or finesse.
I like this much more than the suggestions in the video.
This is brilliant and well thought out. Definitely using it
Biggest issue i have with this suggestion isnt mechanics wise, but the reasoning provided for those mechanics. It is 'NOT' difficult to draw and swing and use two weapons in combat. it is just as easy to use two daggers as it is to use two rapiers or two axes, or two longswords. I speak from personal experience about this.
These are classic fighting styles from modern and medieval history. Using a long weapon and a small weapon is a fighting style called Florentine. Your classic Sword and Dagger style. Using two long weapons is called a 'brace'. A Brace of rapiers, or Turkish Shamshirs was my preferred fighting style from 10+ years of Renaissance fencing. It is also incredibly common in the SCA as well and doesnt take much more then basic training with any weapon to accomplish.
This misconception that duel wielding is difficult always annoys me. Which is why i actually completely agree with the video more so then this tiny change to existing duel wielding that doesnt remove the need for a fighting style AND a feat to make duel wielding viable. (which is two ASI's for a non-fighter, if Tasha's is being used for a fighting style in place of a feat. or 1 ASI for a fighter)
On the off hand, i would change it from not adding ability modifier to damage, to not being able to use the proficiency bonus for the attack. Reasoning, for non ambidexterous people, your offhand(or weaker hand) has less dexterity, and therefor is more difficult to hit with. And then being able to use the proficiency bonus after taking the fighting style, Reasoning when you have the style, you have spesific training/experience for the style. i would altso make the fightingstyle a possible feat for all classes with some dex and str requirements (possibly changed with the class abilities that enable you to use a different modifier for attack and damage rolls I.e Cha for warlocks)
Commenting so I can reference this later. I love this
Instead of doubling your stat with great-weapon fighting style, just have it add proficiency to damage. Maintains the damage buff it does in low levels and stays relevant with your late game changes
Heck yeah to that idea!
Interesting idea. Looking back to 3.x, one might consider using STR*1.5
What I did after watching Treantmonk's video is just changed the dual wielding feat. All the other rules remain the same except now you can draw both weapons when you draw weapons.
Dual Wielder: You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits:
• You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand.
• You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light.
• Once per attack action, you can add an one attack with your off-hand weapon.
I think the removing the bonus action is a great idea, changes to the fighting style, and feat are all great ideas! Adding the modifier back to the damage is where I would say you are crossing the line. The others should be enough to strengthen the concept without tipping the balance too far in their favor.
I'm about to start DM'ing my first campaign, I've watched so many of your videos and they are what pushed me to take the leap. Thank you so much!
Good luck , hope you have fun
Good luck!
Look into Ginny Di on RUclips as well... she provides good insights to many things.
Good luck, have fun, and remember the two most important rules of being ANY kind of GM:
1. No plan you make will ever survive unscathed upon contact with the players. They will find a way to mess with it, roll with it. Adapt and improvise
2. If your players are having fun and the game is consistent and balanced for everyone then you're doing it right, regardless of whatever that negative voice in the back of your head says.
Kelly and Monty are fantastic at giving advice on DMing and playing the game, and their live play series' are really entertaining and fun.
Also Matt Colville has a great series of videos called Running The Game that gives amazing advice for new and experienced DMs alike (I've been DMing since 1979 and I learned quite a bit from his insights!).
One of my problems with shifting the light weapon exception to the fighting style is it would limit a class like barbarians from getting it. The massive brute class being limited to two small weapons while a ranger can use much heavier ones doesn’t make much sense
Agreed, that does severely limit non-light dual wielding to just the Fighter and Ranger. The only two class that get that Fighting style.
So, your big raging Barbarian wanting to swing around two big battle-axes... is gonna have to try imagining the two small hand-axes to be big and intimidating. Oh, and your righteous Paladin wanting to Smite Evil with two gleaming Longswords... well have to settle for two much shorter versions of said swords.
Unless of course they either dip into Fighter or Ranger for the Two-Weapon Fighting Style, or take the Fighter Initiate Feat for it.
They did say they'd add it to the fighting style, but didn't say to remove the feat (unless I missed it). I don't see why you wouldn't be able to keep the feat in the game as well.
Alternatively, you could also just make the Two Weapon Fighting style available to those classes
Sounds like a good reason to take the Fighting Initiate feat!
@@lelandwhitehead56 but at that point you’re using an entire feat for what’s only part of the current feat, which already isn’t that great. If any part of the two weapon fighting setup would fit best in a fighting style, it’d be the +1 AC, as that lines up the most with what other fighting styles do.
Love the recent name dropping of d4: D&D Deep Dive and Treantmonk's Temple. These are my 3 favorite channels and you guys all working together is awesome. Building each other up!!
Maybe the Two Weapon Fighting style means that only your offhand weapon needs to be Light? That way you can do the classic "rapier and dagger" or "katana and wakazashi" weapon sets.
Meanwhile, the Dual Wielder feat lets you ignore the Light requirement for your main hand weapon as well.
I'd keep the Feat's +1 to AC but change it that, if you forgo making an attack with your offhand weapon, you can use your Bonus Action to give yourself an additional +1 to your AC until the start of your next turn.
I like this a lot. I think the x2 offhand attack (considering the extra damage they gave it) might get out of hand with on-hit damage effects like Hunters Mark or Spirit Shrowd.
I feel like that’s a pretty small bonus for a whole fighting style, though I like the idea. Maybe add another small benefit to it? I can’t think of something that would fit well
For the strength increase on two handed weapons, I recommend using something more like what they did in 3/3.5e.
Two handed weapons added 1.5 times the strength mod (rounded down). So an 18 strength would be +6 instead of +4, or your suggestion of +8.
So you get no benefit for capping your strength at 20?
@@PorterPickUp You still get another +1 to your attack roll with 20 STR, and your damage bonus becomes +7.
@@PorterPickUp I'm going by memory from 13 years ago, but I think it was rounded down.
Round up if you want. 😀
@@thedarkmantle 3.5 was always(mostly) round down.
@@PorterPickUp I also just remembered, 3.5 didn't cap your abilities at 20. You could start with 20, and by level 8, have a 22 in strength. Level 16 can have a 24. That's without spells or items.
Historically an off-hand weapon tended to be mostly for defense and/or controlling the enemy's weapon rather than as another means of attacking; as such, I'd actually like to find some way of implementing an option that allows you to use a secondary weapon in place of a shield, maybe as a reaction.
We are talking about fantasy 😉
Agreed. Admittedly, I kinda feel like there should be some kind of Two-Weapon Defense Fighting Style so you can parry an attack with an off-hand melee weapon if it is light akin to Protection.
@@couver73 Two weapon master is emulating this effect by providing the +1 ac bonus.
Agreed, I don't think many people here have actually sparred with two weapons. I'd change basic Two Weapon Fighting to give +1 to AC instead and let the fighting style give you the extra attack.
If you want more, the old AU Sword Feat gave you a reaction to add +2 to your AC whenever you were wielding a sword. Kensai Monk also have a nice feature where you get +2 AC if you are holding a weapon but attack with an unarmed attack.
I'd say bring this in somehow, make it a Feat. Defensive Master: As a Bonus Action you take a more defensive stance, raising your shield or your offhand weapon ready to block incoming attacks. While you spend your bonus action this way(and that really is an opportunity cost for many classes) you gain a +2 to your AC until the start of your next round. (I feel like shield should give you more than sidearm, but I think people would freak out if it was more than a +2.)
@@bavarianbenkenobi7265 Indeed we are. :) My particular fantasy is to emulate swashbucklers!
Love this! One of my greatest DnD inspirations is Drizzt, and it never feels like actual DnD play feels at all similar to the book descriptions of his scimitars blurring and wheeling over one another.
i totally agree on that using two weapons should not use a bonus action and use to use modifiers, and ofc also the stowing of weapons change.
BUT as one who use two weapons to fight with at LARP, i can say you have more defense with two weapons then you have with one, as you can parry with one weapon and counter with the other.
so i would rather have that you gain +1 ac for the duel wielding fighting style and maybe with a reaction to counter attack if a melee attack misses you.
and keep the feat as there is a big difference with fighting with two large weapons then with two light weapons.
this would also make it so that all have to take a feat to use non light weapons, not giving Ranger and fighter the advantage of being able to duel wield non light weapons earlier and without a feat then as an example barbarian. :)
the one with the heavy weapon and twice the str mod i like, but i think i would fit best as a feat.
I love all of these changes, specifically because it evens out the playing field for the majority of martial styles. As a small addition, I would still allow the additional +1 bonus to Armor Class from Dual Wielder while you have a weapon in each hand. That allows for the rapier and parrying dagger, one weapon focused mainly on offense and one weapon focused mainly on defense style of play, while still adding the flurry of attacks that is so iconic to Two-Weapon Fighting. I think I would add it into the Two-Weapon Fighting Style, where it would read along the lines of:
~ While you are holding a weapon in each hand, as long as at least one of those weapons is a light weapon, you gain a +1 bonus to your Armor Class.
I think it would be more balanced if it was an addition to the Dual Weapon Fighting style, don't you think ?
and now people will finally stop saying "Or you could use Crossbow Expert" when we want to make a sword-board fighter!
I like this too. It forces one of them to be light to gain the +1 AC but if you want to just use two longswords or two battleaxes for more damage you forego the extra AC.
@@Gabriel1234452 My thought was either add it to the Fighting Style or to the Feat. I think either one would work.
Absolutely, that should really be the main benefit of having two weapons.
I like that you added one of them had to be light as it only makes sense to defend with.the shorter weapon and attack with the bigger.
i’ve been drawing on the Star Wars 5e rules for fighting styles and feats. they managed to come up with a fighting style for each kind of weapon, and standardized the weapon feats into corresponding Fighting Masteries, and added a feat that lets you pick up any fighting mastery. that’s mostly bookkeeping, but it now means there’s like, 24 sets of valid fighting styles and masteries for you to pick from. of course, half of them are specific to lightsabers and blasters, but the biggest thing they changed for two weapon fighting was: the two weapon fighting style lets you make two attacks whenever you take an opportunity attack. they also changed a fighter’s extra attack so that once you have 3 attacks, two weapon fighting lets you make two more attacks as your bonus action. this essentially keeps two weapon fighting as a 50% boost in number of attacks at minimum, which is neat.
The Star Wars 5e is one of the better fan mods IMO. Like they make the martials way more intriguing without making them busted.
I would add “+1 to AC while wielding a melee weapon in each hand” to the dual wielder feat in your proposed changes. Otherwise, all very solid changes from beginning to end.
The dual weilder feat already adds +1AC
Honestly with this revamped ruling the +1 AC is good but takes away from the shield fighting style. They are proposing that duel wielding should just be lots of swings while historicaly inaccurate its mechanically sound. I would leave the AC bump to shields so as to make that a good style. I posted a comment with reworked version of what was mentioned here it might help your thoughts out a bit. 😃
@@moregenies1 the old version, not the one they presented in this video
@@Zanderof Having two weapons helps with parrying, so in reality it makes sense to add something to AC.
The first defence of any fighter is his own weapon to begin with.
Two weapon fighting has roots in defence historically too. The AC bonus feels very on brand.
The homebrew we're trying out at our table is that the drawing/stowing is just part of normal rules (as many others including you have already suggested), and that point of the Dual Wielder feat is replaced by "Your off-hand attack no longer requires your bonus action. It’s made as part of your Attack action." (Inspired by Treantmonk.) Then we added a new feat with a prerequisite of Dual Wielder feat (feat-tree style) that tacks on more benefits (including the additional off-hand attack with Extra Attack you mentioned) if you want to lean farther into Dual Wielding. I actually kind of like leaving the two-weapon fighting style the same. The idea that not everyone who picks up a second weapon can be as effective with their second weapon as their first appeals to me.
I'd love this to become a series! Going to underpowered or underutilized parts of the game, and buffing em up! Poisons! Potions! Classes and subclasses! :D so much potential for content!
I totally agree 👍🏻
Awesome quick, thought provoking, and inspirational video. As a life long DM since first edition D&D, I love the possibilities all these changes bring to 5e and our campaign. Already discussed with my group and we will be incorporating all these changes and recommendations into our homebrew rules at our next session. Thanks Dungeon Dudes!
I’m so glad to have found this video, I don’t know how I missed it and I have been tweeking two weapon fighting in my own campaign.
For balance, I’ve essentially used reckless attack for inspiration. The two weapon fighting looks like this: the second weapon is restricted to finesse or small, the second weapon is essentially a free attack when you attack with your primary, however you have to have 13 dexterity, you lose the ability to cast anything that needs your hands and you take a knock to your AC of -2. It’s not perfect, but it works out pretty well.
I use something that the dungeon coach suggested in his video. Basically if you have 1 attack your roll your d20 once and if you hit, you roll your damage for hitting with both hands and only add your mod the one time. My table has used this for about 3 months now and its not op or anything, it just puts 2 weapon on par with using heavy weapons.
It does streamline it but part of this video was getting the physical, at table fantasy in there as well which is the multiple attack dice.
It's mechanically the same as heavy weapons but a bit worse, as you have both hands occupied. A Paladin with a greatsword can just get on with it; a TWF Paladin would require warcaster.
Great video, this problem definitely needs tackling. A few things to have in mind:
*2 weapon f. is good from levels 1-4 as is, with this rules a lv1 dual w. Fighter is as a crossbow expert.
*Rage damage adds very quickly on 4 attacks with advantage.
*Shield master shove is intended to be one per turn or once per attack?
*You guys are awesome.
2 handed weapon update that could be interesting. For all 2 handed weapons, if your player character is size large or larger (ie Enlarged, giants might etc.) it can wield 2 handed weapons in 1 hand.
If you are using giants might don't your weapons also increase in size? I think the wording specifies anything you are wearing but I would think your weapons would grow as well.
@@splunky5156 yes, currently it does. This was meant as a potential update to make 2 handed weapons more interesting. My apologies if that was not made clear.
always a joy listening to your considerations.
I had a player (fighter one for two handed weapon style, barbarian berserker the rest up to 1/7) with the idea of a derwish. So he danced singing and raging into battle with two scimitars.
I remembered then far to old books about a ranger with a (under)dark past, so he got two matching magical scimitars. One, his main weapon, dealt cold damage and gave on a crit vulnerability agains fire, the other dealt fire damage and gave on a crit vulnerability against cold damage.
It was fun times and never felt overpowered or annoying. The only bad thing was barbarians do not getting a fighting style so he had to multiclass.
Something I think is more fair, and could be more interesting, is if once per turn you could draw OR stow any items needed to perform an action as part of that action, but discarding items is a free action.
So you can change from your bow to your two swords in time to make an attack with those swords, but you'll have to throw your bow on the ground, unless you recognise you'll be changing weapons a round early.
And once that bows on the ground you might need to move to pick it up and use again, or maybe an enemy might get there first if you move away.
I suspect this will result in a lot of forgotten weapons if the DM is real strict
This is how I manage this problem. Since rules already state you can draw a weapon as part of your movement action, the problem is with stowing something you already have in your hands. If my players don't want to spend time putting something away before getting something else out they have to drop it on the ground. You'd be surprised how well they remember that they're favorite bow or axe is on the ground and pick it up as soon as they can.
I saw a Tiktok the other day of someone explaining their idea for a versatile weapons feat where sword and shield allows extra damage and two handed use gives extra AC. It also allowed you to switch grips as a bonus action by donning/doffing a shield as a bonus action. Very cool.
I remember making an entire fighter subclass dedicated to changing the way two weapon fighting works, slowly getting more attacks with their "off-hand" weapon as they got their class features until at level 20 they could make 8 attacks with a single attack action, 4 with each weapon.
My simple solution. The two weapon fighting style doesnt let you add your modifier to the damage, but instead lets you attack with your off-hand weapon as many times as your attack action. So if you're 20th level, you have 4 attacks as your attack action and 4 attacks as a bonus action (no modifier). So attacking with two light d6 weapons puts you on par with attacking with a greatsword.
So assuming all attacks hit and the modifier is +5 to damage on a 20th level fighter
Greatsword: (2d6+5) × 4 = 48
Dual Wield: [(1d6+5) × 4] + [4d6] = 48
They kind-of-address that in the video, by stating that they prefer all the rolls that're part of the attack to use the same modifiers, for simplicity. Which is a choice that I'd say is preferential, so your approach is definitely not "worse".
Something to keep an eye out is that Dual Wield will (as you've written it, at least) scale better with "every hit" damage bonuses like hunter's mark - Greatsword gets 4 of that, Dual Wield 8. This advantage has to be compared against other damage increases that are available only to Heavy Weapons.
This feels better to me
I REALLY like this. Martial classes definitely lag behind casters. So by balancing these abilities on the more powerful side of things it helps to elevate martial classes a bit
@@3pharaohstowers you can't hold a bonus action
I, myself, am hitting this issue headlong in my subclass homebrew. I've been attempting to take the flavor of the Lich King era Fury Fighter and roll it onto the Barbarian frame (dual wield 2 handed weapons). I used several of the ideas posted in the video to help streamline the process. Unlike the Dungeon Dudes, I left the bonus action attack and amped it up to compensate for the action economy. Reward usage but not punish for not choosing to use.
I think there is a barbarian subclass in the Arcanis campaign that does something with dual wielding larger than light weapon haven't looked at that book in a while so I am drawing a blank on details.
I’m sure you guys know but you do add your ability modifier to the off hand attack already just not to the damage.
I think it makes sense because you might be just as skilled at hitting with your off hand but it might not be as strong
I think when they said "attack" they meant "damage"
I think when they said add your ability modifier to your "role" they meant "roll"
Love the video and love what you guys are doing!!! Keep up the great work! Here is how I run 2 Weapon Fighting.
Untrained: No bonus action, 2 attacks in 1 action, Ability mod added 2nd attack if offhand weapon is light or finesse weapon, Main weapon does not need to be light.
Trained (Fighter Fight Style): ability mod added to both attacks regardless of weapon type, +1 attack if dual wielding, +1 bonus to AC if Dual wielding
Dual Wielded Feat: +1 bonus to AS if Dual wielding (stacks w/ Trained bonus), may fight with weapons of any type, +1 attack if dual wielding (stacks with Trained bonus)
Played around with this a bunch and my players seem to really like it. Non-fighters still get some sweet
advantages without stealing anything away from the Fighter class. The Trained classification really allows martial classes to fully reap the rewards and this is how it should be.
Keep the dice rolling high!!!
I had JUST got my DM to accept a very sub-par standing fix for 2wf, so I can't wait to see what you guys offer which will be undoubtedly better!
Actually same, i wrote up a homebrew feat which is very similar to what they showed in the video, but instead of removing the bonus action restriction, the feat just allows you to attack twice with your bonus action
Here I am wondering if it was indeed undoubtedly better.
Paladin does not need a bonus action to smite unless they want to use a spell for that
Yeah, not sure where they are getting the paladin smite bonus action thing from...
@@h2ongaz it's probably because spells like branding smite do require your bonus action
Yes, they were talking about smite SPELLS, not the Divine Smite feature.
@@TheHornedKing but they are just talking about general smite
@@anthonyyates9003 The first time they bring it up they say "but then paladins can't use their smite spells". They just say "smite" or "smiting" after that, but I think we can safely assume they are refering back to when they said "smite spells".
Love the video. This has been a topic I have been working on myself. Was looking through the math a bit and I think it would make 2WF stronger than GWF consistently and with less investment. With the fury Feat, a Zealot Barbarian of level 5 who acquired hunters mark (however?) could use 2 Battle axes and achieve approx. 65.5 DPR while raging and attacking each turn (not including any reaction). A GWM PAM Zealot with Hunters mark would achieve 57.5 DPR if they cant use their reaction to PAM, if they can, 83.5 DPR. A paladin with TWF can use 2 battle axes, using 2 level 2 slots, and 2 level 1 slots, and a thunderous smite at level 5 can hit for 90 DPR. Add hex (however) and ends up being 97 DPR. Take a paladin with GWM and PAM using 2 level 2 smites, thunderous smite can achieve 75 DPR. if they can react and PAM and 1 level 1 smite, 102.5 DPR. The problem with this is that the 2H fighter has to get 2 feats PAM & GWM, take a -5 on ATK, and the TWF only needs 1 feat, doesn't take a minus to hit, and has more opportunities to crit just due to more d20s being rolled in character career. In the math, I assume every attack hits to achieve the desired numbers. If you include the lower chance to hit with take the -5 to ATK, it would lower the overall DPR as well.
I would suggest allowing the free off hand attack with modifier and the feat, but you can't add effects like hunter's mark, hex, smite, etc. to the off hand attacks because that's where they jump in damage.
I mean a barbarian with hunters mark at level 5 can't rage (you can't concentrate on spells well raging), would have to be a variant human or custom lineage to have like fey touched or magic initiate(for hunter's mark) and dual flurry feat(? fury feat) and even then can only cast it once per day and it requires concentration which can be broken, They've given up ability boosts, the zealot barbarian's "divine fury ability"' only adds extra damage once per turn and at level 5 that is like 7 or 8 damage, it takes at least 1 round to set up hunters mark so that eats up your bonus attack from PAM(are you referring to the old version of PAM or the proposed one in the video), also your bonus attack from PAM gets eaten up by hunters mark eveytime you switch targets and how are they wielding two battleaxes barbarians don't get a fighting style, I am assuming no multiclassing at this point cause they have extra attack.
Paladins don't currently get access to TWF style, spell slots are a limited resource especially at level 5, so anyway point I'll make, is none of this damage is sustainable and I don't think game breaking and all these really high damage builds were being constructed before using the old rules and don't really have much to do with the new rules proposed, power gamers gonna game game game game game! Fix smiting if it's a huge problem at your table don't keep TWF lousy
As for Shield Master I'd do what you guys did, but I'd add you could make a bonus action attack with your shield. Something like 1d4 plus your strength modifier.
Love the shoutout to Treantmonk. The Dudes are class acts
Glad this is being made, because two weapon fighting requires WAY to much investment...
Or the same level of investment as say a polearm build but with way less benefits than polearm master and sentinel. Not even to mention great weapon master extra damage
@@Justin-T gwm is +10 damage -5 to hit. Two weapon fighting is another chance to hit for 9.5 damage.
@@e4Bc4Qf3Qf7 GWM also provides a bonus action attack on a crit or a kill.
@@AnaseSkyrider If you have killed something, you probably will be pretty far from the next thing or have won the battle. Its nice yes, but its primary utility comes when fighting hordes of enemies.
@@e4Bc4Qf3Qf7 how is standard two weapon fighting an average 9.5 when you only get to deal max 6 (light weapon) damage?
My home brew fixes for the Dual Wielder feat. We kept the 2 weapons even not light, and the +1 to AC.
So I added what I called arts.
-Defensive Art, enemies can still do opportunity attacks on you, however because of your mastery, the first 4 opportunity attacks done on you are with disadvantage.
-Offensive art, when you move to an empty space you can do an opportunity attack on any creature 5 feet away from said space using your proficiency.
For the heavy weapon, especially considering the recent trend, you might add proficiency bonus instead of double strength modifier. Not as much extra damage until level 17 or so, but it gives a consistent damage buff at each tier of play. Coupled with the lack of the -5 penalty to hit, I think it balances out but without the weird flavor that hitting harder means you're more likely to completely whiff. Or maybe even if you miss, you still add your proficiency or strength bonus, to reflect that even if you don't pierce the armor, you still don't entirely miss like you were casting a cantrip
cool ! i like ho you worked through the technical issues and offered different perspectives, not just for the two-weapon fighting but also for everything else that might be affected
House rule I've been running for some time has been that with the two-weapon fighting style, offhand attacks are made with advantage. The idea is that they still cost your bonus action when you can get them but that's because your character is using an attack with one hand to create an opening for the other (which is the entire point of dual melee weapons). This also makes the fighting style appealing for rogues to pick up, without being absolutely broken since its still just barely ahead of steady aim but requires a feat or class feature to pick up. Best of all: its simple.
this is almost exactly what i did at my table- i did not alter crossbow or the others you mentioned, but i'm fair convinced to do so after your presentation. i did upgrade Spell Sniper to add the players relevant attribute modifier to cantrip damage, and that has helped cantrips scale with other weapons.
I love the feel of this, especially the negating of BA and same rolls for all attacks. But I think this package is overpowered as-is. At low levels, +2Dex spellcaster with daggers would do more melee damage per attack (9 avg, 2d4+4) than a +2Str great-weapon wielder (8.5 avg,1d12+2), and far more than they would by casting a cantrip. And d6 weapon would come out far ahead with 11avg. Shields also look /a lot/ worse when you're giving up a full 2nd attack, albeit with a lighter weapon. And even when feats/styles are considered, until someone gets 3 attacks in a turn, I think dual wielders would have the best damage overall. Then there's unintended synergies like basic lvl1 warlocks being able to BA Hex, then do '4d6+2xDEX' on one turn without any abilities, feats, or friends.
I think it could use some of this buff, but could use constraints like a minus to damage or removing a bonus to hit. I definitely like making this viable for BA-heavy classes. But great weapon builds have to give up shields and Dex to get there; dual-wielders shouldn't be able to get to the same base damage without some downside, whether that's reduction in raw damage, reduction to hit, or reduction to AC.
I think the simplest fix is to simply modify the attack modifier of dual-wielded rolls, a reduction from _each_ roll would start to move the expect damage of a dual-wielder inline with other playstyles (this could be a static -1 to your attack rolls with dual-wielded weapons, you only add half your proficiency modifier/STR/DEX modifier, idk that's more of a "determine what feels right via playtesting" kinda thing). Depending on your narrative interpretation of AC, this would also make sense as attacking with two weapons is less accurate/damaging than fully aiming and following through with a single weapon.
E.g. The numbers you gave would require a -3 modifier to each attack roll (if I did my math right)
@TaleshicMatera that runs into trouble when you get more attacks. Either you (once again) need keep track of multiple types of attacks during your attack action or (if it applied to all attacks) using two weapons would be strictly worse than using a single weapon once multi attack was high enough.
@@ladaas9528 I was thinking it would be a debuff against your attack roll for all dual-wielded weapons (so applied to all attacks made when both weapons are used in the same action). It would have to solve for it, but there should be a debuff (static or scaling with level) that should maintain the expected damage as similar to single-weapon playstyles: (average damage dealt with alt playstyle per roll)*(probability of successful roll) = [(average damage dealt with dual-wielding playstyle, both weapons)*(probability of success)^2 + 2*(average damage dealt with dual-wielding playstyle, one out of two weapons)*(probability of success)*(probability of failure)], re-express the probability of dual-wielder success as probability of single-weapon wielder plus a modifier, math math math. I guess, we'd have to do the math, and it would only be a viable solution if the modifier was constant or scaled nicely with other attributes, otherwise it would be too clunky to implement. (also, it's a youtube comment, so I may very well have made an error in the formula, but the idea is still there)
Weird, I'm getting the modifier should be pretty much a static -5 or -6 to hit. It assumes that you're doing 9 vs 8.5 at levels without multi-attack and 9 vs 10.5 at levels with multi-attack, and that the dual-wielder get's "flurry of blows" at the same time another player gets Multiattack; but your mean, expected damage (MED) output would be roughly equivalent. There is the caveat, that this does have a scaling problem--the dual-wielder will have a MED greater than the single-wielder against lower AC enemies (>50% chance to hit, before the -5 to hit) but will have a lower MED for the inverse.
I have just finished running a campaign lvl 1 - 14 using these rule sets ( and I brought back the Monkey's Grip Feature allowing you to ignore the heavy property on weapons) so far I saw 0 imbalances and 1 character used a Greatsword, the other used 2 Longswords, and the last character used sword and board. They all did very similar damage. The Paladin loved more attacks, the Fighter Loved the shove action and then wild swinging, and the Bard loved the heavy hitting greatsword. 👌 good job guys.
This just sounds like DnD 5.5 edition at this point lol. All do respect I love the content you guys put out, just seems like a domino effect started to happen where we changed this to supplement this. Then had to change this for this, this for that, so on and so on. I mean at your table sure, homebrew away, but at this point this just sounds like a PowerPoint of why we need a .5 new edition written lol. And this is simply just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt.
We do need an update, but there are those that would love to dual wield and be competitive without having to wait for WotC to hopefully make it more viable.
@@TheBucketOfTruth I agree. I think most of this can be solved at the table with a conversation between the players and the DM. Which I understand they were just hypothesizing a way to get it done with homebrew rules. I just felt like the things they’re changing were so reliant on changing something else then something else that it felt like just a reboot or revision that would require a whole new edition revision
Yeah I think that by putting out rules like this is done as much to help people currently running games and also to let the designers know what rules need to change, there is a lot that could easily be better balanced when 5.5e comes out, so yeah I think this is mostly a call out to 5.5e designers, cause honestly the players I have played with like how simple the rules are for two-weapon fighting in 5e compared to how they were in 3.5e or pathfinder 1e, even if two-weapon fighting is lousy in 5e (and it is!)
@@admizr5416 true. I want to be clear I’m in a full favor of having a 5.5 come out with a complete rework of certain skills and whatnot. Just there will always be a time where a homebrew comes to the point of, okay lets just rework all of the skeletal structure of the game to fit how we think it’s gonna work for our table kinda thing lol ya know?
After crunching the numbers a couple years ago and the numbers line up with Monk unarmed vs DW Longswords as a Champion Fighter (at 20th level). Monk deals an average of 4 damage more per round with just main hand/offhand.
So what I did as a new DM was this:
-If you take the Dual Wielder Feat, you make BOTH hand attacks when you take the Attack Action. (Effectively moving offhand off Bonus Action, opening up the BA for other uses.)
The rules always want to penalize two-weapon fighting and ignore the fact that a sword and shield *IS* two-weapon fighting.
"Guides for GMs" instead of "Game Masters" took me off guard haha
I was just looking searching for homebrews for this rule a couple hours ago. Thank you for the video!
I think the two handed flurry is unnecessary. The problems i see is that it makes a person have endlessly long rounds, which can be boring for others. I think the other changes are already good enough and the original two handed feat can just be an option for classes that don't get a fighting style, don't you think?
I agree with not adding the flurry. I feel like removing the limitations for allowed weapons and allowing the stat bonuses feels right along with removing the bonus action economy issues. I do highly agree with a previous post that the two weapon fighting would flavor well providing either half of a shields protection at +1 ac. The issue with this of course in making the defensive fighting style redundant. But no one that optimizes really takes that anyway.
That solution seems a bit familiar! Beast Barbarian's got precedent that is nice to use for two weapon fighting
"Claws. Each of your hands transforms into a claw, which you can use as a weapon if it's empty. It deals 1d6 slashing damage on a hit. Once on each of your turns when you attack with a claw using the Attack action, you can make one additional claw attack as part of the same action."
The ideas here are amazing omg and yeah if it is a bit too strong (starting w the phb rules) maybe you could give everyone their ability modifier to their off hand; change the fighting style to give you the extra attack without using a bonus action and then add in a slightly nerfed version of dual flurry into dual wielder, something like if you have extra attack you can make two off hand attacks rather than 1 i.e at level 5, 4 attacks (+2 attacks action surge); level 11, 5 attacks (+3 attacks action surge); level 20, 6 attacks (+4 attacks action surge)?
I only suggest this because great weapon master and sharpshooter/crossbow expert are already really strong so if the suggestions you’ve made are too strong, instead of making everything else stronger it might be better to take two weapon fighter back a step again.
But yeah this way classes that can take the two weapon fighting style get that no bonus action trait for free and can pick up dual wielder if they want but the classes that don’t have the fighting style might have to multi class or take the feat that gives them a fighting style w custom lineage or at level 4 which seems a bit more balanced? Also yeah shield master NEEDS to be given some more love. Keep up the great vids!
These are the rules I use, they are not as simple but i think it balances it better while keeping the image dual wielders in media give:
Firstly, I want to explain what is the thought behind these changes. When I think of 2 weapon fighting, i dont think of multiple attacks with each hand, i think of doing a single hit with 2 weapons in harmony. So i wouldn't add attacks but instead change the damage values to add the second weapon.
So the changes would be:
-Fixing the silly rule of not letting you draw or stow two one-handed weapons.
-Two-weapon fighting would keep the option to do the extra attack with a light weapon as your bonus action but in addition the default would add the ability modifier.
-Two-weapon figthing style would now let you add a weaker version of the damage dice (d6 turns to d4 and d8 turns to d6) to your normal attack. this would emulate the feeling of hitting someone with your 2 weapons at once, being in rapid succession or as a single strike. This would keep the balance of damage as it would only be stronger than a heavy weapon if you take the dual wielder feat and would help differentiate damage types as you can dual wield different kind of weapons.
-Dual Wielder Feat would stay the same as it increases your damage output and gives you AC. I want to try a new version of the feat but haven't had the chance to playtest it, I'll add it at the end.
The math behind these changes would go as follows if we use a +3 strength for the examples:
1d6+1d4+3 = 9 in average for using two weapon fighting style with 2 shortswords.
1d8+1d6+3 = 11 in average for using the fighting style and the feat with 2 longswords.
2d6+3 = 10 for a greatsowrd with no feat or fighting style to improve the damage output, or 1d12+3 = 9.5 in average for a greataxe.
This has worked well for me making two weapon fighting a valid option but never being the strongest.
As to the change to the Dual Wielder feat i thought about, it goes like this: In addition to the previous 2 benefits,
-Before you make a melee attack while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a penalty to the attack roll equal to the ability modifier. If the attack hits, you double the ability modifier added to the attack’s damage.
(this would give a bonus similar to the Great Weapon Master feat, but capping at 5 and being more risk than reward as the feat already improves your damage output)
Yeah i completely agree with you, i’ve been playing for ages and i am gonna implement these rules from now on
I like what you guys have here but I gotta say I disagree because I think there’s a far easier/ better way to fix this.
All characters have the ability, when they are wielding a one handed weapon, to wield a weapon In their off hand with the light or thrown properties. When they make hit with an attack on their turn, they roll the damage dice for both weapons, adding their modifiers only once. I know it keeps them from adding hex or hunter’s mark a bunch but it also keeps them from smiting four times a turn at level 5. I just think this is easier to conceptualize and still fits the aesthetic. Plus, it’s basically like giving dex characters a great sword option, which is FINE because they won’t have a shield equipped when doing this.
Again, we think these kind of solutions don't "feel" like two weapon fighting. We want the mechanic to reflect the fantasy.
What I love about changing mechanics to make characters more powerful and fun is that it also opens up the possibility to make powerful NPCs to test players' mettle.
You know, these changes would help out the Monk a great deal, since they would still be able to do an unarmed strike as a bonus action, allowing them to do 3 attacks at 1st level.
I think this catapults the Dual Wielding style really high up there without any drawbacks. You are no longer using your bonus action, you get full damage and there isn't even a to hit penalty as with the two other main damage dealing feats. I think if you are increasing damage on the off hand attacks you should be decreasing to hit to stay in line with the rest. Which is also thematically fitting.
Love the shield master feat. I’ve been wanting to make a sub class that’s all about the sword and board
Our approach was to hybridized a character class feature a couple of feats such as dual wield feat, martial adept mated to Bards; college of swords: Two weapon fighting style along with blade flourishes all into a nifty new feat.
We remove bonus action requirements, an argument won by saying ok if your marilith attacks the party it can make one main hand attack and one off handed as bonus action and the rest of the arms flail about menacingly.
This functionally allows a character to make two attacks,( three if they choose to use a bonus action to attack with either weapon or even cast a spell or use item.) Additionally they have a maneuver like ability that allows them to do a blade flourish giving feel of more attacks/Defense.
Now critics will point out this is taking away from bard....yeah kinda, though to be fair they did make it possible through fighting initiate to steal fighters weapon styles. Plus using martial adept language and treating it as bardic inspiration and limiting it to two flourishes puts full bard classes ahead.
I feel a good option is to let a bard also take this feat and gain an additional attack or more bardic inspiration equal to martial adept feat.
Personally Two weapon fighting should never of not had ability to use str/dex mods makes no sense you've literally been training to use two weapons. Some Dms might think too much is thrown in here and might prefer the dual wield feat be taken separately I can kinda see that.
We all agreed that this applies to players and any npc's sort of what's good for goose good for gander.
When I think of the two weapon fighting, I think of a couple of fantasies the beserking barbarian who swings his two axes, the two sword wielding samurai, the swashbuckling rogue, the monk with two sticks. We need more to do with the off weapon like parrying as a reaction. As well as no bonus attack. Two-weapon fighting style should allow you to cleave.
I think "parrying" is the idea for why the two weapon fighting feat gives you a +1 to AC. That +1 is the character using their offhand weapon to block the attack like they would with a shield
@@MonteCreations sure but for a feat it should at least be close to as effective as the shield spell, I'd rather it be a big boost to ac for one attack. Since it unlikely you would block another attack with it in 6secs. Shields should also be able to do this in addition to the ac they give already making it the premier defensive tool.
I love the Shield Master changes! Being able to shove someone every time you hit with an attack just brings to mind a relentless push forwards with a rain of blows. And yeah, makes sense you should be able to shield a Fireball!
I never knew this was a problem, but it does seem like it would make two weapon fighting stronger.
The changes you guys are brainstorming are actually right along the lines of what I’ve been working on for my table! I’ve been meddling with my own system on the side on and off for a couple years now that aims to make these kind of changes and ideas more integral to the game and more streamlined, so I appreciate the insight you’ve offered.
Polearm master also uses a bonus action.
The only problem I see coming up immediately is on rangers, or those with a starting Feat to get hunter mark. At lvl 1 let's say you have a 1d6 and the twf fighting style. You do 4d6+2xmodifier on turn one (casting hunters mark) then 6d6+3xmodifier (assuming the enemy survives and you don't need to change your hunters mark which at level 1 is a huge if) at level 5 you make 3 attacks on turn 1 and 4 attacks on turn two for a combined total of: 14d6+7xmodifier. You'd be a boss destroyer but of course making attacks to lesser minions wouldnt cause many problems since you need your BA to redo your hunters mark target.
So watching this a second time I now realize that the whole point of your change is to remove the bonus action part, not to give them an extra attack along side the bonus action attack. So I just misinterpreted these
I think the two wapong fighting style could allow the main hand weapon to be any not heavy or two handed weapons, like a rapier + dagger.
thats what the dual wielder feat does. It makes you not require both weapons to be light, so you can dual longsword for example.
So you are saying they are different?
I toyed around with the exact change you are proposing and found that the greatest beneficiary of the change was the rogue. The ability to make two attacks (to make certain their sneak attack lands) and then use Cunning Action to disengage proves very potent. The rogue having to decide between staying engaged and making that second attack or darting away to safety actually leads to interesting game play decisions. This led me to instead change the two-weapon fighting “style” to the following, instead of making a base change to the two-weapon fighting in general:
Two-Weapon Fighting Style (enhancement)
When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack. Additionally, once per turn, when you take the Attack action you can engage in two-weapon fighting as part of that action without requiring a bonus action.
My current paladin is wielding two scimitars but it'd be better if I used a shield but I love these swords mentioning they are of a pair
Zuko
@@wicky7591 half orc zuko god that sounds cool
I love a lot of this discussion and have implemented some of these changes in my game. If I could just rewrite I would do the following.
1) anyone with an off hand weapon can make 1 additional attack with the off hand as a free action and gets +1 AC. Main hand can be any 1 handed but off has to be a light weapon. Damage bonuses added to both.
2) heavy 2 weapon fighting style let's you use regular or heavy weapons in both hands
3) finesse 2 fighting gives an additional +1 to AC
4) give a select group of fighting styles to barbarians, paladins, rogues and monks so martial classes can just pick a tweek.
5) let shields in general add bonus to dex saves.
6) shield master let's you shove as a free action, additional +1AC to shield and adds proficiency to dex save bonus too.
7) feat improved 2 weapon fighting. Make 2 attacks with your off hand as a free action.
8) feat 2 weapon casting. You've trained to use your weapons as casting foci and can use them to trace somatic components of spells. Add 1 to cha, wis or int.
14:15 LOVE the addition to heavy weapons. This should be what the Great Weapon Fighting Style does (given the official one isn't very useful). This would mean removing the STR 15 prerequisite, but I think that's fine since, for a STR of 14 or lower, this is giving you +1/+2 damage at best.
However, that would be too similar to the Dueling fighting style. In my games we have a fix for GWF that is working well: you always throw an extra dice of damage and ignore the lowest.
@@TheBakerdoc Love your fix. I don't see how similarity to Dueling is a problem in itself, but I've also realised adding double STR mod would get kinda broken when you add Great Weapon Master. So I'll probably use your idea at my table, if you don't mind.
@@jacobrobinson884 Being similar to Dueling is not really a problem, it's just that I prefer the different options to be distinctive. Of course you can use that fix!
One additional thing my table does is allow unarmed fighting to benefit from anything that would be considered normally as two weapon fighting. This has proven for us to make the tavern brawler feat more valuable and appealing as well as give the monk a little extra nudge up
There is one melee fighting Style you forget. One handed Weapon and empty Hand.
I think a good idea for that is kind of a fast hands feat that lets them use their bonus action for utility stuff like a grapple, shove or object interaction.
I love how you got this mechanic to work with the Swashbuckler.
All I did was give them another attack on each of their Attack Actions, but the offhand weapon didn't get the modifier.
*Didn't seem to break the game, they actually seemed to break-even with the damage output of the Champion Fighter.
I had watched Treantmonk's vid and really liked his initial proposal. I immediately implemented the "no bonus action" rule in my game.
However, you guys lost me at "Dual Flurry". By allowing yet another attack it will cause a HUGE boost to those builds that have ways adding to damage PER attack (Hexblades, Spirit Shroud, etc.). This has the potential to really make those builds OP. In addition, you "arbitrarily" disallow dual-wielding during action surge, to fix the problem you just created. Action Surge currently doesn't disallow anything, including casting additional spells.
Furthermore, the double strength is just going to increase the power creep. Rather than increasing dual-wield damage past the already powerful GWM build, the aim IMO should be to bring it on par with it (assuming you are using an equal number of feats).
I actually like Chris' idea (he talks about in his own Homebrew rules that he uses) where he just allows everyone to use GWM and SS, removing them from being a "must take feat".
The way that I see the weapon feats like GWM/SS/CBE/PAM is that they tend to give you a free damage increase and a niche bonus action damage increase, with some asymmetry. I feel like instead of a whole new attack, it needs to be a circumstantial attack like GWM or a weak attack like PAM. I feel like circumstantial would be better, something like "When you successfully land an attack with your main weapon and your other weapon that you are two-weapon fighting with, you can use a bonus action to make another attack with either weapon."
The way I fixed it at my table is sorta similar, but the bulk of the changes are in the Dual Wielder feat rather than two-weapon fighting. For a lot of playstyles, the power fantasy really comes online with that first feat, whether it's PAM, GWM, Sharpshooter, Mounted Combatant or War Caster. I didn't want Dual Wielding to be any different.
The Dual Wielder feat now reads as follows:
-One of the two weapons used in two-weapon fighting may ignore the "light" property requirement
-At level 5, the first time you take the attack action on each of your turns while wielding two weapons, you may make one additional attack with a light melee weapon you are wielding. This increases to two extra attacks at level 11 and 3 extra attacks at level 17.
-While you are wielding two weapons, you gain +1 AC for each light melee weapon you are wielding.
Other feats (GWM, Sentinel, XBow Xpert, and Sharpshooter) have also been tuned slightly to compensate, but two-weapon fighting remains unchanged. The drawing and stowing rules as written are ignored, so that anyone can draw and stow two weapons simultaneously.
Thank you for talking about the issue with two-weapon fighting in 5e! I was playing 2e up until last year, and I had loved the ranger class in that edition. One of its coolest features was that it was the only class that allowed two-weapon fighting without a penalty at lower levels, and you get both strikes on your turn. While I love a lot about 5e, I haven't played a ranger at all because who wants to lose a bonus action in order to get the obvious second strike? Makes no sense. I like your fix, but would be happy even if it was boiled down to simply removing the bonus action requirement if you take that fighting style.
I just remove the bonus action portion (and reallocate it as such below) and just allow it once for every attack action and add a reaction attack to a missed(you or opponent)/blocked attack. That would effectively recreate that Hollywood flow of attacks and responses. This would raise the value of 2WF related rules without having to rewrite them. The bonus action would be used to provide advantage to 1 attack OR a bonus to damage as the weapons force the opponent to track multiple weapon motions.
That would give 2WF an Action, Reaction, and a better use of the bonus action, again without having to rewrite the rules and giving them more desirability.
In the end, it's not that the other weapon fighting styles are too powerful really. It's just that 2WF needed to have a "restriction" removed and a stronger edge. Altering the other playstyles because you OP'd this system just makes more work and really ups the CR needed to challenge the players. We're just fixing the 2WF, correct? The others are already really powerful and don't need "boosters".
Yes my proposal does not give the +10 damage bonus, but it doesn't have the -5 penalty. Instead it's balanced by a consistent attack option.
Adding the Dual Wielder feat gives more oomph by allowing stronger weapon options. Two weapon fighting style gives bonus damage (and combined with the more frequent attacks gives the +10 damage output).
The reaction attack in the opponent turn is huge for rogue... they would be able to sneak attack twice per round almost allways...
@@marcofavin8718 Sooo... Too powerful?
@@dontorres8037 Yes, definitly...
@@marcofavin8718 Well I see where you are going, but at the same time, the rogue already gets multiple sneak attacks per round. It's allowed a sneak attack every turn rather than every round. I think it's fair to consume a reaction (similar to polearm master) to one hit, but maybe restrict it to not be sneak attack damage?
Great video! Gotta say though, I noticed you mention this a lot too, Paladin smite in 5e doesn’t cost a bonus action
Really clean fixes. This implementation is actually more straight forward and easier to use for newer players than the current rules. I tip my hat to you dudes.
The only problem I see is the tier 1 damage (levels 1 to 4). A fighter dealing 2d8 + 2mod with their attack action at level 1 is a lot. It leaves all the other fighting styles way behind in damage per round.
Maybe giving access to non light weapons as a fighting style is to much of a buff when you take into account that you also gave the old fighting style and bonus action use for free as part of the buff.
For my homebrew campaign I gave premade, preoptimized "heroes" to my players. I went on RPGBOT, chose a combination of blue (optimal) and yellow (almost bad) ranked subclasses from the same class and combined them. All PC start at Lvl 3. It's so cool to mix and match the same class subclasses features. A weak subclass adds a crazy amount of goodness to an already fantastic subclass.
I was also considering two green (good) ranked subclasses but some don't have two greens or they don't match very well.
An example I gave the Warlock Hexblade and Celestial, two weapon fighting and a bunch of unused feats to build his background and character. He is an actor! I had to give him the Fighting Style feat because he uses a chain (whip) with both hands.
I think that if you’re going to be changing sharpshooter and great weapon master, I think the -5 accuracy penalty makes more sense for GWM where you’re swinging a slow, heavy weapon that can be easily dodged, but deals a meaty hit if it connects. With sharpshooter, a sharpshooter is someone who is accurate with a bow, so why is it giving me an accuracy penalty? It doesn’t make much sense to me. I think sharpshooter should make your attacks more accurate like a buffed archery fighting style, and maybe change the archery fighting style to do trick shots around corners, negating half and three-quarters cover or something.
I also love the shield master changes. It’s never made sense to me that my shield doesn’t help my saving throws against a dragon’s breath weapon, but it also protects me from the damage it deals. Either I’m holding up my shield to protect myself and blocking the damage or I’m not.
I have imagined the -5 +10 for sharpshooter to be a result of "I go for a head shot, or nothing at all. No safe body shot for me"
We have a simple fix for TWF. If you struck with one of your attacks from your attack action you gain advantage on the BA attack when you have the fighting style. Idk how effective this is but its a nic boost
Interestingly, the problems with 2 weapon fighting in D&D are similar the the problems with 2 weapon fighting irl. Its a large investment to get good at it for a pretty negligible advantage
It's definitely not a negligible advantage lol
@@JacobGrim Historically speaking it is. Fighting IRL with two weapons is TWICE the "mental space" being used for the ability to attack with one or the other weapon. When you compare that to single weapon fighting styles its kinda meh. With Martial power being decent it still only takes one blow to get sufficient gains. NO HIT POINTS IRL....
@@acetraker1988 you can parry the opponent's single blade and deal a lethal blow instantly. You have double the ability to counter attack with two blades. The only issue with dual wielding from what I've seen is when the opponent has reach, since single handed weapons generally are not as long as longswords or spears.
Which is why dual wielding was virtually never used in warfare, only duels.
Also, I think you're forgetting that you can use just one of the two weapons most of the time, like a primary one handed arming sword or rapier, and use the offhand weapon only when necessary or when you see an opportunity that would give you the advantage.
@@JacobGrim I won't pretend to be some kinda HEMA swordfighter or anything, just some dude that's heard some conflicting words and demonstrations from some halfway decent swordfighters. But wouldn't that primary and offhand weapon use just... be what you would use a buckler or some kinda shield for? If I'm some random idiot conscripted into a war, whether or not my enemies have spears or not, I'm reasonably sure I could do all of that with a small shield in my offhand and still have way better defensive options than with a dagger.
Of course, that's also for me, random conscript who doesn't like getting stabbed. Being able to parry while stabbing simultaneously is super awesome, assuming that you don't screw up and get wrecked by an opponent using two hands to swing a weapon, or even just a slightly heavier weapon entirely. Parrying almost any sword with a dagger seems... fun.
And of course I know that there are historical records of people dual wielding, and it genuinely has a lot of uses. But I think I see where OP was coming from with calling the advantage negligible. Probably a big advantage if you've got the skill and time to master it, but one that isn't useful at all in warfare. And your average dnd party probably isn't going around having noble duels, but are instead involved in lots of skirmishes. I won't even pretend that anything in dnd is remotely realistic, but the point that as is, it takes a lot of investment to just be able to even USE two full sized weapons in the first place, let alone master them, seems like it reflects reality sorta-okay.
@@planlessdan all great points :D
We already do those first changes in our game (remove bonus action needed), with the addition that you can't make attacks with your bonus action if you use two-weapon fighting, to avoid PAM spear users to make 4 attacks while wielding 2 spears.
It works. It's a westmarches game with 20+ people, so we had like 3 characters with dual wielding and it is just fine. Pretty much in line with PAM, GWF and Dueling. Only sidenote is that GWM and Sharpshooter are banned, so that may have helped it catch up with 2-handers and archers.
Now that Fighting Initiate is a thing, my solution would be to take TWF and Dual Wielder and mash them together.
Such a great feat. Surprised they haven’t talked about it on the channel yet.
My personal houserules are a lot alike.
A) you attack with the offhand as part of the attack action.
B) the fighting style lets you add your asi(to me it feels correct, coz your offhand isn't as strong as your main hand unless you specifically train it to be), but i also do not restrict fighting styles to certain classes. If you get a fighting style as a class, you can pick any fighting style you want.
C) The dual wielder feat lets you attack the same number of times as your main hand, and after you reach level 8 you can use non light weapons
D) GWM gives you a minus=proficiency bonus and double that in damage instead of the flat -5+10.
On the whole I've found that this really balances the idea of great weapons and dual wielding. Your damage output remains basically the same while be mechanically different.
The only thing I still need is to make sword and shield more effective. And this change to shield expert seems awesome to me
Overall your running into the same problems I have when reworking two-weapon fighting, you change that, and you might as well change everything, since you must choose a specific power level for each fighting style and then they need to match. The problem is combining fighting styles such as Polearm master and GWF will always be more effective than any single one. My solution is to leave combining styles to masterful effect in the fighters wheelhouse thats what they should excel at above all others... Then you get a new problem on adjusting how fighting styles working in all martial classes.
For 5e I say keep it simple, tweak two-weapon fighting until it feels cool enough to use compared to GWF, but fight the urge not to mess with the other options. 5E is not perfect, if you want perfect rewrite the system.
Good Luck!
Agreed with all the homebrew fixes here for 2 weapon fighting and having played a version of them already in the past, i can say they are balanced (but this is comparing it to gwm and ss and casters, of course this makes single wielders feel left behind).
my version had a few caveats/bonuses on top of what you guys suggested:
1. whenever you take the attack action with a light melee weapon in your main hand, you can make a single extra melee attack with your off-hand. the off hand weapon must be a light melee weapon. either attack can be a melee weapon attack or a ranged weapon attack with a weapon the thrown weapon property. If you take multiple attack actions in a turn, you can make this extra attack once per attack action (so yes we don't penalize action surge since it happens once per fight anyway. make the fighter feel heroic in that sequence).
2. your ability score modifier applies to the off-hand attacks.
3. free object interaction once per round is you can draw or sheathe any number of objects for every hand you have not holding anything.
4. two weapon fighting style allows you to wield a non-heavy melee weapon in each hand for two weapon fighting. this only applies to melee weapon attacks and doesn't apply to ranged weapon attacks with thrown weapons.
5. the dual wielder feat allows you to make an extra off hand weapon attack. they still gain a +1 to ac for dual wielding.
I don't agree however with the nerfs to the gwm and ss styles. i think those nerfs aren't needed. i don;t mind reworking them though to make them feel distinct but the power level should be the same. i do like the rework for shield master though.
if i was to rework everything to make them feel more distinct i'd divide the weapon types into the following categories:
thrown-focused on dmg bonuses (either flat dmg or bonus dice, more object interactions for drawing, proficiency with improvised thrown weapons)
dual wielding-focused on pumping # of attacks (extra attacks, minor ac boost)
heavy melee-focused on battlefield control (reduced speed, forced movement, knocking prone)
ranged-focused on improving accuracy (advantage, flat bonuses, removing penalties from cover or fighting in close quarters)
one-handed + shield-focused on defensive bonuses (dex saves, good ac boost, dmg reduction for self or others)
These are great homebrew fixes and I’m gonna bring them up with my DM for an upcoming campaign! Great video, dudes!
A Psy Warrior that now can truly fight like Ahsoka Tano? Rolling stats now!
Divine smite does not cost a bonus action. You just have to hit something with a melee weapon attack. Using spells like searing smite do but divine smite does not
I believe they were mostly referring to the spell smites such as Wrathful smite.
The TWF fix I did was just reflavor (reskin) a 2 handed weapon as TWF.
Taking out GWF for heavy weapon master would be a huge nerf for hexblade and battle smiths that want to use big weapons.
I gave a revised look at GWM with a main thread post. It would help keep the feat and make relevant to this ruling. Check it out
Really nice to see that these problems are adressed! I like that video, especially because there is a player in our new DnD group who plays a dual wielder (a champion fighter dwarf with two handaxes/later battleaxes).
I was already thinking about some homebrewing but trying to keep it as simple as possible because this player is also a dnd beginner: I would have just adjusted the dual wielder feat with the additional point that the "extra attack" feature also grants an extra attack on your two weapon fighting bonus action (if he uses it immediately after the attack action and is not moving between all those attacks). After this dwarf took the two weapon fighting style plus the dual wielder feat, he very specializes himself onto this technique, so he should get some more benefit from it!
Besides that addition, everything else can stay the same and I don't think it makes him overpowered.
I think, using the bonus action for his two weapon attacks isn't that kind of a problem, because - besides second wind - there is no more bonus action available... Additionally, we played a bit loosy around the "drawing and stowing" aspect... Everyone can draw the thinks he/she would like to use in his/her turn, but we never talked about this in detail. Furthermore we never did it a "written houserule".
But these tips from your video shows some cool ideas to match this with other characters who would like to dual wield once in a while! Thanks!
It is certainly a first draft. Fighters and other martials do enough damage as is...