Everybody loves bashing two-weapon fighting, but there are uses for it you may not have considered:
1)Ranged weapons. Ever wonder what happens when you pick up a pair of those repeating crossbows with the two-weapon fighting and rapid shot? I'll tell you: ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. It's a -4 penalty for four attacks. You can just nail EVERYBODY within range. AT FIRST LEVEL.
2)Tripping. Everybody whines about the sloppy inaccuracy of two weapon fighting. Pick up the improved trip feat. Your first attack is a touch attack with a plus four bonus. Your second attack is against a prone opponent (+4 bonus).
3)Critical. Ever notice that you roll the dice more often when you fight with two weapons. Ever notice that the more times you roll, the more likely you are to roll high? There's a reason we TWFers love scimitars over longswords. TWFing has some unseen perks.
4)Whips. Like the tripping example, but against everyone in a thirty foot bubble.
5)Whips and crossbows. Ridonkulous.
Anyone else got some ideas? I'm having fun in ways a two-handed weapon would never let me.
I did number 4 once. As a bard. I eventually had two +3 flaming knife-whips. Nothing could stand against my flurry of whippery! Plus I sang a juanty tune while doing it.
Once upon a time I took a close look at fighting styles and realized how deadly TWF could be compared to some other styles, particularily in comparison to two-handed weapons (really, how deadly are they in comparison?). In an attempt to 'balance' them, I took an idea from BG2 and made several fighting style progressions: Two-Handed Weapon Style, Single-Weapon Style, Sword and Shield Style, and Throwing Style. It never really worked out though, and the project has been abandoned. I never really thought it was that bad though.
16 monk levels + 4 master thrower levels (from the Complete Warrior) + Two-Weapon Fighting + Improved Two-Weapon Fighting + Greater Two-Weapon Fighting + Rapid Shot + flurry of blows + palm throw (from the master thrower class) = 20 shuriken thrown per round
Preferably +1 wounding shuriken :ninja1:
EUH... For budget's sake, you might want to make those RETURNING shuriken. Enchanting shuriken can be so expensive.
I do like some of these ideas, particularly the two repeating crossbows. That's very gunslinger-ish for a fantasy world without normal guns.
Gunslinging is just fun regardless of time period... Hooray for action movies.
Quote from: beejazzEverybody loves bashing two-weapon fighting, but there are uses for it you may not have considered:
I am guilty of this: I love TWFing characters but I do feel that they are mechanically inferior in most situations. But beejazz, I believe you're starting this discussion with some mechanical inaccuracies:
Quote from: beejazz1)Ranged weapons. Ever wonder what happens when you pick up a pair of those repeating crossbows with the two-weapon fighting and rapid shot? I'll tell you: ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. It's a -4 penalty for four attacks. You can just nail EVERYBODY within range. AT FIRST LEVEL.
That's wonderful; first off, using rapid shot and TWFing in conjunction is possible within the rules, but you do not get an extra attack via rapid shot for each weapon. The Rapid Shot feat gives you an extra attack at your highest bonus if you accept a -2 penalty to your attacks; TWFing gives you an extra attack at your highest bonus with your off-hand weapon if you accept a -2 penalty to your attacks (or -4 if the off-hand weapon is one-handed). Thus, Rapid Shot + TWFing will only get you 3 attacks, all at a -4 penalty. Additionally, you suffer a -2 penalty for firing a light crossbow with one hand ...
At first level, with a Dex of 16, a devoted crossbowist will have a +4 to hit at first level (counting their BAB of +1). So a human crossbowist could get Two-Weapon Fighting, Point Blank Shot, and Rapid Shot ... but we encounter the first problem: this character cannot afford rapid reload at first level, so you're limited to an attack with each weapon.
At second level, the character can pick up rapid reload, and now has a +6 to hit (we'll add PBS to the equasion). Fighting an opponent with a 15 AC, the character will have a 54% chance of scoring a regular hit, and a 6% chance of scoring a critical hit (60% of the attacks are hits, 10% are threats, and thus 60% of 10% is 6%). With the crossbows' damage output saddly limited to 1d8+1 damage, your crossbowist is dealing an average of 3.63 damage per round.
Now, the character wants to Rapid Shot and Two-Weapon Fight to get three attacks. This applies a -6 penalty to all of these attacks, reducing the to hit of each attack to +0. The damage per attack is the same (1d8+1), but the character now has three attacks. The character has a 27% chance of scoring a regular hit and a 3% chance of scoring a critical hit for all 3 of their attacks. This comes out to an expected damage output of 5.445 per round (because of the percentages, you're basically ensuring that one attack hits in a round on average, so you're doing close to your average damage of 5.5 per hit).
With just rapid shot, the character could spend their TWFing feat on Weapon Focus (light crossbow). While rapid shooting, they would have an attack bonus of +5 for two attacks. They'd have a 49.5% chance of scoring a regular hit and a 5.5% chance of scoring a critical hit. Their damage output hasn't changed. Now their average damage with a full attack is 6.655.
For this character, TWFing is inefficent, Weapon Focus would be better.
Quote from: beejazz2)Tripping. Everybody whines about the sloppy inaccuracy of two weapon fighting. Pick up the improved trip feat. Your first attack is a touch attack with a plus four bonus. Your second attack is against a prone opponent (+4 bonus).
Improved Trip grants a +4 bonus to your strength check to win the trip, not to the touch attack to establish the trip. Not too bad. You're limited to using sickles or kama (which are effectively the same mechanically speaking), as I believe they are the only light weapons with the tripping capability. I have seen a TWFer excell with this style, but they didn't deal a whole lot of damage, they were battle field control. I've seen a whirlwind heavy flail tripper deal more damage.
Quote from: beejazz3)Critical. Ever notice that you roll the dice more often when you fight with two weapons. Ever notice that the more times you roll, the more likely you are to roll high? There's a reason we TWFers love scimitars over longswords. TWFing has some unseen perks.
Not really. Your likelyhood of confirming a threat is decreased because of your decreased chance of hitting. Unless you're using burst or vorpal weapons, with which a critical has added functions, Criticals don't particularly favor TWFers. I don't have any math to suport this right now, but give me a situation and I can test it.
Quote from: beejazz4)Whips. Like the tripping example, but against everyone in a thirty foot bubble.
A whip's range is 15 foot, is it not? Whips cannot deal damage to creatures with +1 natural armor or +3 armor to AC, so that effectively means you can't damage most people past 4th level (when rogues have magic leather and when monks have an amulet of natural armor), so that hurts that. And, whips are a one-handed weapon, meaning you'll suffer a -4 penalty to your touch attacks to trip (which shouldn't hurt too much). This is a field control build, and is difficult to weigh.
Quote from: beejazz5)Whips and crossbows. Ridonkulous.
Do you intend on tripping an opponent and then shooting them with a crossbow? Or bolting them and then tripping them? I'm not sure what is especially rediculous about this.
Quote from: beejazzAnyone else got some ideas? I'm having fun in ways a two-handed weapon would never let me.
I'm glad you're having fun, that's what the game is about. I'd like my players to have fun and contribute as well, because when a player is outshinned by another player, the first player typically has less fun.
So, I do feel that TWFing is imbalanced. I've seen a TWFing Ranger adventure along side a THFing Barbarian; the ranger's only course of action that contributed to the party was disarming and tripping opponents so the barbarian could kill them easier; on a one-on-one fight he usually lost due to his exceptionally low damage output. I've seen this on many other occasions, till I adopted my TWFing changes:
Ambidexterity is reintroduced. It removes the penalty for wielding a one-handed off-hand weapon, and increases off-hand strength damage to full. TWFing Dexterity bonus requirements are reduced by 2, but Ambidexterity requires a 16 Dex.
Improved Two-Weapon Fighting grants all off-hand attacks: there is no need for GTWF or PTWF. I'm still looking for a more elegant solution (perhaps having TWFing let you make two attacks with a standard attack and ITWF let you make two full attacks with a full attack action; still testing).
Really, those are the only changes I've had to make. My Weapon Finesse additions have helped rogue and dualist type TWFers as well.
Meh... for a twf damage build all you need is a half-giant with oversized twf, monkey grip, and EWP katana. Individually, everybody loves trashing those feats and calling them a waste, but in the light of 6d8 points of damage (even a wildly inaccurate 6d8 points of damage) I'd say it's worth it. Just make sure to have a single THF weapon (especially a reach weapon) for those high-AC foes and as far as I can tell, you're set. TWF is like Power Attack in that you don't need to use it 100% of the time. It's really just a way of getting rid of large numbers of low-CR, low-AC lackeys. And don't give me the speech about combat reflexes. Its benefit is limited against intelligent opponents (5-foot step) and those with reach. Likewise, cleave relies on you to drop your opponent before you get an extra attack AND has a prerequisite feat. Anyway, the benefit of two-weapon fighting is not solely its ability to deal extra damage (which would leave it behind power attack, among other feats) nor solely its ability to make extra attacks (which would leave it behind combat reflexes potential... if ahead in terms of reliability) nor solely it's potential for battlefield control (which would leave it behind improved trip, improved disarm, and improved sunder, however well they mix with twf for a follow-up attack) nor solely its ability to mix and match weapons (which would leave it behind... okay I can't think of anything... quick draw? I don't know)... the fact is that two weapon fighting sacrifices some amount of effectiveness for an incredible level of versatility.
ooo... And here's a CR5 monster that can deal 12d8 (with reach) in a round. You take a maug (large construct from fiend folio) give it the four arms trait from DMGII (+1 CR, free multiattack feat) give it one level of fighter (total CR 5) for feats give it EWP katana, monkey grip (from complete warrior), and oversized TWF (from complete adventurer)...wait... do I have room for another feat? How about some of that combat reflexes for the reach. Start combat by using that weakening touch to sunder the fighter's armor (don't worry about attacks of opportunity... you got REACH). How's that for coping with inaccurate attacks... muahahahahaha! Admittedly, it's a better CR5 monster than EL8 player... but it's still mean as hell.