How do you feel about Dual Wielding, as in using two weapons, one in each hand, as a fighting style or possible character choice in TTRPGs?
I ask because I know a lot of people with a realism boner dislike it, and while I don't question that it's not an effective or viable tactic in real life combat, I don't see it as being as huge an issue in tabletop games. For one it opens up a new combat style for characters to employ, but it also brings up a problem.
>What's a good mechanic for dual wielding? Simply allowing the players two attacks or twice the damage would be too powerful in most games to justify, another solution is to allow each weapon to maybe roll for its damage and then keep the higher of the two, which seems a reasonable trade off.
However the real problem with Dual Wielding is not the dual wielding itself but with the lack of alternatives. Typically if you're a fighting class or warrior in both tabletop and video games, your equipment choices are usually going to be; >One handed weapon and shield >Two handed weapon >Two one handed weapons This way you occupy both hands. Now the reason why this is bad is because it basically takes away a huge fighting style- using a single one handed weapon and keeping one hand open. This allows that one hand to grapple, provide stability for the blade, grab objects, climb, throw things, and many other cool things that are barely ever represented even in tabletop games, much less in video games where such programming is impossible in today's times.
How about yourself? What is your approach to dual wielding in games? Do you give incentives for it or disallow it? How about one handed weapons being used with both hands in a sort of fencing or bandit style?
Legends of the Wulin has an abstract but mechanically deep combat system, and it deals with 'dual wielding' by making Paired a weapon tag. Instead of having specific stats for various weapons, it has a set of basic weapon tags (Sword, Staff, Spear and such, as well as some broader ones like Massive or Flexible), and combining two weapon tags together can be used to describe almost anything. To dual wield, just use a Paired or Paired special weapon, such as Paired/Sword for dual swords or Paired/Massive for Melon Hammers.
Jayden Fisher
>I ask because I know a lot of people with a realism boner dislike it Which is rather dumb, most systems are not realistic to begin with.
Noah Parker
Even though I commented that it was gay in another thread, I think that it's ok. Most systems don't handle it well, which is why it may get some hate, along with rule of cool and whatnot.
On video games it has been handled fairly well recently though, in Dark Souls 2 (power stances) and 3 (double weapons). I think that the same solution could be applied to TTRPGs without much headaches, basically make it so that you basically get a increased hit dice or some abilities depending on how you're TWFing.
Lincoln Clark
>realism boner Who was Musashi?
Brody Howard
A legendary Samurai that wrote a nice book and occasionally fought with two swords, of which one was smaller than the other.
Though his greatest victoy was with pic related.
Aaron James
The Oar story is the best.
Nito ryu is real deal tho.
>You now realize that fighting with a shield is technically dual wielding, and sword and shield beats sword any day.
Liam Martinez
That gets into shields being made too passive in most combat systems. (both trpg and video game)
>I ask because I know a lot of people with a realism boner dislike it,
So what makes my desires for realism flare up and make me go nuts is how common dual wielding gets when allowed. Especially gun dual wielding which is IRL a shitty plan outside of pistols that take 20+ seconds to reload.
The starting problem is that it's easy to represent an attack in a simplistic way but not body movement. Then there's some minor allowances for some body movements but not others. Throw in stuff like anime where dual wielding and giant swords are equivalently breaking physicality. Then consider 99% of sheathing animations in cartoons and video games involve a sword phasing through solid leather.
By the end of it all we get this confused jumble of things being realistic and things being allowed because cool.
I think this problem does seep into the mechanics of dual-wielding. It's not enough to be allowed to do it but that it needs to fulfill this mental image of achieving this unrealistic goal. This usually means the mechanics have to make dual wielding an offensive upgrade over wielding a single weapon while shields are a defensive upgrade.
I don't have a good solution to it because I regard a good part of the problem player desires/goals. So I just play the system mechanics straight and put up with it. I do favor systems where it isn't a fantastic idea such as Shadowrun 5e (which has a number of mechanics that limit dual wielding from being a number crunch upgrade)
Daniel Bailey
>That gets into shields being made too passive in most combat systems. (both trpg and video game) Yup, that was my point.
Jaxon Myers
Big bully who won mostly because of his height and reach advantage
Cooper Parker
>On video games it has been handled fairly well recently though, in Dark Souls 2 (power stances) and 3 (double weapons). I think that the same solution could be applied to TTRPGs without much headaches, basically make it so that you basically get a increased hit dice or some abilities depending on how you're TWFing.
Dark souls also has weapon animations to balance things with. Length of attack, hit boxes, and how open you are left can be used to make a single 1h weapon viable. Further it defaulted to 1h + shield which makes your 1h attack patterns indifferent to your other hand. So even in DS1 it was possible to have a weapon in your left hand slot that you swap in to mix a specific attack in.
Representing that in tabletop would be hard...but you know what I just thought of that can be similar? Robo Rally. Got it recently so it's fresh in the mind.
So for those that don't know the game. Briefly, in robo rally everyone is rally racing robots in a square grid factory board. Movement is done in groups of up to 5 moves by playing a set of cards face down for those moves. On turn 1 everyone flips the card in the first slot and then everyone's turn 1 move is resolved + board effects. There is no static order of movement. Instead each movement card (of which there are IIRC 6 types) has an individual 3 digit priority number. The highest priority movement triggers first and movement can cause you to push other robots around.
Anyway, the point I'm getting at is that Robo Rally's priority # is the most similar mechanic I know of to animation time. However, it's very clearly way too cumbersome to bring into a tabletop RPG cleanly. Still it's an interesting thing to consider what an RPG system with an individual attack priority would look like.
Justin Martin
>This usually means the mechanics have to make dual wielding an offensive upgrade over wielding a single weapon while shields are a defensive upgrade.
Why is this bad though? I honestly really like this paradigm, and while it may be simple or 'autistic' it makes a lot of sense for game abstraction and is really fun.
Chase Rodriguez
>What's a good mechanic for dual wielding?
Adventurer Conquerer King has it give a +1 to attack rolls, and that's it. If you take a proficiency (kind of like a feat, but not quite) in it, you can bring it up to +2 to hit. Which is quite a lot, considering that the maximum ability modifier is +3, and the absolute maximum base tohit for player characters is the equivalent of +9.
For reference, the other "fighting styles" are" >Weapon and shield: +1 AC, or +2 AC with the proficiency >Polearm: May attack from second rank, fuck over charging enemies, more people may attack a single target in melee, and +1 initiative with proficiency >Two-handed weapon: Bigger damage die, and +1 damage with proficiency >Single weapon: Keep a free hand open for other stuff including torches, and +1 tohit with the proficiency
So it's the "make me more likely to hit things" style, but has tradeoffs versus the other ones. Unless you sunk a proficiency in it (which isn't always the best idea in a game that has an emphasis on leadership and realm management), there's no reason you can't switch between weapon types at will depending on what's best for the moment.
Dominic Roberts
I like how the Riddle of Steel does it. It's an offensive style for unarmored fighting and very demanding of fighter's skill. Main advantage is ability to launch two attacks in the same tempo. Opponent must answer both of them at the same time but one weapon can parry only one attack in the same tempo. It makes dual wielding better defensive option against itself.
Carter James
Because IRL a shield not only improved your defense but also your offense.
Being able to block easily an attack of your enemy opens up a world of possibilities for offense maneuvers you can preform without getting skewered.
In games shields only give a boost to defense and a shitty bash attack which doesn't really encompass everything a shield does.
Nathaniel Butler
Hyoho Niten-ichi-ryu is mostly dealing with the single sword though, two swords is like 10% of their curriculum.
Jaxon Johnson
>That gets into shields being made too passive in most combat systems. (both trpg and video game)
Try Runequest6. Using shields offensively works well with the ruleset. And the combat system in general is pretty damn good.
Adam Gutierrez
>shitty bash attack which doesn't really encompass everything a shield does.
Heh and now how often is that a stun status ailment?
>Why is this bad though?
It gets very mechanical and binary. Dualwield or sword + board become the only viable options. See the key word there was "upgrade". As in straight up better.
Now dual-wielding is a type of special snowflake wish fulfillment. Once it becomes common place people move onto trying to find a new unique shiny and eventually you have full anime stuff like daggers attached to chains. Which is okay if it's that kind of a setting/system but it also means some guard with a polearm looks like a boring jackass.
To get into why dual-wielding is a silly thing that doesn't work the way people think it does... Core issue being that the human body uses a large part of the torso muscles including shoulder and hips on an attack. You can't put strength behind an attack with both hands at the same time. IRL most dual-wielding styles involve using the offhand as a defensive/parry device that can flow into offhand attacks. (Offhands also tend to be shorter then a mainhand) However, at any time you are only comitting to an attack with one weapon at a time. This also is true with fire arms where aiming and bracing for recoil uses concentration that can only be devoted in one direction at a time. Old West and Pirates would fire one hand at a time while taking time to steady the shots.
Can you guess I like Riddle? Being forced to split dicepools does a good job representing that split in concentration.
Ryan Thompson
Play GURPS if you want to have a useful open hand.
James Jackson
This. This whole thread is basically solved with RQ6 combat.
Shields passively block *and* attack, having two weapons improves defense and let's you use actions points to combo, two handed weapons are way more damage, ranged weapons and magic have to deal with reloading/casting time. To top it all off you can learn several fighting styles with different benefits.
Jaxson Thomas
People with a realism boner should read instead of rubbing themselves on their books.
European masters like di Grassi tell us about advantages and flaws of dual welding swords:
>Requires three to four times the training, because you have to learn one hand, then the other until it is as good as the first, then make both work together instead of one getting in the way of the other.
>one sword is defending when the other is attacking: both doing the same doesn't works, specially the crossed sword attack/defense one sees in some media.
>it is for duels and tourneys, for one focuses on individual defense instead of mass combat.
>it is best used against enemies with little to no armor.
>its great bonus is that one hand does as well as the other, including reach. A normal swordsman has problems against lef-handed enemies. Against dual welding swords he fights both a left-handed and a right-handed, never knowing which hand is the feint and which is the true strike.
>and while I don't question that it's not an effective or viable tactic in real life combat Eskrima dude here.
Everyone is full of shit.
>Simply allowing the players two attacks or twice the damage would be too powerful in most games to justify, another solution is to allow each weapon to maybe roll for its damage and then keep the higher of the two, which seems a reasonable trade off.
>However the real problem with Dual Wielding is not the dual wielding itself but with the lack of alternatives. Typically if you're a fighting class or warrior in both tabletop and video games, your equipment choices are usually going to be;
Dual-wielding constrains your attacks angle massively. It's shit for long ranges and your weapons can block each other if you do not use pre-trained movements. The end result is that you can parry with your off-hand, have more chances for randomly slicing your opponent apart and can bind their weapon while having a weapon of your own free. However, you are fucked if you cannot close the range.
Personally, as long as my opponent is not using a bladed weapon, I'd prefer my fist as my off-hand weapon, because I can use it for joint manipulation and disarms.
Connor Hernandez
In eskrima, the approach is opposite: You start with both hands, then go down to each side in training. However, dual-wielding is mostly a thing done to increase coordination and as a way to train strikes with resistance with a partner. It's the focus in a lower amount of styles compared to one-handed fighting.
Just to give some perspective from a martial art from the other side of the globe.
Jacob Hall
>Can you guess I like Riddle? Patrician taste, my friend
>Dualwield or sword + board become the only viable options. That's just a failure/lack of features on the part of the system as a whole and doesn't inherently have anything to do with shields being the "Defensive" upgrade. You could very well have a variety of upgrades for a variety of styles depending on what you wanted.
Ian Wright
Get a parrying dagger.
Matthew Johnson
You're welcome.
Huh, so that's why there are so many eskrima videos with dual wielding. You guys dual anything more besides knifes and batons?
Hadn't seen that one.
Which ones? Marozzo's and Grassi's manuals linked above also have chapters for greatswords and polearms. The guy whose videos I linked also has some videos for you, including one where he uses a greatsword one-handed. Also:
>You guys dual anything more besides knifes and batons? The basic idea is that you always dual-wield, because you have two hands. It doesn't matter if you have two sticks or a stick and a fist or two fists or a fist and a knife. The basic movements are always the same, more or less. Obviously any device that you carry will be different - With a pen you can penetrate skin, with a fist you can't and with a stick you can use the same movement (hammerfist) to crush bones.
However, bladed and blunt styles diverge. I couldn't use a machete properly, because my style comes from cane fighting and wrist movements and shit are different - Blunt weapons need speed to get force, which causes movements that would be inefficient with a blade and could possibly fuck up your wrist as well. In addition, there are some styles that only focus on one aspect, like unarmed combat or dual-wielding. I once found a very flashy video of dual-wielding that used ineffective but awesome - Apparently there are styles that don't focus on combat effectiveness. In my school, dual-wielding is not a real part of the curriculum, but rather a way to learn dexterity. In the same vein, we sometimes do left-handed training for balance.
However, the curriculum is very tight, with barely any fluff. Something like Modern Arnis has more dual-wielding, but also has an entirely different definition of short range and trains medium and long range, while in my school short range is the thing that we train, while long range engagements are countered by closing into short range range. (Our long range tactic does not go beyond "this is how you hit their hand")
