What are your thoughts on dual wielding?

I prefer duel welding.

If you know how and when to use it, it totally works

>not dual wilding bollock daggers

If you want to "balance it" go with a shifting bonus, either to attack or defense.
In many styles, the off hand weapon is either used to defend against attacks (an easier to carry shield) or to feint/beat or otherwise create openings for a decisive strike.
Works as well with paired hand axes as diasho.

It is realistic. As mentioned beforehand, it's been done historically in a lot of different cultures.

>Not all that useful, more or less a dueling/showmanship thing
It's fairly useful when you consider that people dueled all the time. It may not be that useful on the battlefield, but not every adventure is on the battlefield.

Shoot them first. Without a shield to save them, you can remove a lot of damage output fast.

I think it should be balanced around counter attacks, or sacrificing defense for a bonus attack. Should definitely be more situational than the traditional sword and board, but not necessarily worse.

This.

The problem is that D&D has this stupid idea of more weapons=more attacks, instead of the second weapon being considered a support thing (or rather, the two weapons together being considered one "style" of attack).

>It's not like it's some sort of mystical technique capable by only a select few.
Some recent animu begs to differ

realistic.

Both accuracy and damage penalties are called for. If you're swinging with both arms at once to try to get more attack in than someone using only one weapon, not only are you not waiting for an opening, but you're not putting your whole body into each stroke. The hits will be faster, but much weaker and clumsier. It's much better to have a shield or a longer two-handed weapon.

Thanks for reminding once again why DS 3 was such shit.

I just trust this guy, he seems to know what he is talking about.

Shit for kids

Is that supposed to Matt Eastern? I can't tell.

So how would you balance your dual wielding idea around a D&D game system? How would you turn dual-wielding from multiple attacks to that support thing?

Well, first I'd differentiate weapons meaningfully; that is, by something other than size of the damage dice/crit rate.

Then, having two weapons means you have two smaller effects, while having 1 big weapon means you have a stronger effect and a bit more damage (in exchange for a bit less versatility).

For example, spear + shield would give you reach (spear) and some sort of defensive bonus (shield), while a two handed greatspear would just give you reach +2.

The easiest way, at least in 5E, would be to let a dual wielder use their bonus action to impose advantage on their next Attack action.

So how should damage be handled while dual wielding?

If it's not multiple attacks, then which weapon deals the damage? Is it the "main hand"? Is it something else?

I'll be back later tonight to check on this thread if this thread here is still alive. I've been wanting to rework dual wielding in my own homebrew, so I appreciate any and all takes on this subject.

As I've said, weapons would be differentiated by things other than damage dice, so yeah, same damage as just using one weapon. The advantage would be that your other hand is also doing something.

Take a look at Codex Martialis

Easton

I'd like to see their training manual for those double knives drills.
Mostly to see how they use the 'blade down' off hand to parry

It's almost as if D&D works best when martial characters are given a system of powers ranked by level that they can use through an adventuring day instead of a series of infinite use attacks with little variation.

As a combat tactic, using two swords is superior to using a big sword in two hands, but sub-par compared to drawing a katana really fast.

I hate that i understood this reference

Viable, when you consider that a shield is a weapon.

Now i want an image of him Photoshoped to look like a stereotypical Asian

Most simplistic way would be

During your turn, you may use dual wielding offensively to gain a bonus to hit. Or you may use it defensively to gain a bonus to block an attack

In a duel, using two different weapons grants you exponentially more options than fighting with one.

In a battlefield scenario I can't really imagine any two-weapon aside from shield fighting being viable, since you'd be more likely to just drop/sheathe your other weapon and pull out the next one.

I misunderstood the question

>Mostly to see how they use the 'blade down' off hand to parry
They do that in Western arts too.

Those pics 8 out of 10 times shows duels between men using swords/daggers. I have never seen a sword and dagger versus a halberd or staff/spear.

That's because people generally didn't duel with polearms. They're specialized formation fighting or thick melees, much like how people generally didn't take a parrying dagger to the battlefield.

But in a rpg scenario what I said could happen. How would a fight between such men develop?

Tends to attract weebs and snowflakes, but it's cool when done well. In terms of realism, who gives a shit? It's called fantasy for a reason

I dunno, depends on the system you're using. In most D&D derivatives, the sword is the definitive weapon unless you're going for a specific kind of build.

One sword was hard enough to acquire. One big sword is better than two small ones because in real life you cant parry a full forced blow from something heavy with something small unless you were just plain 90 percent out of the way. That means you either need a shield or a big weapon. (or a long one)

The solution for weapons reach in my system is that the man with the longer weapon is harder to hit. If both have the same length no bonus is applied.

The polearm user kills the fuck out of the dual wielder as the guy with two swords has a much harder time blocking and has a disadvantage in reach

Okay, well that's your system and I don't know it. In D&D, swords have dis-proportionally high damage dice and in some editions, a bonus to hit. Additionally, the Longsword can be two-handed for an even bigger damage bonus, while polearms are generally locked into the two-handed style for a lower AC.

I don't mean to treat the way things were as irrefutable evidence, but if that were the case, anyone who wanted to live would have used long, hafted weapons for dueling. That basically didn't happen, though longer and lighter swords were produced explicitly for duels.

Polearms aren't noble or honourable. Duelling with a polearm is like showing up to a pistols at dawn arrangement with an Uzi and body-armour. Remember, duelling was about being a noble and defending your honour. Also, you didn't exactly carry a polearm everywhere, that'd be like going to the local takeout place with a AK on your back. Noble people wore swords, and so swords were what was used in duels.

you cant carry a halberd around everywhere

What I meant was for rpg encounters, not everyone is going to be wielding swords and daggers.

>scary guy with pole arm chasing you
>run into confined quarters

what now lawman

You totally could show up with something like that if you wanted to. "Rules of dueling" is a very, very late addition to the idea of a contest of arms. Speaking strictly about Europeans, the contest of champions would indeed have you show up with basically every weapon you could carry and your armor. As time went on, people began to specialize in dueling, and the weapon of choice for this was a sword and shield. Why? I don't know, but the intent was totally to kill the fuck out of the other guy and show that your might made right. When unarmored dueling in the street became common, people adapted the knife into this style of combat in place of the shield.

I don't have a time machine, I couldn't tell you exactly why polearms didn't come to dominate duels. Certainly, several kinds of swords did, from the light espada ropera used by nobles in dress to the battlefield ready hand-and-a-half swords favored by mercenaries. Given that your options were generally to win the duel or die, there must have been some kind of survival strategy at play.

>Noble people wore swords
Everybody *could* wear swords. While a master crafted sword could be outrageously expensive, even regular countrymen could afford a decent quality sword if they saved up. This was especially true as metallurgy continued to develop. Most people carried some kind of knife, though, because you can't really use a sword in your everyday life unless you're some sort of man-at-arms and you'll probably use your knife every day.

I like it when I get enough money to enchant both. Running one now. Had a crystal of life stealing in one and a greater fire crystal in the other. Can heal (assuming I'm not fighting undead) while dealing extra damage. Along with great cleave I'm the party's living blender/crowd control.

get poked

Counterpoint: Chinese dueled with swords as well, but they considered polearms to be in no way less "noble" than swords. There was no sword-centric image to maintain, and if you were of the right station, it wouldn't be a social faux pas to carry your spear or poleaxe around with you. They still dueled primarily with swords.

A lot of melee combat in D&D needs to be fixed but a small step towards improving it would be making duel wielding function like having a shield against melee attacks. Either it gives you the AC bonus like a shield does, or rework shields so that with your reaction you can impose disadvantage on an enemy's attack, and duel wielding allows you to do the same with your offhand weapon. While attacking, you can use your offhand weapon to give you a small bonus to attack rolls, or advantage on your roll, something like that. If giving advantage is too powerful, then make it so you can't get the offensive and defensive benefit in the same round.

Now shields are purely defensive and lack the flexibility of an offhand weapon, but offhand weapons don't protect against ranged attacks at all.

>That's because people generally didn't duel with polearms. They're specialized formation fighting or thick melees, much like how people generally didn't take a parrying dagger to the battlefield.

Talhoffer seemed to have a lot of material for using polearms in duels, which suggests otherwise.

I think those were "official" duels. Not two random men fighting.

>I think those were "official" duels

Give how often "kick him in the balls" and "then trip him and stab him in the face" show up in his manuscripts, I don't think they were exactly designed for honour duels ;)

>I have never seen a sword and dagger versus a halberd or staff/spear.
As mentioned before you don't see it often because polearms are more of a battlefield thing and sword/dagger was more of civilian thing. It did happen though.

Judging by previous discussions and this thread, it seems like people go through a progression with stuff like this.
Phase 1 people like it because its animu
Phase 2 people hate it because its animu and muh realism
Phase 3 people like it because muh actual realism and utility

youtu.be/kqvpEYWkpgs
Sword in main hand, dagger in the other.

I know historically the blade down was preferred more often than up. In modern times it seems to have gone the opposite with blade up has become the preferred style to hold for its versatility to both cut and stab.

I want to see how thus modern army trains it since it probably didn't use historical manuscripts to develops it

Sword and dagger a good
Sword and sword a shit

double rapier is totally on par with using a dagger. just you know. you need 2 rapiers.

Full length sword and full length sword a shit. Two short swords was fairly workable.

Double rapier was more of a dexterity and a "look what I can do" thing rather than a serious weapon pairing.

>Hi, folks, Matt Easton here!

They absolutely did duel with polearms, such as german judicial duels between town champions wielding pollaxes.

The pollaxe was literally depicted as the weapon of Alexander the Great and his companions in at least one big ass painting of note and was the weapon of the knightly classes who fought the 100 Years War during it's latter half.

They're totally noble.