Best Take on Two-Weapon Fighting

So that it strikes as one weapon, and not as two separate ones?

I'm sorry, but my knowledge on LotW is lacking.

>His spell isn't "Sword."

There's sort of a delicate balance between not wanting everyone to do it and not wanting it to be completely useless

Posh cunt style: nimble blade + parrying dagger
Tough mofo style: sword + blunt weapon
Good hunter style: axe + pistol size of howitzer

I made a 4e character based around dual-wielding, but it was a bit more than 'two weapons'

The idea was to have a magical satchel filled with a boatload of mundane weapons with special qualities like 'defensive' or 'brutal' for different tasks, along with quickdraw feats. Then you'd say, draw a hammer and a spear, use those for specific abilities that needed the damage of a hammer or had an extra effect for the spear. Then you'd drop them on the ground, since stowing weapons costs actions you don't have, and you'd draw a spiked shield and a chakram, and use those to defend yourself during the enemy's turn.

By the end of each fight the battlefield was just littered with discarded blades and weapons. It was actually really fun, if a bit gamey and gimmicky.

I would say that's one of the better options for TWF in any system though: where weapons are distinct enough that having one in each hand is an advantage due to the versatility. Like carrying a hammer for the raw bludgeoning damage alongside a spear in the other hand for reach and range, for example.

I'm not a LotW guy either, but basically, you are not using weapons so much as styles.

A dagger, sword and dagger & sword would all be different styles with different tags.

Which is a pretty good way to do it imo. I really hate it when having two weapons in hand somehow doubles the number of attacks... that way lies madness.

>dual wielding
it sucks

such is the cases

I like the way GURPS does it. There's a penalty for attacking once each with two weapons with a single maneuver, and a further penalty for attacking with the off-hand, unless it's a weapon meant to be used in the off-hand, like a cloak or a shield. You can buy up a technique that can remove this penalty in full, and you can take another advantage for full ambidexterity or a much cheaper one for a single weapon. It's a small purchase in a cinematic game where the technique can be bought up.

You can attack one target with both weapons, which gives them -1 to their defenses, or attack two adjacent foes.

I like the rules because it makes two-weapon fighters cheap (you only need six points if you're using one weapon skill, which is a drop in the bucket for a 250-point Dungeon Fantasy character) and gives a believable benefit to your attack (penalty to defend against your two attacks). You can find the rules in Basic Set, page 417.

I'm a sucker for sword and axe or even double axes, even if they aren't super practical compared to say, sword and dagger.

Are there any gurps rules for using two weapons as one attack? Say, for example, dual welding daggers and attacking or parrying with them together?

Cross parry (Martial Arts, page 121) lets you parry with both hands at once for +2 to your parry, in addition to counting as a heavier weapon for the purposes of breakage (good for parrying polearms, not so good for parrying shields) and allowing fencing weapons, like rapiers and main-gauches, parry flails and kusaris. You can't parry with those hands again after making a cross parry, but you usually know when you need to make one. I see it used a lot by unarmed fighters and dual-weapon users, it's a great option to have.

As far as I know, you have to roll to attack twice, once for each weapon. If you want a hack-y solution, you could stat it up as an innate attack (think fireballs and psionic swords) that does as much damage as your weapons combined, but can only be used when wielding both weapons, and uses whatever melee weapon skill you normally dual-weapon attack with.

Best Dual Wielding is offhand utility dual wielding

Anima. Because nothing beats being the retard clown with semi auto mossin or obrez with bayonet on each hand for 2-4+ attacks a turn with only -10 penalty

This.

Sword and "board" fighter.
-2 defense
+2 looking cool

Sword and shield is typically thought to be the boring option but it can aesthetic as fuck.

It's for Pathfinder (with Path of War) but here's the idea I came up with. With dev confirmation and additional possibilities if you follow the thread.

giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?411495-Dreamscarred-Press-Path-of-War-Expanded!-(Discussion-Thread-IV)/page43&p=19295773#post19295773

Personally, I like 5e: you're giving up some total damage to maximize your odds of getting at least one hit in, which means characters like Rogues and Paladins can, but don't have to, use it. Neither required nor useless isn't a bad place to be.

I like systems where "parrying daggers" are just flat out listed as shields. Much more in line with their historical usage.

Pic related is the superior fighting style. Suck it, birdbrains!

TWF pallies are actually INSANE in terms of sheer nova damage because of the ability to choose to expend smites after a hit. I don't remember the exact stats, but if I recall, at second level a 5e paladin with two shortswords RAW can potentially kill an Allosaurus in one turn.

In general, 5e's take on TWF is pretty good, but varies significantly in usefulness depending on what class you're playing, which is interesting. For example, for rogues, most of the time, TWF is a gamble between getting free disengages or trying to edge in a sneak attack dice you might have missed for your attack this turn. For clerics, it's a decent reliable way to guarantee your middle-level bonus damage dice kicks in. For anyone with mobility, it's free multiple disengages. For throwers, it's doubly useful, as one is able to make combinations of ranged and melee attacks- getting to pick your attacks like that is also just FUN because there aren't really penalties hoisted on you, and even characters not built to TWF CAN choose to in a pinch.

For example, I played a finesse paladin with a rapier and shield who would sometimes switch to dual-wielding combinations of shortswords/daggers, or sometimes a hand crossbow, or a combination of rapier and whip. Being that variable all the time is wonderful.

The only advantage to two-weapon fighting is that you're harder to completely disarm, because you have two weapons. That may seem minor, but in games that arnt D&D where disarming is much more common as a tactic, being that much harder to disarm completely is a fairly big advantage.

The only acceptable dual wielding is sword+antique pistol.

I prefer when both your first AND second weapon are shields.

I figure this would be a good thread to ask, but I've been making a home brew game where it's not exclusive to two hands, but potentially any number of them.

The rule is that normally, fighting with two weapons incurs no penalty on your Main Hand, but a -5 penalty to your Off Hand. If your off hand is using a Light Weapon instead, then it's a -2 penalty instead.

When you take the feat once, then the penalty to the off hand turns to a -2 penalty instead, or no penalty if using a light weapon.

If you have multiple hands, then you have that many off-hands, and each consecutive off hand attack makes the penalty become -5 greater.

Each time you take up this feat, the penalty for your next off-hand becomes -2 instead of -5.

I should mention that you roll only once when you fight with multiple weapons, and the penalty you get stacks into the roll.

Damage with all of those off hand weapons do not add Strength to damage; but rather only the weapon's qualities themselves.

I can't help but feel this needs a lot more work, but I'm stuck. Anyone have an idea on how to get my thing better? I do want to balance it around multiple hands, and I want each weapon to count for something.

Only elves should be allowed to be agile enough to employ dual wielding effectively for anything more than sword+dagger.

That seems...not great. The question you need to answer is what makes two weapons better than one two-handed weapon. Logically having two weapons should make it easier to exploit weaknesses and be disarmed, and two-handed weapons should make you more vulnerable and do more damage. As such, I would say that having multiple weapons should increase crit range or give bonuses to opportunity attacks, if either exist in your game. For example, assuming (as it sounds) that you're using something DnD based, having an off-hand weapon could increase crit-range on your on-hand weapon, and you could have a feat for multiple off-hand weapons stacking. The catch could be that if you do crit you have to resolve it with the weaker offhand weapon, meaning that you could crit more often but do less damage when you did.

Florentine style.

I do wish to keep the weapon styles things simple however, but I do want them to be distinct.

So far, I have:

Great-Weapon Fighting: Fighting with two or more hands. Damage dealt this way has Strength doubled for determining damage with it. Not sure how to include multiple hands in this.

Sword-and-Board: One hand has a weapon, the other a shield. Shield grants a bonus to Reflex Defense against Direct Attacks (no AC, only Reflex Defense). Not sure how to apply multiple shields into this that isn't gonzo.

Single Handed Weapon, other hands free: +1 bonus to Attack check, damage, and Reflex Defense.

Multi-Weapon Fighting: You read it already, but I do think having it be more technical would be best.

My gig is to try to allow for mixing and matching any amount of hands with any amount of stuff without some things being either too good, or too bad.

>Not sure how to include multiple hands in this.
extra hands increases your Reach(preventing enemy counters and the like) while removing penalties for fighting Gargantuan opponents.

>Not sure how to apply multiple shields into this that isn't gonzo.
Either the reflex defense only applies to 1 hit per round per hand, or each shield grants a bonus to defense in this order: Reflex Defense, Backstab/some other defense, and AC, looping back every 3 shields. I think investing 2 extra hands is enough of a cost for bonus AC.

>Single Handed Weapon, other hands free
Extra hands can be used to push or drag flanking opponents, making them roll a save to not get hit by their friends

>Multi-Weapon Fighting:
I kind of have to support to reduce crunch. Each extra weapon improves crit-range, but will by necessity decrease the potential damage you deal. Instead, more weapons could perhaps increase your options for on-crit effects. Having different poisons applied to each weapon, fixed elemental damage, etc.

One of my favorite in jokes was two alternate items I put in one of my settings. The parrying dagger was +2AC but when used as a "weapon" it did 1d4 piercing. I also added the opportunity for PCs to salvage spiked shields that had no changes other than when used to shield bash it did piercing instead of bashing.

I made the description of both items word-for-word identical down to the interactions with feats. Amused the hell out of me but none of the players caught it.

I believe they admitted that they only disallowed this in 5e because of balance concerns.

Or rather they disallowed allowing the ACs to stack. Technically you can still do it but there's no reason to.

The thing is, to make multi-weapon fighting simple, you need the elements of each weapon to be simple too.

I also wish to keep multi-weapon fighting confined in one roll.

With my original idea, the crunch for determining the penalties if any have been dealt with ahead of time, even if it isn't at all pretty.

I do like your Shield idea though.

As for great weapons, I think each extra hand should provide a flat +2 bonus to damage. The Strength score bonus only applies for whatever weapon is used by the main hand.

I want to keep the technical situational stuff in the realm of feats if I can. There aren't any crits, so I'll need to use something else.

The most technical I want to go at the baseline are: Attack Checks, Damage, Defenses, and Armor (which is damage reduction)

What I'm trying to figure out is how to find this baseline for multi weapon fighting that not only addresses each weapon choice, but also can scale nigh indefinitely with any amount of hands.

Of course, coming to utilize said hands will be costly, but I want it to work ok side by side with those with less hands.

I think the problem is that you need to have the effects be discrete and stackable. As is, only one of your ideas is stackable, and even then only to a certain extent. A simpler progressions is as follows:
1. By default a character with only the barest of proficiency can only use one hand.
2. Upgrades can be applied to use an additional hand in a specific way.
3. Those upgrades should all be stackable with multiple hands involved.

In addition to that structure, you should be able to use one additional hand as if you had an upgrade with a single defined penalty to hit.

Examples of buffs are as follows
1.Multi-handed fighting: damage bonus per hand in exchange for AC penalty per hand.
2.Sword and Board: AC bonus per shield, penalty to hit per shield.
3. Single Hand Weapon (open hand fighting): Open hand provides bonus to resisting manuvers such as trip and disarm, per open hand you can use in this way.
4. Multi-weapon: as described by me previously.

The result is a simple cache of abilities which a character can call upon and easily resolve their bonus.

Say you have a four armed character with a shield, a two-handed weapon, and a dagger, and no shield proficiency. They therefore have a damage and crit-range bonus (with the lower damage caveat) as well as two standard to-hit penalties as well as the non-proficiency penalty. You neednt use my specific upgrade suggestions, but a simple and uniform system makes everything easier.

>you need the elements of each weapon to be simple too.
4 fire damage on hit. Only affected by elemental resistance.

I meant it for it to still be 1 roll.

Extra hands for great weapons won't really increase damage, to be honest. You get faster and more wieldy, which is closer to more attacks or better accuracy than damage. That's why i just treated more hands as being a longer weapon without the normal drawbacks. If you want it simple though, you can just increase accuracy by a flat +2 per hand.

>that not only addresses each weapon choice, but also can scale nigh indefinitely with any amount of hands.
well, unless you have on-hit effects, you're simply not going to have enough mechanics to make each weapon different with just Attack Checks, Damage, Defenses, Armor, and 1 roll. You could work something out with Reach and penalties to an enemy's opportunity attack, but....

How many different weapons did you have in mind, anyway?

Alright now this is making more sense. Make it so that using more than two hands has a trade off of some sort. The problem I have is that I have done away with crits. I'll figure something out there though, and I do want to make sure not to imply that one has to use the highest damaging weapon in their main hand either.

I like how Riddle of Steel did it.
You have a proficiency for it (well, two more or less), that gives you access to maneuvers that utilize two weapons.

>where I can find the rule in print if applicable?
Ebay, mostly.

In the game I'm writing, every weapon you wield allows you to attack, counter-attack or parry once per round. Shields parry much better than weapons but are quite worse to attack. In addition, every attack you make but the first attack in your activation is penalized - no Might bonus to the roll to wound, plus a penalty to hit.

In addition, the actions a character is allowed each turn are limited - and this includes attacks and parries.

With a specific Feat, dual-wielding characters can make one non-penalized attack with each weapon they wield per turn, instead of one non-penalized attack per turn total.

So, basically, wielding two weapons instead of one weapon and a shield means you can use your extra weapon to make one additional, poor attack, or a decent parry, while the shield would grant you one excellent parry or a terrible attack.

Sure, and that would be the advantage of having a two handed and one handed weapon: for swifter foes you could opt for the more accurate single-handed weapon.

Well I do have weapon traits, where I can make each weapon technical. But I guess I meant the base weapon styles. I don't want the base styles to be too situational (hence the simplicity of the mechanics)

I'm sorry that I'm making no sense. I'm pressed on time, and I'm on my way to work)

I would argue that 2handed is more accurate. 1handed just functions better in small spaces

Yes, but you're trying to hit a moving target. You can make much more agile adjustments to strike vital points with a one-handed weapon than you can with a two handed one. I actually do HEMA stuff, and while I would never take an arming sword over a good longsword, if you need them to be "equal but different" then overall accuracy is largely the tradeoff, especially when you're classing a longsword, a halberd, a spear, a maul, and greatflail all as one "class" of weapons. Its an abstraction to be sure, but it holds true more often then it doesnt.

fair enough

Dont get me wrong, its an asspull, but its an asspull for the greater good.

Like this.

dual grand lances in power stance in Dark Souls 2 - turbothrust the world to death

Dual wielding should be forbidden. Whenever I see/hear someone is dual wielding, it's a total immersion kill for me. It's just so unrealistic I can't take it seriously.

Parrying daggers are acceptable. It's Florentine style that rustles my jimmies.

Yeah, I forgot about that, parrying daggers fine.

Ever heard of Drizzt Do'Urden, Artemis Entreri, Zaknafein, Jarlaxle?

I've heard the name Drizzt Do'Urden before, very long time ago, can't remember who he was though.

You simply choose the tag that would fit best, a Crossbow would be 'Ranged', a huge two-handed club would be 'massive' a pair of tonfa would be 'paired'. They all give small benefits like 'ranged' allowing you to attack people not in your immediate vicinity, Sabre being better at inflicting ripples (wounds) etc.

For an additional cost you may also choose to combine two tags if you feel it would be represent your build. Dual wielding throwing knifes could be 'Ranged/Paired' for example. Bonuses don't stack though, so they're not a 'no-brainer' choice to take.

One thing that the system doesn't allow for is shields as part of the weaponry. Either you can abstract it as being part of the armour you're wearing (just makes you tougher) or could be represented as 'paired' or a 'paired/other' combo so you can realiate with shield bashes when you parry them especially well.

I just did a negative to hit/damage on off hand weapons, it's the easiest way to balance it.

Found it
D100 System, 50/50 base hit/miss

Medium Creatures have base damage of 10, weapons multiply the damage

Whatever your main hand is, attempting to attack with a weapon in your off hand incurs a penalty of -20 to your attack rolls, in addition, your damage with that weapon is treated as having 1 size smaller Base Damage(A medium creature's attack with his off hand weapon would have a Base Damage of 5)

Attempting to use a Two-Handed Weapon in a single hand incurs a -40 penalty, and your Base Damage is treated as a size category smaller. These negative mods are doubled for attempting to use a two handed weapon in your off hand(A medium creature has a Base Damage of 2(Tiny) for a 2-H weapon in the off hand)

Ran a game once with this guy who has some experience with fencing, we had to pass a dexterity check every round so as not to fumble and hurt ourselves, I found out a while later that its actually kinda accurate

Rapier + Main Gauche or Sword Breaker, although I still prefer Rapier + Buckler so you can bash people if they get too close, and elbow them if they get even closer

Real life surviving 15th and 16th century fencing manuals do touch on dual wielding paired weapons in some cases, but at a given moment only one weapon is ever used for attacking while the other is used defensively.

See: Giacomo di Grassi's work on "a case of rapiers" or "of the cloak and rapier"

I have some familiarity with the system, so I'll explain a bit.

Your combat stats (Accuracy, damage, dodging, etc.) are based on what kung fu style you're using. If you change to using a different style mid-fight, your stats change.

Weapons come with "tags", as mentioned; special weapons have two, allowing to have things like Paired Swords, or a Massive, Flexible meteor hammer. Each tag has three benefits, including a possible minor stat bonus. Paired weapons give a small bonus to accuracy, let you deal a little damage to someone if you roll well to block their attacks, and give you a way of making secondary attacks, which does cost resources to use.

Note that extra attacks aren't as good in LotW as they are in most games; LotW has a weird dice mechanic based on matching sets, where you roll your dice pool and can assign sets to different actions. Paired weapons just give you a way of using one of your leftover sets to make an attack, which you normally can't do. Also, you can get secondary attacks through kung fu techniques, so paired weapons don't have a monopoly on the mechanic.

Yeah, use a second blade to make up for your lack of skill, snakeboy.

Warhammer, because there is noo dual wielding, you gain nothing from using a weapon in off-hand for attacking, it's just a normal attack (with penalty without a trait, which I homerule and simply delete).

Off-hand is just used for parrying (with anything, preferably with "parrying" items, like shields, sword breakers or parrying daggers).

I don't really like dual wielding, even in epic systems like dnd, I don't see the appeal.

I like systems where shields are listed as weapons. Which is basically doing the same thing from a different angle.

Just say the player can chose which weapon they want to use when making attacks.

A character could carry short sword and throwing axe or dagger on the side.

They have slight more versatility, but don't get any extra, bonuses, attacks or penalties because of it.

What more do you want?

According to Roland Warzecha, dual wielding with two identical weapons that do the same thing is pretty hard for the human brain. It's a lot easier for humans to use both arms when they're for different functions. That's why shield + weapon is easy but two identical swords is hard.

>buying Riddle of Steel when Song of Swords and Band of Bastards are free

Fantasy Craft has a pretty elegant take on it, really:

There's no inherent benefit to wielding two weapons at once, aside from the fact that you have access to each weapon (and the various options/beneficial traits each may afford) simultaneously without needing to spend actions to switch weapons. To get more attacks per turn from two-weapon fighting, you need to take a feat, which works identically to similar feats you can get for other weapon styles (single melee weapon, ranged weapon, or unarmed).

Were you playing characters that were not assumed to be competent or trained with their fighting style?

Yeah, and they're just as bad as everyone else.

>It's just so unrealistic
So unrealistic it was done for real back in the sword days... for show but still.

what i personally did is adding a little defense bonus for having two means of parrying. against foes with a two-handed weapon you get the advantage of having one weapon getting parried while with the other one you can ignore the bonus one defense

You sound salty.

I bet that out of ten duels with me you wouldn't win a single one, you coward.

Seconding Fantasy Craft and 40k RPGs and good ways of handling it. LotW was always hard for me to wrap my head around though.

My favorite way of handling it is 13th Age: You pick one of the weapons to attack with each turn and if you roll a 2 on the d20 you get to reroll the attack, fluffed as you taking advantage of an opening or feinting with your offhand. If you really, really want to attack twice in a round you can choose some character options for it, but you use a smaller die for damage so the net effect is only something like +3 damage.

I really don't like d20 systems that let anyone make an extra attack each turn, even at a penalty, because that way of doing things almost invariably makes sword-and-dagger fighting pointless.

Technically, Dual Weapon Attack fits the bill. Though you still have to roll once for each weapon.

dual weapon fighting is best done with big disadvantages on your off-hand.

So I've got a few ways to handle it that can be used or combined.

>Multi-attack
The D&D. You can attack once with each weapon. Has the potential to be ludicrously broken if dual-wielding powerful weapons, so it's usually limited to weaker ones. I don't use this.

>Off-hand guard
The off hand dagger/etc. gives a defensive buff or functions similarly to a shield. Modify the AC and/or shield bash damage depending on the type of weapon.

>Paired weapons
'Dual wielding' is treated in the rules similarly to a single weapon and/or two-handed weapon. My preferred.

Basically, dual-daggers (in 5e) is one attack roll with 2d4 base damage. That comes out to slightly more than a longsword, but at the cost of a shield.

Feats let you up that to 2d6 base for twin scimitars or shortswords, more equivalent to a greatsword.

For a strange mix like spear + warhammer, use both dice. 1d6 + 1d8. However, impose a penalty to attack roles AND AC for using an unwieldy weapon in such a manner.

If one weapon is disarmed, treat the remaining as... a single weapon.

If the player chooses to attack with their primary and defend with an off-hand, they get a shield-style AC bonus (if it's a dagger or something that can parry).

Twin spears or longswords is fine! But it'll take 2 or so feats to remove the negative penalties and by that point great-weapon fighters have been rerolling bad attack damage for six levels.

two weapon fighting is for weebs and 12 year olds

youtube.com/watch?v=gJBEDxh0RQw

It amazes me that out of all the things that could trigger people's autism in fantasy settings, the thing which really gets them is something that was a real historical practice, only presented in an unrealistic, stylized way. Even though most combat in modern media is highly stylized and unrealistic in the first place, and certainly in most RPGs, with or without dual wielding.

But I don't think it's actually about realism. These people just like to pretend they are superior to the people who are actually enjoying themselves because they know historical trivia via YouTube amateur historians.

Master race

OP asked where to get it in print my man. So I told him.
Also, I bought RoS last year and there's nothing you can do about it!

>lindybeige
yeah sure... you'd better check your historical sources.
wiktenauer.com/wiki/Category:Double_Side_Swords

It's gonna be really hard swinging a zweihandler in one hand while dual wielding.

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