Dual Wielding [Dungeons & Dragons]
(midwest.social)
tgirlschierke
RPGMemes Well, yeah. If the sword is so heavy that you need two hands to wield it...then, it's a two-handed weapon. It's only considered "dual wielding" if both your hands are holding separate weapons. So, sword in one hand and an empty handed attack with the other, counts.
The whole basis of this (nonsense) argument, and related ones, is that "weapon" is defined as "one of the entries in the 'weapons' table in the DMG", rather than y'know, the normal meaning of the word. But there is zero indication that this'd be the case, it's just powergaming chudslop.
Treantmonk has been a disaster for tbe 5e community.
People desperately need to understand that mechanical rules are there for balancing and taking them so painfully literally just isn’t necessary.
You only get one unarmed attack on the dice, but if you want to say you did the damage in two or three hits instead of one then go for it, it literally does not matter. You can even say you missed one attack and them wound up for a sneaky second one!
Follow the rules for number related things and roleplay and tell a story for being cool related things.
As DM, I'll have you roll the dice, tell you if it succeeded or not, and then have YOU describe what happens based on the roll.
But with this particular thing, it's not really about the story. It's the player trying to maximize their bonuses so the dice will be more favorable. In which case, sure. You can dual wield your hands. But you're still taking a penalty with your off-hand unless you have the feat that removes it. You ever try to punch someone with your non-dominant arm? You definitely take a penalty IRL, unless you're ambidextrous.
... and this is why I don't play D&D. It's all abstract. It's more like a board game than an RPG.
[Obviously, this is just my opinion, and it's subjective, and it's probably wrong. But, we are where we are.]
In what way? The die tell you success rate so you can’t just say “I succeed at everything” and you use your creativity to bring it all to life.
Your comment as written, especially with the clear example in my first comment, reads like “I’m not creative enough to work within the system”. I’m guessing that isn’t your point but I’m not sure what else to read it as.
You have to abstract something for a game, though. So are you saying you want it less abstract in that you want less of it to rely on dice (and thus more role playing), or do you want it less abstract in that you want more crunch and mechanics for, like, pooping?
I was more thinking about the abstraction of things like character classes and levels. "I'm a knight and can only more in L-shapes." or "I'm a seventh level human." That's what I mean about it being more like a board game than an RPG. Compare "I'm a third level barbarian" to, eg, Call of Cthulhu and "I'm a pilot who was a POW in WWI which is when I picked up fluency in German." One of those is a potential character, the other is just a playing piece.
There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there
Read it as dual welding and was quite impressed by the concept.
Unarmed Strikes are not just punches, they have nothing to do with how many hands you have. You can even Unarmed Strike with a weapon in each hand. If you want to "dual wield" Unarmed Strikes, go Monk.
Stuff like this is why I like my DM so much. He has basically a "common sense" time for stuff like this where if an action makes good common sense within the world he's built (like a warrior type being able to punch someone after swinging a sword, or a brawler type being able to use both their fists without having to have some esoteric attribute attached to their character sheet), it's allowed, and you can roll for it.
There's a phenomenon in TTRPGs called a Mermaids Amulet. There was an item in a game that let a mermaid breathe in air, which was the ONLY thing that indicated they normally couldn't. In short, a rule was only shown to exist by an ability to overcome it.
Monks have the ability to make a bonus action unarmed strike after making an attack, which would be redundant if the dual wielding rules let you do that.
If you are with a mermaid with this, can you summon the amulate from around their neck?
thought that just let them add their modifier to the second attack
If that was the case, it'd be phrased more like Two Weapon Fighting from the fighter's fighting styles. But instead of saying you can add your modifier, it says you can make an unarmed strike. Which means you couldn't before.
An Unarmed Strike without modifier would also be literally 1 point of damage, barring Monk or Unarmed Fighting Style
I am directly talking about the Monk, though
DND is a weird mix of too many rules and not enough rules.
I can't imagine too many scenarios where allowing someone who is wielding a one-handed (or versatile) weapon and nothing in the off hand to have a bonus action unarmed strike to be game-breaking. Seems like an easy call to me.
So there's a few issues here:
- Unarmed Strikes do not require an open hand. Punches, kicks, and slams all count as the same Unarmed Strike
- If you were to allow this, there would be no reason to allow someone with two Shortswords or a Greataxe to do a BA strike
- ...which would then render the BA attack from Polearm Master moot since they no longer need a feat to do that
- I'll also note that the fighter with a sword in one hand and nothing in the other is likely using the Duelist fighting style, so that sword attack is effectively two die sizes larger. A Duelist Longsword is roughly equivalent to a Greatsword to put it in perspective
At the end of the day, allowing martials to perform a BA Unarmed Strike wouldn't be game breaking, but it needs to be applied universally which has secondary implications
As far as I remember the rules, unarmed strike damage is 1 + Str modifier (i.e., a 1d1 damage die). And anyone untrained in unarmed strikes (not monk, not having the Tavern Brawler feat or similar) couldn't add their prof bonus to the attack roll. This makes it significantly weaker than a proper dual wielding build or something like PAM, where the attacker typically gets a proper damage die and prof bonus. Which is why it doesn't seem like a big deal to allow it.
Unarmed strikes can be done for flavor with kicks, elbows, etc. But mechanically I'd allow it as a proper bonus action if the character were wielding a single weapon without a shield. Anyone can describe anything however they want for flavor, I'm just talking about balancing the action economy.
Unarmed strikes with kicks and elbows and such aren't just flavor, it's written in the rules that you can use any part of your body.
Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, head-butt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike—a melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, or shove a target within 5 feet of you.
The mechanics don't state you need a free hand anywhere.
You need to be trained in some sort of unarmed fighting style to be able to throw a kick in between slashes. If you did it untrained, it would leave you unbalanced and prone to get hit.
Makes sense to let a monk with a quarterstaff do it and not a barb with a great axe.
Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, headbutt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike
D&D isn't a real world simulator. It values them all equally.
You technically can't do an unarmed strike if you have a 2hander. Quarterstaves are versatile weapons, which allow for monks to do kicks while using them.
I know what you said, but the mechanics still don't allow for kicks with a regular 2hander. I was trying to rationalise the actual mechanics with some real world logic.
Do you know where it says you can't unarmed strike while holding a two handed weapon? I'm not seeing a requirement for a free hand in the rules.
Pretty sure this is rules as written or at least as interpreted by Baldur's Gate 3. It's been a while since my playthrough but I'm pretty sure I was doing this with Astarion the whole time. Knife in one hand unarmed strike with the other. Warrior monk rogue kicked ass.
In BG3, you have to multiclass into rogue for the off-hand attack. But yeah, I think it would let you "dual wield" with a single light weapon.
That's incorrect, if you are able to dual wield you can bonus action attack, the issue is that you get only 1 offhand attack and it doesn't get your str/dex to damage without the feat. Also, after lvl 5 other classes get to multi attack with the mainhand, but the offhand gets only 1 attack. 2 if you get the extra bonus action from thief.
You need to use light weapons though.
So we're just giving out bonus actions now? /s
Free actions? In this economy?
Yeah, especially when one is likely much more powerful than the other. If you are a monk with a sword you are wasting your time. If you are a Warrior* with a free hand you are wasting your time.
*Sorry, that should have been Fighter, I'm sick, and I've been reading too many variant rulesets while I'm sitting at home.
If you have nothing else to do with your bonus action that round then it isn't really a waste of time, no matter how bad it is. 1 damage is sometimes all you need.
Anytime a show or movie shows a sword fight where someone also gets punched in the face is just good choriography.
Also somewhat historically accurate. Ye olde sword fighting was basically just brawling with blades.
Depends on what era. In Europe, coats of plates didn't really appear before the 13th century and full plate armor wasn't developed until the late 14th century. Before that you mainly had people wearing chainmail and a helmet if they could get it, or gambesons (cloth armor).
At that time, weapons were still somewhat effective against armor. Spears, axes, and arrows could punch through chainmail.
When full plate armor was developed, only the very wealthy had access to it, and everyone else continued to just wear chainmail and gambesons. Fully armored knights effectively became tanks that could slash their way through all the peons.
The only realistic way the foot soldiers could stop them was to have several guys swarm an isolated knight, each grabbing a limb, and hold him down. Then they would either stab the knight through the gaps in his armor (like the eyeslot of the visor) or more likely would drag him off for ransom.
That being said, there are plenty of instances of 2 armored knights fighting each other, with them often half-swording or grappling each other to the ground and stabbing each other with daggers.
But my earlier comparison to tanks still stands. Most of the time, tanks are actually supporting infantry units, with tank v tank encounters being relatively rare. Similarly, knights spent most of their time in relatively small units killing a lot of unarmored opponents
Ugh, this is reminding me that my DM swears that my dual wielding, grappling rune knight/barbarian’s fists are not “melee weapons” and thus cannot use any of the runes that are activated by a melee weapon.
If Bruce Lee’s were licensed as lethal weapons, then why the hell can’t mine, Dan!?
The ones that say "when you hit a creature with an attack using a weapon"? Your DM is following the intended rules. In 5e, your empty hand can make "melee weapon attacks," but that attack is not an "attack with a melee weapon" or an "attack using a weapon." Unless that changed in the recent update, I haven't read the 5.5 books.
Melee weapon attacks not being attacks with a weapon sounds like a prime example of badly written rules.
It’s because “attack” isn’t specific enough. Everything in DnD is either a weapon attack (typically a physical attack using whatever weapon you have equipped) or a spell attack. In general parlance, “I punch the kobold” translates to “I use Unarmed Strike to make a weapon attack on the kobold.” But that doesn’t mean the Unarmed Strike is a weapon. Since generic attacks aren’t allowed in the rules, you have to designate it as a weapon attack, instead of a spell attack. Oftentimes, the distinction is because there are certain spells or effects that use your weapon as a spell focus, or trigger when making/taking weapon/spell attacks.
For instance, Booming Blade requires brandishing a weapon to channel the spell before you make a weapon attack. The spell component literally lists “a melee weapon worth at least 1 sp, which the spell does not consume.” Then if you hit with the weapon attack, the spell triggers. So your fists could make a weapon attack (using Unarmed Strike) but would not count as a valid weapon for the spell. Even if you could convince the DM that your hand is worth at least 1 silver piece, it still wouldn’t be a melee weapon. So you wouldn’t be able to cast the spell if you were unarmed.
Still sounds like a badly chosen name to me. Calling a category "weapon attack" when not all attacks within it are attacks with weapons makes it wide open to misinterpretation, especially when in some cases it's relevant whether a weapon is used or not. The fact that it took you two long paragraphs to explain the difference between a weapon attack and a weapon attack with a weapon illustrates this rather nicely.
Distinguishing "spell/nonspell" or "spell/weapon/unarmed" would've solved the issue without this whole "weapon but not really" song and dance routine.
Any complicated system with a long history is going to have quirks, be that a game or any other.
A change which appears simple at first glance like adding 'unarmed' as a basic category might end up introducing more complication than it solves, due to knock-on effects in other parts of the mechanics.
Maybe. It's because "weapon attack" is the verbiage they settled on for hitting somebody with something that isn't a spell (spells make "spell attacks"). They could call them "weapon or unarmed attacks" but that seems unnecessarily verbose when 95% of them are going to be made with a weapon. You might think that for hand-to-hand combat you could simply refer to "melee attacks," but "melee" is a specifier that can be applied to spell attacks too, so it's out.
So the current situation is this: a rule can simply refer to all "attacks," or it can refer to "melee" or "ranged" attacks, or it can refer to "weapon" or "spell" attacks, or it can use both specifiers (as in "ranged weapon attack").
So if you want to fix it, you need a word to replace "weapon" that could include unarmed combat but excludes all spells. "Physical" might be good, but has some edge case problems: if I have a psychic "blade" that attacks your mind, it makes "physical attacks" despite being a non-physical object. If I have a spell that physically throws a boulder at you, it's pretty easy for me to remember that I should make a spell attack roll, but if you have a feature that defends against "physical attacks" you might think it should apply against the boulder when it doesn't. "Martial attack" might be getting at the right thing, but it sounds strange, and for new players who might be new to RPGs "martial" and "melee" are both uncommon words that kind of sound similar, and that might cause confusion. (Also "martial melee attack" sounds more natural than "melee martial attack," but then it has the opposite word order from "melee spell attack" and that's weird.)
There may be a perfect word out there, but in the end they decided "weapon" was the least confusing, despite requiring the caveat that attacking unarmed is a "weapon attack." And so everywhere that the rules say "attack with a weapon" instead, it is to specifically exclude unarmed attacks, although I admit that it's not always obvious why they want to do that.
The term "nonspell" would be available if the only relevant distinction is whether it's a spell or not.
weird... am I the only one who grew up w/ 'dual wielding is two weapons of the same kind' table rule? hence, the dual label....
Not the only one, but probably a minority. Dual-wielding identical weapons is mostly a meme popularized by fantasy literature and games, and the movies and pc games based on those.
In actual reality people are quite bad at coordinating similar weapons and don't get much benefit out of it. So the classical dual-wield is a bigger main weapon and a smaller supporting offhand, beginning with shields being used offensively (and getting smaller and more maneuverable with the main one becoming lighter and faster - see buckler) and ending with classic combinations like rapier & parrying dagger or Daishō (a katana & wakizashi pair).
Rapier and main gauche was my first idea of dual wielding, shrug
DW in real life means that you have two weapons, of any kind. It literally means that you are wielding two. Not a pair.
Probably, considering the meaning of dual
When I DM I have a consistent house rule that if you have the ability to do a bonus action, you can do a strike with an unarmed off hand if you are adjacent to an enemy regardless of class. If it connects it does 1d4 bludgeoning and has a chance to knock a medium or smaller enemy prone if the player wins a strength contest. Nat 20 achieves both the connecting of the hit and the prone.
That is massively more powerful than a RAW normal action unarmed attack, which does a single point of damage with no other riders.
More fun
I’d allow this but, I’d let it just be the flat Str score of an attack.
Monks get to have their unarmed strike to be special.
The prone stuff seems a bit OP. I’d make it a part of Crusher instead.
It usually works out fine. Plus sometimes the potential of just getting a 1d4 out of it doesn’t seem worth it to waste a bonus action, especially at higher level encounters. I have other house rules that also incentivize other options too. But I’ve been blessed with players that like to keep things interesting and inventive for the fun of it rather than just cheese everything they can.
"Also, f*ck monks."
I like when my monk players take 15 minutes to decide what to do only to end up punching a bunch of times and end their turn.
I think that has less to do with monks and more to do with your players.
...most folks don't like that...
As someone with a similar hobby, I personally hate this clip. It's obviously choreographed, but I just don't find concussions funny anymore.
What's hilarious to me is that you'd have to have a mod to make this work effectively in bg3. Or at least multiclass into monk, which makes little sense when you confused consider that fighters are kinda known for tactics like that, and there's a lomg standing tradition of punching a motherfucker when a weapon attack fails, or even using a weapon attack to set up a punch (or kick) in many martial arts that have a weapon focus
Martial arts? Like monks are trained in?
I didn't write things in a good way.
Yes, like monks are trained in, but more like real world monks that are martial artists.
