Multiweapon Fighting and Changing Forms

[SirNibbles]

How exactly does Multiweapon Fighting (Monster Manual, page 304) function with changing forms?

Do you have to qualify for the feat in your base form in order to gain any benefit? If your base form allows you to take Multiweapon Fighting and you change into a form with two or fewer hands, do you lose the benefit of Multiweapon Fighting (due to prerequisite loss) without gaining the benefit of Two-Weapon Fighting?

If you have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat (Player's Handbook, page 102) and your base form has two hands and you change form (via Polymorph, Wild Shape, or some other method) to a form with three or more hands, are you treated as having Multiweapon Fighting?

The wording is rather vague:

"Special: This feat replaces the Two-Weapon Fighting feat for creatures with more than two arms." - Monster Manual, page 304

[Gruftzwerg]

How exactly does Multiweapon Fighting (Monster Manual, page 304) function with changing forms?

Do you have to qualify for the feat in your base form in order to gain any benefit?
No you need to have the form when you take the feat. > actual form at time of gaining the feat/lvlUp.


If your base form allows you to take Multiweapon Fighting and you change into a form with two or fewer hands, do you lose the benefit of Multiweapon Fighting (due to prerequisite loss) without gaining the benefit of Two-Weapon Fighting? you lose the benifits of MWF and don't gain anything in exchange.


If you have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat (Player's Handbook, page 102) and your base form has two hands and you change form (via Polymorph, Wild Shape, or some other method) to a form with three or more hands, are you treated as having Multiweapon Fighting? No. same as the question before.


The wording is rather vague:

"Special: This feat replaces the Two-Weapon Fighting feat for creatures with more than two arms." - Monster Manual, page 304
You may treat MWF as TWF for requirements of feats/PrC/abilities and so on. Just to pass the requirement (facecheck). But you don't get the benefits of the other ability.

[Darrin]

How exactly does Multiweapon Fighting (Monster Manual, page 304) function with changing forms?


TWF and MWF are interchangeable. If you have TWF when you change into a form with 3 or more hands, then TWF becomes MWF. Likewise, if your natural form is multi-armed, you have MWF, and you change into a typical humanoid form, then MWF is replaced by TWF.



Do you have to qualify for the feat in your base form in order to gain any benefit?


If you change into a form that no longer meets the Dex requirement, then you still have the feat but can't use it to reduce your TWF/MWF penalties. You'd use the typical TWF penalties for attacking with offhand weapons.



If your base form allows you to take Multiweapon Fighting and you change into a form with two or fewer hands, do you lose the benefit of Multiweapon Fighting (due to prerequisite loss) without gaining the benefit of Two-Weapon Fighting?


No. MWF is replaced by TWF. However, there is a discrepancy between the Dex requirements. MWF only requires Dex 13, while TWF requires Dex 15. If your new form has a Dex score under 15, then you would still have the TWF feat, but would not be able to use it.



If you have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat (Player's Handbook, page 102) and your base form has two hands and you change form (via Polymorph, Wild Shape, or some other method) to a form with three or more hands, are you treated as having Multiweapon Fighting?


Yes.



The wording is rather vague:

"Special: This feat replaces the Two-Weapon Fighting feat for creatures with more than two arms." - Monster Manual, page 304

It is. My reasoning here is "replaces" happens any time you change form, rather than at a specific "level up" point. I'm also assuming that the replacement is symmetric and reversible. There isn't much clear rules text on this, so I'm basing my reasoning on what I would consider an easy-to-understand and practical interpretation for general table play rather than get bogged down into the minutiae of all the different variations of changing forms.

I'm also assuming that TWF/MWF were obtained the typical way: gaining class levels/HD, or gaining them via a class ability (Ranger 2, Fighter Bonus Feat, etc.). In general, you keep your existing feats when you change form, although it depends on how exactly you're changing form and there are certain feats that don't always work in your new form. Feats with (Su) effects may not work, and racial bonus feats may be lost.

[Gruftzwerg]

It is. My reasoning here is "replaces" happens any time you change form, rather than at a specific "level up" point. I'm also assuming that the replacement is symmetric and reversible. There isn't much clear rules text on this, so I'm basing my reasoning on what I would consider an easy-to-understand and practical interpretation for general table play rather than get bogged down into the minutiae of all the different variations of changing forms.

I'm also assuming that TWF/MWF were obtained the typical way: gaining class levels/HD, or gaining them via a class ability (Ranger 2, Fighter Bonus Feat, etc.). In general, you keep your existing feats when you change form, although it depends on how exactly you're changing form and there are certain feats that don't always work in your new form. Feats with (Su) effects may not work, and racial bonus feats may be lost.

I get your point of view. But why would they split it into 2 feats then? I mean, it would have been far more easy to skip TWF and put all the rules into MWF (which would cover TWF if it wasn't a feat for itself). And since PHB & MM are invented/published at the same time, I assume that there was a reason for slitting it into 2 feats and not puting everything into a single feat (= you don't change the feat just because you changed form, imho). It just refers to anything that would otherwise affect or interact with the TWF featline.

[Darrin]

I get your point of view. But why would they split it into 2 feats then? I mean, it would have been far more easy to skip TWF and put all the rules into MWF (which would cover TWF if it wasn't a feat for itself). And since PHB & MM are invented/published at the same time, I assume that there was a reason for slitting it into 2 feats and not puting everything into a single feat (= you don't change the feat just because you changed form, imho). It just refers to anything that would otherwise affect or interact with the TWF featline.

It's partly an artifact of differences between the switch between 3.0 to 3.5 editions, and partly a consequence of haphazard design philosophy.

In 3.0, the designers did not anticipate (and in many cases deliberately discouraged) PCs from being anything other than the standard humanoid races. You can see this in several 3.0-era books: The [Monstrous] feats are for MONSTERS only! The [Draconic] feats are for DRAGONS only! You can even see this anti-humanoid bias in the 3.0 version of girallon's blessing: having multiple arms is confusing for a humanoid mind! Make a Will save to see if you use the wrong salad fork or accidentally disembowel yourself!

However, in between 3.0 and 3.5, this philosophy shifted, and you can see this shift in Savage Species. This is where we see Level Adjustment/ECL introduced, monster classes, type-changing rituals, the type pyramid, templates, etc. Unfortunately, Savage Species was published right in the middle of the transition between 3.0 and 3.5, and is sometimes referred to as a "3.25" book because it has a mishmash of 3.0 and 3.5 rules.

In 3.5, the stance on PCs playing on monsters has changed. We have LA/ECL, we have more subsystems weaving in non-humanoid abilities, thri-kreen are in the XPH/SRD, and there is a more open-minded attitude to non-humanoid PCs. Unfortunately, the MWF feats were never properly updated. They included MWF in the 3.5 Monster Manual mostly for compatibility reasons, as that was the only "multi-armed" feat that appeared in any notable stat blocks. Improved/Greater MWF were only printed in Savage Species, and for whatever reason the designers never got around to updating it: it was already "sorta" 3.5, so... just handwave it and move on.

Under 3.0, MWF was intended to be the equivalent of TWF: if you were a multi-armed creature, you took that instead of TWF, and it was supposed to be functionally the same. Maybe one of the designers got all bent out of shape over the grammatical structure of "Two-Weapon" and "Multi-Weapon"? It might have made more sense to combine the two feats into a single feat and eliminate the confusion but... that didn't happen. So we have the 3.0 intent (badly worded, with no further detail) with all these other 3.0/3.5 feat chains, and if you want the game to move along smoothly, then you just use the "minor adjustments" clause from DMG page 4 and move along.