Best TWF using core books only

[Aaron Underhand]

Hi, asking for the assembled brain to help with this.

I know that TWF is generally considered inferior to GWM, PAM, Sharpshooter or xBow expert builds, but I was wondering what the best core build looks like.

Options I can see include:

Straight Fighter
Straight Ranger
and various other multiclass flavours with Warlock, Paladin or Barbarian

I'd like a view at 1st, 5th and 11th level

To reiterate - Core books only

Thanks in advance

[CTurbo]

I'd say a combo of either Ranger/Barbarian, Fighter/Barbarian, or Ranger/Fighter/Barbarian

Bottom line, Barbarians make great TWF characters and are even better with the fighting style.

The Dual Wielder feat is good but not mandatory unless you are looking for maximum optimization.

[Expected]

Rogue 19/Fighter 1 is, in my opinion, the best at TWF. You get 2 chances to Sneak Attack, +Dex modifier for offhand or +1 AC from the Fighter dip, and +1 AC and the ability to dual wield rapiers (the Finesse weapon with the highest damage die) with the Dual Wielder feat.

[Spacehamster]

gloom stalker 5, rogue(any) 15 would be working great, variant human and get the dual wield feat right out the gate and at level 3 gloom stalker you get dark vision, negating the lack there of
that humans normally suffer from. :)

Edit: oh core books only, then hunter ranger works almost as well.

[ProseBeforeHos]

Rogue 19/Fighter 1 is, in my opinion, the best at TWF. You get 2 chances to Sneak Attack, +Dex modifier for offhand or +1 AC from the Fighter dip, and +1 AC and the ability to dual wield rapiers (the Finesse weapon with the highest damage die) with the Dual Wielder feat.

I think this is the right idea. Go;

Rogue 1 (more skills starting as a rogue)

Fighter 1 (pick up TFW style)

Rogue 2-8 (all of a rogues more powerful stuff, and your 2nd ASI)

Fighter 2-5 (two attacks)

Then run rogue till lvl 20/end of campaign.


As for your subclass... if we're using *just* the core books then I suggest assassin. If the expanded books (Volo's etc.) are allowed, swashbuckler is a natural pick.

[MrSalty]

Depending on the length of your typical adventuring day, Vengeance Paladin with a dip of something to get the TWF style seems like an easy way to take optimal advantage of multiple hits. Pally has some good spells that apply on-hit affects to say nothing of being able to unload your smites at a truly alarming rate.

[Whit]

TWF. Best options.

1. Rogue. Sneak attack works on a hit. So the more attacks you get, better chance to hit.

2. Paladin Vengeance gives advantage. Hexblade lvl 1 gives 19-20 crit. more hits u get better to roll that crit then smite for max dice rolls.

[Corran]

Rogue. For getting another chance to sneak attack if your first attack misses. I don't think it's any good for anyone else (especially fighters, that get up to 4 attacks).

[bid]

I think the best is ranger 5 / rogue 15
- 3 * 1d6+5 from basic attacks with twf style
- 1d8 from colossus
- 3 * 1d6 from HM
- 8d6 from SA
~ 64 damage, with better DPR conversion since most of it has 3 chances to land.
This assumes you don't have to move HM.

Bladelock 12 / rogue 8 comes close
- 3 * 1d6+5 - 5 from basic attack without twf style
- 3 * 6 from lifedrinker / improved pact weapon
- 3 * 1d6 from hex
- 4d6 from SA
~ 63 damage
This assumes you don't have to move hex.

[strangebloke]

TWF hexblade is super cool but not actually good. Same for bloodhunter. The problem comes down to action economy. You need multiple turns to turn on hex/blood rite/hex curse, and by the time you get the DPR out the fight's basically over. In a situation where for some reason you can set up all the bonus actions ahead of time, this build is insanely high damage. Much easier to set up ahead of time with blood hunter.

[No brains]

Even though they don't get the style, Paladins can make good TWFighters for the same reasons that Rogues are: more chances to land their big hit. While spell slots limit the number of times the Paladin can ultimately land those big hits, heavy armor proficiency and a larger hit die give them more chances to land those hits.

[Mortis_Elrod]

I've tried twf builds in a multiple different ways.

PHB only i think you're best bet is Barbarian 9/Fighter 11. Champion is great for crit fishing truth, but i like battle master more for a variety of reasons, one of which is that more attacks means more maneuvers per turn, which means more damage. Also Superiority die add to crits, which makes the criticals better, then add in brutal critical..

So this has the benefits of crits while also having nice sustained damage via rage and lots of attacks, plus its fairly tanky with HP. For Barbarian subclass i think either are fine. Really the build class features more so than the subclass' do it all for you.

PHB only race....vHuman gets you dual wielder ASAP, but i think maybe Half-Orc is better for Savage attack. you have enough ASIs for STR 20, Con 20 and Dual wielder. i guess human gets you more dex so slightly better AC....

[Kane0]

Basically something that wants weapons but doesn't use a lot of bonus actions.

Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin have little to use their bonus actions on without going into feats, so work well with TWF depending on stats and subclass

Ranger, Bard, Warlock and Rogue have things to do with their bonus action but can also dual wield relatively well.

Oddly enough some casters like Clerics can benefit from TWF quite a bit, but they aren't usually the best attackers.

At the bottom of the heap are wizards, sorcerers, druids and monks. The former not being well suited to weapons in the first place and the latter having TWF essentially built into the class with Martial Arts and Flurry of Blows

[ProsecutorGodot]

TWF hexblade is super cool but not actually good. Same for bloodhunter. The problem comes down to action economy. You need multiple turns to turn on hex/blood rite/hex curse, and by the time you get the DPR out the fight's basically over. In a situation where for some reason you can set up all the bonus actions ahead of time, this build is insanely high damage. Much easier to set up ahead of time with blood hunter.

This was my nightmare at the start of SKT with my Blood Hunter. I made him to be a TWF. Strictly by raw when you activate your rite you can't sheathe your weapons or have those weapons leave your grip. Kind of inconvenient not having a free hand during the exploration parts of the game and as you've already mentioned activating the rites in combat was pretty sub optimal.

I switched that character to a SnB build as soon as I had the chance. The cool points are off the charts for TWF but the effectiveness was incredibly lacking.

As for on topic: Assuming a primary attacking ability score of 16 at level 1, ASI at 4 and Dual Wielding at 8. Fighters and Rogues can have their primary attack stat maxed by level 8 due to their increased amounts of ASI.

1st level:
Fighter : (2d6)+6 = ~13 starting turn 1
Barb : (2d6)+7 = ~14 starting turn 2 after raging
Rogue : (2d6)+3 + 1d6 = ~13.5 starting turn 1, requires sneak attack
Other classes do not yet compete in effectiveness with these 3.

5th level:
Fighter 5: (3d6)+12 = ~22.5 starting turn 1
-Can gain ~15 more damage with action surge
-Battle Master can add superiority dice to damage, for as much as ~13.5 more damage. This uses 3/4 of their superiority dice pool
-Hunter Ranger is competitive with this build, trading nova damage for consistency. They also gain spellcasting.
Barb 5 : (3d6)+14 = ~24.5 starting turn 2 after raging
-PHB Barbarian has no subclass that gives them any additional damage
Rogue 4/ Fighter 1 : (4d6)+12 = ~26 starting turn 1, requires sneak attack
-Rogues do not gain extra attack so we multiclass fighter for TWF, damage improves over the additional 1d6 sneak attack by 0.5.
-Where the other classes can split this damage as needed, Rogue does not allow for multi target damage spreading due to its reliance on sneak attack.
-Rogue 3/ Paladin 2 is competitive with this build, trading consistency for nova damage.

11th level and later:
Things become complicated. Raw numbers matter less this late into building a character, your choices become about what you need and what you're willing to give up. It's hard to argue that a mix of Rogue X/Paladin X wouldn't be some of the highest nova damage available, while a straight Fighter option would give you some of the most consistent damage. The better of the two options is mostly preference but I would very slightly give the edge to Rogue X/Paladin X as Nova damage is more likely to push an encounter in the players favor, in my experience.

Hunter Ranger remains loosely comparable to Fighters but is starting to lose out due to Spellcasting taking up a large part of their design space and not giving them much in return for a melee focused build. They become incentivized to multiclass into Fighter or Rogue to keep their damage up and pick up more useful class features like Action Surge and Sneak Attack. Rangers don't lose much by leaving their core class behind, this is considered one of the major faults of PHB Ranger.

At this point a single class TWF Barbarian starts to become significantly less effective due to the design of their class pushing heavier weapons with larger damage dice. A TWF Barbarian would also be incentivized to multiclass into fighter at this point, but that loses them the opportunity (that may never happen) of achieving the juicy capstone of +4 STR and CON.

These are just some examples, notably easy ones to use and build. There are other combinations that can be used that are more complex (Tri class Fighter/Rogue/Paladin) and some that require strict understanding of the game rules (Rogue/Barb).

tl;dr (if my opinion piece isn't super interesting)
Level 1: Fighter
Level 5: Rogue 4/ Fighter 1
Level 11+: Rogue X/Paladin X

[Rerem115]

I've always had a soft spot for Ranger 8-9/Rogue 11-12. You get all the Ranger features that are actually important, and then you get a lot of the best Rogue features (In the case of the Hunter Ranger, you can get the same feature(s) earlier by multiclassing Rogue than staying Ranger!).

Hunter's Mark + Extra Attack is always nice, and then multiclassing Rogue makes sure that you don't cap out your DPR by 5th level.

[Whit]

Rogue. For getting another chance to sneak attack if your first attack misses. I don't think it's any good for anyone else (especially fighters, that get up to 4 attacks).

Fighter with GW feat true.
But he can get fighter with 5 attack’s as twin weapon. Will it do less equal or more damage? Depends on ac to hit. If GW goes for -5 to hit and missed 2/4 and twin hits 5/5 twin does more damage.
Plus it is about how you want your character to look sometimes over optimizing. You want that duel wielder loom or not.

[nickl_2000]

Fighter with GW feat true.
But he can get fighter with 5 attack’s as twin weapon. Will it do less equal or more damage? Depends on ac to hit. If GW goes for -5 to hit and missed 2/4 and twin hits 5/5 twin does more damage.
Plus it is about how you want your character to look sometimes over optimizing. You want that duel wielder loom or not.

It also depends on what else you do. Taking Magic Initiate Warlock for Hex would make a decent difference with 5 attacks.

[rbstr]

Basically you're looking for low bonus-action usage and things that do added damage per hit. And you really should pick up the fighting style via Fighter 1 on classes that don't get it automatically.

Damage per-hit:
Ranger for Hunter's Mark, Guardian of Nature (for weird strength-rangers)
Barbarian's rage
Warlock's Hex
Hexblade Curse
Paladin Improved Divine Smite and Divine Favor (which is...maybe a bit better than it gets credit for when dual-wielding. You don't have to use a BA to switch targets like Hunter's Mark and Hex)

A very important note is that nearly all of these things require a bonus action to activate! So, if you try to stack up on these per-hit things, you're going to get diminishing returns unless you're fighting something that will last many rounds.

There's also the pseudo-TWF of Monk's martial arts attack. Pretty compatible with Ranger in particular.

Best at level 1 is probably Fighter, since it gets the style. Like that's a bit better than Hex/HM + regular attack + twf attack. (2x(d6+3)=13 every round vs. 2d6+3=10 round 1, 3d6+3+13.5 in subsequent rounds)
At 5? Ranger. Fighting Style, Hunter's Mark, and Extra Attack pull it ahead. No other option offers all three things at level 6. Though fighter1+something can at level 6 - Paladin is the dark horse level 6 candidate.
Level 11? Fighter 1 Barbarian 10, maybe? My bet is on that or Hexblade (using the curse)+fighter 1/. Paladin+Fighter1 is, again, dark horse candidate at level 12.

[Rerem115]

Oooh, have to give special mention to Vengeance Paladin. TWF style + Hunter's Mark + Smite + Improved Divine Smite is a nasty combination.

*edit* They don't get TWF, which makes no sense to me, but a Fighter 1/Vengeance Paladin X would be a fine build. Or, even better, if your DM is permissive and allows either the Varian Weapon Master Feat (+1 Str, Fighting Style) or TWF as a Paladin style.