Improving the Feel of Two Weapon Fighting

[Floorlock]

I'm running an upcoming campaign in which one of the players wants to run a Dual-Wielding Horizon Walker Ranger.

The flavor of all of it seems cool....but, after looking into it further, he was notified that one of their main features is to eat up their bonus action to provide more force damage against one enemy. This obviously clashes with TWF, on top of the often used Hunter's Mark

As has been often noted...the bonus action usage seems to be the main issue with TWF. So I have two questions.

1. How much out of balance would it be to change this up with a feat? Most already see the Dual Wielder feat as one of the weaker ones. Would it be acceptable to buff it by adding another feature of the feat that allows the offhand attack to be made without the expenditure of your bonus action?

2. 5E has been out for years now. Surely there have been many homebrew options to tweak the feel of Two Weapon Fighting. Does anyone have any opinions on what the best options are? Are there any that are more widely accepted than others?

[strangebloke]

I'm running an upcoming campaign in which one of the players wants to run a Dual-Wielding Horizon Walker Ranger.

The flavor of all of it seems cool....but, after looking into it further, he was notified that one of their main features is to eat up their bonus action to provide more force damage against one enemy. This obviously clashes with TWF, on top of the often used Hunter's Mark

As has been often noted...the bonus action usage seems to be the main issue with TWF. So I have two questions.

1. How much out of balance would it be to change this up with a feat? Most already see the Dual Wielder feat as one of the weaker ones. Would it be acceptable to buff it by adding another feature of the feat that allows the offhand attack to be made without the expenditure of your bonus action?

2. 5E has been out for years now. Surely there have been many homebrew options to tweak the feel of Two Weapon Fighting. Does anyone have any opinions on what the best options are? Are there any that are more widely accepted than others?

There are two major fixes that I usually see:

1. Add this phrase to the two-weapon fighting style: When you gain the extra attack feature, instead of attacking with your offhand weapon as a bonus action, you can instead make an attack with your offhand weapon as part of the main action.

2. Add this phrase to the two-weapon fighting style: When you gain the extra attack feature, you can make two attacks with your offhand weapon as a bonus action instead of one.

Basically, one of them makes TWF more efficient, while the other one makes the action economy more valuable. Both of them are structured to deal with the fact that until fifth level, TWF is actually much higher DPR than other options, but that after fifth level, its only on par with other options, whilst taking more action economy. Both of them jive equally well with rangers, in my opinion, since although with fix #2 you'll miss out on the offhand attack on the first round, you'll catch up by the second round. The reason this is tied to the fighting style is that nonmartial classes can't get three attacks and can't cheese with things like Tenser's Transformation. Plus, TWF was already plenty good for rogues, paladins, and barbarians, being the best melee style for barbarians and rogues without feats, and being passable for paladins at high levels even if they don't have the appropriate fighting style.

To prove the point about TWF falling behind at fifth level, here are some sample fighter DPR calcs

DUL Fighter 1: 1d8 + 3 + 2 = 9.5
TWF Fighter 1: (1d6 + 3) * 2 = 13
GWF Fighter 1: 2d6 + 3 + 1.4 = 10.5

Makes sense, right? TWF requires the most investment, since you can't use a shield or cast while holding two weapons, and because you are losing your bonus action. GWF comes next, because it doesn't eat your bonus action and you can cast with it. Finally comes dueling. I'd argue that without feats, GWF is the weakest style by far before fifth level, especially since it locks you into a strength build. If you have additional damage riders, like magic weapons or hunter's mark, TWF is explosively powerful at this level. But let's look at fifth level

DUL Fighter 5: (1d8 + 3 + 2)*2 = 19
TWF Fighter 5: (1d6 + 3) * 3 = 19.5
GWF Fighter 5: (2d6 + 3 + 1.4)*2 = 20.8

This is a problem! Not a huge one, really, but using your bonus action should yield you something especially since you probably have some competition for that action economy by this point. Instead, it is functionally identical to the other options. GWF is still as lackluster as it ever was without feats, but now TWF is even worse, requiring more investment and less payoff. The first 'fix' I proposed lowers the required investment, and therefore makes TWF look fine. You don't deal as much damage as the GWF, but you can get more bonuses from damage riders and you aren't married to a strength build. The second fix looks like this:

TWF Fighter 5: (1d6 + 3) * 4 = 26

As to feats... I won't go into that too much, but suffice to say that a slight buff to Duel Wielding would probably be in order, as well as a sizeable debuff to Sharpshooter and possibly to GWM.

[Man_Over_Game]

I've done a lot of analysis regarding TWF, and strangebloke is right. Generally, TWF is weaker than alternatives, and gets slightly stronger than other options as long as you're fine with the hefty investments (feats, Hunter's Mark, fighting styles).

It starts strongest at level 1, and is borderline useless at max level. It becomes more useless the more Extra Attacks you get with your Main Action.

What you're describing on bullet 1 isn't too terribly powerful, but you would be granting an extra attack each turn. Keep in mind that extra attacks are considered a level 5 feature. What's to stop your player from having 3 attacks and a bonus action at level 5? There should be some kind of implementation to compensate for this buff.

Perhaps, when dual wielding, you do not add your modifier to your damage, unless you spend a bonus action. Otherwise, you only deal damage from the weapon portion. This would prevent some ludicrous burst potential with Hexblade's Curse, Hex, or Hunter's Mark, but allow more versatility for dual wielding players. They'll do the same max damage with the use of a bonus action, but now they don't NEED to use their bonus action to still be a dual wielder.

[Millface]

As suggested, you could add the phrase to the fighting style: "If you receive the extra attack feature, you can make an extra offhand attack as part of that action. You can still use your bonus action to make an additional attack with your offhand." So, with no feat investment, TWF can now make 3 attacks at level 5 with no bonus action requirement or 4 with one.

If that seems like too much, you can add something to the actual Feat that lets you have both the extra attack and the bonus action attack as long as you have both the feat and the fighting style instead to at least force a Feat investment.

In 3E that's why it worked. With no feats you get an extra attack, then you'd get an additional offhand attack for each feat you invested in it up to 4. I don't think in 5e you should be able to have a fighter with 8 attacks regardless of feat investment, but up to 6 should be fine.

[strangebloke]

What you're describing on bullet 1 isn't too terribly powerful, but you would be granting an extra attack each turn. Keep in mind that extra attacks are considered a level 5 feature. What's to stop your player from having 3 attacks and a bonus action at level 5? There should be some kind of implementation to compensate for this buff.


Yeah, it actually gets a bit silly since you can wield a polearm in your offhand and if you have PAM and DW you can get four attacks a round.

...but that's a problem with PAM, which should be fixed separately.

[ciarannihill]

So there's 2 primary things that bother me about how TWF is handled in 5E, but neither seems like something there's an elegant solution for, IMO, and 5E works well enough that I wouldn't change things in my home game for the sake of simplicity, but if I was going to I'd do these things:

1: Historically wielding two weapons was functionally having the offhand weapon as a parry tool like a small shield that could also fatally wound as a tradeoff for being unable to block as well as a shield while wielding something like Rapier in the main hand. 5E does acknowledge this, but only as a part of the feat Dual-Wielder. I would make the Two Weapon Fighting fighting-style the basic case for wielding two weapons, it seems silly to gate it to me anyway, and make the ability to use non-light weapons part of the fighting style, and grant +1 AC if a light weapon was used in the offhand for parrying.

2: If you find an opening with which to strike with your offhand weapon, it's going to be timed alongside your regular attacks. I would change the feat to allow the use of your offhand strike to be added to your attack action once per turn instead of as a bonus action. "Once per turn, while wielding separate melee weapons in each hand and you take the attack action, you can attack with your offhand weapon as well. If you do this you can no longer attack with your offhand weapon as a bonus action", but worded far less clunky. This is the biggest flaw with TWF -- Bonus Actions are usually stronger at higher levels than an extra melee attack is. So make it more efficient, not more powerful. Still only one attack with it, but not it doesn't use up your bonus action.


But yeah, seems like a huge change for not much difference overall IMO.

[MaxWilson]

1. How much out of balance would it be to change this up with a feat? Most already see the Dual Wielder feat as one of the weaker ones. Would it be acceptable to buff it by adding another feature of the feat that allows the offhand attack to be made without the expenditure of your bonus action?

Seems reasonable.

[Callak_Remier]

You can homebrew what ever you want. But RAW you know that doesn't work

[Man_Over_Game]

I came up with a complicated and a simple workaround for this to make TWF valuable for what it provides. I don't have my notes on me, but I do distinctly remember the simple fix:

When you use your bonus action for a TWF attack, you get a +1 AC bonus for the remainder of the round. This stacks with the +1 AC from the Dual Wielder feat, which is present at all times while you hold a weapon in both hands.

This makes it noticeably useful, and makes your choices pretty balanced, between:

GWF, for when you want your bonus action while focusing on damage.

Dueling, for when you want your bonus action while focusing on defense.

TWF, for when you want both offense and defense, but don't need your bonus action.


While this is simple, this does not address OP's concern over making rapid-fire attacks.


If speed is a concern, I'd make it so that:

When holding a weapon in your offhand, and you take the Attack action during your turn, you get one extra attack that you must make with a separate weapon in your off hand. If you do so, you do not benefit from the relevant modifier for damage for any of these attacks from this action. You may spend your Bonus action to add half your damage modifier to these attacks (rounded down). The Two Weapon Fighting Style applies your full damage modifier to your attacks with use of your bonus action rather than half.

Damage wise, it's not much different than the standard TWF playstyle, but it does allow you to use it without expending your bonus action. Doing so does mean you miss out on 3-8 damage, depending on what fighting style/modifiers you have, but it would allow more versatility.

Notably, this does reward classes that utilize "per attack" benefits, such as the Swashbuckler, Hex/Hunter's Mark builds, or any damage-bonus-on-hit effects (like Hexblade's Curse), but the overall variance isn't much.

[clash]

Just take out the bonus action and in practicce it performs about where it should and works with the classes that thematically want to use it.