SangoProduction
2024-01-25, 04:57 AM
I watched a Shadiversity video featuring double bladed sword fighting. Looks and sounds cool. Almost as cool as the idea is initially, when you read these books as a kid.
But dual wielding sucks in D&D. And double weapons basically sap all (of what little there was) flexibility out of dual wielding 2 different weapons.
Now, we could address this by adding entirely new systems to the format, like weapons mattering in almost any way outside of reach and damage (and thus giving these weapons, which lack both, a fighting chance)... that's more in the category of homebrew. And fair homebrew, honestly, but out of scope for this post. (Even the early BESM versions had weapons/attacks that were meaningfully different in noncomparable ways 20+ years ago.)
Instead, I'll see what the best double weapons are in the game, and how to best use them (the answer is Spheres, because it always is - at least when it comes to martial nonsense... pretty easy to beat "I swing my sword" and "I swing my sword 5% better").
Quarterstaff: 1d6/1d6, bludgeoning, simple, monk. (A travesty of a stat line for such a good simple weapon.)
Weighted Spear: 1d8/1d6, P / B, simple, brace (a straight upgrade from quarterstaff, unless you were silly enough to be a monk in a game that doesn't want you to be a monk. Although only slightly so.)
Now for the only notable exotic weapons
Orc Double Axe: 1d8/1d8. Slash (Same for two-bladed sword)
Double Spear: 1d8/1d8, Pierce
Dire Flail: 1d8/1d8, Bludgeoning (and disarm and trip properties)
Yeah. That's right. The only benefit that the majority of the exotic double weapons have over the weighted spear is +1 expected damage on the off hand. With literally one exception to the flail, and its disarm property at least giving +2 to disarm checks.
Every single exotic weapon is strictly worse than just dual wielding martial weapons, without exception. (Now, if you were restricted in sources, such that you couldn't get a scizor, or gandasa, you at least get the argument of "At least it gets +1 expected damage on the offhand." Yeah. You can see why having damage and reach as the only meaningful difference between weapons might be a problem.)
But Weighted Spear is simple, and is roughly equivalent to wielding 2 simple weapons. A reasonable DM would let you place a like... scythe head on one end of your back up weapon for a bit of damage type flexing.
(There's an argument for putting like the bayonet or axe musket here. But that's not what you'd classically think of as a double weapon. I want my lightsaber fights, dammit! And sadly, not even using Particle Blade Emulation lets us get double lightsabers, as it becomes a 1d6/1d6.)
So, for sake of best possible use case, let's make the assumption that we are restricted to simple weapons.
So let's look at the spheres available to support this move.
Base sphere: Get a second attack, on making attack action, though "both" attacks incur -2 penalty, and off-hand applies 1/2 strength.
Mercurial Flow: Full strength to off-hand, and treat off-hand as main-hand for purposes of power attack, and the like. This means you actually have better damage bonus from power attack than two handers do (at cost of accuracy).
Gemini Dancer: Basically give +5 to hit (in incredible bonus), and its only penalty is only in play *if* you needed that bonus. And it's that you do minimum damage. Which may sound bad until you realize that losing no more than 7 damage off of your otherwise-miss is still really good, and still adds strength, and rider effects, and so on.
Dual Opportunity: On AoO, also hit with off-hand weapon.
Following Strike: On successful attack action, hit *another target* with off-hand.
Tandem Offensive: Although it only transfers enhancement bonuses, and not all enhancements, that's still a substantial budget improvement (or means your enhancer of the group can target another weapon/armor instead of both of your weapons).
Weaponmaster: Flex damage types as a swift or free action. There. Now you don't need a kind DM... Just a feat-like resource...
Double Weapon Training: Proficiency in all melee double weapons. Not worth it, because that's spending a feat-like for basically a damned +1 dmg to your offhand.
Rider effects: See this guide here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?646139-A-list-of-SoM-attack-rider-effects). You attack more. You also have a +25 percentage points to hit, for the purposes of the rider effects. It's actually pretty damn good.
Two-Weapon Rend: Basically another rider effect. But this gives +1d10, and another 1.5x strength, if you hit with both ends. That can be pretty huge when you've got Gemini Dancer (even if it's argued that you only add the minimum damage on that.. which you don't). And I guess I should point out that it is marked (3PP) on the wiki. But you're uses weighted spear for god's sake. You need the help, and I'm no psychiatrist.
Power Attack: Notably good value out of it.
Weapon Focus-likes: On account of being one weapon, any weapon-specific feats that let you hit 5% more often (Much wow.), or the like, applies to both ends.
Dual Wielding sphere already addresses that. But you get to avoid taking that talent on account of implicitly not needing it. Even if you were going to go for such an interesting and fun feat.
The standard non-spheres feats for martials.
And... that's basically it as far as good support for the archetype. Most of it is not specific to double-weapons. Kind of to be expected, all considered. If there were more weapon-specific feats, maybe there would be a better argument for double weapons. But then there's be more weapon-specific feats.
And of course, more generically, you can simply be good at being a martial. Which means, generically, you can just take Spheres of Might
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So, who uses double weapons the best?
Armorist: Negates almost the entire gold cost associated with dual wielding. Because magic. This also opens up the entirety of the spheres of power to you. As a half caster, but that's still incredible. Look to Spirit Blade, Martial Armorist, and Whitesmith for some good archetype options. (With the obvious caveate on the spirit blade deal of needing an ally to wield you, and let you basically dump your physical stats.)
With all of its scaling coming almost exclusively from class levels, it really hates multiclassing. Especially since all of its scaling is based on the assumption that you are outpacing gold users.
Mageknight: More as an addon rather than replacement to Armorist, they have a bunch of legitimately good features for their weaponry. Like Arcane Weapon Focus (light bonus damage), Imbue Weapon (uses CAM in place of physical stats for hit and dmg), and Penetrating Blow (target touch for 1 round for 1 spell point).
Technician: Anatomical Insight gives +1/2 lvl damage as sneak attack.
But, obviously, its improvements are what make it what it is. For example, the Poison Tempering holds additional doses of poison (poisons are great, as already mentioned). Shield lets you benefit from a shield while having both hands occupied wielding this. That alone is probably worth a 1 level dip if nothing else. Especially if you take the tower shield talents in Equipment sphere. Piston lets you spend a move action to add +1d6/2 levels to the next successful attack. (At least it's never expended until it's used.) Electric Current adds a tiny amount of additional damage (but to every attack).
And given that you would typically be able to improve each weapon individually, if dual wielding, there's a way you could convince your DM to let you apply the improvement to each head rather than to the entire weapon, which is an improvement for everything, other than Electric Current (and who cared about that anyway).
Blacksmith: When you're getting more damage per strike, like with Thunderous Blows (even if only against sunder targets), getting more attacks is good. Thus dual wielding... wait. No, it's only on AoO or AA. Not on-hit. Well still, it's kinda cool to cave in enemy armor with the butt of your spear.
But if you look to the Peltmonger archetype, you do instead get +1d6 sneak attack per 3 levels.
Rogue: Speaking of, the Rogue doesn't have a great sneak attacker variant in Spheres... at least until the Deadly Assassin archetype was introduced. So you can now add 1d6 / 2 levels of sneak attack damage to your fancy spear-spinning, while still enjoying the benefits of Spheres of Might.
Conscript: Dual Wielding specialization reduces the penalty to dual wielding by another 1 at level 3. And gets you a fancy animal companion while you're at it. Otherwise it's... there.
Striker: With favored weapon, you can use the weighted spear as though it were unarmed for the class, and how much damage it does. So strictly speaking, there's literally no benefit to it for the weighted spear, unless your DM really does not like the idea of you enchanting your fists (and even if they do like the idea, they might not like the idea of enchanting your fists differently from one another).
But it is a kinda cool class.
Scholar: with Lightning Rod, they create a storm with their quarter staff, which is a double weapon. Even though it's not being used as a double weapon. Or a weapon at all. I'm trying here.
But dual wielding sucks in D&D. And double weapons basically sap all (of what little there was) flexibility out of dual wielding 2 different weapons.
Now, we could address this by adding entirely new systems to the format, like weapons mattering in almost any way outside of reach and damage (and thus giving these weapons, which lack both, a fighting chance)... that's more in the category of homebrew. And fair homebrew, honestly, but out of scope for this post. (Even the early BESM versions had weapons/attacks that were meaningfully different in noncomparable ways 20+ years ago.)
Instead, I'll see what the best double weapons are in the game, and how to best use them (the answer is Spheres, because it always is - at least when it comes to martial nonsense... pretty easy to beat "I swing my sword" and "I swing my sword 5% better").
Quarterstaff: 1d6/1d6, bludgeoning, simple, monk. (A travesty of a stat line for such a good simple weapon.)
Weighted Spear: 1d8/1d6, P / B, simple, brace (a straight upgrade from quarterstaff, unless you were silly enough to be a monk in a game that doesn't want you to be a monk. Although only slightly so.)
Now for the only notable exotic weapons
Orc Double Axe: 1d8/1d8. Slash (Same for two-bladed sword)
Double Spear: 1d8/1d8, Pierce
Dire Flail: 1d8/1d8, Bludgeoning (and disarm and trip properties)
Yeah. That's right. The only benefit that the majority of the exotic double weapons have over the weighted spear is +1 expected damage on the off hand. With literally one exception to the flail, and its disarm property at least giving +2 to disarm checks.
Every single exotic weapon is strictly worse than just dual wielding martial weapons, without exception. (Now, if you were restricted in sources, such that you couldn't get a scizor, or gandasa, you at least get the argument of "At least it gets +1 expected damage on the offhand." Yeah. You can see why having damage and reach as the only meaningful difference between weapons might be a problem.)
But Weighted Spear is simple, and is roughly equivalent to wielding 2 simple weapons. A reasonable DM would let you place a like... scythe head on one end of your back up weapon for a bit of damage type flexing.
(There's an argument for putting like the bayonet or axe musket here. But that's not what you'd classically think of as a double weapon. I want my lightsaber fights, dammit! And sadly, not even using Particle Blade Emulation lets us get double lightsabers, as it becomes a 1d6/1d6.)
So, for sake of best possible use case, let's make the assumption that we are restricted to simple weapons.
So let's look at the spheres available to support this move.
Base sphere: Get a second attack, on making attack action, though "both" attacks incur -2 penalty, and off-hand applies 1/2 strength.
Mercurial Flow: Full strength to off-hand, and treat off-hand as main-hand for purposes of power attack, and the like. This means you actually have better damage bonus from power attack than two handers do (at cost of accuracy).
Gemini Dancer: Basically give +5 to hit (in incredible bonus), and its only penalty is only in play *if* you needed that bonus. And it's that you do minimum damage. Which may sound bad until you realize that losing no more than 7 damage off of your otherwise-miss is still really good, and still adds strength, and rider effects, and so on.
Dual Opportunity: On AoO, also hit with off-hand weapon.
Following Strike: On successful attack action, hit *another target* with off-hand.
Tandem Offensive: Although it only transfers enhancement bonuses, and not all enhancements, that's still a substantial budget improvement (or means your enhancer of the group can target another weapon/armor instead of both of your weapons).
Weaponmaster: Flex damage types as a swift or free action. There. Now you don't need a kind DM... Just a feat-like resource...
Double Weapon Training: Proficiency in all melee double weapons. Not worth it, because that's spending a feat-like for basically a damned +1 dmg to your offhand.
Rider effects: See this guide here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?646139-A-list-of-SoM-attack-rider-effects). You attack more. You also have a +25 percentage points to hit, for the purposes of the rider effects. It's actually pretty damn good.
Two-Weapon Rend: Basically another rider effect. But this gives +1d10, and another 1.5x strength, if you hit with both ends. That can be pretty huge when you've got Gemini Dancer (even if it's argued that you only add the minimum damage on that.. which you don't). And I guess I should point out that it is marked (3PP) on the wiki. But you're uses weighted spear for god's sake. You need the help, and I'm no psychiatrist.
Power Attack: Notably good value out of it.
Weapon Focus-likes: On account of being one weapon, any weapon-specific feats that let you hit 5% more often (Much wow.), or the like, applies to both ends.
Dual Wielding sphere already addresses that. But you get to avoid taking that talent on account of implicitly not needing it. Even if you were going to go for such an interesting and fun feat.
The standard non-spheres feats for martials.
And... that's basically it as far as good support for the archetype. Most of it is not specific to double-weapons. Kind of to be expected, all considered. If there were more weapon-specific feats, maybe there would be a better argument for double weapons. But then there's be more weapon-specific feats.
And of course, more generically, you can simply be good at being a martial. Which means, generically, you can just take Spheres of Might
-
-
So, who uses double weapons the best?
Armorist: Negates almost the entire gold cost associated with dual wielding. Because magic. This also opens up the entirety of the spheres of power to you. As a half caster, but that's still incredible. Look to Spirit Blade, Martial Armorist, and Whitesmith for some good archetype options. (With the obvious caveate on the spirit blade deal of needing an ally to wield you, and let you basically dump your physical stats.)
With all of its scaling coming almost exclusively from class levels, it really hates multiclassing. Especially since all of its scaling is based on the assumption that you are outpacing gold users.
Mageknight: More as an addon rather than replacement to Armorist, they have a bunch of legitimately good features for their weaponry. Like Arcane Weapon Focus (light bonus damage), Imbue Weapon (uses CAM in place of physical stats for hit and dmg), and Penetrating Blow (target touch for 1 round for 1 spell point).
Technician: Anatomical Insight gives +1/2 lvl damage as sneak attack.
But, obviously, its improvements are what make it what it is. For example, the Poison Tempering holds additional doses of poison (poisons are great, as already mentioned). Shield lets you benefit from a shield while having both hands occupied wielding this. That alone is probably worth a 1 level dip if nothing else. Especially if you take the tower shield talents in Equipment sphere. Piston lets you spend a move action to add +1d6/2 levels to the next successful attack. (At least it's never expended until it's used.) Electric Current adds a tiny amount of additional damage (but to every attack).
And given that you would typically be able to improve each weapon individually, if dual wielding, there's a way you could convince your DM to let you apply the improvement to each head rather than to the entire weapon, which is an improvement for everything, other than Electric Current (and who cared about that anyway).
Blacksmith: When you're getting more damage per strike, like with Thunderous Blows (even if only against sunder targets), getting more attacks is good. Thus dual wielding... wait. No, it's only on AoO or AA. Not on-hit. Well still, it's kinda cool to cave in enemy armor with the butt of your spear.
But if you look to the Peltmonger archetype, you do instead get +1d6 sneak attack per 3 levels.
Rogue: Speaking of, the Rogue doesn't have a great sneak attacker variant in Spheres... at least until the Deadly Assassin archetype was introduced. So you can now add 1d6 / 2 levels of sneak attack damage to your fancy spear-spinning, while still enjoying the benefits of Spheres of Might.
Conscript: Dual Wielding specialization reduces the penalty to dual wielding by another 1 at level 3. And gets you a fancy animal companion while you're at it. Otherwise it's... there.
Striker: With favored weapon, you can use the weighted spear as though it were unarmed for the class, and how much damage it does. So strictly speaking, there's literally no benefit to it for the weighted spear, unless your DM really does not like the idea of you enchanting your fists (and even if they do like the idea, they might not like the idea of enchanting your fists differently from one another).
But it is a kinda cool class.
Scholar: with Lightning Rod, they create a storm with their quarter staff, which is a double weapon. Even though it's not being used as a double weapon. Or a weapon at all. I'm trying here.