How to Play a Dual Wielder in Dungeons & Dragons 5e

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wielding a rapier and a dagger or a swift elven Ranger charging forth with a pair of scimitars no matter what choice you make a dual wielder is a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield going with all-out attacks and throwing caution to the wind as they charge into battle blades in both hands as exciting as this archetype can be it's actually a very difficult one to pull off in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition there are many classes and subclasses that suit the dual wielding fighting style but not all of them handle it very intuitively and not all of them live up to the expectations of that awesome damage dealer that so many of us have in our minds today we're going to break down some of the rules for dual wielding in Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and talk about how we can build a character that really delivers on the expectations and the awesome damage-dealing potential that we all want to see out of this archetype there's a lot to look at so let's get rolling essentially anybody in Dungeons & Dragons can pick up two weapons and attack with them there are some classes and options that might be better optimized for this type of play style but it's open to anybody so let's review the rules on how fighting with two weapons works when you take the attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you're holding in one hand you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light that you're holding in the other hand you don't add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack unless the modifier is negative if either weapon has the throwing property you can throw the weapon instead of making a melee attack with it so the first two things to be aware of with dual wielding rules in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition first of all the extra attack that you gain always uses your bonus action and you have to take the attack action on your turn in order to activate it this unfortunately means that dual wielding does not gain any benefits from abilities such as extra attack even if you are a 17th level fighter who can make multiple attacks with the attack action action holding a second weapon in your offhand is only going to grant you the ability to make one additional attack as a bonus action it is very important to note that dual wielding only applies to melee weapons or throwing weapons so it won't apply to people trying to create a prominent ranged character if you hold the pair of hand crossbows and you don't have any other feats or other abilities and you fire that hand crossbow in your main hand the dew weapon the two have been fighting Klaus does not activate because you didn't attack with a light melee weapon that you were using in one hand you attacked with a ranged weapon another thing to watch out for is although dual wielding weapons can be open to anybody some classes make really great use of their bonus action and because your offhand attack uses your bonus action it may not work well with classes such as the monk with their flurry of blows you'd actually be better off just using the monk's abilities rather than dual wielding weapons in fact the monk despite being a class that is so often depicted dual wielding weapons or using two weapons doesn't actually gain any benefits from using two weapons at all because their martial arts ability lets them always attack as a bonus action with an unarmed strike no matter what so there are some classes that make a lot of use of their bonus actions that actually have a really difficult choice if they want to do a wheeled or not because in order to gain the benefits of using two weapons you need to be able to use your bonus action to attack with your offhand weapon the great thing here is that most light melee weapons are also finesse weapons which means that they work very well with dexterity based characters dexterity itself is such a great attribute to have for your character because it influences your armor class your attacks and even your initiative as well as many other elements so a dexterity based character wielding to finesse weapons is a great choice ultimately well dual wielding is a classic fantasy archetype in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition some of the restrictions with dual wielding do make it a little bit lackluster especially considered two other powerhouse damage dealing options like using two-handed weapons and range weapons that said this is an archetype that can still shine in play particularly at lower levels of play dual wielding remains strong at the earliest levels from first to fifth level and remain strong through the mid levels of play it does start to drop off somewhat at higher levels once you get to about eleventh level and higher but it remains still a fun archetype that does have a lot of viable options for it so with all this in mind and all the rules reveal it will do a Willie in mind let's look at some of the really key class features and other options that we might want to consider when building a character that is going to use two weapons now one of the most important aspects of creating a dual wielder is taking the fighting style for two weapon fighting which is available for Rangers and fighters this will actually allow you to make the best use of dual wielding the rules for two weapon fighting are pretty straightforward when you engage in two weapon fighting you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack this instantly increases your damage output for attacking with your offhand when you think about this at low levels a first level fighter with the two weapon fighting fighting style is now gonna do quite a lot of damage even more damage than if they were wielding a single great sword if you're using a pair of short swords now you've got d6 damage each weapon plus your ability modifier which could be +3 or +4 so you're doing like 2d 6 plus 6 or 8 damage which could be even more than if you were using a great sword in one hand this also has the added benefit of low levels of play that if that character that is wielding the great sword makes one attack and that attack misses that attack deals no damage but the dual wielding character gets to make 2 attacks and so both those attacks could hit in which case they deal more damage than the greatsword wielder but only one of those attacks could hit and the other could miss which means that they still get a little bit of damage in even though it wasn't quite as effective as getting to make both their attacks hit so this is where at low levels of play the dual wielding style really really works quite well the 2 weapon fighting fighting style is available like we said 2 rangers and fighters making them two of the most prominent choices for dual wielding unfortunately two weapon fighting is not an option available for barbarians or paladins so your dual wielding barbarian Berserker might have a bit of a harder time delivering the damage output that you were hoping for yeah I think with both the paladin and the Barbarian their lack of having this fighting style makes it a little bit more difficult for them to fully embrace the two weapon fighting style without picking up additional feats or multi classing when we talk about the classes that excel at dual wielding the before-mentioned Ranger and fighter are top of the list but we shouldn't discredit the rogue which actually has a lot of great potential for dual wielding as well so let's go through these classes one at a time and talk about the benefits of dual wielding with them so the fighter has some primary benefits whether you want to be a dexterity based do a wielder or a strength-based do a wielder I think both of these work equally well with the fighter as always you get extra attack you get the fighting style right off the bat and you get great armor proficiencies if you want to be a strength-based dual wielding character fighters also gain more feats over the course of their career making it easier for you to justify they pick up the dual wielder feat perhaps even quite early on and come up pretty strong out the gate the only downside to the fighter or really the lack of synergy is the fact that extra attack and the fighters iconic ability action surge don't really confer any benefits to do a wielding when you action surge as a fighter and make extra attacks using extra attack it actually doesn't matter that you had an extra weapon in your offhand if you're a fifth level fighter and you action surge and you have two long swords in your hands because you've got the dual wield or feat you get to make five attacks total over the course of your turn which if you compare that to the great sword wielding fighter who got two we make four attacks it kind of doesn't come out too far ahead overall it's still a nice flurry of weapon attacks but overall action surge doesn't really give you any benefits for dual wielding now if we look at something like the battle master fighters with their maneuvers this actually works really really well with the dual wielding option because more options to attack means more options to use your maneuvers allowing this type of fighter to actually Nova pretty hard and deal out a lot of extra damage on the flipside some of the other fighter archetypes work a little bit less well with dual wielding particularly ones like the eldritch night because eldritch Knights often need to have a free hand or the war caster feet in order to cast their spells so if you're playing an elder tonight that is dual wielding you're gonna be drawing and putting away your weapons a lot as you're trying to open up your free hand to cast your spell's so if you are gonna be a spell casting Elgar's Knight wielding two weapons make sure you take out of the duel wielder feet or pick up the war caster feet as well because you're gonna need that to manage all your differents hand swapping in play next up we come to the Ranger the Ranger has a similar package to the fighter right out of the gate they get the two weapon fighting fighting style and they get extra attack so already at very early levels they're dishing out more damage just by taking the dual wielder option and then the big benefit for Rangers is you're gonna get the Rangers spell-casting particularly the spell hunters mark which adds d6 extra damage when you cast it against a target - every attack that hits this means that once you have hunters mark up and running if you're making two attacks you're getting an extra to d6 damage out of hunter's mark this is really really good at low levels because now if you're using a pair of short swords now your short swords with each doing to d6 damage on a hit the problem with hunters mark is that it takes a bonus action to cast so the first turn of combat when you cast hunter's mark you can't then also swing with your extra weapon this creates a little bit of a action management problem for a ranger because if you cast hunter's mark on a target attack it then kill it you can now move your hunter's mark to another target as a bonus action again which now prevents you from making your bonus action attack from dual wielding if you're going up against a big meaty target like a boss or a dragon it's got a lot of hit points that is likely to survive a lot of attacks it's probably worth casting hunter's mark on them and going to town but if you're fighting a bunch of smaller creatures like goblins and cobol's and zombies that are gonna go down in one or two hits anyways it's probably not worth using hunter's mark on them and just putting those extra attacks from dual wielding right into them and getting that damage as quickly as possible one thing to keep in mind with the Ranger is that when we are looking at playing a dual wielder pay very close attention to the features from the subclasses some of the Ranger subclasses like the gloom stalker or the hunter actually have ways to really benefit from using the dual wielder option some of the other subclasses like the Beast Master might have a lot of other things they want to do with their bonus action that can really take away from playing this type of style yeah this is true with the monster hunter and even the horizon Walker both of which have core features of the subclass that rely on using a bonus action to activate these bonus action abilities get in the way of your ability to effectively do a wield so again the Rangers example of a class that dual-wielding works really really well for them but they have so many other features that are trying to compete for using their bonus action lastly we come to the rogue and the rogue is actually a very special option here because it surprisingly can gain a lot out of dual wielding and that is simply because rogues entire stick is based on getting sneak attack and what is better than having more opportunities to get that sneak attack now robes neither get extra attack nor do they gain the two weapon fighting fighting style and the other really important thing to mention off the bat is that you can only apply your sneak attack of damage once per turn this means that if you are a rogue who is dual wielding and you've got a pair of daggers and you stab somebody and apply your sneak attack damage when you stab them again with your offhand you can know now no longer apply that sneak attack damage so it isn't an option for doubling your damage as a rogue because you could only apply sneak attack damage once per turn but as a real player nothing is more disappointing than attempting your one attack hoping to get that sneak attack and missing and then your turn is over by using dual wielding if you miss on that first attack you have a second opportunity to land that precious sneak attack and deliver damage on your turn as a rogue player that is the best part of your combat is dealing that sneak attack damage so making sure that you can hit with one of your two attacks is better than missing with your only attack so well dual wielding as a rogue doesn't mean that you're going to be able to do more damage in one turn over the course of an entire combat encounter dual wielding with a rogue increases the reliability by which you will land your sneak attacks around after round after round after round greatly increasing your overall damage output over the course of the entire combat encounter so let's talk about some of the feats you might want to take if you are going to play a dual wielder and the first one is definitely the most obvious choice and that is the dual wielder when you take the dual wielder feat you gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand you can use two weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't liked and you can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally only be able to draw or stone one the primary benefit of the dual wielder feat is that it upgrades your weapon selection instead of being able to restrict being restricted to light melee weapons which often cap out with a damaged die of 1 d6 you can now use non light one-handed melee weapons such as battle axes and long swords that have a d8 damage die this will give you a little bit of extra damage turn over turn and that +1 bonus to your AC is a nice little perk as well I'm not a DM that really stresses did you draw your weapons and stowing your weapons too much but some DMS are very big sticklers for this so the dual wielder feat also really helps alleviate that problem I recommend considering the dual wield or feat if you are planning on playing a strength-based dual wielding fighter but for many Rangers you might still gravitate towards the dexterity side of things and you're gonna want to use finesse weapons anyways such as scimitars or short swords and so this feat carries little benefit although you could then use this to wield a pair of rapiers which is a little bit of a strange-looking visualization I don't think there were too many people that historically actually wielded too rapiers but it's possible and now you get to deal 1 da damage with both offhand and main hand weapons while still using a finesse weapon so that can be pretty effective for a ranger or a rogue also as a dual wielder you do gain a +1 to your AC and honestly anything that adds to your AC is a good thing however this might not be quite as good as just adding 2 to your dexterity which would also increase here I see however if you're playing a variant human this might be the perfect choice to pick up at first level if your dexterity score is already capped out or you can pick the speed up as a variant human then it's totally worth it but I wouldn't take this feat unless you're getting it right away first level as a variant human or you've already capped your main ability score that you're using if you're using dexterity or you are playing a strength-based dual wielder the dual wielder feat is the prime option for anybody looking to play a dual wielder however if we wanted to look at some other feats that might be an option something like mobile which will allow you to have better battlefield maneuverability to get into combat when you need to avoid difficult terrain and be able to make your attacks and get out of there can be really helpful mobile is really really valuable for rogues who when you're dual wielding you will not be able to use your cunning action to disengage or hide so by taking the mobile feet you can still get in there stabbed twice and retreat without needing to disengage and not and still avoid that attack of opportunity the other great feat you could take is lucky which pretty much speaks for itself here it just is going to increase your chances of dealing that damage and really just help you out in a whole bunch of roles as long as you remember to use it beyond that there's not too many other options for dual wielders I would be very tempted as a fighter or a rogue who was dual wielding to perhaps take some sort of feat like magic initia to get access to maybe hex so that I could use the hex spell to buff my damage on my attacks that could be a nice little way to get some extra damage out of your dual wielding fighting style similar to getting hunter's mark without necessarily needing to multi-class to get it so oh and all when we look at the dual wielder it can be a really exciting and fun option on the battlefield but you do want to be careful if you're bringing this character into higher levels what are you going to do from levels 11 to 20 if you're playing in a campaign that goes that far luckily most campaigns start at pretty low levels and don't make it much higher than level 11 so if you do want to play a dual wielder in a low level campaign that might be a great option but always be aware that this does Peter off towards the last half one of the nice benefits of playing a dual wielding character is that it is real lightweight in the commitments beyond taking the dual wielder feat if you even take it you don't really need that much to be an effective character that wields two weapons this means that at higher levels of play your character can more readily take other ability score increases and different feats a character that wants to load up with crossbow expert and sharps shooter and alert and lucky or pull our master and great weapon master and Sentinel is going to eat up a ton of feats and isn't gonna have all the feats they need for their character Intel those higher levels of play anyways and so that means that you as your character can start diversifying and taking other options and expanding other things particularly with dexterity based characters that are dual wielding you might even start taking archery based feats which allows your character to be super flexible this kind of switch hit or archetype that allows you to still fight with ranged weapons but then get in close when the situation demands it a dual wielding character can be quite flexible and in this regard and maybe also be able to do other things by even throwing away your offhanded weapon fighting with just one weapon and then using your hand for other things like casting spells or interacting with the environment these types of flexibility that you have to do these sort of things can often be underestimated but are an important part of the flexibility of the duo wielders toolkit so this has been a look at how to play a dual wielder in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition if you have any great duel wielding characters that you've created tell us about them in the comments below the videos that we create on our Channel are made possible thanks to the amazing generosity of our patreon supporters if you'd like to join our patreon community and participate in our chats on discord please follow the links in the description below to learn how you can support the channel make sure to check out our live play in the worlds of Drakon hime which airs Tuesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern at twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes you can find all the previous episodes from those campaigns right up over here and we had plenty more guides to the archetypes and classes have dungeons of dragons 5th edition right up over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 442,997

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: Z8RPL6_4t0Y

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020