Two Weapon Fighting - Guide for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

hey there everyone patrick ferguson from skull splitter dice reporting from my office today as opposed to my dnd room studio which is undergoing a few changes right now but today we're going to be talking about fighting with a weapon in both hands a time-honored tradition in d d and while some other systems and older additions may have made this a bit complicated to pull off thankfully 5th edition smooths out just about everything and we're going to go over all of that in today's episode [Music] before getting fancy or adding a bunch of class abilities let's go through exactly how two weapon fighting works in fifth edition with no bells and whistles when you make an attack action you make a single attack roll with a weapon that you're holding so now let's take a look at the rules for two weapon fighting when you take the attack action and the 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 melee weapon 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 thrown property you can throw the weapon instead of making a melee attack with it let's go over this slowly and make sure that you don't miss the key pieces of what's going on here it's important to note that this isn't a feat or something exclusive to a specific class everybody can do this if they really want to the big limitation for two weapon fighting is that both your weapons need to have a light quality light is a weapon quality given to smaller weapons which usually do less damage than their big cousins the extra attack you get to make with your extra weapon uses up your bonus action this is important to keep in mind since this means even when you gain the extra attack ability and similar abilities you still only ever get the one bonus action always keep in mind that offhand attacks don't add the modifier this means that out of your one-two punch the second hit is going to be quite weaker your first attack is totally normal the one you got from the actual attack action but your second attack the one from the bonus action doesn't get to add your strength or dexterity modifier to the final damage as long as your thrown weapons are light you can toss an extra one through two weapon fighting as a bonus action now you might be asking yourself why doesn't everybody just do this it seems like a superior approach to combat well two weapon fighting is amazingly easy to do in 5e but doing so means choosing an extra attack above some other perhaps better options generally attacking with two light weapons has about ish the slightly higher damage output than smacking with one heavy weapon and because it's between two attacks you have better odds of hitting at least once but once you get to level five or so and gain an extra attack two swings with something big hits a lot harder than three stabs with something small i'm obviously generalizing a little bit here but the strategy with two weapon combat is more weaker attacks instead of fewer stronger attacks any of you guys out there that have played a souls born game i'm sure i don't have to lecture you about this part of the strategy unfortunately holding two weapons means that you cannot hold a shield put a weapon in that offhand or a shield it's a choice between offense and defense plus two ac is a major buff that you shouldn't pass up without consideration your class may not have a shield proficiency to begin with so this may not really be that big of a deal to you but still to others it can be and also bonus actions matter for some classes your bonus action is a vital resource that you can't reliably use for that extra swing a surprisingly large number of abilities use your bonus actions barbarian rage flurry of blows and countless archetype abilities that need your bonus action so just keep this in mind when you're figuring out your build so what weapons should i choose for two weapon fighting well two weapon fighting requires two qualities light and one-handed so unless you've got access to homebrew exotic weapons or odd magic items your options are basically going to be clubs daggers hand axes light hammers sickles scimitars and short swords to start off with a bit of a dud i wish there was a reason to use clubs outside of role playing or flavor but there's really not don't use clubs kids stay in school and don't use clubs say no to clubs daggers however get a lot of use mainly because they're the only weapon that has finesse light and the throne weapon properties this lets you get away with some pretty cool stuff like stabbing a dagger in for a melee attack for your first attack and then throwing the dagger away for your second attack as a throwing one the damage is very low but they're the best finesse option out of the simple weapon category if you're planning on using a dual wielding dexterity based character these are probably your best option if you don't have a marshall weapon proficiency hand axes get a step up in their damage die over daggers a d6 as opposed to a d4 they're simple weapons that can still be thrown but you lose the finesse quality hand axes are the best option if you're using a dual wielding for strength based characters who may not have access to martial weapons light hammers are the only throne bludgeoning weapon which is odd but there's still no reason to use them over hand axes if you ask me they're better in just about every respect unless you're dealing with some strange damage type resistances where you need bludgeoning for some reason ah sickles while i love them stylistically they're outmatched by practically every other weapon in the game so unless there's you know some sort of character-based reason don't use sickles might get some heat for this but i'm going to lump together scimitars and short swords if not only because they're identical and all but a couple ways which i'll get to in a second but they're also your best options as they're definitely the big winners when it comes to dual wielding both have the light and finesse qualities and each one does one d6 of damage which is the best option you'll get from a light weapon the only differences between them other than their aesthetics is that scimitars deal slashing damage and short swords deal piercing damage also the scimitar is slightly more expensive which if you've ever seen one you could probably assume why but if you have the weapon proficiencies both the scimitar and short sword are martial weapons these are your best options for straight damage dealing as a dual wielder pick one of these unless you want to play around with throwing weapons in which case you should definitely just go back to the market and pick up some daggers and hand axes before you head out thankfully in 5v you don't need any feats to make two weapon fighting viable though they did provide a feat that helps those builds along called dual wielder it's a solid feat and you should consider taking it if you plan on doing primarily to weapon fighting just keep in mind that the ability score increase you'll be giving up for it can often be better than just getting the feed itself weirdly enough should you decide to choose defeat though let's go over everything that that entails starting with that plus one bonus to ac while you're wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand the ac bonus goes a long way towards making up for the shield you're missing out on by putting a weapon in your off hand it's still not as defensive as a shield but it definitely helps you can also use two weapon fighting even when one-handed melee weapons you're wielding aren't light this is an important bit as all those weapons ratings that we had earlier go right out the window and now you can just grab a pair of whatever one-handed weapons you'd like generally this just lets you upgrade from a d6 weapon to whatever d8 weapons you want to try but it also unlocks some crazy builds like double whips or the classic net and trident combo i'm a personal fan of the double whip build myself another aspect is that you can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one of them this will be better or worse depending on how much of a stickler your dm is really technically you should be able to only draw a single weapon as part of your turn's movement so if you get attacked you should only be able to draw one of your weapons without wasting an action this lets you get around this problem however most dms i've encountered don't enforce this issue all that much so this feature will be essentially wasted if you play in a more lenient group as we said earlier any class can dual wield if they want to but there are definitely some that are built more efficiently for it than others starting with the fighter super simple all fighters get to pick a fighting style and you can simply pick two weapon fighting this gets rid of the biggest limitation for two weapons by letting you add your ability modifier to your offhand attack simply pick this fighting style followed by picking your fighter archetype and you're ready to go there's also the ranger who usually needs that first turn bonus action for hunter's mark but after that they don't need their bonus action for really all that much and you can use it for those extra swings plus that hunter's mark damage applies with every hit including your offhand attacks all this and rangers even get the same fighting style ability that fighters get i'll be at a level later as for the barbarian you need your bonus action to start raging but once you're good and angry your bonus action is freed right up your bonus rage damage will apply to your offhand attacks as well and the all-out assault feels pretty in line with the barbarian i particularly like the path of the zealot for this build as you gain more chances to hit and deal the extra damage with the divine fury feature so is it worth it this will vary greatly on your build but in a vacuum two weapon fighting generally means trading out the possibility of greater damage on fewer attacks in favor for lesser damage spread out over multiple attacks and while everyone can have their own strategy in terms of applying the mechanical knowledge of that to their game i know that some people are just dead set on playing a dual wielding character because that's the character they want to play and frankly if that's all the reason you have that's enough thank you guys so much for watching i really appreciate it be sure to like and subscribe because we put out new content like this every week and if you're creating a character that fights with two weapons that you're proud of i would love to hear all about them down in the comments i think my favorite one that i've ever encountered was a character that my buddy played that was a dwarf that dual wielded two hammers i just i don't think i've seen that before and haven't seen it since just kind of found it funny thanks again for watching my name is patrick ferguson from skull splitter dice and until next time farewell thanks for joining us don't forget to like comment and subscribe so you never miss out

Channel: SkullSplitter Dice

Views: 12,194

Keywords: Two weapon fighting, two weapon fighting 5e, 5e two weapon fighting, two weapon fighting pathfinder, dnd 5e two weapon fighting, improved two weapon fighting, dnd 5e two weapon fighting feat, greater two weapon fighting, pathfinder two weapon fighting feats, two weapon fighting style 5e, pathfinder two weapon fighting build, oversized two weapon fighting, dnd, dnd5e, d&d, dungeons and dragons

Id: Sj1vbq3uZ8Y

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021