tgirlschierkeDual Wielding [Dungeons & Dragons]
owenfromcanadaI can’t imagine too many scenarios where allowing someone who is wielding a one-handed (or versatile) weapon and nothing in the off hand to have a bonus action unarmed strike to be game-breaking. Seems like an easy call to me.
chemical_cutthroatYeah, especially when one is likely much more powerful than the other. If you are a monk with a sword you are wasting your time. If you are a Warrior* with a free hand you are wasting your time.
*Sorry, that should have been Fighter, I’m sick, and I’ve been reading too many variant rulesets while I’m sitting at home.
vithigarSo we’re just giving out bonus actions now? /s
Pretty sure this is rules as written or at least as interpreted by Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s been a while since my playthrough but I’m pretty sure I was doing this with Astarion the whole time. Knife in one hand unarmed strike with the other. Warrior monk rogue kicked ass.
In BG3, you have to multiclass into rogue for the off-hand attack. But yeah, I think it would let you “dual wield” with a single light weapon.
That’s incorrect, if you are able to dual wield you can bonus action attack, the issue is that you get only 1 offhand attack and it doesn’t get your str/dex to damage without the feat. Also, after lvl 5 other classes get to multi attack with the mainhand, but the offhand gets only 1 attack. 2 if you get the extra bonus action from thief.
You need to use light weapons though.
𝕱𝖎𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍So there’s a few issues here:
- Unarmed Strikes do not require an open hand. Punches, kicks, and slams all count as the same Unarmed Strike
- If you were to allow this, there would be no reason to allow someone with two Shortswords or a Greataxe to do a BA strike
- …which would then render the BA attack from Polearm Master moot since they no longer need a feat to do that
- I’ll also note that the fighter with a sword in one hand and nothing in the other is likely using the Duelist fighting style, so that sword attack is effectively two die sizes larger. A Duelist Longsword is roughly equivalent to a Greatsword to put it in perspective
At the end of the day, allowing martials to perform a BA Unarmed Strike wouldn’t be game breaking, but it needs to be applied universally which has secondary implications
You need to be trained in some sort of unarmed fighting style to be able to throw a kick in between slashes. If you did it untrained, it would leave you unbalanced and prone to get hit.
Makes sense to let a monk with a quarterstaff do it and not a barb with a great axe.
Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, headbutt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike
D&D isn’t a real world simulator. It values them all equally.
You technically can’t do an unarmed strike if you have a 2hander. Quarterstaves are versatile weapons, which allow for monks to do kicks while using them.
I know what you said, but the mechanics still don’t allow for kicks with a regular 2hander. I was trying to rationalise the actual mechanics with some real world logic.
Do you know where it says you can’t unarmed strike while holding a two handed weapon? I’m not seeing a requirement for a free hand in the rules.
I got lost in the reeds, I though we were talking about bonus action unarmed attacks, which, for doing a bonus action attack you need a light weapon and only monks consider unarmed attacks “light” for the purposes of bonus action attacks. So yeah, fighters RAW can’t bonus action unarmed strike with their “offhand” because they don’t consider their first/feet light weapons.
In any case, you are right, anyone should be able to use their whole action to kick someone even if they are wielding a 2hander, but only monks can do it as a bonus action effectively, if they are using versatile monk weapons like quarterstaves.
As far as I remember the rules, unarmed strike damage is 1 + Str modifier (i.e., a 1d1 damage die). And anyone untrained in unarmed strikes (not monk, not having the Tavern Brawler feat or similar) couldn’t add their prof bonus to the attack roll. This makes it significantly weaker than a proper dual wielding build or something like PAM, where the attacker typically gets a proper damage die and prof bonus. Which is why it doesn’t seem like a big deal to allow it.
Unarmed strikes can be done for flavor with kicks, elbows, etc. But mechanically I’d allow it as a proper bonus action if the character were wielding a single weapon without a shield. Anyone can describe anything however they want for flavor, I’m just talking about balancing the action economy.
Unarmed strikes with kicks and elbows and such aren’t just flavor, it’s written in the rules that you can use any part of your body.
Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, head-butt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike—a melee attack that involves you using your body to damage, grapple, or shove a target within 5 feet of you.
The mechanics don’t state you need a free hand anywhere.
Yes, I’m aware what the rules say. And those rules specify that an unarmed attack is one option when doing a melee attack. And there are other rules that specify when you can make a melee attack. OPs post was noting the weirdness of D&D, in that there are some things that aren’t explicitly specified in the rules. Specifically, whether using two fists counts as dual-wielding (RAW, it doesn’t).
According to the rules, characters can make a melee attack when performing the Attack action (plus in a number of other cases). Most of the time, the Attack action involves one or more attacks with a weapon (martial classes get more than one starting at level 5).
So any weapon attack can be substituted as an unarmed attack. A character wielding a greataxe who can normally make two attacks with the Attack action could substitute one or both of those attacks with kicks, elbows, or for flavor, releasing the weapon with one hand and bitchslapping their opponent.
The question isn’t whether someone wielding other weapons can make an unarmed attack, it’s a question of when. More specifically, when can a character use a bonus action to make an unarmed attack.
The rules also contain information about dual-wielding weapons:
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 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 that modifier is negative.
If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it.
OP’s post calls out that fighting bare-fisted would not qualify as two-weapon fighting, and thus RAW a character fighting unarmed could not use a Bonus Action to make an additional attack (despite “wielding” two fists).
My point was that, as a GM, I would rule that fighting unarmed, or fighting with a single one-handed weapon and not having a shield, would qualify as being able to make an additional attack with a bonus action per the two weapon fighting rules.
But per the rules, landing an unarmed attack in this scenario would result in a maximum of one (1) point of damage, as the Str modifier would not be added to the damage (unless the character had some other benefit that improved it, such as a class feature or feat). So there’s no reason to not allow it, as it’s a pretty weak option.
Anytime a show or movie shows a sword fight where someone also gets punched in the face is just good choriography.
Also somewhat historically accurate. Ye olde sword fighting was basically just brawling with blades.
Depends on what era. In Europe, coats of plates didn’t really appear before the 13th century and full plate armor wasn’t developed until the late 14th century. Before that you mainly had people wearing chainmail and a helmet if they could get it, or gambesons (cloth armor).
At that time, weapons were still somewhat effective against armor. Spears, axes, and arrows could punch through chainmail.
When full plate armor was developed, only the very wealthy had access to it, and everyone else continued to just wear chainmail and gambesons. Fully armored knights effectively became tanks that could slash their way through all the peons.
The only realistic way the foot soldiers could stop them was to have several guys swarm an isolated knight, each grabbing a limb, and hold him down. Then they would either stab the knight through the gaps in his armor (like the eyeslot of the visor) or more likely would drag him off for ransom.
That being said, there are plenty of instances of 2 armored knights fighting each other, with them often half-swording or grappling each other to the ground and stabbing each other with daggers.
But my earlier comparison to tanks still stands. Most of the time, tanks are actually supporting infantry units, with tank v tank encounters being relatively rare. Similarly, knights spent most of their time in relatively small units killing a lot of unarmored opponents
southsamuraiWhat’s hilarious to me is that you’d have to have a mod to make this work effectively in bg3. Or at least multiclass into monk, which makes little sense when you confused consider that fighters are kinda known for tactics like that, and there’s a lomg standing tradition of punching a motherfucker when a weapon attack fails, or even using a weapon attack to set up a punch (or kick) in many martial arts that have a weapon focus
Martial arts? Like monks are trained in?
I didn’t write things in a good way.
Yes, like monks are trained in, but more like real world monks that are martial artists.
Tell me how the grass tastes little man
As someone with a similar hobby, I personally hate this clip. It’s obviously choreographed, but I just don’t find concussions funny anymore.
When I DM I have a consistent house rule that if you have the ability to do a bonus action, you can do a strike with an unarmed off hand if you are adjacent to an enemy regardless of class. If it connects it does 1d4 bludgeoning and has a chance to knock a medium or smaller enemy prone if the player wins a strength contest. Nat 20 achieves both the connecting of the hit and the prone.
SusagaI’d allow this but, I’d let it just be the flat Str score of an attack.
Monks get to have their unarmed strike to be special.
The prone stuff seems a bit OP. I’d make it a part of Crusher instead.
It usually works out fine. Plus sometimes the potential of just getting a 1d4 out of it doesn’t seem worth it to waste a bonus action, especially at higher level encounters. I have other house rules that also incentivize other options too. But I’ve been blessed with players that like to keep things interesting and inventive for the fun of it rather than just cheese everything they can.
Kichae[email protected] The prone stuff also just seems unbelievable. Jabbing someone with your off-hand isn’t going to knock anyone over. It’s not a running body check against someone who isn’t bracing.
I see this all of the time in the PF2r subreddit. Everyone wants to know why it’s so hard to push enemies around or knock them over, as if they’re pro-wrestlers desperate to oversell for you for a paycheque, and not creatures who are opposing your attempts to do those things.
mojofrododojoweird… am I the only one who grew up w/ ‘dual wielding is two weapons of the same kind’ rule? hence, the dual label…
DW in real life means that you have two weapons, of any kind. It literally means that you are wielding two. Not a pair.
It literally means that you are wielding two. Not a pair.
guess that makes sense.
is there something in 5e for paired weapons then?
OoopsNot the only one, but probably a minority. Dual-wielding identical weapons is mostly a meme popularized by fantasy literature and games, and the movies and pc games based on those.
In actual reality people are quite bad at coordinating similar weapons and don’t get much benefit out of it. So the classical dual-wield is a bigger main weapon and a smaller supporting offhand, beginning with shields being used offensively (and getting smaller and more maneuverable with the main one becoming lighter and faster - see buckler) and ending with classic combinations like rapier & parrying dagger or Daishō (a katana & wakizashi pair).
In actual reality people are quite bad at coordinating similar weapons and don’t get much benefit out of it.
so this is what led me to really think on this one: if people are inherently bad going at it with two of the same, a specialization / class benefit / perk whatev that made each weapon equally effective would incentivize that.
know it’s very much fantasy. rapier and buckler / parrying dagger / daisho - these let you use your dominant arm for the larger weapon and play defensively (esp buckler) - same with a knight wielding a shield and sword - to my goofy logic this wouldn’t require a special skill or perk, hence wouldn’t be dual wielded.
but, as stated in other replies, I’m also probably mixing up rpg systems like palladium’s rules too, because most of my playtime was a few decades ago lol, and tho I played AD&D and 2.5, I payed a lot more tmnt.
To be fair, the official D&D rules call it “Two-Weapon Fighting”. Not sure if it’s to avoid this confusion.
Identical weapons are what I typically picture in that scenario, but it makes sense mechanically to allow different types (especially with a rapier/dagger combo being a thing in a lot of fantasy, and probably historically? I dunno).
that is helpful.
I probably am also getting mixed memories from playing TMNT/palladium, which had some kind of specialization for two of the same weapons… unless my brain is absolute tapioca, which, considering the hellscape out there, isn’t much of a stretch…
Not completely right
(5.5e) Two-weapon fighting is a Fighting Style that only some classes can get.
Dual Wielder is a general Feat that any character of level 4 with str or dex 13 or higher can take.
Anyone can dual wield when their main weapon has the Light property.
There are three things in the rules that I’m aware of that talk about fighting with two weapons:
There’s a phenomenon in TTRPGs called a Mermaids Amulet. There was an item in a game that let a mermaid breathe in air, which was the ONLY thing that indicated they normally couldn’t. In short, a rule was only shown to exist by an ability to overcome it.
Monks have the ability to make a bonus action unarmed strike after making an attack, which would be redundant if the dual wielding rules let you do that.
_lilithIf that was the case, it’d be phrased more like Two Weapon Fighting from the fighter’s fighting styles. But instead of saying you can add your modifier, it says you can make an unarmed strike. Which means you couldn’t before.
RamenJunkieIf you are with a mermaid with this, can you summon the amulate from around their neck?
Stuff like this is why I like my DM so much. He has basically a “common sense” time for stuff like this where if an action makes good common sense within the world he’s built (like a warrior type being able to punch someone after swinging a sword, or a brawler type being able to use both their fists without having to have some esoteric attribute attached to their character sheet), it’s allowed, and you can roll for it.
People desperately need to understand that mechanical rules are there for balancing and taking them so painfully literally just isn’t necessary.
You only get one unarmed attack on the dice, but if you want to say you did the damage in two or three hits instead of one then go for it, it literally does not matter. You can even say you missed one attack and them wound up for a sneaky second one!
Follow the rules for number related things and roleplay and tell a story for being cool related things.
Hossenfeffer… and this is why I don’t play D&D. It’s all abstract. It’s more like a board game than an RPG.
[Obviously, this is just my opinion, and it’s subjective, and it’s probably wrong. But, we are where we are.]
There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there