D&D Next Q&A: Weapon Dice, Sorcerer, Warlock, & Feats

NOTE: Phaezen and Sky Roy cleared up a huge misconception on my part. I had assumed that two-weapon fighting reduced the damage dice on both weapons and removed any ability score bonuses, to boot. It turns out that while both attacks take an attack penalty, only the light weapon loses out on the damage bonus, so it is not as bad as I had originally thought. In that case my only criticism is that I think that the attack penalty could be reduced a bit (maybe -1/-1), or at least removed for the primary attack. Seems like a good stress-test opportunity.

Two-weapon fighting in Dungeons & Dragons has almost always been a bad idea. I do not think it was even possible in Basic (barring houserules), but according to 2nd Edition’s Combat & Tactics you could try attack with two weapons, you just took a -2 to the first attack and a -4 to the second. 3rd Edition kind of kept this model, starting you out at a whopping -6 and -10 to attack, which could be reduced to -2 and -2 through the use of lighter weapons and feats.

4th Edition made it more universally applicable through the use of feats and its power system. The Two-Weapon Fighting feat gave you a +1 bonus to damage when you made attacks while wielding two weapons, I guess assuming that you worked the other one in there at some point. Simple, to the point, and stacked with Weapon Focus, though understandably too simple for some, which is why it was nice that several classes–namely barbarians, fighters, and rangers–had access to at-will multi-attack powers (though many higher level attack powers let you hit multiple things, too).

The current take on it in Next is that you have to be wielding a light weapon, you take a -2 penalty to both attack rolls, and you have to use the light weapon’s damage die for both attacks. Oh, you also do not get to add any bonuses. So, as an example, let us say that a fighter with a Strength of 16 wants to hit an orc with a longsword and short sword: she makes both attacks at a net +2, and if she hits both times will deal an average of 7 damage.

What if the fighter just ditches the short sword for a shield? She makes her one attack at a +4, deals an average of 7.5 damage, and has a slightly improved Armor Class. Even if she goes with the short sword her damage is only reduced by a half-point, but she is still way more accurate. If she decides to on a full-offensive and pulls out a greatsword? Her attack bonus still stays at +4, but damage improves to 9.5.

Of course none of this assumes feats, of which three out of the Two-Weapon Fighter specialty are directly applicable:

• Dual Wielding lets you use any one-handed weapon when making your double-attack, which can improve the average damage from 7 to 9 (assuming two longswords, here). You still have the penalty though, so you are spending a feat to make less accurate, slightly less damaging attacks.
• Two-Weapon Defense gives you a slight Armor Class boost, which means that with Dual Wielding you are now doing better-than-longsword damage, with the same Armor Class, but are still less accurate.
• Eventually you can get Two-Weapon Strike, which lets you make one attack with advantage. This is a pretty good payoff because you are also making the attack at your full bonus, and you get to add damage bonuses. The drawback is that you have to spend a feat on Dual Wielding and wait until 9th-level.

I was not a fan of having to plan towards a concept in 3rd Edition, and it is because of this that in my last playtest packet feedback that I voiced by dissatisfaction that a player wanting to wield two weapons is worse off in every way–accuracy, damage, and defense–unless she spends feats. Eventually being able to make a very accurate attack is nice, but that is at least eight levels down the road; in the mean time you will be much better off using a sword and shield, or a two-handed weapon.

My proposal was to allow a character with two weapons that attacks the same target to roll both damage dice, keep the highest result, and add her damage bonus. This makes it so that you get more reliable damage, without exceeding what a character with one weapon can do (or doing more than a character with a two-hander). You could do this as part of a single attack roll, or require that both attacks hit in order to gain the benefit (which has the advantage that the dual-wielder gets another chance at landing an attack, though she will not always get to roll extra dice).

The problem is that this only works against a single target. What about hitting multiple targets? In this case I was thinking of a mechanic where the character can divvy up damage to two or more targets, which would again prevent the dual-wielder from out-damaging the two-hander. This could also require the use of Martial Damage Dice, like the monk’s Flurry of Blows, as the benefit is that the fighter gets to make extra attacks to stack damage, instead of rolling multiple dice and taking the best result.

As for the sorcerer and warlock, I still see no reason why the dragon-sorcerer cannot be a heavy-hitting melee-ish spellcaster type. I really dug the sorcerer mechanic, and hope that future iterations retain the “manifest traits as you cast more spells” shtick. Frankly if they are going to make a warrior mage, why not make a warmage tradition?

Small Characters and Two-Handed Weapons

3rd Edition handled small characters and weapons in a very strange way by giving each weapon its own size category. You could use a weapon your size or smaller in one hand, and a weapon one category larger in two hands. I think that a weapon smaller than your size extra benefits from Two-Weapon Fighting (counting as a “light” weapon, if I recall correctly).

What this meant for small characters was that you couldnt use a greatsword, but you could use a longsword in two hands. Since damage dice scaled with size, it basically amounted to the same thing: a longsword dealt the same damage as a “small greatsword”. Where this didnt make a lot of sense is that it implied that small races just didnt make two-handed weapons at all, but instead made their weapons to a Medium standard. You could argue that a human might very well use a gnome’s greatsword as a longsword, but the weapon proportions would be off and you still didnt have some things like a Small spiked chain.
This lead to a problem where they would pitch in weapon’s like a halfling’s kama and a korobokuru’s lajatang, to account for how a smaller race might go about using an iconic weapon. They were basically just standard weapons reduced by size, but with a longer name.
Revised Edition fixed this to a point by just making one weapon and allowing you to size it however you wanted to. Weapons were categorized by light, one-handed, and two-handed, so if you found a Small greatsword you knew that a gnome would use it in two hands, since it was pegged at two-handed. I liked this change because it made a lot more sense, though it did add in a complication of what size the weapon was in a treasure find. I suppose it made more sense in that you could sort treasure by where the party found it: in a dwarf fortress, most of its probably Medium.

Anyway.

4th Edition handles things a bit differently. There are no more weapon sizes anymore. They come in one-handed or two-handed, and some have the Off Hand or Versatile property. Versatile is important because for Medium characters, you get a +1 damage bonus when using it in two hands. If you are Small, you have to use the weapon in two-hands, but get no damage bonus. Kind of like the whole 3rd Edition weapon-scaling-by-size thing. This isnt a big deal, except when it comes to powers that require you to use a two-handed weapon.
Versatile weapons are lumped into the one-handed category, since you can use them in one hand. By definition, Small characters can take but not actually use those powers since they cannot qualify for using a two-handed weapon, except for the shortbow.
This has lead some to believe that you cannot play an effective barbarian, since most of the at-wills demand a two-handed weapon. An oversight on the part of Wizards? Well, I recall that people were complaining that the barbarian at-wills were too good since they all offer constant bonus damage dice. A rogue with barbarian training could really mess things up with those. Wizards said that they would find a fix, and so they did: rogues cannot use two-handed weapons and benefit from Sneak Attack. The downside? Well, they evidently overlooked the little guys in the process.

The solution to this is simple: just suck it up and let Small characters use those powers in your game. A houserule? Certainly, but I’ve houseruled a lot more and a lot more extensively in other games (I had a houserule document that I would email players before starting new campaigns). This is really a no-brainer, and if you’re going to wait for Wizards to make it all shiny and official, then I feel for you and your group. You can get all up in arms about it, or you can stop making such a big deal out of it and actually go play.