Yeah, unfortunately dual wielding being tied to a bonus action makes it really only optimal on thieves because they get an extra BA. They can actually consistently make an off-hand attack or two. Very deadly with dual xbows. It makes the two weapon fighting style not a great choice for martial classes because the additional +2 on the off hand often won't be used.
I'm most familiar with how two weapon fighting works in 3.5 (due to kotor). In that system the benefit of equipping an off-hand weapon is making an extra attack during your round for free. However gaining this extra attack came at the cost of a penalty to attack in both hands. Pathfinder uses something similar. I pulled this list of penalties from D20 (before the addition of any player modifiers):
Circumstances Primary Hand Off Hand
Normal penalties –6 –10
Off-hand weapon is light –4 –8
Two-Weapon Fighting feat –4 –4
Off-hand weapon is light and Two-Weapon Fighting feat –2 –2
(Note: that the dual wield trait is not required to equip two full sized weapons in each hand you just took a larger penalty to hit for doing so).
I'm not sure about pathfinder, but the dueling feat line in kotor eventually gave you +3 on your mainhand attack and +3 to defense. So the benefit of going two handed was the chance at higher damage at the risk of accuracy and defense, while the benefit of single handed was consistent striking and higher defense. Personally wouldn't mind if BG3 worked a bit more like this. Make the two weapon fighting style add something like a +2 on the roll for each hand and allow an extra attack per round done with the off hand (as a non BA). Then make the dual wielder feat add an additional +2/+2.
This approach would make dual wielding much more viable on martial classes, but be aware that it would leave Rogues suffering a bit as they wouldn't be able to pick a fighting style like martials to add an additional +2/+2, only the trait at lvl 4. However, it could also help them by freeing up their BAs for more than offhand attacks.
If they did take an approach more like this I would also recommend merging the dueling and defense fighting style. Remove defense and merge it with dueling for a +2 on the attack roll and +1 to AC. This would be a massive damage increase to two weapon fighting so single handed folk would need to be given something to keep pace (especially with skills like hunters mark or hex).
Last edited by Princeps08; 03/01/23 09:24 PM.
