Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pact of Blade and Two Weapon Fighting

Hail, and well met, all.

Does anyone know how Pact of Blade will work with the offhand weapon of a Two Weapon Fighting character?

Meaning, will the damage of the offhand weapon also be CHA based, or the PoB spell only effects the primary hand weapon damage, and the offhand weapon damage would be based on either STR or DEX depending on the weapon?

Thank you.

Take care.

Well per 5e rules the Pact of the Blade boon only applies to one weapon, therefore you should only be allowed to use CHA on which ever weapon you have designated as your pact weapon. It's generally not an overall affect on your character, but on the weapon itself.

Also Larian obviously could have changed this completely, but that's how it works in 5e.

I would assume not- with the potential exception of duel wielding the exact same weapon type. There is a feat that allows you to duel wield weapons that are not light. If you where to bind a rapier, it -in theory at least- means you bind all rapiers on your person. The above is just speculation, albeit from a programming standpoint it makes sense.

Alternatively, you could grab the polearm master feat, which adds a d4 bonus action attack (as well as a few other polearm related things). This attack gets stat bonus added to damage, and since it is a single weapon it will definitely work with pact of the blade. Another advantage is that it definitely gets stat bonus added to damage, whereas generic off hand attacks do not (unless Larian changes the rules).

The downsides are that you must take a feat, and you must wield a weapon with the polearm tag.

If you just want the extra attack, this is a good way to get it. If you actually want to literally dual wield then it won't work.

In D&D, using CHA for weapon attacks is a Hexblade thing, not a Pact of the Blade thing. I might have missed something about how Larian is going to implement Warlocks in release, however.

Fair point, I was thinking of the new 5e playtest version of blade pact, which closely aligns with bg3's mechanic.

To your point (from Hex Warrior feature of Hexblades):
"The influence of your patron also allows you to mystically channel your will through a particular weapon. Whenever you finish a long rest, you can touch one weapon that you are proficient with and that lacks the two-handed property. When you attack with that weapon, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls."

So it still would only apply to one weapon.

Pact of the tome Warlock "should be" able to learn Shillelagh cantrip.
This means that you can change a regular 1d4 club (or staff) to 1d8 + charisma bonus to damage and also with charisma bonus to attack rolls.

I've heard various rumors that there's going to be a Warlock option in BG3 that is essentially a package deal of Pact of the Blade and Hexblade. In PnP, pretty much everyone who plays a Hexblade takes Pact of the Blade because they mesh strongly. I have no idea how Warlocks are going to work in One D&D, or if One D&D is even remotely relevant to BG3.

Getting back to 5e PnP, I did see an official Twitter (or X if that's what it is now) post from Mike Mearls or Jeremy Crawford about whether or not a Pact of the Blade Hexblade can dual wield using CHA by doing the following: conjuring a Pact weapon and also transforming a physical magic weapon into a Pact weapon, and the answer was yes. Now, I can't find the quote and it's about D&D, not BG3, so take my statement for what you think it's worth as it relates to BG3.

EDIT: Here it is. This assumes I am interpreting everything correctly. https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/930235396792786944

It's been confirmed that in BG3 Pact of Blade will change your weapon damage stat to CHA from STR or DEX.

Well there's your answer for 5e. I've never heard of a Hexblade using a their blade pact on something other than their primary weapon, but it works in that scenario.

I doubt that would be possible in BG3 with out the hexblade class giving you the additional weapon, but we'll see in a few days.

Apparently "Pact of the Blade" is going to automatically include the Hex Warrior feature of Hexblade (per RokalVG, anyway).

The correct answer is "no one knows yet, only that it's different to PnP".

I will mention that a hexblade pact of the blade gets two weapons they can use charisma with, one that they summon and one that they bind to.

And it does look like polearm master might be a good choice, especially since humans start with the proficiency.

Which is exactly what Jeremy Crawford said in the post I linked to.

And isn't really relevant to the original question. It's just a curious wrinkle.

When it comes to coding the ability it's easiest just to have CHA apply to everything. Seems to be how they have done monks with DEX. It's the "summon a weapon" bit that's irritating to code. You go have a big long menu of potential weapons? Open a store interface?

It directly addresses the topic of the thread. It would be hard to imagine something addressing it more directly. The only way you could even remotely say Crawford's post doesn't address the topic is to say "Well, Crawford doesn't say 'You can do it to two light weapons and then dual-wield them'."

The question was "does anyone know how it will work in BG3".

To which the answer is "no" (apart from a few people under NDAs). What JC has to say about the PnP game isn't relevant, since the one thing we do know is it is different in BG3 to how it is in PnP.

Apparently your suggestion is to just post "No, I don't know" and anything else is off topic. I, however, am looking at the title of the thread. And that Crawford twitter post is directly on point. But, as you say, we have no way of knowing how it will work in BG3. But how it works in PnP is what we have to go on right now.

Well, it can be narrowed down to:

a) It applies only to one weapon (like shillelagh);

or

b) It applies to all weapons you are proficent with (like Monk).


If a) is correct, and hexblade is added to BG3 at some point in the future, then it might apply to two weapons.

I don't see how your pure conjecture is any better than saying "Here's how Jeremy Crawford says it works in PnP."

Okay, this isn't feeling that productive right now. Hopefully we can all agree that none of us know yet how this is going to work in BG3, but as long as we can keep it friendly and light, we can still have fun speculating based on what we know of the 5e rules and snippets we've seen