Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Build Discussion Dual-Wield Without Auto-Attacking with Off-Hand?

Hey, guys. I have a Monk 8/Rogue (Thief) 4 build to get tons of Bonus Actions to punch stuff with. Right now, I am dual-wielding daggers because they're really good (Knife of the Undermountain and Sussur Dagger). I can only perform one Martial Arts attack after each weapon attack (either Main or Off-Hand). So here's the problem: Whenever I perform a Main Hand Attack, it automatically uses the Off-Hand Attack. This consumes one of my bonus actions that I would otherwise punch with. The only way to avoid this is back attacking with Sneak Attack, which only uses the Main Hand. However, I can only Sneak Attack once per turn, and I can only do it at all if I have advantage. I could do an Off-Hand Attack, Martial Arts, Sneak Attack, Martial Arts, but that's not optimal damage (no Fighting Style available in this build). The reason I'm dual-wielding is for the ability to take a third Bonus Attack while using Wholeness of Body, and because my Off-Hand is very useful against spellcasters (Sussur Dagger can silence enemies). I could possibly get the Dual-Wielder feat to put a better weapon in my Off-Hand, but I still wouldn't be adding my Dex bonus to damage. I'd really rather kick most of the time.

How can I kick enemies as much as I should be able to while dual-wielding?

*Edit*
I just looked at my Astarion, who I gave Dual-Wielder to. Apparently, Dual-Wielder just gives you the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style. I had no idea, and apparently the wiki doesn't either, as it explicitly claims the opposite. Still, I'd like to know if I could throw out more kicks.

Dual-attacking can be disabled by pressing [R] on PC or clicking the 2nd tiny icon under your melee weapon on the hotbar.

Not sure how it's done with controller UI, but there should be some option available to disable dual-attacks.

Thank you very much! I do hope it still does both attacks during an Attack of Opportunity. But I guess I can toggle it back and forth if not.

you can spend your bonus action first before your main action... so for example use the off hand weapon to hit one target then attack another with the main hand

You can Sneak Attack IF you wield a Finesse weapon (such as Dagger or Shortsword) and then either:

(a) you have Advantage on the attack

(b) you do NOT have Disadvantage on the attack AND the opponent in question has the Threatened state, i.e. is under melee attack by an ally

While (a) is indeed occasionally the case, (b) is the far more usual situation.

You CAN Sneak Attack with the offhand attack, and thats the main reason why IMHO one should always dualwield on a pure Rogue - if your main hand misses, you may still get the Sneak Attack on the offhand attack, and Sneak Attack is a nice amount of damage indeed, especially on a pure Rogue.

To my knowledge you cannot sneak attack with the offhand if that attack is unarmed, as it would be the case with Monk bonus action attacks. Either way with 3-4 Rogue levels its "merely" 2d6 extra damage, once per round, so its not THAT much of a loss if it doesnt trigger.



In this build you can get Dualweapon style (or how its called) by trading 1 level of Rogue for 1 level of Fighter; this would lose you a feat though but then Dualweapon basically is a feat. Otherwise the fourth level of Rogue gives absolutely nothing but a feat, so unless you have a feat that you consider important to get, I'd strongly prefer taking the Fighter level.

AFAICS the dualweapon feat does almost nothing in regards to damage and should be avoided - unless you have two non-light weapons you want to pick for their extra effects. Which ironically is most often the case for Wizard and Sorcerer who can then wield two staffs at the same time.



And yes, if you toggle off the offhand attack, you can still pick it explicitly, or you can use any other bonus action available to you.

The most annoying problem of this option is not only that it spends your bonus action on the offhand attack, but that it still does so even if the mainhand attack already killed the opponent in question, completely wasting the bonus action for zip benefit. Thats why by default I always switch it off.

The one occasion when you really want to enable dualweapon is when you do your first attack out of stealth, starting the combat and possibly causing a surprise round. Using dualweapon in this occasion makes sure that you do both your main hand and your offhand attack instantly, while otherwise your bonus action and for the record also all extra attacks get lost.

I would like to add that alternatively you can enable the option that doing such an attack out of stealth will not spent your action. I find this option is extremely strong though because it increases your initial damage output quite enormously, and initial spike damage makes a huge difference in this game.

This is what's killing it for me. Forcing you to consume a bonus action for your off hand attack is a questionable design principle. Now you have to play all kinds of silly games to get extra bonus actions, a Frankenstein build that has little to do with the concept of a traditional dual-wield fighter. But burning that anyway if the first hand gets a kill, yeesh. It's bad enough one or two weapons give extra whomp if the target still has full HP, and so they cannot be used as offhand without losing that 90% of the time.

Battlemaster with 2-handers is a much cleaner design. Not that I'm a big fan of all these extra pseudo-currencies.

"Hey, I just had a great idea. Dual wielder, the offhand burns the bonus action, to get extra DPS! I coded it, done!"

"Sounds like a good plan, oh, I hear the ice cream truck bell. Let's go. I hope you remember to think this through later!"

It's not really about coding, it's about the D&D rules. Whereby, offhand attacks cost a bonus action.

The design principle being that Dual Wield gets easy access to weaponizing their bonus action because they can just slap enemies with their off-hand weapon (Even better with TWF for stat modifier as damage).

While 2H weapons instead have to jump through hoops to utilize their bonus actions for damage (Polearm Mastery, Great Weapon Mastery, Frenzied Strike etc)

1h + Shield forgoes the ability to weaponize their bonus action in favour of the AC bonuses from having a shield.

With 1h only (Ideal for any Duelist or Swashbuckler themes) being gimped forever and never supported in any way, shape or form at all outside maybe some specific magical items (BG3 has the Gloves of the Duelist for +2 on attack rolls and Duelist's Perogative Legendary rapier)

In other versions of D&D there have been times when dual wielding has been so much better than other options too. Either from lack of ways for 2h to use bonus actions, to 3.5e's Tactic Feats (Namely the one where if you get a Crit then a nearby ally with the same Feat will do a free Attack of Opportunity against the target too. So more attacks = More chances to crit = More free AoO's from allies during your turn)

The only real "Janky code" is BG3 trying to give a QoL feature to players so they can do both attacks with a single click/button press. With this QoL feature not factoring in times when the main-hand attack already kills a target (So will still consume that off-hand attack on a dead target)


Technically, that's a BG3 problem, not a design problem. BG3 homebrewed the Fast Hands ability to give an extra bonus action. In actual 5e, there isn't such a bonus on ANY class. So at worst you just need 1 level of Fighter or 2 levels of Ranger for TWF. Even this is specific to 5e too, prior editions had alternatives (I.e. In 3.5e Rogues got the ability to make specific weapons (What we now know as Finesse weapons) utilize their Dex modifier for attack and damage regardless of which hand it was in)

Meanwhile, nothing from a video game will even approach the actual concept of a traditional dual wield fighter. In which the off-hand weapon is literally just a bad shield that will occasionally be useful to stab someone after a main hand parry.

The notion of a "Dual wield fighter" who actually goes about swinging 2 weapons around is pure fiction. With dual wielding in real life consisting almost entirely of an off-hand dagger to use for parrying (With the only notably prominent style was for dueling with Rapier and Dagger) with it not being overly popular due to the terrible nature of how a dagger performs defensively compared to even a tiny buckler (Low mass of the dagger means it is very easy to displace with any other weapon. In addition, your hand is more exposed and can be sniped by quick cuts compared to a buckler)