LogFAQs > #896678664

shadowsword87 posted...

-The secondary weapon deals its base die damage (i.e. deals 1d8+0) with the offhand (without Two Weapon Fighting), and the bonus to hit doesn't get proficiency bonus. But this isn't limited to the paladin, it's just how it works. You can do some gross stuff to the system with this though. This won't give a bonus to AC (that I know of, there's always something).

Yeah, I've looked into that because of my penchant for swashbuckler-type characters, and I noticed that the rules-as-written sort of make two-weapon fighting kind of awkward to deal with (and also somewhat annoying, like how the literal Swashbuckler subclass - which is sort of built around the idea of two-weapon fighting - can't benefit from the Two-Handed fighting style).

The Dual Wielder feat DOES give a bonus to AC via having the offhand weapon, but for flavor's sake if I was DMing a game and a player wanted to have a main gauche (which is mostly used for blocking, like a shield, but which also has a blade that could theoretically stab), I'd probably homebrew a solution where the off-hand blade gives a +1 boost to AC but can be used to attack on a given turn with a bonus action, with the proviso that in a turn where it is used to attack, the player doesn't benefit from the defense boost. Sort of like a very stripped down version of the Defender magical weapon. Especially since - AFAIK - they don't really give stats or rules for that sort of off-hand dueling-specialized off-hand weapon (in the same way that they don't have basic rules for things like the cestus, katar, hook swords, or wind-and-fire wheels, which are all favorites of mine).



shadowsword87 posted...

It's absolutely fine, hell the character I'm playing right now can't speak. If you talk to some completely grognardy people about it, they will give you a weird look, but paladin stuff doesn't actually care about your strength... so whatever.

To be fair, grognardy people hate Paladins in general regardless of how they're played, so that doesn't mean much.

But yeah, I have no problem somewhat handicapping a character for the sake of flavor. I do it all the time in video games (mainly wearing weaker underleveled armor because I think the stronger armor options look like shit). But I was sort of trying to feel out just how handicapping it would be. Like, "minor inconvenience for the sake of a cool character" sort of handicapped, or "outright fucked, especially at higher levels when you're going to be useless" sort of handicapped.


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