You make a good point here.

However, If I look at my options, and I see wielding two weapons and taking a virtue that does essentially the same thing as this virtue, I would (no-brainer) choose the shield route because I get to do all the same damage, AND get the shield bonus to my parry.


The only difference of course is that this (shield fighting) is a cultural thing for lake-men.



Personally the main advantage I like to see when fighting with two weapons is that it's more diverse. (remember the Blade-singers of D&D 2nd ed)?

1: Two hander is more damage
2: sword and board is more defensive
3: two-weapons are more diverse - lending a style that allows for more flexibility - pressing, or defending, and having the choice of using the damage/injury/piercing rating as you see fit.

I believe Cynan has a very good blend and well defined mechanic for this. The only question I have for him is:

In the side-by-side comparison of which "build" does what, they all seem very balanced, but I recall you stating in a previous post that the 2-weapon build allows for a second roll of a Feat die - which I didn't see that factored into the side-by-side. Once that's added to the mix, I think it is perhaps too favored.


What I would prefer to see a 2-weapon build get is as you list the choice of which injury rating to use (if weapons are different), and a CHOICE of bonus to Parry or Attacks that is gained by a Mastery selected. Essentially allowing the character to be flexible and mold to the current combat as it is playing out. Pressing the attack with both weapons flying at the opponent like a whirling dervish, and then holding back using them to parry as much as possible when in a fight that he needs to better defend himself.

Sir Kicley: The thing I posted first involving the re rolling is something I had discarded entirely. On further analysis of the game mechanics I realized that by original post with feat die re-rolls was too much. The feat die is something that you normally only get to re-roll for common skills and ranged attacks, and that the game designers did this for a reason... the ranged attack virtues / rewards tend to be a little better because any group can only have a limited number in rearward stances and it helps balance the higher target numbers.

My second post was meant to replace it, not add to it. I agree it would be way too powerful to have both. I currently use the version in the second document. However, after creating this mastery I began to question myself thinking that if I made a special mastery for 2 weapon fighters, should I therefore have a similar mastery for 2 handed weapon users and shield fighters? Granted the lake town book does have shield fighting, but it's only available to one culture. So I made them and some others like one for mounted combat, and actually 2 for ranged combat, though I'm not in love with those.

In the end I questioned the need to have combat style masteries to start with :-)

As to allowing the guy with 2 weapons to decide if he can add his bonus to offense or defense, I thought about doing that myself.

Of course in a real fight, or a simulation thereof, a fighter using 2 weapons can use both to actively block blows and would likely hold both in front of him granting him a passive defense as well... and both weapons can be used for attack as well. So it seems to make sense that the player should be able to decide. I encourage you to do this.

I opted against it myself because I feel the player already chooses stance and having another variable may confuse some players who are less experienced with role playing game combat systems or less inclined towards number crunching. Really it's not a bad idea at all for the right group. My group is composed of great actors, but for some of whom this is their first table top RPG experience. I chose to try to err on the side of simplicity. Also I justify it that a weapon can be used to block but not as good as a buckler... especially against arrows...


And a question for you Sir Kicley, what is a Dervish? I have seen references to them in fantasy RPG talk but I don't know where they come from :-)

Yepesnopes: I think your idea has merit. I presume you mean for these rules to be used by players choosing to buy a mastery and that any character who picks up a side arm does not operate under these rules? If that were not the case it would need to be taken into consideration. Also you'd have to decide what to do when a player who didn't have the mastery decided to use 2 weapons.

One thing which I believe is that cultural virtues available to only one culture should be different, (and maybe slightly better if they are very similar as in this case) when compared to masteries which all cultures have available to them.

You are right that the shield gives a great advantage by granting it's defensive bonus. I might offer you some ideas to make it different but also have advantages.

I might suggest that instead of making the extra damage like how it is under sheild fighting, make it this: hero's damage rating plus weapon's damage rating.

So instead of having a shield that costs 3 endurance and gives +2 to parry, and does 3 extra damage sometimes added to your base damage rating, you might can have a short sword that is 1 endurance and does 5 extra damage (plus your damage rating), but does not add to your parry bonus....

So in effect it would tend to have less endurance cost (depending on the shield and weapon), does more damage but gives no parry bonus. It would favor short swords since they have the same damage as any other one handed weapon, but you could allow for short spears and short axes that had the same effect when fighting 2 weapon.... some players might also choose daggers if they were really trying to keep the fatigue rating down.

I think the parry bonus is preferable to having a lower endurance, or possibly having a higher damage bonus (it doesn't always come up) but that agrees with my opinion that it should not be as good as a virtue available to only one culture. Anyway it's an idea.

That was indeed what I was trying to state in my short post.

May be something that should be sorted out /clarified is that when you roll your extra attack with the feat dice for your off-hand weapon you cannot score a wound by rolling equal or over the off-hand weapon edge number. I haven't done the numbers but it looks to me that it would be then too powerful otherwise.

Cheers,
Yepes

Technically - a Dervish is a type of middle-eastern monk (persian or turkish or iranian muslim origins).

Whirling Dervishes are more of a modern touristy attraction of dance amongst Turkish people; you may have seen them - big flowing skirts twirl and float out away from their bodies as the person spins, wearing those tall flower pot looking hats.


In common RPG terms, a whirling dervish takes that spinning dance in mind to imagine a twisting two-weapon fighting fast and furious fighting style mixed with very fast dervish-like dancing and twirling - Darth Maul, Yoda (against Christopher Lee), or as seen in many over-the-top martial arts movies like Kill Bill or Crouching Tiger, or iconic D&D characters like Drizzt Do'Urden and his enemy Artemis Entreri.


There's a Prestige Class called the Whirling Dervish or just Dervish in D&D 3rd edition that is essentially a dancing/2 weapon wielding nightmare of a combatant.



As for Our take on 2weapon fighting in TOR, it sounds like you and I have very similar views, and takes on it. Ultimately I would never want to allow more than one (melee) attack in a round for a character - even including allowing for better of two feat dice. I loathe that 2weapon fighting allows for an extra attack in D&D. I much prefer it to be a more flexible/diverse fighting style that allows for more options to be the fighter as he needs to improvise during a fight.

Thank you Sir! Knowing what Dervish means puts prior experiences into an interesting perspective.

Anyway I feel slightly more enlightened now :-)

I'm glad we see roughly eye to eye on the two weapon fighting. Having my ideas endorsed by one who seems as into the game as me, makes me feel like "I got it right"

Middle Earth really isn't normally in the same vein as DnD and I really don't want to inadvertently encourage lots of my players to start 2 weapon fighting by making it seemingly better than the options otherwise available to their character, but I think it's nice to allow players the freedom of expression to go outside what I'd expect or even prefer of their characters.

Since this thread seems to keep coming back, maybe I'll go back and modify my original post so I don't confuse others with my changing ideas.

And for the record, I too do not want to encourage a bunch of D&D-esque fans of 2-weapon fighting and definitely don't want to make it a better more appealing option so as to promote it.



For what it's worth, I allow the option - ONLY via a Mastery that is learned. (it's not something inherently known - but the option is available to those who really want to do it).

After having read your ideas of what you do with it (the ability to use the best of the injury or piercing of the two weapons) I have considering making that a stackable Mastery as well - thus having two Mastery's that cater to that fighting style.

A bit off topic but, did a two weapon fighting style actually ever existed in the "real" world, or is it just an invention of movies, pc-games, D&D and the like?

It sounds to me a very ineffective way of fighting, specially if compared to weapon&shield.

Cheers,
Yepes

Historical records of people using 2 weapons to fight are sparse but exist. shields with weapons seem to be dominant from the ancient pre-medieval world up to the rise of plate armor. Two handed weapons are also very common, especially spears. With the advent of heavy plate armors in the later middle ages 2 handed weapons become much more dominant and shield become a thing of the past.

examples of 2 weapon fighting seem to be predominantly for single combat and for small scale fights as opposed to large scale battles.

Roman gladiators sometimes had 2 weapons, one popular game was the fish man versus the net man where one guy had a gladius and shield and the other had a net and spear I think. Whether the net man often used the spear in one hand at the same time as the net is unclear however. If it were me and I had a 6 foot spear I'd use the spear in 2 hands for better control, speed and accuracy, and let the net drag on the ground grasped in one of the hands that I was holding the spear. Then when the fish man charged me (which he would when I missed my first thrust) I'd try to swing the net across to catch him in it and if so then try to finish him off with the spear... that might arguably not really be 2 weapon fighting, it's alternating between 2 weapons, but he does have two weapons and two hands so.... .I think it qualifies. Also the spears might have been short enough to be effective in one hand if so it would be 2 weapon fighting for sure. Also it would not surprise me if they would pit gladiators against each other with unusual weapon arrays like 2 weapons. The gladius was short blade and might suit 2 weapon fighting.

Maybe a better example is something I heard: There was a samurai apparently mentioned in some Japanese text who tried using a sword in each hand. apparently he won a lot of duels like that.... this is something that I heard about through word of mouth however and I have no references on it. I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy of it.

Apparently there is an eastern martial art (maybe also from Japan) that uses 2 daggers (not sure how it's spelled) just like the character in teenaged mutant ninja turtles :-) There are also forms of stick fighting where they use 2 sticks.... I'm not sure when the stick fighting originated though, it may not be that old, I don't know.

In the late middle ages or Renaissance, when gun powder had already displaced the aristocracy off the battlefield, dueling with a short parrying dagger or "main gauche" as well as a rapier became very popular. There may have been rapier fighters in Florance as well who might have used 2 rapiers at once, again this is a word of mouth thing, I'm not 100% sure about it but I think that's where the term "fighting Florentine" comes from in the SCA.

There are certainly other random things here and there throughout history I've never heard of or else forgotten about, but I feel knowledgeable enough to tell you with confidence that it was not a common way of fighting, or at the very least, that there is little historical documentation recording it.

There are a lot of good reasons to not use 2 weapons:

Shields stop arrows and javelins really good. If you don't have armor you want a shield almost more than you want a real weapon. In the dark ages most warriors did not have armor. Even if you have armor you still want a shield because there are openings in the armor..

Swords were extremely rare and expensive in the dark ages, axe hafts and spear hafts are made of wood and are easily broken, If you can't afford a sword you want a wooden shield to block blows with that will stand up to a few blows.

if you can't afford to have a shield made you can't afford to have a second axe, axe heads are metal and therefore difficult to make. You'll probably go with the mainstay of the dark ages grunt and use a spear in 2 hands.

a spear in two hands or a long axe wielded in 2 hands is more useful when used in conjunction with shieldmen. Shield lines can defend the front but 2 handed weapons tend to have much better reach. Those with long spears used in 2 hands can fire blows that can reach enemy lines even if they are standing in the second rank. Same with the longest 2 handed axes. Using 2 short 1 handed weapons does not give you extra reach so if you want to be able to attack you need to be on the front line, that makes an opening in the line which defeats the purpose of a shield wall.

You are right that there are challenges in fighting with 2 weapons and generating killing force with each weapon, but with some training it can be done. I have done it in SCA rattan combat (which I consider a pretty good mock combat) and though I never became an expert in fighting with 2 weapons, it wasn't so bad.... For a seasoned fighter it's really not rocket science, its definitely a lot more effective than going out with just one single handed weapon even if you've never done it before.

The biggest obsticle is that when you fight for real, you want to hit hard, so you rotate your torso into each blow. the trouble is if you have 2 weapons you can't turn your torso both ways at once, so you rotate your torso one way and strike with that hand then rotate it the other way and strike with the other hand.

There is a martial art where they fight with 2 sticks, it might be called Cali? Check one of them out to see what it could look like (of course their sticks are a lot lighter than swords or axes.... but still.... anyway I know that what I did was not a perfect recreation of viking age fighting because the weapons (though heavy) were not steel, and though we hit hard we were not killing each other. Still I feel pretty certain that it would have been better than useless. I'd still never walk onto a dark ages battlefield without a shield if I could help it. What use is it to be a great fighter if you don't live long enough to reach the enemy because you got an arrow in the face?

Good write-up.

Yes the renaissance period musketeers with their parrying daggers/main gauche are probably the most renown two-weapon fighting techniques.


The daggers that the ninjas used in that example are called "sai" (sigh); which were shaped and designed to catch an opponents weapon and snapping it, or used like a punching quick thrust attack or even throwing through the foot and pinning a person to the floor or hand to a wall.

Nice read!

All in all, I think in our group will stick to the RAW rules of TOR. I see the dark shadow that once two weapon fighting would goes in, the next step will be to ask for the backstab feat

So far we have found TOR such an elegant game...it is the first RPG we have played that has survived so long without house rules.

Cheers,
Yepes

Just watched this past Sunday's episode of Vikings (History Channel).

Awesome fight scene between the invading Vikings (about 30 of em) against a larger force of english who attacked them at the camp the Vikings built near the shore they landed on.

In the fight - two of the vikings - including the lead protagonist of Ragnar Lothbrook, fought wielding two weapons - and did so effectively. Short sword and hand axe. Most used weapon and shield - though at least half of the time the shields are being used as weapons themselves, attempting to smash the others shield or weapon out of the way. The whole combat was awesome to watch.

I went back and re-watched the fight a few times to see what I could see about the fighting style (though I admit I know the difference between historical accuracy and hollywood stunts for entertainment):

1) it definitely appears that it doesn't provide a great deal more "attack" in a give time frame - which supports my theory and debunks the way D&D allows for two attacks per round vs 1.

2) it usually was used with one weapon intercepting the other - the hand axe caught and used the curving part of the blade to hook and force the opponents weapon down or aside to give an opening for the other weapons to be used - a quick short thrust/stab to the mid section. Or using the short sword to quickly stop and deflect/parry the blow followed by a quick chop to the sword arm. This further supports my feeling that using two blades simply make it more likely to hit with their attack - not attack more frequently.

3) Often times in mass-combat such as displayed there, the killing blow left that weapon temporarily unavailable as it was still stuck in the dying victim, but there was always someone there to take the falling dude's place and an incoming attack didn't wait for the weapon to be freed. Having a second weapon in hand afforded him the ability to attack an adjacent foe if possible or have it available to parry an incoming blade while he struggled to free his weapon (the axe took a little effort to do this sometimes when it was imbedded deeply) to be ready to fight with it as well.

I believe these point support my feeling on how to make mechanics for fighting this way. A diverse style that allows for better striking accuracy, or better chance to defend (in the case of point 3). Thus affording a "floating" bonus to either attack or parry is both possible in the mechanics, and thematically believable with some form of substantiation seen in media forms of entertainment.



If you take nothing else from this post - at least take from it that if you're not watching Vikings......WHY NOT???? You're missing out!