Dual wielding?

[Glorelendil]

Yet another mechanic suggestion:

1. No Mastery/Virtue required. Dual wield if you want to. The "cost" is that you lose a shield.
2. Bonus to attack roll equal to the encumbrance of the second weapon. (Yes, that means a dagger in your off hand does nothing.)

Then the Mastery would be: after a Great Success or better, spend a point of Hope to make an attack with the offhand, using your skill in that weapon.

So it sort of steps on the toes of Spear of Last Alliance, except that you have to lug around extra encumbrance to do it, and possibly invest in another weapon skill. Might want to limit it to 1h weapons that don't have 2h or thrown modes.

Bear in mind that this suggestion is coming from an anti-dual-wielder.

[Glorelendil]

Another question is: does dual-wielding "belong" to a specific culture? That is, should it be a virtue not a mastery?

I know a lot of people will say "No!" But...the same could be said of Lakemen Shield-fighting. Why can't anybody learn how to bash with a shield?

Because that's just not how TOR does it.

Although I can agree with the logic of making it universally available, via Mastery, it could also be argued that it's more in the spirit of Francesco's game to restrict such a thing to one culture. To make it a "signature style" of that culture*. If anybody really wanted to dual-wield, they would just have to choose that culture. If there's one thing that has precedent in TOR, it's that you can't pick and choose all your favorite features and put them into a single character.

In that case, I could see it working more like Shield-Fighting. Something like, "On a Gandalf, you get a second attack with your offhand weapon, using your skill with that weapon." One of that culture's starting weapon packages might be "Sword: 2, Dagger: 2" (no families, no favoured).

*(Note that I do not have a strong opinion about what that culture would be. Others might.)

[Falenthal]

Yet another mechanic suggestion:

1. No Mastery/Virtue required. Dual wield if you want to. The "cost" is that you lose a shield.
2. Bonus to attack roll equal to the encumbrance of the second weapon. (Yes, that means a dagger in your off hand does nothing.)

Then the Mastery would be: after a Great Success or better, spend a point of Hope to make an attack with the offhand, using your skill in that weapon.

My own primitive idea was similar:

Add a Mastery called Two-weapon fighting (or whatever).

If the Mastery has not been "bought":
On any attack use the skill of the main weapon. Substract from that skill double the Encumbrance of the secondary weapon. Dagger is considered for this purpouse to have a basic Encumbrance of 1, thus substracting 2 skill points from the main weapon.

If the Mastery has been "bought":
As above, but the basic Encumbrance from the secondary weapon is substracted (instead of double the Encumbrance).

In both cases, the basic Encumbrance of the secondary weapon may be added to the Damage of the first weapon or to the Parry rating each round. Missile and weapons that must or can be wielded two-handed can't be used with this style.

As said, it was a primitive idea. I still had to compare if it might be more benefitial than having a shield (more parry, less encumbrance), but at least you had the hindrance of having the main weapon skill reduced, which can compensate for other benefits.

[Michebugio]

So it sort of steps on the toes of Spear of Last Alliance, except that you have to lug around extra encumbrance to do it, and possibly invest in another weapon skill.

It doesn't: the Spear of the Last Alliance is a two-handed great spear, so it wouldn't be possible to combine that with the use of another weapon. Also, the Spear grants an additional attack against another opponent, while our "Savage Assault for players" allows an attack against the same opponent.

Regarding the other ideas, I personally wouldn't go farther than what Savage Assault does. It's fits perfectly in the base rules (it's practically like it was already written for players - after the Spear of the Last Alliance it's like they said "the rule is there, just take it"), and it's not too powerful since it has a Hope cost.

[Glorelendil]

By "steps on the toes of" I just meant that it duplicates the mechanics of. Like if Deadly Archery let you roll the Feat die twice it would be stepping on the ties of Fair Shot.

[Rich H]

By "steps on the toes of" I just meant that it duplicates the mechanics of.

... Not sure where Michebugio is from but that isn't what 'steps on the toes of' means for us Brits and I suspect a fair few others, which would explaing the slight misunderstanding; it's very much associated with getting in the way of something, stealing their thunder, etc.

[Magus76]

Hey there,

What if the cost for Dual Weilding was a penalty to Parry during your adversary's next attack?

If you use a second weapon it limits your abillity to parry and avoid an attack, hence the cost of lowered Parry.

The cost could be determined by the encumbrance of the weapon, so a Dagger would lower the character's Parry by one during the adversary's next attack.

What do you all think?

/Peter

[Rich H]

The cost could be determined by the encumbrance of the weapon, so a Dagger would lower the character's Parry by one during the adversary's next attack.

I'm not getting into this debate as I have no real interest in it but a dagger has an encumbrance rating of zero so I think your proposed house rule should be "Reduce your Parry rating by a total of one plus the encumbrance rating of the off-hand weapon".

[Magus76]

The cost could be determined by the encumbrance of the weapon, so a Dagger would lower the character's Parry by one during the adversary's next attack.

I'm not getting into this debate as I have no real interest in it but a dagger has an encumbrance rating of zero so I think your proposed house rule should be "Reduce your Parry rating by a total of one plus the encumbrance rating of the off-hand weapon".

Ah, true true! Thank you for that correction

[Dunheved]

I went through this thread as I was interested in fighting from horseback and the Search feature identified a section covering it. (I am still thinking through what might influence the rules for fighting adversaries on horses; and for fighting from a horse.)
HOWEVER

I'm not getting into this debate as I have no real interest in it .... ".

I like TOR because its 'rules light'. Rules are written to allow flexibility in narrative. Using two separate weapons in two separate hands hasn't come up in the limited games I've been in. But the way I'd resolve it is simply to allow dual wielding: but my aim would be to include it as part of the narrative of combat e.g. in the middle of a combat, a Great (or Extraordinary) Success is rolled, the extra Damage inflicted is narrated as due to a stunning use of an off-hand weapon during the melee. No extra rules needed. Just good satisfying narrative. {As you parry a final swing from the Black Uruk, the momentum of the two handed scimitar pulls him over, exposing him to a lightning stab into his midriff with the poniard you picked off the floor of the Easterly Inn. Gotcha!}



OFF TOPIC: A great board game from the 1980s - Squad Leader by Avalon Hill - went for an abstracted idea of combat too. In that game the basic infantry squad of all the main proponents had the same firepower; leading to a murderous close combat rule. However, this simplicity allowed faster and much more emotional gaming to take place - instead of mechanical calculations we would laugh (or groan) with the dice roll that came up sometimes labelling pieces of cardboard with nicknames that we always recalled. It's that atmosphere I like in wargames.