I am currently creating a barbarian an which I would like to use a Battle-axe and Claws. Would I be capable for an Attack action with the Dual Wield Feat to attack with Claw attack then Bonus action - attack with the Battle-axe? For a rotation of:
Attack
Claw 1d6 +str +rage / Claw 1d6 +str +rage
Bonus action
Battle-axe 1d8 + rage
Another question is if the claw is the off-hand, does it as a bonus action attack, proc the 2nd swing? Do you lose your str modifier unless you have "fighting Initiate - Two Weapon Fighting" feat for your claws if it is used for a BA?
1) I am currently creating a barbarian an which I would like to use a Battle-axe and Claws. Would I be capable for an Attack action with the Dual Wield Feat to attack with Claw attack then Bonus action - attack with the Battle-axe? For a rotation of:
Attack
Claw 1d6 +str +rage / Claw 1d6 +str +rage
Bonus action
Battle-axe 1d8 + rage
2) Another question is if the claw is the off-hand, does it as a bonus action attack, proc the 2nd swing?
3) Do you lose your str modifier unless you have "fighting Initiate - Two W;eapon Fighting" feat for your claws if it is used for a BA?
1) Yes.
2) The additional claw attack only procs off of using the Attack action, so not off of a bonus action.
3) Yes, if you are two-weapon fighting to generate a bonus action attack with your second weapon you need the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style to apply your ability modifier to the damage of that bonus action attack (unless the modifier is negative). Doesn't matter what kind of weapon you're using for that bonus action attack.
Path of the Beast claws do not count as held weapons, as evidenced by the fact that they can hold other weapons. Thus they don't work with TWF. They are rather designed to simulate TWF on their own without utilizing your bonus action.
What you can do once you have Extra Attacks is take your first swing with that battleaxe two-handed via the versatile trait (or a greataxe for that matter) and then make your second attack with claws, which would allow you to make an additional third attack with your claws. Then you still have your bonus action available for other stuff.
Path of the Beast claws do not count as held weapons, as evidenced by the fact that they can hold other weapons. Thus they don't work with TWF. They are rather designed to simulate TWF on their own without utilizing your bonus action.
What you can do once you have Extra Attacks is take your first swing with that battleaxe two-handed via the versatile trait (or a greataxe for that matter) and then make your second attack with claws, which would allow you to make an additional third attack with your claws. Then you still have your bonus action available for other stuff.
I would disagree here.
The text for the Beast barbarian feauture clearly says "It counts as a simple melee weapon for you". That means that everything that affects simple melee weapons affects your claws, Tail or Jaw too.
Path of the Beast claws do not count as held weapons, as evidenced by the fact that they can hold other weapons. Thus they don't work with TWF. They are rather designed to simulate TWF on their own without utilizing your bonus action.
What you can do once you have Extra Attacks is take your first swing with that battleaxe two-handed via the versatile trait (or a greataxe for that matter) and then make your second attack with claws, which would allow you to make an additional third attack with your claws. Then you still have your bonus action available for other stuff.
I would disagree here.
The text for the Beast barbarian feauture clearly says "It counts as a simple melee weapon for you". That means that everything that affects simple melee weapons affects your claws, Tail or Jaw too.
That's pushing it. Two Weapon Fighting normally requires that a weapon have the "Light" property. Just because it counts as a simple melee weapon doesn't mean it has the light property. The Path of the Beast specifically states that the Claw counts as a weapon provided that hand isn't holding anything, so we're forced to make a decision here. Do we want to use our claws for weapons, and if so we get the extra attack with our claw until level 5 with ability modifier damage. After level 5 with extra attack, we then get three claw attacks. Honestly, the design intent here already speaks to the intent of trying to mesh with Monk who always gets bonus action attacks via unarmed weapons specifically because of the Monk class.
If we're bringing another weapon into the fray that is hands based, I'm going to engage two weapon fighting rules and ask which is the off hand for the sake of not allowing ability modifer damage to the off hand attacks UNLESS they have the two weapon fighting style. I'm not going to allow it at all if the second weapon doesn't have the light property.
From a functional standpoint, if the player wants to say hey I make all attacks with my claws, alternating hands? Great, I don't care that can have all the ability modifer damage on all attacks, but the second a weapon is in there it needs to follow ALL two weapon fighting rules.
I never claimed that they have the "light" property, as that wasnt the point of the post I quoted.
The point of the quoted post was that Claws dont count as held weapons for the purpose of two weapon fighting, which is wrong. They count as simple weapons, which means that you can for example, take the feat "Dual Wielder" and get all benefits from it, when you rage with no weapons in hand as a beast Barbarian and pick the Claw option.
I'm not arguing that they don't count as weapons. I'm pointing out that they aren't held in your hands, which the text of TWF requires. Here's the text:
Each of your hands transforms into a claw, which you can use as a weapon if it’s empty.
You're not holding anything by definition. As soon as you are, they aren't claws anymore.
Again, RAI totally backs this up. You get the extra attack from the claws because you don't get TWF. It's better because it doesn't use your BA. It is balanced and working as intended without TWF.
"Holding" no, but "wielding" yeah, so it gets ambiguous after you take Dual Wielder feat, which arguably either turns the TWF holding requirement into a wielding requirement, or imposes a new additional wielding requirement on top of the original holding requirement. It gets muddy quick... the extra Attack attack itself is not supposed to be "mimicking" TWF, because you get it even when you only have one claw free, so it's offhand claw agnostic. I could see allowing it for a character that took Dual Wielder, but I'd admit that would be stepping a bit into the gray area created by unclear language, and not explicitly RAW (and apparently not RAI, if Dan Dillon is some sort of expert I'm supposed to recognize?)
"Holding" no, but "wielding" yeah, so it gets ambiguous after you take Dual Wielder feat, which arguably either turns the TWF holding requirement into a wielding requirement, or imposes a new additional wielding requirement on top of the original holding requirement. It gets muddy quick... the extra Attack attack itself is not supposed to be "mimicking" TWF, because you get it even when you only have one claw free, so it's offhand claw agnostic. I could see allowing it for a character that took Dual Wielder, but I'd admit that would be stepping a bit into the gray area created by unclear language, and not explicitly RAW (and apparently not RAI, if Dan Dillon is some sort of expert I'm supposed to recognize?)
Dan Dillion works on the Design team under Crawford since 2019 and has credits in books. He was named as one of the authors of the spell tattoo unearthed arcanas, as well as the dragon subclasses UA.
Judging by how badly some parts of Tashas were worded, I doubt that even the people making it knew what they were doing here...
For example, why do natural weapons in Tashas suddendly all count as simple melee weapons, when this was never the case before?
I never got why a Shortsword counts as a light weapon that you can do TWF with, but an empty fist does not, that makes no sense gameplay or balance wise. The only class that could abuse this would be the monk, and that class already gets a free attack as a bonus action anyway.
I accept that it seems to be RAI that its not possible, but I still choose to not accept it as a Rule in my game.
Natural Weapons were always weapons, RAW. People just used to argue with me about it that they weren’t. Nothing has changed in rule books about Natural Weapons, but SAC has finally acknowledged.
They still aren’t simple weapons, with the exception of the Beast Barb... and that’s a new feature.
The Unarmed Strike problem is not new, that’s an old mistake they introduced in... 2016? in the first errata. Egregious, but doesn’t have much to do with Tasha’s.
When you enter your rage, you can transform, revealing the bestial power within you. Until your rage ends, you manifest a natural melee weapon, choosing one of the following options each time you rage:
Whereas in the final version it says:
When you enter your rage, you can transform, revealing the bestial power within you. Until the rage ends, you manifest a natural weapon. It counts as a simple melee weapon for you, and you add your Strength modifier to the attack and damage rolls when you attack with it, as normal. You choose the weapon’s form each time you rage:
So it may not have worked for the UA version, but in the final version they specifically say that they count as a simple melee weapon. So the question is in the final version since they count as a simple melee weapon, how does that interact with rules such as the dual wielder feat which states:
You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits:
You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand.
You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light.
You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one.
So why wouldn't they work for dual wielder in the final version given that they are two simple melee weapons that you are wielding?
You master fighting with two weapons, gaining the following benefits:
You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a separate melee weapon in each hand.
You can use two-weapon fighting even when the one-handed melee weapons you are wielding aren't light.
You can draw or stow two one-handed weapons when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one.
So why wouldn't they work for dual wielder in the final version given that they are two simple melee weapons that you are wielding?
For the record, there's no balance reason to stop the clawbarian from dual wielding claws with the feat, but the twf text in the phb that the feat's second bullet point references says you have to be *holding* weapons, and the bullet point only modifies the part about light weapons, not the holding - it remains RAW that in order to TWF, you must be *holding* weapons. That's what causes all the confusion and rules discussion.
But, as I assume this thread has mentioned - I merely skimmed it - by level 5 the point is moot. A clawbarian with the feat and Extra Attack can do this sequence without violating the RAW:
1) Dual wielding longswords, attack with first longsword during Attack action.
2) Drop second longsword, attack with claw twice.
3) Pick up second longsword.
4) Attack with second longsword as bonus action.
So there's no really good reason to force the Barbarian to actually have a second longsword to perform the above sequence. There are some mechanical differences, especially if only one longsword is magical, but come on.
In fact, even without the feat, the above sequence is legal with shortswords, so you can houserule the claws have the light keyword without any balance concerns.
So just to make sure I have this straight, one of the game designers, a man who helped develop and write the rules says no, it doesn't work that way. Yet there are people here arguing that he is wrong and they know more about how the rules work than one of the people that made those rules? Please! The arrogance being shown here is hysterical.
So here's why it doesn't work;
The game designers said it doesn't work.
The rules creators said it doesn't work.
The TWF feat requires that you are HOLDING a weapon in each hand - Your hand IS the weapon not holding it.
TWF requires the weapons be light, absolutely nothing in the ability description says the claws are light, A greatclub is a simple weapon but isn't light and there are plenty of others.
Here's reasons why it does work;
The DM is free to modify, drop or create rules as they see fit.
So... simple answer - ask your DM. Nobody else's answer matters for jack. If you are the DM and you like the idea then use it, if you don't then don't use it.
Remember that the game is balanced (and thus designed) around the idea that multiclassing, feats and magical items are optional and thus not necessarily considered when designing new content... And given that you'd need to have the Duel Wielding feat in the first place to even begin to think of using claws to attack with an off hand attack...
I feel that its rather fair to say that the designer didn't consider the TWF rules when they made the Beast Barbarian. They were likely a non-issue.
Now, the purpose of the Duel Wielding feat is to allow you to use weapons you normally wouldn't with the TWF rules. I can see arguments that the DW feat removes any requirement that the weapons need to be -held-, assuming any given GM will agree that weapons need to be held in the first place. Natural language over technical details in the core, and all that.
But, ultimately, its going to have to be a DM call. Its a drawback of the whole "feats are optional" bit. Designers don't have to pay them any mind, so they leave such odd interactions up to individual DMs.
Without rehashing explanations others have given... you cannot use your claws with two-weapon fighting (even with the dual-wielder feat).
But at level 5 you CAN use a greatsword or greataxe for first attack, then 2 claws for your second attack. You can also pair it with the great weapon master feat, giving you 3 chances (with advantage) to crit - which would trigger a bonus action attack that you can make with your sword/axe.
I am currently creating a barbarian an which I would like to use a Battle-axe and Claws. Would I be capable for an Attack action with the Dual Wield Feat to attack with Claw attack then Bonus action - attack with the Battle-axe? For a rotation of:
Attack
Claw 1d6 +str +rage / Claw 1d6 +str +rage
Bonus action
Battle-axe 1d8 + rage
Another question is if the claw is the off-hand, does it as a bonus action attack, proc the 2nd swing? Do you lose your str modifier unless you have "fighting Initiate - Two Weapon Fighting" feat for your claws if it is used for a BA?
Thanks
1) Yes.
2) The additional claw attack only procs off of using the Attack action, so not off of a bonus action.
3) Yes, if you are two-weapon fighting to generate a bonus action attack with your second weapon you need the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style to apply your ability modifier to the damage of that bonus action attack (unless the modifier is negative). Doesn't matter what kind of weapon you're using for that bonus action attack.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Path of the Beast claws do not count as held weapons, as evidenced by the fact that they can hold other weapons. Thus they don't work with TWF. They are rather designed to simulate TWF on their own without utilizing your bonus action.
What you can do once you have Extra Attacks is take your first swing with that battleaxe two-handed via the versatile trait (or a greataxe for that matter) and then make your second attack with claws, which would allow you to make an additional third attack with your claws. Then you still have your bonus action available for other stuff.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Awesome, thank you for helping me solidify my build, I really appreciate it! Your feedback was great!
I would disagree here.
The text for the Beast barbarian feauture clearly says "It counts as a simple melee weapon for you". That means that everything that affects simple melee weapons affects your claws, Tail or Jaw too.
That's pushing it. Two Weapon Fighting normally requires that a weapon have the "Light" property. Just because it counts as a simple melee weapon doesn't mean it has the light property. The Path of the Beast specifically states that the Claw counts as a weapon provided that hand isn't holding anything, so we're forced to make a decision here. Do we want to use our claws for weapons, and if so we get the extra attack with our claw until level 5 with ability modifier damage. After level 5 with extra attack, we then get three claw attacks. Honestly, the design intent here already speaks to the intent of trying to mesh with Monk who always gets bonus action attacks via unarmed weapons specifically because of the Monk class.
If we're bringing another weapon into the fray that is hands based, I'm going to engage two weapon fighting rules and ask which is the off hand for the sake of not allowing ability modifer damage to the off hand attacks UNLESS they have the two weapon fighting style. I'm not going to allow it at all if the second weapon doesn't have the light property.
From a functional standpoint, if the player wants to say hey I make all attacks with my claws, alternating hands? Great, I don't care that can have all the ability modifer damage on all attacks, but the second a weapon is in there it needs to follow ALL two weapon fighting rules.
I never claimed that they have the "light" property, as that wasnt the point of the post I quoted.
The point of the quoted post was that Claws dont count as held weapons for the purpose of two weapon fighting, which is wrong. They count as simple weapons, which means that you can for example, take the feat "Dual Wielder" and get all benefits from it, when you rage with no weapons in hand as a beast Barbarian and pick the Claw option.
I'm not arguing that they don't count as weapons. I'm pointing out that they aren't held in your hands, which the text of TWF requires. Here's the text:
You're not holding anything by definition. As soon as you are, they aren't claws anymore.
Again, RAI totally backs this up. You get the extra attack from the claws because you don't get TWF. It's better because it doesn't use your BA. It is balanced and working as intended without TWF.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
And how do you know the RAI?
Did you find the developers statement here?
"Holding" no, but "wielding" yeah, so it gets ambiguous after you take Dual Wielder feat, which arguably either turns the TWF holding requirement into a wielding requirement, or imposes a new additional wielding requirement on top of the original holding requirement. It gets muddy quick... the extra Attack attack itself is not supposed to be "mimicking" TWF, because you get it even when you only have one claw free, so it's offhand claw agnostic. I could see allowing it for a character that took Dual Wielder, but I'd admit that would be stepping a bit into the gray area created by unclear language, and not explicitly RAW (and apparently not RAI, if Dan Dillon is some sort of expert I'm supposed to recognize?)
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Dan Dillion works on the Design team under Crawford since 2019 and has credits in books. He was named as one of the authors of the spell tattoo unearthed arcanas, as well as the dragon subclasses UA.
Judging by how badly some parts of Tashas were worded, I doubt that even the people making it knew what they were doing here...
For example, why do natural weapons in Tashas suddendly all count as simple melee weapons, when this was never the case before?
I never got why a Shortsword counts as a light weapon that you can do TWF with, but an empty fist does not, that makes no sense gameplay or balance wise. The only class that could abuse this would be the monk, and that class already gets a free attack as a bonus action anyway.
I accept that it seems to be RAI that its not possible, but I still choose to not accept it as a Rule in my game.
Natural Weapons were always weapons, RAW. People just used to argue with me about it that they weren’t. Nothing has changed in rule books about Natural Weapons, but SAC has finally acknowledged.
They still aren’t simple weapons, with the exception of the Beast Barb... and that’s a new feature.
The Unarmed Strike problem is not new, that’s an old mistake they introduced in... 2016? in the first errata. Egregious, but doesn’t have much to do with Tasha’s.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
This ruling was about the UA path of the beast barbarian.
The UA version said:
Whereas in the final version it says:
So it may not have worked for the UA version, but in the final version they specifically say that they count as a simple melee weapon. So the question is in the final version since they count as a simple melee weapon, how does that interact with rules such as the dual wielder feat which states:
So why wouldn't they work for dual wielder in the final version given that they are two simple melee weapons that you are wielding?
They're not wielded in each hand, strictly speaking, so the AC benefit could be disputed. I wouldn't make a problem of it myself though.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
For the record, there's no balance reason to stop the clawbarian from dual wielding claws with the feat, but the twf text in the phb that the feat's second bullet point references says you have to be *holding* weapons, and the bullet point only modifies the part about light weapons, not the holding - it remains RAW that in order to TWF, you must be *holding* weapons. That's what causes all the confusion and rules discussion.
But, as I assume this thread has mentioned - I merely skimmed it - by level 5 the point is moot. A clawbarian with the feat and Extra Attack can do this sequence without violating the RAW:
1) Dual wielding longswords, attack with first longsword during Attack action.
2) Drop second longsword, attack with claw twice.
3) Pick up second longsword.
4) Attack with second longsword as bonus action.
So there's no really good reason to force the Barbarian to actually have a second longsword to perform the above sequence. There are some mechanical differences, especially if only one longsword is magical, but come on.
In fact, even without the feat, the above sequence is legal with shortswords, so you can houserule the claws have the light keyword without any balance concerns.
So just to make sure I have this straight, one of the game designers, a man who helped develop and write the rules says no, it doesn't work that way. Yet there are people here arguing that he is wrong and they know more about how the rules work than one of the people that made those rules? Please! The arrogance being shown here is hysterical.
So here's why it doesn't work;
Here's reasons why it does work;
So... simple answer - ask your DM. Nobody else's answer matters for jack. If you are the DM and you like the idea then use it, if you don't then don't use it.
Without rehashing explanations others have given... you cannot use your claws with two-weapon fighting (even with the dual-wielder feat).
But at level 5 you CAN use a greatsword or greataxe for first attack, then 2 claws for your second attack. You can also pair it with the great weapon master feat, giving you 3 chances (with advantage) to crit - which would trigger a bonus action attack that you can make with your sword/axe.