Dual Wielder doesn't have an advantage over PAM in terms of either damage per round or attacks per round
Dual Wielder, level 5, Two Weapon Fighting Style: AC +1, 3 attacks per round for 3d8+12 (25.5)
PAM, level 5, Defense Fighting Style: AC +1, 3 attacks per round for 2d10+1d4+12 (25.5), and gains a reaction attack when foes enter reach, and is using a reach weapon.
The main reason to go dual wielder is because there are zero finesse polearms, and Dexterity is generally a better stat than Strength.
I'm thinking that an additional Attack for the multi-attacker might be a good idea. She's built as a speed fighter so 20 Dex and twin weapons. She currently has three attacks (2 plus the off-hand BA attack) so if she gets an item that grants another Attack then that helps a lot.
I also want to thank all the people who provided the hard math because that also brought to light a mistake I've been making: Because the twins do so much damage I've been making fewer but higher-HP enemies. I should go the other way instead to mix things up. The damage the twins can crank out per attack is 15+ the damage die. If the targets have about 12 HP each then they're over-killing where the speed fighter will just about drop one per attack. When the BBEG or tougher mid-range bosses show up the twins can still do their thing but the speed fighter is built to fight hordes of mooks so I should give them more hordes of mooks.
Thanks for the help everyone.
This This This. Lots of small enemies, and the TWF PC will shine! This is legit the sign of a GREAT DM. Respect.
A thing I've considered to improve the long term viability of dual wielding is something like:
Once per turn when you a wielding two melee weapons and miss with an attack using one weapon, you may retry the attack with the other weapon.
It could probably be made a free feature of dual wielding without a balance issue.
“Can,” not “may,” 5e is a “can” edition. (Nitpicky, I know, but it prevents a lot of the rules lawyering that used to come up in 2e.) The other than that hint could be added on is using your BA for +1 AC until the start of your next turn. Combined those two things go quite a ways to rebalancing things.
Dual wield shines when you have riders on your attacks, spells on the target, sneak attack, smite, magical items, etc. Giving the player magical weapons with a rider can fix the problem in the short term, but in the long term they should probably change their planned build a bit to get access to a rider of some sort.
One option was for her to MC into Ranger for 2 levels and pick up Hunter's Mark. As long as she focuses on one target that's an extra D6 per hit and she hits a LOT.
If it's an option, I'd suggest warlock instead. With DM help it's easier to justify than ranger, the low level benefits are greater, and you get hex twice (once if you only go one level) per short rest instead of hunter's mark twice per long rest.
Problem with options like hunter's mark and hex is that they consume bonus actions (which you need for 2WF) and maintaining concentration on a melee build isn't that easy. What's the base class on the two weapon fighter?
Use creatures with higher AC. Great weapon master and sharpshooter are very powerful *if* you can reliably hit with it. If your party is consistently hitting with -5 to hit, then there's obviously no reason not to take that -5 to hit and gain 10 damage, which allows them to pull ahead drastically. Now, that's a little bit harder to do against barbarians using reckless attack, but even then a higher AC would make it more difficult for the great weapon master attacks to land.
If every single attack hits, then obviously sharpshooter and great weapon master are going to be very powerful feats. Dual Wielder is decently strong as well, but can't keep up if the drawback of great weapon master/sharpshooter is basically meaningless. If your party has +9-11 to hit, and you're throwing monsters with AC 13 at the party regularly, then of course barbarians with great weapon master and sharpshooter builds are going to do a lot of damage. Even if they might occasionally miss now, it does a lot for balance if you make them actually need to consider whether it's worth likely missing to try to do extra damage.
I wouldn't recommend playing favorites for your two weapon fighter. Letting them "bend the rules" because they aren't keeping up won't help- it will be clear that someone is being treated as a favorite, and that can ruin groups, friendships, etc. Instead, make encounters where they are able to perform while great weapon master and sharpshooter need to watch the accuracy penalty, or which allow the dual wielder build to perform more effectively. Instead of just throwing huge bags of health at the party, that only the crazy damage dealers can handle, try tossing encounters that force more participation from the rest of the party- a lot of enemies with smaller pools of health where two weapon fighting can be very effective but great weapon master and sharpshooter are overkill, for example. If you toss enemies who have hundreds of hit points at the party, of course the 50+ damage per turn that the great weapon master/sharpshooter characters are doing will shine. However, if you're fighting a dozen smaller enemies, who are properly spaced and have around twenty to forty hit points each, then it allows each player to defeat enemies, sharing the spotlight.
It sounds like you've already been thinking of this, and that's a good insight. Just remember that creatures are there for you to use- you can always adjust the amount of health, multiattacks, AC, etc. to balance encounters to "spread out" the participation instead of letting a few characters spotlight. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that- I remember reading a post on twitter by someone on the development team for 5e who said, (and I'm paraphrasing): "As a DM, you can take the average hit points, roll for hit points, or pick anywhere between the minimum or maximum." It really changed my mindset on how I use creatures in combat- I'm not so slavishly dependent on the statblocks now, making some dynamic adjustments to suit the party that I have in the session.
I can certainly admit that I felt attacked by your statement "Again, that says more about you as a player than it does me as a DM", and therefore lost objectivity leading me to misunderstand your post #30. I read out that you contradicted your original statement in post #5, which was obviously wrong. My mistake and sorry at this point. I didn't mean to attack you unfoundedly, but sometimes misunderstandings go their way.
Use creatures with higher AC. Great weapon master and sharpshooter are very powerful *if* you can reliably hit with it. If your party is consistently hitting with -5 to hit, then there's obviously no reason not to take that -5 to hit and gain 10 damage, which allows them to pull ahead drastically. Now, that's a little bit harder to do against barbarians using reckless attack, but even then a higher AC would make it more difficult for the great weapon master attacks to land.
If every single attack hits, then obviously sharpshooter and great weapon master are going to be very powerful feats. Dual Wielder is decently strong as well, but can't keep up if the drawback of great weapon master/sharpshooter is basically meaningless. If your party has +9-11 to hit, and you're throwing monsters with AC 13 at the party regularly, then of course barbarians with great weapon master and sharpshooter builds are going to do a lot of damage. Even if they might occasionally miss now, it does a lot for balance if you make them actually need to consider whether it's worth likely missing to try to do extra damage.
I wouldn't recommend playing favorites for your two weapon fighter. Letting them "bend the rules" because they aren't keeping up won't help- it will be clear that someone is being treated as a favorite, and that can ruin groups, friendships, etc. Instead, make encounters where they are able to perform while great weapon master and sharpshooter need to watch the accuracy penalty, or which allow the dual wielder build to perform more effectively. Instead of just throwing huge bags of health at the party, that only the crazy damage dealers can handle, try tossing encounters that force more participation from the rest of the party- a lot of enemies with smaller pools of health where two weapon fighting can be very effective but great weapon master and sharpshooter are overkill, for example. If you toss enemies who have hundreds of hit points at the party, of course the 50+ damage per turn that the great weapon master/sharpshooter characters are doing will shine. However, if you're fighting a dozen smaller enemies, who are properly spaced and have around twenty to forty hit points each, then it allows each player to defeat enemies, sharing the spotlight.
It sounds like you've already been thinking of this, and that's a good insight. Just remember that creatures are there for you to use- you can always adjust the amount of health, multiattacks, AC, etc. to balance encounters to "spread out" the participation instead of letting a few characters spotlight. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that- I remember reading a post on twitter by someone on the development team for 5e who said, (and I'm paraphrasing): "As a DM, you can take the average hit points, roll for hit points, or pick anywhere between the minimum or maximum." It really changed my mindset on how I use creatures in combat- I'm not so slavishly dependent on the statblocks now, making some dynamic adjustments to suit the party that I have in the session.
Just for clarity as well...
We are talking AC of 18+ to see an appreciable drop in damage (For the Sharpshooter at least) so we are talking big changes to CR balances:
An AC of 18+ is generally reserved for fairly high AC creatures....so again be very careful mucking about with AC as it does disrupt the math of the game pretty quickly if you are also maintaining the creatures offensive output.
I can certainly admit that I felt attacked by your statement "Again, that says more about you as a player than it does me as a DM", and therefore lost objectivity leading me to misunderstand your post #30. I read out that you contradicted your original statement in post #5, which was obviously wrong. My mistake and sorry at this point. I didn't mean to attack you unfoundedly, but sometimes misunderstandings go their way.
Dual Wielder doesn't have an advantage over PAM in terms of either damage per round or attacks per round
The main reason to go dual wielder is because there are zero finesse polearms, and Dexterity is generally a better stat than Strength.
This This This. Lots of small enemies, and the TWF PC will shine! This is legit the sign of a GREAT DM. Respect.
A thing I've considered to improve the long term viability of dual wielding is something like:
It could probably be made a free feature of dual wielding without a balance issue.
“Can,” not “may,” 5e is a “can” edition. (Nitpicky, I know, but it prevents a lot of the rules lawyering that used to come up in 2e.) The other than that hint could be added on is using your BA for +1 AC until the start of your next turn. Combined those two things go quite a ways to rebalancing things.
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If it's an option, I'd suggest warlock instead. With DM help it's easier to justify than ranger, the low level benefits are greater, and you get hex twice (once if you only go one level) per short rest instead of hunter's mark twice per long rest.
Problem with options like hunter's mark and hex is that they consume bonus actions (which you need for 2WF) and maintaining concentration on a melee build isn't that easy. What's the base class on the two weapon fighter?
I know I'm a bit late, but...
Use creatures with higher AC. Great weapon master and sharpshooter are very powerful *if* you can reliably hit with it. If your party is consistently hitting with -5 to hit, then there's obviously no reason not to take that -5 to hit and gain 10 damage, which allows them to pull ahead drastically. Now, that's a little bit harder to do against barbarians using reckless attack, but even then a higher AC would make it more difficult for the great weapon master attacks to land.
If every single attack hits, then obviously sharpshooter and great weapon master are going to be very powerful feats. Dual Wielder is decently strong as well, but can't keep up if the drawback of great weapon master/sharpshooter is basically meaningless. If your party has +9-11 to hit, and you're throwing monsters with AC 13 at the party regularly, then of course barbarians with great weapon master and sharpshooter builds are going to do a lot of damage. Even if they might occasionally miss now, it does a lot for balance if you make them actually need to consider whether it's worth likely missing to try to do extra damage.
I wouldn't recommend playing favorites for your two weapon fighter. Letting them "bend the rules" because they aren't keeping up won't help- it will be clear that someone is being treated as a favorite, and that can ruin groups, friendships, etc. Instead, make encounters where they are able to perform while great weapon master and sharpshooter need to watch the accuracy penalty, or which allow the dual wielder build to perform more effectively. Instead of just throwing huge bags of health at the party, that only the crazy damage dealers can handle, try tossing encounters that force more participation from the rest of the party- a lot of enemies with smaller pools of health where two weapon fighting can be very effective but great weapon master and sharpshooter are overkill, for example. If you toss enemies who have hundreds of hit points at the party, of course the 50+ damage per turn that the great weapon master/sharpshooter characters are doing will shine. However, if you're fighting a dozen smaller enemies, who are properly spaced and have around twenty to forty hit points each, then it allows each player to defeat enemies, sharing the spotlight.
It sounds like you've already been thinking of this, and that's a good insight. Just remember that creatures are there for you to use- you can always adjust the amount of health, multiattacks, AC, etc. to balance encounters to "spread out" the participation instead of letting a few characters spotlight. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that- I remember reading a post on twitter by someone on the development team for 5e who said, (and I'm paraphrasing): "As a DM, you can take the average hit points, roll for hit points, or pick anywhere between the minimum or maximum." It really changed my mindset on how I use creatures in combat- I'm not so slavishly dependent on the statblocks now, making some dynamic adjustments to suit the party that I have in the session.
@IamSposta:
I can certainly admit that I felt attacked by your statement "Again, that says more about you as a player than it does me as a DM", and therefore lost objectivity leading me to misunderstand your post #30. I read out that you contradicted your original statement in post #5, which was obviously wrong. My mistake and sorry at this point. I didn't mean to attack you unfoundedly, but sometimes misunderstandings go their way.
Just for clarity as well...
We are talking AC of 18+ to see an appreciable drop in damage (For the Sharpshooter at least) so we are talking big changes to CR balances:
An AC of 18+ is generally reserved for fairly high AC creatures....so again be very careful mucking about with AC as it does disrupt the math of the game pretty quickly if you are also maintaining the creatures offensive output.
No blood no foul.
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