DW does not interact with the rules for the Light property in any way. It simply requires the first attack to be made with a Light weapon, which is a totally different concept.
There's two different abilities letting you take a Bonus Action to make an extra attack when taking the Attack action and attacking with a Light weapon; the Light property and the Dual Wielder feat. We refer to them as;
The extra attack of the Light property
The extra attack of the Dual Wielder feat
Nick Mastery only modify one of them, the extra attack of the Light property.
The Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat modify the two of them because both are extra attack as a result of using a weapon that has the Light property.
Yes, thank you for quoting the text that specifically shows that:
a.) Both rules regarding the bonus-action attack are worded the exact same way and are both specifically derived from the Light property.
They are not "derived from the light property". They look for the presence of the light property.
If I give two people an envelope each and tell them "give this to the first person who comes in wearing a hat", the contents of the envelopes do not become the same. Even if they both contain a $10 bill, they're two different $10 bills.
And that's what's metaphorically happening here. You have two abilities (Light and DW) that are looking for an attack with a Light weapon, and they give the attacker a bonus action attack when they do.
The only weird part is that one of the two abilities watching for an attack with a Light weapon is the Light property itself.
b.) Nick specifies that you can only make an extra attack via the Light property once per turn.
It specifies that you can make the extra attack of the Light property once per turn.
One might think that with all this use of "derived from", "via", and the like, that you were trying to cloud the issue in order to score rhetorical points against 5e 24.
I suggest choosing your words more carefully to avoid that. It might also help clear up your own confusion on the matter.
It's interesting, because another thread argues that the Dual Wielder attack *is* of the Light property, to claim it benefits from Two-Weapon Fighting. That's the state of 2024 5e, where a rule both applies and doesn't apply simultaneously for the benefit of exploiting the rules.
Let's see what TWF actually says:
When you make an extra attack as a result of using a weapon that has the Light property, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of that attack if you aren’t already adding it to the damage.
Again, it references using weapons with the Light property, which is, as established above, not the same as the extra attack of the light property.
Is this stuff more confusing and requiring of close reading than it could be? Definitely.
But it's not actually unclear, much less contradictory.
Enhanced Duel Wield is a modification of the text found in the Light property. Just look at them side by side and that becomes obvious. They're not two different ways to make an offhand attack. It is the same way but one has been modified to allow other weapon options.
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I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Enhanced Duel Wield is a modification of the text found in the Light property. Just look at them side by side and that becomes obvious. They're not two different ways to make an offhand attack. It is the same way but one has been modified to allow other weapon options.
If it were intended to simply modify, they would have done for DW what they did in Nick, and have it modify the extra attack of the Light property.
They did not. They put the text, similar though it may be, into a separate feature, which makes it a separate ability.
And it's well-established that different abilities, even with similar or even identical effects, stack. (In the general case, but exceptions must be explicitly established, and nothing here does that.) The canonical example would be Sap Slow Mastery and Ray of Frost. (and the warlock invocation that gives EB the same rider effect).
For feat wording only applying to the extra attack of the Light property, see Crossbow Expert compared to Two-Weapon Fighting Style;
Crossbow Expert.When you make the extra attack of the Light property, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the extra attack if that attack is with a crossbow that has the Light property and you aren't already adding that modifier to the damage.
Two-Weapon Fighting: When you make an extra attack as a result of using a weapon that has the Light property, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of that attack if you aren't already adding it to the damage.
With just the light property and two scimitars, no Dual Wielder feat, how many attacks does one get? ( remember, not adding the Dual Wielder Feat, just the light property and nick from the scimitarA and scimitarB.)
[ 2 copper on 3 attacks]
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" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
With just the light property and two scimitars, no Dual Wielder feat, how many attacks does one get? ( remember, not adding the Dual Wielder Feat, just the light property and nick from the scimitarA and scimitarB.)
Oh and using the 2024 version of Two-Weapon Fighting Style Feat instead of the actual light weapon ability,( which the light property is the 2014 version of Two-Weapon Fighting found in the combat section of 2014 in Melee Attacks group after AoO), is where the confusion lies.
Light property and Dual Wielder Feat are the same as far as the extra attack as a bonus action is concerned.
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" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Others have explained this before, but here's a summary of how it works:
The "extra attack only once per turn" in the Nick Mastery Property refers to the extra attack granted by the Light property. Nick doesn't provide a new extra attack; it shifts the extra attack of the Light property from a Bonus Action to an extra attack and adds a restriction to it: "You can make this extra attack only once per turn".
Because of the previous rule, if you use Nick, you can only make the Light property's extra attack once per turn.
The Dual Wielder feat provides another source for a bonus action attack, separate from both Light and Nick.
I feel like there's another post today talking about the same thing: Nick debate SOLVED
Others have explained this before, but here's a summary of how it works:
The "extra attack only once per turn" in the Nick Mastery Property refers to the extra attack granted by the Light property. Nick doesn't provide a new extra attack; it shifts the extra attack of the Light property from a Bonus Action to an extra attack and adds a restriction to it: "You can make this extra attack only once per turn".
Because of the previous rule, if you use Nick, you can only make the Light property's extra attack once per turn.
The Dual Wielder feat provides another source for a bonus action attack, separate from both Light and Nick.
I feel like there's another post today talking about the same thing: Nick debate SOLVED
Okay, then can you make a second attack with the Light property if you just use a different Light weapon without Dual Wielder?
In fact, the Nick rule dictates that you can only make an extra attack as part of your Attack action once. It never says you can't make a second bonus-action attack, just that the attack you apply Nick to specifically can't be used twice in one turn. So even if Dual Wielder functioned the way you claim, it's utterly useless because nothing actually stops you from making a bonus-action attack with the Light property.
Let's try again:
If you want to make 3 attacks on your turn using Light and Nick, you'd need the Dual Wielder feat to use the Bonus Action that Nick freed up. Or the Extra Attack feature.
You use your first attack and the Light property is triggered, giving you an extra attack as a bonus action
You use your second weapon with Nick to consume the extra attack but without consuming the bonus action
You use your level 5 Extra Attack feature to attack with the Light weapon again
You want to now use your Bonus action because you think your 3rd attack triggered Light again. At that point your DM will point to Nick and say that Nick clarifies that your Light property has been modified to only once per turn. Alternatively: You have the Dual Wielder Feat and explain to your DM that the Dual Wielder Feat gives you another source of a bonus action attack that is separate from Light and Nick. Yay, thanks to the feat you get a 4th attack!
This is all correct, but it should be made clear that you don't need the extra attack in step 3 to use the Dual Wielder bonus action attack.
Once you make the attack in step 1, you have two available bonus action attacks: one from Light, and one from DW. You could normally only take advantage of one, but Nick lets you use the Light additional attack without consuming the bonus action, so it's available for the DW attack.
(And you still shouldn't need to be a pedantic rules nerd to figure out how two-weapon fighting works. This is not my number 1 gripe about the 2024 combat rules, but it's probably my #1 new gripe.)
And this video (interaction between the Light weapon property, Dual Wielder feat, Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat, and Nick Weapon Mastery):
You bring up a great point: Extra Attack. The Nick property doesn't actually allow you to make more attacks during your Attack action than your class features dictate. A character at level 5 can't make three attacks with their Attack action, Nick or no Nick.
The video (and the PHB) explains how that's possible.
With just the light property and two scimitars, no Dual Wielder feat, how many attacks does one get? ( remember, not adding the Dual Wielder Feat, just the light property and nick from the scimitarA and scimitarB.)
[ 2 copper on 3 attacks]
Only two.
It’s three, because the light property is the same as the Dual Wielder Feat. The only difference between the light property and DWF is the different weapon that can be used as the offhand weapon.
Nick works to just move the “Bonus action of an extra attack to making an extra attack during the Attack Action ( main action ), and still leaves the light property bonus action available to make the offhand attack just like DWF does.
“D&D it’s by design” ;
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
In this video, start at 2:35 and watch till 3:20, and the jump cut from the official video is revealed. Todd Kendrick gets the three attack question in, and crawford confirms yes.
Three attacks and Dual Wielder is never mentioned in those first 3:20 minutes of the official video.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Crawford was wrong when he answered that one question on the fly about throwing three daggers because he simply forgot that the Nick Mastery property includes a restriction. he was focusing on the portion of the Nick Mastery property which frees up the Bonus Action for other things. Just because Crawford says something off-the-cuff doesn't actually change the words that are written in the text.
There shouldn't be so many posts on this aspect of the Nick Mastery property and the DW Feat. It's extremely clear. As has already been explained by others several times now, the Light property allows an extra attack as a Bonus Action when certain prerequisites are met. The Nick Mastery property allows THAT extra attack of the Light property to be made as part of the particular Attack action that is specified within the Light property instead of as a Bonus Action. This frees up your Bonus Action to be used by something else. But THAT extra attack of the Light property can only be made once per turn.
Now, totally separately from that we can look at the Dual Wielder Feat. This is a totally different feature within the game which provides its own rules. The DW Feat is a Feat whereas the Light property rule is a rule for an equipment property. The DW Feat provides a rule which allows you to make an extra attack as a Bonus Action as long as certain (other) prerequisites are met.
So now you have two game features which allow you to use a Bonus Action. Some characters might eventually have 5 or 10 different ways of using a Bonus Action. There is no problem with that. If your Bonus Action is available, you choose one of the ways in which you are allowed to use it and you apply that rule.
In this case, the Nick Mastery property frees up your Bonus Action so that you still have your Bonus Action available even after you are done resolving your usage of the Light property by making the extra attack of the Light property. Once that is done, you cannot make the extra attack of the Light property again on this turn because of the restriction. But your Bonus Action is still available, so you can still choose one of the 10 different ways that you have available to use your Bonus Action. One of those ways is to apply your Dual Wielder Feat to give yourself an extra attack to be used as a Bonus Action. That extra attack is coming from the Feat. If your Bonus Action is still available to use, then you can use it in that way if you want.
Crawford is touted as the Primary Game Architect, thus he designed the rules, had them written, and now it’s RAW. Video confirms by his words the RAW intent.
Nuff Said.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Crawford is touted as the Primary Game Architect, thus he designed the rules, had them written, and now it’s RAW. Video confirms by his words the RAW intent.
Maybe it was edited out because people thought they could double dip bonus actions using Nick?
nick only allows changing the extra attack that can normally be taken as a bonus action and allows the attack to be made as part of the main Attack Action instead of using your bonus action to make that attack, and your bonus action is still available, and your bonus actions still has the ability to make an extra attack as a bonus action with the other hand.
Nick doesn’t remove the bonus action, it just gives you an extra attack if you are attacking with two weapons one in each hand.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Nick doesn’t remove the bonus action, it just gives you an extra attack if you are attacking with two weapons one in each hand.
It's true that Nick doesn't remove the Bonus Action. But it does explicitly restrict how many times you can make the extra attack of the Light property to once per turn. Once you've made the extra attack of the Light property during your Attack action (by taking advantage of the rule provided by the Nick Mastery property) then you can no longer make the extra attack of the Light property during your Bonus Action of the same turn.
You can make this extra attack only once per turn.
DW does not interact with the rules for the Light property in any way. It simply requires the first attack to be made with a Light weapon, which is a totally different concept.
There's two different abilities letting you take a Bonus Action to make an extra attack when taking the Attack action and attacking with a Light weapon; the Light property and the Dual Wielder feat. We refer to them as;
The extra attack of the Light property
The extra attack of the Dual Wielder feat
Nick Mastery only modify one of them, the extra attack of the Light property.
The Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat modify the two of them because both are extra attack as a result of using a weapon that has the Light property.
They are not "derived from the light property". They look for the presence of the light property.
If I give two people an envelope each and tell them "give this to the first person who comes in wearing a hat", the contents of the envelopes do not become the same. Even if they both contain a $10 bill, they're two different $10 bills.
And that's what's metaphorically happening here. You have two abilities (Light and DW) that are looking for an attack with a Light weapon, and they give the attacker a bonus action attack when they do.
The only weird part is that one of the two abilities watching for an attack with a Light weapon is the Light property itself.
It specifies that you can make the extra attack of the Light property once per turn.
One might think that with all this use of "derived from", "via", and the like, that you were trying to cloud the issue in order to score rhetorical points against 5e 24.
I suggest choosing your words more carefully to avoid that. It might also help clear up your own confusion on the matter.
Let's see what TWF actually says:
Again, it references using weapons with the Light property, which is, as established above, not the same as the extra attack of the light property.
Is this stuff more confusing and requiring of close reading than it could be? Definitely.
But it's not actually unclear, much less contradictory.
Enhanced Duel Wield is a modification of the text found in the Light property. Just look at them side by side and that becomes obvious. They're not two different ways to make an offhand attack. It is the same way but one has been modified to allow other weapon options.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
If it were intended to simply modify, they would have done for DW what they did in Nick, and have it modify the extra attack of the Light property.
They did not. They put the text, similar though it may be, into a separate feature, which makes it a separate ability.
And it's well-established that different abilities, even with similar or even identical effects, stack. (In the general case, but exceptions must be explicitly established, and nothing here does that.) The canonical example would be
SapSlow Mastery and Ray of Frost. (and the warlock invocation that gives EB the same rider effect).Edit: Oops
For feat wording only applying to the extra attack of the Light property, see Crossbow Expert compared to Two-Weapon Fighting Style;
With just the light property and two scimitars, no Dual Wielder feat, how many attacks does one get?
( remember, not adding the Dual Wielder Feat, just the light property and nick from the scimitarA and scimitarB.)
[ 2 copper on 3 attacks]
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Only two.
Oh and using the 2024 version of Two-Weapon Fighting Style Feat instead of the actual light weapon ability,( which the light property is the 2014 version of Two-Weapon Fighting found in the combat section of 2014 in Melee Attacks group after AoO), is where the confusion lies.
Light property and Dual Wielder Feat are the same as far as the extra attack as a bonus action is concerned.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Others have explained this before, but here's a summary of how it works:
I feel like there's another post today talking about the same thing: Nick debate SOLVED
Let's try again:
If you want to make 3 attacks on your turn using Light and Nick, you'd need the Dual Wielder feat to use the Bonus Action that Nick freed up. Or the Extra Attack feature.
I usually recommend this explanation from Dual wield, Nick and light weapons:
And this video (interaction between the Light weapon property, Dual Wielder feat, Two-Weapon Fighting Style feat, and Nick Weapon Mastery):
The video (and the PHB) explains how that's possible.
It’s three, because the light property is the same as the Dual Wielder Feat. The only difference between the light property and DWF is the different weapon that can be used as the offhand weapon.
Nick works to just move the “Bonus action of an extra attack to making an extra attack during the Attack Action ( main action ), and still leaves the light property bonus action available to make the offhand attack just like DWF does.
“D&D it’s by design” ;
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
In this video, start at 2:35 and watch till 3:20, and the jump cut from the official video is revealed. Todd Kendrick gets the three attack question in, and crawford confirms yes.
Three attacks and Dual Wielder is never mentioned in those first 3:20 minutes of the official video.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
Crawford was wrong when he answered that one question on the fly about throwing three daggers because he simply forgot that the Nick Mastery property includes a restriction. he was focusing on the portion of the Nick Mastery property which frees up the Bonus Action for other things. Just because Crawford says something off-the-cuff doesn't actually change the words that are written in the text.
There shouldn't be so many posts on this aspect of the Nick Mastery property and the DW Feat. It's extremely clear. As has already been explained by others several times now, the Light property allows an extra attack as a Bonus Action when certain prerequisites are met. The Nick Mastery property allows THAT extra attack of the Light property to be made as part of the particular Attack action that is specified within the Light property instead of as a Bonus Action. This frees up your Bonus Action to be used by something else. But THAT extra attack of the Light property can only be made once per turn.
Now, totally separately from that we can look at the Dual Wielder Feat. This is a totally different feature within the game which provides its own rules. The DW Feat is a Feat whereas the Light property rule is a rule for an equipment property. The DW Feat provides a rule which allows you to make an extra attack as a Bonus Action as long as certain (other) prerequisites are met.
So now you have two game features which allow you to use a Bonus Action. Some characters might eventually have 5 or 10 different ways of using a Bonus Action. There is no problem with that. If your Bonus Action is available, you choose one of the ways in which you are allowed to use it and you apply that rule.
In this case, the Nick Mastery property frees up your Bonus Action so that you still have your Bonus Action available even after you are done resolving your usage of the Light property by making the extra attack of the Light property. Once that is done, you cannot make the extra attack of the Light property again on this turn because of the restriction. But your Bonus Action is still available, so you can still choose one of the 10 different ways that you have available to use your Bonus Action. One of those ways is to apply your Dual Wielder Feat to give yourself an extra attack to be used as a Bonus Action. That extra attack is coming from the Feat. If your Bonus Action is still available to use, then you can use it in that way if you want.
Crawford is touted as the Primary Game Architect, thus he designed the rules, had them written, and now it’s RAW. Video confirms by his words the RAW intent.
Nuff Said.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
The thing he said that was edited out?
Was that perhaps because it was incorrect?
If it's correct, why was it edited out?
Maybe it was edited out because people thought they could double dip bonus actions using Nick?
nick only allows changing the extra attack that can normally be taken as a bonus action and allows the attack to be made as part of the main Attack Action instead of using your bonus action to make that attack, and your bonus action is still available, and your bonus actions still has the ability to make an extra attack as a bonus action with the other hand.
Nick doesn’t remove the bonus action, it just gives you an extra attack if you are attacking with two weapons one in each hand.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
It's true that Nick doesn't remove the Bonus Action. But it does explicitly restrict how many times you can make the extra attack of the Light property to once per turn. Once you've made the extra attack of the Light property during your Attack action (by taking advantage of the rule provided by the Nick Mastery property) then you can no longer make the extra attack of the Light property during your Bonus Action of the same turn.
I think that's called RAI dude.