I'm going to be a player in a new campaign soon where I'm going to be playing a fighter and I plan on using Throwing Weapons.
Here are my thoughts
The character is going to have a belt essentially MADE of throwing weapons (Either daggers or darts) that he can use to draw "ammo" from.
Here's my dilemma, If I use daggers, then I can incorporate 2 weapon fighting with throwing (since they have light) and eventually take the Tasha's feat to give me the 2 weapon fighting style on TOP of my thrown weapon fighting.
If I use Darts, I can't do 2 weapon fighting, but I can later pick up sharpshooter since they're range weapons.
I would probably go with daggers, myself, I just like the versatility of being able to switch between ranged and melee. The quick draw ability from the Thrown Weapons style will also apply to stabbing with a dagger, which is neat.
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I like the darts with sharpshooter better than the daggers with 2 weapon fighting.
Thematically I like the image of a dagger thrower though, so I would say my darts resemble small throwing daggers.
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Daggers. There is little change you will always be able to fight at range. I somewhat wonder how many Daggers you get to carry around on your Ammo Belt. It's probably not a problem. Few DM's seem to care about such things, but Daggers are about a foot long and weigh in about about one pound. You may have been thinking about throwing knives, which do not exist in the current version of D&D. Back when they were around they did 1d3 worth of damage.
Darts get the same range and do the same damage. Darts aren't all that small either. Same length as a dagger. They're a quarter the weight, so you have less trouble with the Ammo Belt thing, but you're talking Lawn Darts here, not like the modern kind of darts you throw at dartboards in bars, and not anything close to Needles. Blowguns shoot Needles. They do one point of damage.
With feats, I like Fighter Initiate for the Two Weapon fighting style. That's a dependable damage boost. I'm not sold on Sharpshooter. The ability to ignore cover is nice, but the ability to take a huge penalty to hit in exchange does not seem equitable in the days of Bounded Accuracy. Getting bonuses to hit takes some work.
For either weapon, something like a Battlemaster could get you a nice boost with Precision Strike to make up for Sharpshooter's cost, but I don't think much else in the maneuvers is all that helpful with thrown weapons. You might take Fighting Initiate as a feat to grab just the few maneuvers and something more range oriented as a subclass, but unless you're doing a Variant Human you're going to be a while before you have enough feats to make your concept come alive. Much will depend on your scores. For anything other than rolled scores, Humans are strictly inferior to getting a +2 you can apply to your Dex. Half-Elves are the obvious choice. Mountain Dwarves are also great for that.
A dagger has a short range of 20 feet. That is not a viable ranged build. You will be engaged and forced to melee. Darts are the way to play this concept.
Sharpshooter increases your effective range to 60 feet and allows you to ignore cover which is huge. You could decide to never use the extra damage option and it would still be far and away better than any other feat.
And there's nothing stopping you from pulling out a dagger if something gets in your face. That is an option for both builds.
I'm going on the assumption here that OP wants to focus on throwing. A build that's always switching back and forth between melee and ranged is a different concept in my eyes. If that's more what you want, I could see why you might prefer daggers. Just keep in mind that going dagger pretty much forces you into this hit & run style due to its abysmal range.
I missed the point about Daggers not being "ranged weapons" and thus not qualifying for Sharpshooter. They are "thrown" weapons, not "ranged", and that's an important distinction. As a DM, I'd be inclined to allow Sharpshooter with Thrown weapons, but others might not.
I would still use Daggers. It gives me more flexibility. If I have put everything into Ranged Weapons then I am somewhat weak in melee and it is inevitable that I will be forced into that. The extra range Sharpshooter gives to Darts is kind of nice, the secondary ability somewhat useless without feats to back it up, and if I really want to be effective at *range* I'm going to use a bow. Sharpshooter is going to *shine* with a longbow.
I understand the desire to go with "flavor" and a character concept. Perhaps people would like to go full on Ninja and scatter Throwing Stars around. They would have to be homebrewed, and such things would only do 1 point of damage, but they are usually thrown to make people keep their heads down, and with Sharpshooter, you don't *care* if they take cover. Shuriken are also like Blowgun Needles, in that they were more used to deliver poison than to do damage, and again, you might be surprised at how heavy the real things are. The things you see that are punched out of sheet metal aren't what was actually used. Those are more a decoration and would essentially do no damage at all in D&D terms.
In addition, a Ninja might find use for Ball Bearings and or Caltrops, to make the hit and run thing much more fun for the Ninja. Try running up to melee them now! I'm almost tempted to make a subclass. Traditionally Ninja would be Rogues... Ranged sneak attacks, poison darts, crossbows... I start to wonder why bother with a Fighter. An Arcane Archer is better for Range, a Rogue is better for the Dagger and Dart thing, since ranges in cities are usually pretty short... Fighters are really much better for melee. That's what most of the subclasses are about, but I'm off topic now.
Yeah. Daggers. Half-Elf. Talk to the DM about using Sharpshooter with Daggers and they are better in every way than Darts. Archery and Two Weapon Fighting styles either way. Probably a Battlemaster, since none of the other subclasses offer anything useful for a ranged build but the Arcane Archer, and they are very specifically built for bows.
Thrown daggers can make use of the first two bullet points of the Sharpshooter feat. An attack with thrown daggers is a ranged weapon attack, aka a ranged attack with a weapon, it's just not an attack with a ranged weapon.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
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I'm going to be a player in a new campaign soon where I'm going to be playing a fighter and I plan on using Throwing Weapons.
Here are my thoughts
The character is going to have a belt essentially MADE of throwing weapons (Either daggers or darts) that he can use to draw "ammo" from.
Here's my dilemma, If I use daggers, then I can incorporate 2 weapon fighting with throwing (since they have light) and eventually take the Tasha's feat to give me the 2 weapon fighting style on TOP of my thrown weapon fighting.
If I use Darts, I can't do 2 weapon fighting, but I can later pick up sharpshooter since they're range weapons.
What y'all think?
Voted for Other: drop daggers entirely. Do this by level 12 at the latest:
ASIs/feats: Str 20, Sharpshooter (you need SS for thrown weapons to have credible range)
Loadout: darts + hand-axes
2 attacks with a hand-axe with thrown style where only one gets your stat mod should beat the one dart you give up for it, so that's the basic attack pattern: 1 hand-axe from your attack action and your bonus action, and all other attacks from your attack action are darts.
If you're a Rogue (not going to get Extra Attack, but multiple high-accuracy attacks important to land a Sneak Attack), I'd suggest Daggers. You can get by with one-and-only-one fighting style via a feat (Thrown Weapon Fighting Style), because +3-5 damage on your Bonus Action attack via Two Weapon Fighting Style isn't really where you're hoping to score your DPR.
If you're a Fighter or other martial class (will have Extra Attack, can afford to average out higher DPR by taking -5 to-hit penalties from Sharpshooter, have access to a fighting style as a class feature), I'd suggest Darts. You can more easily get two fighting styles via your class (Thrown Weapon Fighting Style) and a feat (Archery Fighting Style), which is important because a Sharpshooter picks up more DPR from to-hit bonuses than it does from other small damage modifiers.
Darts really only throw one less dart than Daggers throw, due to missing out on the TWF Bonus Action. But because Daggers can't stack +10 damage, Darts will almost always do more damage... unless that extra dagger is the difference between landing a 10d6 Sneak Attack or missing out on it for the round. So, Darts, unless you're a rogue, and then maybe STILL darts if you can somehow fit both Thrown Weapon Fighting and Archery Fighting Styles, and can pick up Extra Attack via multiclass.
If we're throwing, say, two per round... over 3-5 rounds per fight... over 3-5 fights per day... that's anywhere between 18 and 50 pieces of ammunition you'll need per day. That would be 5-12 lbs of darts, with no real stretch of the imagination to fit on a bandolier... or 20-48 lbs of daggers, probably occupying every single pocket, buckle, and strap on your body... or 40-96 lbs of handaxes, probably requiring some sort of handy haversack or other magical instrument to access.
Unlike proper ammunition (bolts, arrows, and bullets), I don't believe that there's anything RAW in the PHB that thrown weapons have a chance of becoming lost or breaking.... so a dozen or so darts, daggers, or handaxes would probably get you through most fights, assuming you can take the time to collect them afterwards. But not all fights or battlefields may allow for that, so you'll probably still want to double that at least to be on the safe side... two dozen darts is 6 lbs, daggers is 24 lbs, or handaxes is 48 lbs.
I assume you are married to the idea of Darts or Daggers. That is fine, but I feel you are limiting yourself. If you back up and consider, How should I build a ranged fighter? then you will open up more options.
If I had to choose between Daggers and Darts I would certainly choose Daggers. Daggers may be melee or thrown weapons, so they have more usefulness. You will find magic daggers once in a while. You are less likely to find magic darts.
As a fighter, you get to choose a fighting style, and at least with Daggers you may choose Two-Weapon Fighting. I don't know if the Ranged fighting option would help Darts like it does for Bows. But as a Ranged Fighter, you have your choice of bows, javelins, Daggers, Spears, Hand Axes and probably others, so in case you had not considered these I just wanted to "Throw" that out there.
Good luck.
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I like Darts for this. Archery Fighting Style + Sharpshooter offers a lot more than two-weapon fighting. Be a battle master and quick toss can fill in those bonus action attacks.
You can wield a shield and even go strength for plate. Maybe a bit odd conceptually, but whatever. Dex works just fine too.
I like Darts for this. Archery Fighting Style + Sharpshooter offers a lot more than two-weapon fighting. Be a battle master and quick toss can fill in those bonus action attacks.
You can wield a shield and even go strength for plate. Maybe a bit odd conceptually, but whatever. Dex works just fine too.
Agreed. The +2 bonus in attack rolls is amazing, it helps a lot to mitigate the penalty from Sharpshooter.
Also, although limited, do not forget that the new battlemaster maneuver Quick Toss also allows you to do a thrown attack with a bonus action. It costs you a Superiority Dice and it’s not “free” like TWF, but it’s a valuable resource whenever you want to attack more. SD recharge in short-rests and you can always get more dices from Martial Adept and/or Superior Technique Fighting style.
Thanks all for the opinions! I think what I'm going to go with is a bit of both. Have my belt full of darts, and have 2 daggers ready to go in case of melee.
The character is going to be a dex based fighter (Psy Warrior) and is going to be particularly weak so hand axes are out.
Race-wise, he's the result of an illithid hybridization experiment on a human So I'm using Tasha's Custom Lineage with the Telekinetic feat (for added psychic-ness). I really like the idea of flavoring the "drawing the weapon as part of the attack" as him throwing weapons with his telekinesis, hence the reason I'm sold on throwing weapons lol.
You may end up running into magic weapon problems unless your DM is willing to play ball. A two level dip into artificer for the returning weapon infusion solves everything. You could even flavor the infusion to be related to your telekinesis and fly your dart around the battlefield like Yondu.
I think my DM is willing to play along. This will be his first time DMing outside of a oneshot though so even if he doesn't, I wouldn't mind. I just want him to have a good experience with it lol (I usually DM for him)
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I'm going to be a player in a new campaign soon where I'm going to be playing a fighter and I plan on using Throwing Weapons.
Here are my thoughts
The character is going to have a belt essentially MADE of throwing weapons (Either daggers or darts) that he can use to draw "ammo" from.
Here's my dilemma, If I use daggers, then I can incorporate 2 weapon fighting with throwing (since they have light) and eventually take the Tasha's feat to give me the 2 weapon fighting style on TOP of my thrown weapon fighting.
If I use Darts, I can't do 2 weapon fighting, but I can later pick up sharpshooter since they're range weapons.
What y'all think?
I would probably go with daggers, myself, I just like the versatility of being able to switch between ranged and melee. The quick draw ability from the Thrown Weapons style will also apply to stabbing with a dagger, which is neat.
Canto alla vita
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ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I think I'm leaning towards daggers as well... Mainly for the aesthetic lol.
Though I think I would reflavor the darts as "needles" for edginess...
I like the darts with sharpshooter better than the daggers with 2 weapon fighting.
Thematically I like the image of a dagger thrower though, so I would say my darts resemble small throwing daggers.
Daggers. There is little change you will always be able to fight at range. I somewhat wonder how many Daggers you get to carry around on your Ammo Belt. It's probably not a problem. Few DM's seem to care about such things, but Daggers are about a foot long and weigh in about about one pound. You may have been thinking about throwing knives, which do not exist in the current version of D&D. Back when they were around they did 1d3 worth of damage.
Darts get the same range and do the same damage. Darts aren't all that small either. Same length as a dagger. They're a quarter the weight, so you have less trouble with the Ammo Belt thing, but you're talking Lawn Darts here, not like the modern kind of darts you throw at dartboards in bars, and not anything close to Needles. Blowguns shoot Needles. They do one point of damage.
With feats, I like Fighter Initiate for the Two Weapon fighting style. That's a dependable damage boost. I'm not sold on Sharpshooter. The ability to ignore cover is nice, but the ability to take a huge penalty to hit in exchange does not seem equitable in the days of Bounded Accuracy. Getting bonuses to hit takes some work.
For either weapon, something like a Battlemaster could get you a nice boost with Precision Strike to make up for Sharpshooter's cost, but I don't think much else in the maneuvers is all that helpful with thrown weapons. You might take Fighting Initiate as a feat to grab just the few maneuvers and something more range oriented as a subclass, but unless you're doing a Variant Human you're going to be a while before you have enough feats to make your concept come alive. Much will depend on your scores. For anything other than rolled scores, Humans are strictly inferior to getting a +2 you can apply to your Dex. Half-Elves are the obvious choice. Mountain Dwarves are also great for that.
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A dagger has a short range of 20 feet. That is not a viable ranged build. You will be engaged and forced to melee. Darts are the way to play this concept.
Sharpshooter increases your effective range to 60 feet and allows you to ignore cover which is huge. You could decide to never use the extra damage option and it would still be far and away better than any other feat.
And there's nothing stopping you from pulling out a dagger if something gets in your face. That is an option for both builds.
I'm going on the assumption here that OP wants to focus on throwing. A build that's always switching back and forth between melee and ranged is a different concept in my eyes. If that's more what you want, I could see why you might prefer daggers. Just keep in mind that going dagger pretty much forces you into this hit & run style due to its abysmal range.
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I missed the point about Daggers not being "ranged weapons" and thus not qualifying for Sharpshooter. They are "thrown" weapons, not "ranged", and that's an important distinction. As a DM, I'd be inclined to allow Sharpshooter with Thrown weapons, but others might not.
I would still use Daggers. It gives me more flexibility. If I have put everything into Ranged Weapons then I am somewhat weak in melee and it is inevitable that I will be forced into that. The extra range Sharpshooter gives to Darts is kind of nice, the secondary ability somewhat useless without feats to back it up, and if I really want to be effective at *range* I'm going to use a bow. Sharpshooter is going to *shine* with a longbow.
I understand the desire to go with "flavor" and a character concept. Perhaps people would like to go full on Ninja and scatter Throwing Stars around. They would have to be homebrewed, and such things would only do 1 point of damage, but they are usually thrown to make people keep their heads down, and with Sharpshooter, you don't *care* if they take cover. Shuriken are also like Blowgun Needles, in that they were more used to deliver poison than to do damage, and again, you might be surprised at how heavy the real things are. The things you see that are punched out of sheet metal aren't what was actually used. Those are more a decoration and would essentially do no damage at all in D&D terms.
In addition, a Ninja might find use for Ball Bearings and or Caltrops, to make the hit and run thing much more fun for the Ninja. Try running up to melee them now! I'm almost tempted to make a subclass. Traditionally Ninja would be Rogues... Ranged sneak attacks, poison darts, crossbows... I start to wonder why bother with a Fighter. An Arcane Archer is better for Range, a Rogue is better for the Dagger and Dart thing, since ranges in cities are usually pretty short... Fighters are really much better for melee. That's what most of the subclasses are about, but I'm off topic now.
Yeah. Daggers. Half-Elf. Talk to the DM about using Sharpshooter with Daggers and they are better in every way than Darts. Archery and Two Weapon Fighting styles either way. Probably a Battlemaster, since none of the other subclasses offer anything useful for a ranged build but the Arcane Archer, and they are very specifically built for bows.
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Thrown daggers can make use of the first two bullet points of the Sharpshooter feat. An attack with thrown daggers is a ranged weapon attack, aka a ranged attack with a weapon, it's just not an attack with a ranged weapon.
Canto alla vita
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ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Voted for Other: drop daggers entirely. Do this by level 12 at the latest:
Fighting styles (assumed limit 2): Archery, Thrown
ASIs/feats: Str 20, Sharpshooter (you need SS for thrown weapons to have credible range)
Loadout: darts + hand-axes
2 attacks with a hand-axe with thrown style where only one gets your stat mod should beat the one dart you give up for it, so that's the basic attack pattern: 1 hand-axe from your attack action and your bonus action, and all other attacks from your attack action are darts.
If you're a Rogue (not going to get Extra Attack, but multiple high-accuracy attacks important to land a Sneak Attack), I'd suggest Daggers. You can get by with one-and-only-one fighting style via a feat (Thrown Weapon Fighting Style), because +3-5 damage on your Bonus Action attack via Two Weapon Fighting Style isn't really where you're hoping to score your DPR.
If you're a Fighter or other martial class (will have Extra Attack, can afford to average out higher DPR by taking -5 to-hit penalties from Sharpshooter, have access to a fighting style as a class feature), I'd suggest Darts. You can more easily get two fighting styles via your class (Thrown Weapon Fighting Style) and a feat (Archery Fighting Style), which is important because a Sharpshooter picks up more DPR from to-hit bonuses than it does from other small damage modifiers.
Darts really only throw one less dart than Daggers throw, due to missing out on the TWF Bonus Action. But because Daggers can't stack +10 damage, Darts will almost always do more damage... unless that extra dagger is the difference between landing a 10d6 Sneak Attack or missing out on it for the round. So, Darts, unless you're a rogue, and then maybe STILL darts if you can somehow fit both Thrown Weapon Fighting and Archery Fighting Styles, and can pick up Extra Attack via multiclass.
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I know the OP said dart or daggers, but when it comes to weapons that can dual wield and throw I'm rather fond of the handaxe.
1d6 is much better than 1d4.
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If we're throwing, say, two per round... over 3-5 rounds per fight... over 3-5 fights per day... that's anywhere between 18 and 50 pieces of ammunition you'll need per day. That would be 5-12 lbs of darts, with no real stretch of the imagination to fit on a bandolier... or 20-48 lbs of daggers, probably occupying every single pocket, buckle, and strap on your body... or 40-96 lbs of handaxes, probably requiring some sort of handy haversack or other magical instrument to access.
Unlike proper ammunition (bolts, arrows, and bullets), I don't believe that there's anything RAW in the PHB that thrown weapons have a chance of becoming lost or breaking.... so a dozen or so darts, daggers, or handaxes would probably get you through most fights, assuming you can take the time to collect them afterwards. But not all fights or battlefields may allow for that, so you'll probably still want to double that at least to be on the safe side... two dozen darts is 6 lbs, daggers is 24 lbs, or handaxes is 48 lbs.
I like darts.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I assume you are married to the idea of Darts or Daggers. That is fine, but I feel you are limiting yourself. If you back up and consider, How should I build a ranged fighter? then you will open up more options.
If I had to choose between Daggers and Darts I would certainly choose Daggers. Daggers may be melee or thrown weapons, so they have more usefulness. You will find magic daggers once in a while. You are less likely to find magic darts.
As a fighter, you get to choose a fighting style, and at least with Daggers you may choose Two-Weapon Fighting. I don't know if the Ranged fighting option would help Darts like it does for Bows. But as a Ranged Fighter, you have your choice of bows, javelins, Daggers, Spears, Hand Axes and probably others, so in case you had not considered these I just wanted to "Throw" that out there.
Good luck.
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Throwing daggers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doVYFjIJcfU
or a real throwing weapon...MACHETE!!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwbG64YC-vQ
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I like Darts for this. Archery Fighting Style + Sharpshooter offers a lot more than two-weapon fighting. Be a battle master and quick toss can fill in those bonus action attacks.
You can wield a shield and even go strength for plate. Maybe a bit odd conceptually, but whatever. Dex works just fine too.
Just do both. Anyone can afford a pair of daggers on top of your bandolier full of darts. And as has been mentioned, darts are mechanically better.
It's almost never a good idea to reflavor anything for the sake of edginess. ;)
Agreed. The +2 bonus in attack rolls is amazing, it helps a lot to mitigate the penalty from Sharpshooter.
Also, although limited, do not forget that the new battlemaster maneuver Quick Toss also allows you to do a thrown attack with a bonus action. It costs you a Superiority Dice and it’s not “free” like TWF, but it’s a valuable resource whenever you want to attack more. SD recharge in short-rests and you can always get more dices from Martial Adept and/or Superior Technique Fighting style.
Thanks all for the opinions! I think what I'm going to go with is a bit of both. Have my belt full of darts, and have 2 daggers ready to go in case of melee.
The character is going to be a dex based fighter (Psy Warrior) and is going to be particularly weak so hand axes are out.
Race-wise, he's the result of an illithid hybridization experiment on a human So I'm using Tasha's Custom Lineage with the Telekinetic feat (for added psychic-ness). I really like the idea of flavoring the "drawing the weapon as part of the attack" as him throwing weapons with his telekinesis, hence the reason I'm sold on throwing weapons lol.
Sounds like a fun build LeBattery!
You may end up running into magic weapon problems unless your DM is willing to play ball. A two level dip into artificer for the returning weapon infusion solves everything. You could even flavor the infusion to be related to your telekinesis and fly your dart around the battlefield like Yondu.
I think my DM is willing to play along. This will be his first time DMing outside of a oneshot though so even if he doesn't, I wouldn't mind. I just want him to have a good experience with it lol (I usually DM for him)