TWF+Fists

[valczir]

I've seen people asking whether this was possible (and I know it's not), but I was wondering how many people think it should be. I know this has to have come up somewhere, but I either missed the conversation or ... yeah, that's about the only option. Personally, I think it should, and I'd like to make my case here.

[edit] After doing a bit of reading, it looks like it's possible that TWF and Flurry can stack, which would mean that I'm pretty much just plain wrong. I have never allowed anyone to take two full round actions in a round because it just doesn't make sense, so I assumed you couldn't flurry (which takes a full round) and attack with your offhand (which also takes a full round) in the same round. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Because of the fact that I still think it's absolutely ridiculous to use Flurry and offhand attacks in a single round, I'm going to continue my argument.

Here's a little support for why I don't think Flurry and TWF should stack:

Full Attack

If you get more than one attack per round because your base attack bonus is high enough, because you fight with two weapons or a double weapon (see Two-Weapon Fighting under Special Attacks, page 160), or for some special reason (such as a feat or a magic item), you must use a full-round action to get your additional attacks. You do not need to specify the targets of your attacks ahead of time. You can see how the earlier attacks turn out before assigning the later ones.

The only movement you can take during a full attack is a 5-foot step. You may take the step before, after, or between your attacks.

If you get multiple attacks because your base attack bonus is high enough, you must make the attacks in order from highest bonus to lowest. If you are using two weapons, you can strike with either weapon first. If you are using a double weapon, you can strike with either part of the weapon first.

Deciding between an Attack or a Full Attack: After your first attack, you can decide to take a move action instead of making your remaining attacks, depending on how the first attack turns out. If you've already taken a 5-foot step, you can't use your move action to move any distance, but you could still use a different kind of move action.

[/edit]

In PnP D&D, the full monk would most likely use fists at higher levels because they dealt quite a bit more damage than any other monk weapons - Flurry of Blows allowed you to attack almost as fast with fists as you could using the TWF chain with any other weapons. Fists began weaker than some of the other monk weapons, but they became much more useful at higher monk levels (2d10 base damage per hit with two extra attacks at full attack bonus, ending up with an AB of +15/+15/+15/+10/+5 while using FoB at level 20, not counting anything other than BAB and Flurry).

If you chose to multiclass, taking a level or three of monk, you probably wouldn't use your fists because they didn't deal all that much damage, instead going for one of the other monk weapons (or choosing to not be centered and going with some other weapon).

Personally, I liked how this worked. A level 8+ monk would probably be using fists, as they deal as much base damage as a bastard sword. A level 12+ monk would be fairly stupid to use anything but his fists, as they deal as much base damage as a greatsword (unless that monk had gotten ahold of a pretty darn sweet weapon or two).

In DDO, fists cannot approach kama damage due to the fact that kamas attack significantly faster. Even dealing with only base damage, not counting any damage modifiers, it's been shown that two kamas can deal at least as much damage as handwraps.

More than anything, that is what annoys me about the way Flurry of Blows was implemented in DDO. Admittedly, you had a harder time hitting things with the original version of FoB, but at least that way, a fist would count as a one-handed weapon that could be dual wielded.


So I vote that we should be able to dual wield handwraps and apply the TWF feat chain to them. Make fists the ultimate high level monk weapon again!

... Darn, no poll option, eh? Meh.

[wolfy42]

If you could dual wield handwraps that would give a monk 4d8 base dmg at lvl 16...which is pretty strong. You would get all the bonuses of dual wielding (double enchant bonus, double power attack bonus, double elemental bonus etc) and would probably be one of the highest dps classes in the game after factoring in Ki attacks.

The solution in my opinion is simple.

Standard unarmed attacks wielding 1 handwrap do full dmg and count as a two handed weapon (getting 1.5x strength bonus and double power attack bonus).

If you wield 2 handwraps (And the only thing you can dual wield with a handwrap is another one) your BASE unarmed damage is halved (IE you do 1d8 dmg x 2 at lvl 16. At lvl 1 wielding two handraps you would do 1d3 base dmg per attack.

This would balance everything out AND allow monks to chose between combat styles at will.

It would make high end dual wielding handwrap monks exactly equal to high end dual wielding kama monks.

The two handed bonus to monks using only 1 handwrap just makes sense and allows the option of doing so because without it EVERYONE would go the TWF handwrap route since it would be so much better.

That is the only easy solution that I see for this.

You could just make unarmed a get the two handed weapon bonus (1.5 strength and doube power attack) but while that makes unarmed as good as a QS it does not make it as good as kamas who get double enchantment bonus (+5 on each) and double elemental bonuses.

The speed difference though would make it close enough not to matter much.

I think at a minimum unarmed attacks need to be given the 1.5x strength and double power attack bonuses.

[valczir]

...
If you wield 2 handwraps (And the only thing you can dual wield with a handwrap is another one) your BASE unarmed damage is halved (IE you do 1d8 dmg x 2 at lvl 16. At lvl 1 wielding two handraps you would do 1d3 base dmg per attack.

This would balance everything out AND allow monks to chose between combat styles at will.

It would make high end dual wielding handwrap monks exactly equal to high end dual wielding kama monks.

The two handed bonus to monks using only 1 handwrap just makes sense and allows the option of doing so because without it EVERYONE would go the TWF handwrap route since it would be so much better.

See, the thing is that fists are supposed to be one of the most powerful weapons in the game, if you're a full monk (in D&D). A partial monk won't use fists because other weapons are more useful. A full monk will use fists because they are much stronger than any other options.

I'm not looking for fists to be as viable as dual kama, in the end-game, I'm looking for them to be as viable as dual kama around level 5ish (as it seems to be in PnP).


Anyway, after more reading, it seems that it's confirmed that you must make a full attack action to use extra attacks granted by any feat or by wielding two weapons, but that any individual feat or extra weapon does not need to encompass the extra attacks. Therefor, TWF and Flurry can stack just fine.

However, it also seems that fists can be dual wielded normally, so me saying we should be able to dual wield fists is basically saying that TWF should work the way TWF should work.

Q: Can a monk fight with two weapons? Can she combine a two-weapon attack with a flurry of blows? What are her penalties on attack rolls?

A: A monk can fight with two weapons just like any other character, but she must accept the normal penalties on her attack rolls to do so. She can use an unarmed strike as an offhand weapon. She can even combine two-weapon fighting with a flurry of blows to gain an extra attack with her off hand (but remember that she can use only unarmed strikes or special monk weapons as part of the flurry). The penalties for two weapon fighting stack with the penalties for flurry of blows.

For example, at 6th level, the monk Ember can normally make one attack per round at a +4 bonus. When using flurry of blows, she can make two attacks (using unarmed strikes or any special monk weapons she holds), each at a +3 bonus. If she wants to make an extra attack with her off hand, she has to accept a -4 penalty on her primary hand attacks and a -8 penalty on her off-hand attacks (assuming she wields a light
weapon in her off hand).

If Ember has Two-Weapon Fighting, she has to accept only a -2 penalty on all attacks to make an extra attack with her off hand. Thus, when wielding a light weapon in her off hand during a flurry of blows, she can make a total of three attacks, each at a total bonus of +1. At least one of these attacks has to be with her off-hand weapon.
A 20th-level monk with Greater Two-Weapon Fighting can make eight attacks per round during a flurry of blows.

Assuming she wields a light weapon in her off hand, her three off-hand weapon attacks are at +13/+8/+3, and she has five attacks (at +13/+13/+13/+8/+3) with unarmed strikes or any weapons she carries in her primary hand. If the same monk also has Rapid Shot and throws at least one shuriken as part of her flurry of blows (since Rapid Shot can be used only with ranged attacks), she can throw one additional shuriken with her primary hand, but all of her attacks (even melee attacks) suffer a -2 penalty. Thus, her full attack array looks like this: +11/+11/+11/+11/+6/+1 primary hand (two must be with shuriken) and +11/+6/+1 off hand.

Keep in mind, the full monk in PnP became deadly because of those fists. Without the fist damage, they were kind of meh. No one would make a 100% monk in PnP and use kamas unless they wanted to decieve their enemies, because their fists were so much more useful. A partial monk, however, would usually choose to use other weapons, because monk unarmed damage is based on monk level.

[Wu_Jen]

This was from the WotC board.

Apparently they ruled that it does stack. Yay! Monk power! Apparently in 3E it didn't but in 3.5E it does

First off, I would like to apologize for taking a couple of day to get back to this question. As you may know, we have several avenues that questions can come into Wizards of the Coast from, and different people who may end up answering them. Since this was not a cut and dry answer, I wanted to coordinate with Customer Service and Sage's advice at Dragon magazine before posting the answer to your question.

Quote:
quote:Since we have a staff member here, maybe he could shed some light on whether or not Monks can benefit from Flurrying and the TWF tree feats at the same time?
The simple answer is yes.

The long answer is that a monk with TWF can use both Flurry and TWF in a full attack. The penalties for doing so are added to all attacks and the additional attack gained from TWF only gets +1/2 Str bonus to damage.

Example: 4th level Monk, Str 14, BAB +3, TWF feat.
Atk: Unarmed +5 melee (1d8+2)
Flurry: 2 Unarmed +3 melee (1d8+2)
Flurry and TWF: 2 Unarmed +1 melee (1d8+2) and Unarmed +1 melee (1d8+1)

If you have a weapon, such as a sai, that is special monk weapon and you can flurry with it, you can only use that weapon as either as your primary hand attack or off-hand attack, but not both.

Example: same as above with a +1 Sai.
Flurry and TWF: 2 Unarmed +1 melee (1d8+2) and +1 Sai +2 melee (1d4+2)

or

Flurry and TWF: 2 +1 Sai +2 melee (1d4+3) and Unarmed +1 melee (1d8+1)

and from this in the FAQ:

Can a monk fight with two weapons? Can she combine a two-weapon attack with a flurry of blows? What are her penalties on attack rolls?

A monk can fight with two weapons just like any other character, but she must accept the normal penalties on her attack rolls to do so. She can use an unarmed strike as an offhand weapon. She can even combine two-weapon fighting with a flurry of blows to gain an extra attack with her off hand (but remember that she can use only unarmed strikes or special monk weapons as part of the flurry). The penalties for twoweapon fighting stack with the penalties for flurry of blows.

[EinarMal]

They should stack as has been pointed out, they really need to do something to make fists at least as good (I would prefer better) than dual kamas. What the heck is the point of unarmed fighting if kamas are better (and they are better now starting around 9th level with ITWF)?

The increase in base damage and the fact that the unarmed animation is a bit faster, does not make up for the fact that with GTWF you are getting far more attack rolls in the same amount of time with dual kamas.

The way monk handwraps are implemented is messed up, as in unarmed fighting and flurry of blows. Monk to me are totally broken in their most fundamental way they are supposed to fight. Monks are supposed to get lots of attacks to make unarmed fighting with poor crit weapons effective.

[EinarMal]

If you could dual wield handwraps that would give a monk 4d8 base dmg at lvl 16...which is pretty strong. You would get all the bonuses of dual wielding (double enchant bonus, double power attack bonus, double elemental bonus etc) and would probably be one of the highest dps classes in the game after factoring in Ki attacks..

It would not be overpowerd because of poor crit range, you all are way to hung up on base damage which matters less and less when you start adding in bursting and other effects. Someone with two green steel khopesh will easily make up for the base damage difference.

Monks should be one of the highest DPS classes in the game, if you build them correctly in PnP (using flurry and TWF) they are as well....working as intended.

The bottom line is Monk's aren't proper tanks (lack intimidate and high hit points) and they currently lack DPS, and they are not really support characters. Currently there is zero reason to play a monk other than for the heck of it. They are mediocre at best.

Monks should be a DPS striker type ala Rogues and Rangers, that should be their role. All of those classes are light/no armor, have evasion, and should put out good DPS.