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Dual Wielding [Dungeons & Dragons]
(lemmy.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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People desperately need to understand that mechanical rules are there for balancing and taking them so painfully literally just isn’t necessary.
You only get one unarmed attack on the dice, but if you want to say you did the damage in two or three hits instead of one then go for it, it literally does not matter. You can even say you missed one attack and them wound up for a sneaky second one!
Follow the rules for number related things and roleplay and tell a story for being cool related things.
As DM, I'll have you roll the dice, tell you if it succeeded or not, and then have YOU describe what happens based on the roll.
But with this particular thing, it's not really about the story. It's the player trying to maximize their bonuses so the dice will be more favorable. In which case, sure. You can dual wield your hands. But you're still taking a penalty with your off-hand unless you have the feat that removes it. You ever try to punch someone with your non-dominant arm? You definitely take a penalty IRL, unless you're ambidextrous.
An unarmed strike is a weapon attack. When you make a weapon attack, you can use a bonus action to make another weapon attack with your offhand. It seems pretty straightforward and intuitive that your offhand weapon attack could be using your bare hand.
... and this is why I don't play D&D. It's all abstract. It's more like a board game than an RPG.
[Obviously, this is just my opinion, and it's subjective, and it's probably wrong. But, we are where we are.]
You have to abstract something for a game, though. So are you saying you want it less abstract in that you want less of it to rely on dice (and thus more role playing), or do you want it less abstract in that you want more crunch and mechanics for, like, pooping?
I was more thinking about the abstraction of things like character classes and levels. "I'm a knight and can only more in L-shapes." or "I'm a seventh level human." That's what I mean about it being more like a board game than an RPG. Compare "I'm a third level barbarian" to, eg, Call of Cthulhu and "I'm a pilot who was a POW in WWI which is when I picked up fluency in German." One of those is a potential character, the other is just a playing piece.
That's all up to how you play the game, then. I've been in games that are both; ones where I played a "human wizard" and ones where I didn't know what the other characters' classes were because they were just, like...Zaraaraasnaan, dude. You know, Z?
Edit: And some games that turned from one to the other, honestly.
Zaraaraasnaan sounds more like a real person than a game piece. What character class am I?
That's a character in the PF2e game I've played every week for the past year. I know he's a gnome because he and the other gnome in the party are total buddies and talk about gnome life all the time. And he's very sneaky and stealthy, but he also does some magic stuff and is very loud and opinionated. So maybe he's a rogue, but honestly I couldn't tell you.
Well good. I feel like you shouldn't (easily) be able to tell. My question was about me, though. What character class am I? I'm good at soft people skills, cooking, archery, carpentry, languages, project management... am I allowed to wear metal armor? Can I cast spells?
My point isn't that D&D is bad, it's not, but it's also not for me. Different people like different things and that's great. If you like knowing that someone is playing a cleric or a barbarian (and therefore you also know all the associated limitations and specials of that character), I'm not trying to piss on your picnic. But for me it's too much like 'I play a knight and can only more in L-shapes'. Like I said, game pieces, not characters.
I'm not trying to sell you on class-based RPGs if that's not your thing. I'm just saying that I think your particular problem as stated is more about the style of the specific table than of the specific system (though in fairness I agree that the system isn't helping you much). Do you like classless games better, or are you more in the "just write a book" camp?
I enjoy classless. I started on Red Box D&D back in 1982 (I think) and it was an absolute revelation for me and a foundational moment for my entire life's 'hobby' compared to the computer adventure games I'd played up until that point (The Hobbit, Colossal Cave, Zork, etc). But a few short years after that I was introduced to Runequest and D&D just seemed like a child's game in comparison. Again, I want to make it clear I'm not dismissing anyone else's game. If D&D is your one true love then that's awesome and I'm glad you love it and hope you have many, many more years of gaming enjoyment.
But I, personally, found the class system and the level system just too artificial and not reflective of living, breathing characters. It felt (to me) like a cartoon version of role-playing compared to Runequest where PCs were deeply, and fundamentally, embedded in the game world, and the limitations on them were in-game, world-based limitations, rather than game system limitations which were not a natural outcome of the world, but of the arbitrary decisions of the game designers. I'm thinking 'woshippers of Humakt (the RQ god of Death) can't kill people who surrender' vs. 'magic users can't wear armor' kind of limitations.
I want to stress, once again, I'm not trying to shit on any one else's game fun. The more people playing TTRPGs the better as far as I'm concerned.
I haven't played Runequest. It's been on the list for ages, though.
I'm actually not even that big a fan of D&D specifically; most of my recent games have been PF2e, which has a lot more of a LEGO set feel with how you build characters and I think can avoid some of the issues you're talking about. But I'm always up for trying new systems when I get the chance. In fairness, that's rare.
With you 100% on that last line.
In what way? The die tell you success rate so you can’t just say “I succeed at everything” and you use your creativity to bring it all to life.
Your comment as written, especially with the clear example in my first comment, reads like “I’m not creative enough to work within the system”. I’m guessing that isn’t your point but I’m not sure what else to read it as.
There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there