Well, one sword isn’t really better than two. Dual-wielding has two major advantages currently, and that’s increased Rate (you get the sum of the Rate of both weapons) and can equip one weapon with a high Accuracy bonus and one with a high Defense bonus, and get the benefit of two weapons that way. Finally, dual-wielding offers many stunting opportunities. You want to be careful not to make dual-wielding clearly better than using a single weapon. Currently, there’s a trade off of Rate and Damage, which seems ok to me. If dual-wielding gives you improved offense AND defense over single-wielding, then you’re dumb not to use two weapons. There are plenty of systems in Exalted that need more love than dual-wielding. You should be giving me your ideas for sorcery!
So I’ve done some thinking about the whole two weapon problem in Exalted. The rules are rather poor. In most games there is a clear benefit to having more than one weapon but in Exalted it’s pretty much useless and/or nonsensical. This is too bad since Exalted is all about awesome and dual wielding is definitely awesome. Usually other systems allow for an additional attack at a severe penalty to both attacks. However extra attacks are more significant an advantage in Exalted than other systems, and penalties are more easily bought off so as to almost not matter. So no free extra attacks are suggested here.
What actually does dual wielding accomplish?
1)You can use both hands. To be honest your ability to hit things effectively isn’t twice as fast. A proper hit uses your whole body and you only have one body. So if rate were to be affected it would increase a small sum but not double or increase dramatically, That’s for charms to do.
2)You can attack two places at once. Well you still have the body problem here but you do have a wider range of striking surfaces with two weapons. Accuracy may be considered to be increased in this way for you are less likely to miss with a larger amount of weapon covering a target. Think of grapeshot vs solid slug in a shotgun.
3)You can attack and defend. Well so what a shield does this, and a shield blocks more of your body making it a better defense from ranged attacks. Shields can’t be eclipsed so dual weapon defense must be balanced with them. Shields are much more simple to use since they have one dedicated role and it’s mostly to hid part of your body behind. The rules do this beautifully by adding a small value to DV.
4)You can utilize the benefits of different weapon strengths. Yes a long sword for range and a short thin dagger for slipping into the chinks of armor when too close to swing a sword, but exalted doesn’t use range difficulties because it isn’t awesome. Still there are many differences in weapons so this combination of odd weapons is already reflected in their various stats. Under current rules you just choose which weapon you are currently attacking with and use those stats. No benefits from the weapon you are not using, but you don’t have to spend a round switching weapons.
5) You have two hands pressing into the opponent which should cut them up more. Well that is only if both hit. I advise against adding direct damage.
Exalted has worked very hard to streamline the combat so it doesn’t take an ice age to figure out what has happened, so dual wielding should be handled just a neatly. Also balance should be kept in check so that it doesn’t give such an advantage that everyone has to dual wield to be effective.
My suggestion
Dual wielding is about flexibility so why not give a couple simple options. Offense: Dual wielding adds to accuracy or rate depending on how used but should only increase either by one or two (like shield bonuses). Extra accuracy is extra damage so no damage should be in the mix because you should consider the extra damage from the extra accuracy like hitting with two weapons. One would distribute their bonus dual wielding points into accuracy and/or rate as they see fit. The penalty should be that you are committing yourself fully to attack and you should receive an equal penalty to your DV as you added to your offense. This should balance the attack power up nicely.
*Defense: *Can’t be used in the same round as offense, because that weapon is already engaging the opponent offensively, duh! This should work just like shields only it works worst against ranged attacks than melee. Again I suggest a penalty for not committing to the offense and you should receive a penalty on your attack that round equal to what you added to your defense. Why? it’s hard to coordinate using two weapons. The weapon adding to the defense must have at least a +1 to be used defensively. So if you miss match a weapon with a high defense with one having negative defense, you can’t get a bonus to your defense by using the parrying pool of the high defense weapon aided by the negative defense weapon. That just doesn’t work (unless you stunt of course, but that would just be flavor for the bonus the stunt provides).
Well, one sword isn’t really better than two. Dual-wielding has two major advantages currently, and that’s increased Rate (you get the sum of the Rate of both weapons) and can equip one weapon with a high Accuracy bonus and one with a high Defense bonus, and get the benefit of two weapons that way. Finally, dual-wielding offers many stunting opportunities. You want to be careful not to make dual-wielding clearly better than using a single weapon. Currently, there’s a trade off of Rate and Damage, which seems ok to me. If dual-wielding gives you improved offense AND defense over single-wielding, then you’re dumb not to use two weapons. There are plenty of systems in Exalted that need more love than dual-wielding. You should be giving me your ideas for sorcery!
h1. One sword is better than two?
So I’ve done some thinking about the whole two weapon problem in Exalted. The rules are rather poor. In most games there is a clear benefit to having more than one weapon but in Exalted it’s pretty much useless and/or nonsensical. This is too bad since Exalted is all about awesome and dual wielding is definitely awesome. Usually other systems allow for an additional attack at a severe penalty to both attacks. However extra attacks are more significant an advantage in Exalted than other systems, and penalties are more easily bought off so as to almost not matter. So no free extra attacks are suggested here.
What actually does dual wielding accomplish?
1)You can use both hands. To be honest your ability to hit things effectively isn’t twice as fast. A proper hit uses your whole body and you only have one body. So if rate were to be affected it would increase a small sum but not double or increase dramatically, That’s for charms to do.
2)You can attack two places at once. Well you still have the body problem here but you do have a wider range of striking surfaces with two weapons. Accuracy may be considered to be increased in this way for you are less likely to miss with a larger amount of weapon covering a target. Think of grapeshot vs solid slug in a shotgun.
3)You can attack and defend. Well so what a shield does this, and a shield blocks more of your body making it a better defense from ranged attacks. Shields can’t be eclipsed so dual weapon defense must be balanced with them. Shields are much more simple to use since they have one dedicated role and it’s mostly to hid part of your body behind. The rules do this beautifully by adding a small value to DV.
4)You can utilize the benefits of different weapon strengths. Yes a long sword for range and a short thin dagger for slipping into the chinks of armor when too close to swing a sword, but exalted doesn’t use range difficulties because it isn’t awesome. Still there are many differences in weapons so this combination of odd weapons is already reflected in their various stats. Under current rules you just choose which weapon you are currently attacking with and use those stats. No benefits from the weapon you are not using, but you don’t have to spend a round switching weapons.
5) You have two hands pressing into the opponent which should cut them up more. Well that is only if both hit. I advise against adding direct damage.
Exalted has worked very hard to streamline the combat so it doesn’t take an ice age to figure out what has happened, so dual wielding should be handled just a neatly. Also balance should be kept in check so that it doesn’t give such an advantage that everyone has to dual wield to be effective.
My suggestion
Dual wielding is about flexibility so why not give a couple simple options.
Offense: Dual wielding adds to accuracy or rate depending on how used but should only increase either by one or two (like shield bonuses). Extra accuracy is extra damage so no damage should be in the mix because you should consider the extra damage from the extra accuracy like hitting with two weapons. One would distribute their bonus dual wielding points into accuracy and/or rate as they see fit. The penalty should be that you are committing yourself fully to attack and you should receive an equal penalty to your DV as you added to your offense. This should balance the attack power up nicely.
*Defense: *Can’t be used in the same round as offense, because that weapon is already engaging the opponent offensively, duh! This should work just like shields only it works worst against ranged attacks than melee. Again I suggest a penalty for not committing to the offense and you should receive a penalty on your attack that round equal to what you added to your defense. Why? it’s hard to coordinate using two weapons. The weapon adding to the defense must have at least a +1 to be used defensively. So if you miss match a weapon with a high defense with one having negative defense, you can’t get a bonus to your defense by using the parrying pool of the high defense weapon aided by the negative defense weapon. That just doesn’t work (unless you stunt of course, but that would just be flavor for the bonus the stunt provides).
A.