House Rule: the Cinematic Dual-Weapon Attack Tweak
One of the main reasons I started this site is that I wanted a proper place to share my GURPS resources with the rest of the world. Funnily enough, I kept delaying posting any materials because I wanted to shape them up a bit fist and, well, I’ve posted none so far. But a discussion I read on the GURPS forums today motivated me to finally do something about it, in the form of a new house rule. So there you go – the Cinematic Dual-Weapon Attack Tweak.
The Cinematic Dual-Weapon Attack Tweak
Dual-Weapon Attack and Rapid Strike aren’t mutually exclusive any more – you can use them both during the same turn, performing a Dual-Weapon Attack with one of your attacks and a Rapid Strike with another. Heck, you can even perform a Dual-Weapon Attack and then perform a Rapid Strike with one of the resulting two attacks. Each of those options can still be used only once per turn, however. In essence, Dual-Weapon Attacks becomes a cheap version of Extra Attack which can only be taken once.
So, what’s the reasoning behind this? Read on.
Dual-Weapon Attack is a combat option which lets you perform two attacks instead of one, using a weapon held in each hand. The penalty for doing so is -4 to both attacks, and an additional -4 penalty to the off-hand attack unless you have Ambidexterity or Off-Hand Weapon Training. Dual-Weapon Attack is also a cinematic technique which lets you buy off the penalty to both attacks, so for the measly price of 6 character points (5 to max the technique and 1 for the Off-Hand Weapon Training perk) you can perform two attacks instead of one without any penalties.
There are two other options for attacking more than once per turn (ignoring All-Out Attack): Rapid-Strike enables you to attack twice with a single weapon at a -6 penalty to both attacks which can be reduced to -3 with Weapon Master or Trained by a Master, costing you 20 or 30 points but with additional benefits. The other is Extra Attack which will cost you 25 points if you’re using two different weapons or 28 points (because of the Multi-Strike enhancement) if using only one, and you won’t have any penalties to your attacks.
Finally, the RAW states that you can only perform a Dual-Weapon Attack with one of your attacks per turn, just as with Rapid Strike. Rapid Strike and Dual-Weapon Attack are also mutually incompatible; you can’t use them together, and you can only use one or the other within a single turn. Extra Attack can be added on top of that for even more attacks, but you can still only perform one attack per turn as a Dual-Weapon attack or Rapid Strike.
Now that the stage is set, it’s obvious that Dual-Weapon Attack is the optimal way to attack more than once per turn. That is, until you decide to use the option from Martial Arts which lets you perform more than two attacks with Rapid Strike. In such an environment where characters have high enough skill to pull off three or more attacks with Rapid Strike, Dual-Weapon Attack becomes obsolete as a way of engaging multiple foes.
This looks fine from a purely mechanical point of view since Dual-Weapon Attack still has its uses (performing two Deceptive Attacks at maximum skill without Extra Attack or performing techniques where margin of success is important), but one of the main reasons players in cinematic games wish to use two weapons is to perform a lot of attacks. And Dual-Weapon Attack is completely useless there! So in order to make fighting with two weapons a reasonable choice in that regard, Dual-Weapon Attack needs to be compatible with Rapid Strike.
The only side effect is that anyone with two weapons (or using both fists) will be able to perform one more attack per round. I find this acceptable. As I already said, this turns Dual-Weapon Attack into a cheaper version of Extra Attack which can only be taken once. There is already a precedent for that in RAW – Combat Reflexes is a cheaper version of the Defense Bonus metatrait which can only be taken once, and it has some additional bonuses to boot.
Some might argue, for the sake of this option being unbalanced, that you don’t just get an extra attack with two weapons but also an extra defense. That’s true, but you can get it anyway – you may always wield two weapons and attack with only one of them. You’d still get the extra defense without any attack penalties, and avoiding the off-hand penalty to Parry is as easy as spending 1 point for Off-Hand Weapon Training or using Main-Gauche. Even better, you could use a shield.
So there you have it. Sometimes I’m really amazed at how apparently small changes can have a whole lot of reasoning behind them.
Related posts: