How does dual-wielding work?

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I understand how it works at low levels, but what happens when you start getting addition attacks per round?

How many attacks are made with the primary hand weapon, and how many are made with the offhand weapon?

TIA

[ February 10, 2007, 16:27: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

 

IIRC, you get one additional attack (with your off-hand weapon) for dual wielding. And I don't think that changes at all regardless of level.

Klorox, my experience is that the best off-hand weapons aren't those that have great offensive attack effects, but those that provide a good ongoing, constant effect while you have it equipped, like a STR bonus or an AC bonus or some constant spell effect.

You're only going to get 1 attack with this offhand weapon, likely with a fairly strong to hit penalty. The best thing you can do is put your best offensive weapon in your main hand and put the best weapon with some sort of ongoing, constant effect weapon in your offhand to provide a good constant benefit that will be of more value than one iffy attack.

 

Crucis is right, you'll never get more than 1 extra attack (for -2 to all attacks if it's a small blade and -4 if it's any other one handed weapon).

Dual wielding can make a difference early on against low level foes, but later on it has many shortcomings.

Bear in mind that two handed weapons allow you to add 1.5 STR bonus to damage instead. That's not too shabby for a STR 18 character it yields +6 instead of +4 and it gets better as STR goes up.

Dual wielding in IWD2 is not the most efficient type of combat but it can be handy depending on your weapons (like crucis posted) and maybe in certain situations (if you use a finesse build or use weapons that cause elemental damage and don't care that much about regular damage).

 

The one thing that I'm a bit confused about is this. Say that you've got a dual wielding 15th level fighter with 3+1 attacks per round (the +1 for the off hand). Now, the fighter's base BAB sequence will be +15/+10/+5. Is the off hand attack made off of the "+15" BAB (then modified for dualwielding) or something else?

 

the fighter would have +13/+8/+3/+13 assuming he had both two weapon fighting and ambidexterity, and he was using a small blade in the off hand. The reason is that as caradhras said, dual wielding imposes a -2 on all attacks that round, main hand or off-hand. If you had said fighter using a larger weapon in his off hand, he'd have +11/+6/+1/+11 due to having a -4 on all attacks.

 

Ahhh, so the offhand weapon gets its attack with the full AB, minus the appropriate offhand two-weapon fighting penalty. Cool.

So when two weapon fighting (with the appropriate feats), you are actually getting 2 attacks with your best BAB. While that still may not be as good overall as one good two handed weapon for damage potential, it's as bad as it might seem. It would certainly be better than having to take your extra attack after a few -5 AB penalties (for each main hand attack after the first).