Dual Wielding Equals Awesome

I don't know how widely my view is shared 'round the globe, but personally, I find dual wielding to be damn cool. And with dual wielding I mean the use of two melee weapons in combat - one in each hand.

In real life, fighting with two weapons is hard and usually highly inpractical, if not entirely dumb - blocking with a shield is easier than parrying with a dagger or sword. Shield would also grant quite a bit more protection from projectiles. Although, taking opponent's weapon aside with one weapon and striking with another might work.

In fantasy (games), however, two weapons mean often twice the fun - if one sword is nice, then two swords must be twice as nice, sometimes even more. Dual-wielding is usually penalized more or less, but it's possible to overcome the penalty with skills or enchantments. Also, using one two-handed weapon is commonly given as an alternative to dual wielding, but while pretty neat too, I find two weapons more appealing - and often still the better choice for higher damage, like in Dungeon Siege 2.

When the Untitled Roguelike Project's combat system was still ongoing heavy development, armor granted a constant amount of protection from damage. This meant that bigger and slower weapons would do more damage than smaller and faster weapons (or damage at all). After realizing this, I worked to fix it and changed the damage reduction to a percentage value. I also standardized all weapons to do same amount of damage over certain time (energy spent), so that no weapon type could be favored over others. Certain class talents improve the effect of some weapons and fighting styles though, and will lead (or force) some characters onto certain path. But I think it's alright, as I want classes to have their niches.

Neither have I done the math if two-handed style and two weapon style actually are equal in effectiveness. I would favor dual wielding at this point but both will probably have their moments. It will be interesting to see if the burst damage of big weapons is much better option in certain situations, though I doubt the difference will be as drastic as in the pvp fights of WoW, where randomly coming big numbers make it harder for the target to react.

 It seems this post went more towards URLP than I initially meant - I was just going to say few words how I like dual wielding in games, or how I dislike the lack of it, which actually makes me sad (Dungeon Siege 1, Icewind Dale 1, Baldur's Gate 1 (without BG1Tutu), it's you who I'm pointing at now). But let me pull back a bit and add something quickly before I head towards bed myself.

When talking about dual wielding, one name seems to always pop up: Drizzt Do'Urden, the famous drow elf ranger created by R.A. Salvatore. Drizzt's trademark are his twin scimitars - Twinkle and Icingdeath - which he puts into great use in the myriad number of novels he appears. Drizzt is of course superhumanly dexterous, ambidexterous actually, which allows him to use the two rather large weapons so well together.

Drizzt is also infamous for causing many to copy his character - there are many Drizzits in mmorpgs and D&D campaigns, and some frown upon this heavily. I'm guilty for doing this myself too, though only in tabletop D&D. Quite a few elven rangers with two scimitars I've made, one was even a drow, lol. Even now I'm playing an elven ranger with scimitars in our D&D 4th edition campaign. In fact, there's a feat called Scimitar Dance (missed attacks with scimitars do dex mod damage) available at level 11, so that one can be as drizzt as possible.

But now off to bed.