"Swords Akimbo": Twin weapons, dexterity requirements, and related

Hijacking from this thread. The waters were getting muddied with multiple topics being discussed, so I'm splintering this part of the discussion.

There were some interesting suggestions. I'm going to run with one of them: Dexterity requirements. Here's my own take on the suggestion:

Weapons gain a soft dexterity requirement (if they don't already have one?). For the vast majority of weapons, this requirement will be low - around 3-8 for lower-tier weapons/materials. It will scale down with weapon mass, so heavier weapons require less dexterity (and more strength), and up with flexibility, so a whip would require higher dexterity. (I'm thinking a whip might require somewhere around 12.) When i say soft, I mean it will not actually prevent you from using it - but there will be penalties, up to and including a chance to simply fail to attack, or to accidentally hurt yourself.

The base dexterity requirement assumes you are wielding the weapon in one hand with nothing in the other hand. (Using two hands on one weapon would not help you meet the dexterity requirement.) If you are wielding anything in the other hand - a shield, another sword, whatever - the requirement to wield the weapon (effectively, anyways) increases in proportion to the size of the other item. Shields are large, so using your sword with a shield is a little harder than using just the sword. Halberds are huge, so wielding two halberds is ... hard.

Ancillary: Handedness. A character may default to being right-handed (most characters) but sometimes they are ambidextrous. (No lefties here - honestly that would just add annoyance to the player, unless it was very clearly pointed out.) What does handedness do? Well, it changes your strength and dexterity balance slightly. Your primary hand gets +1 strength and dex, your off-hand gets -1 strength and dex. It also changes the stat growth rate for each arm in a similar manner. (Recall that your right arm and left arm have independent stat values, and the displayed value is their average.) Ambidexterity just... doesn't do this, both hands are main hands and develop equally.

Game effects of dex requirements: It would rather penalize two-weapon combat in general, and make it harder to pull off.It would also make whips a lot harder to use with anything in the off-hand (except, perhaps, a dagger). Further, when using mismatched weapons, your smaller weapon will suffer a greater penalty than the larger weapon.

Game effects of handedness: Especially in combination with dexterity requirements as laid out above, it would make a non-ambidextrous character a bit less efficient at developing as a twin sword fighter, and would encourage them to use a sword-and-board or greatsword type weapon. Otherwise, effects would be relatively minimal.

IDK if I would penalize certain weapons or playstyles. The "broken" dual wielding only happens late in the game when the player can also have artificial limbs and God tier stats. It's also balanced out by the brutal difficulty of some of the end game enemies.

Thus in early game, dexterity requirements could put players off some builds, while in late game, they wouldn't matter for players that build for high stats.

Handedness could be a nice hidden statistic, like talents. But if we have right handedness, we should definitely have left handedness!

I agree in principle. You would need some way to indicate it in a quite obvious way, otherwise it's just one more barrier for new players.

I don't think larger weapons would use less dexterity? Bladed weapons would be pretty high dexterity/skill to hit at the right angle to cut and halberds would require good balance and aim. Edit: actually, I think I'm thinking of skill instead. Disarming/fumbling due to low dex would be a welcomed addition to the game.



Handedness sounds intriguing, though it would be funny see a guy with a giant right arm and tiny left arm. I'm pretty sure you'd know what hand you're better at using quickly.