DND is a weird mix of too many rules and not enough rules.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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It's too many rules written with too much haste and no testing. You end up with a ton of rules that aren't clear and contradict each other constantly. It's honestly a shit system. New players really should be told to play Pathfinder 2e at this point, not D&D5e. If the company being complete shit wasn't enough of a reason, the rules making a lot more sense should be.
New players really should be told to play Pathfinder 2e at this point, not D&D5e
It's unfortunate that DND 5e is the sole mega popular game.
People who want fantasy tactical combat would probably do well with Pathfinder 2e. But people who just want to tell a fun story would probably have a lot more fun with something lighter, like Fate.
There's so many games out there and most don't get the love they deserve
coughcough PBtA.Daggerheart.Ironsworn.literallyanythingelse cough
Sorry, that came outta nowhere. 🙇🏼♂️
I can't imagine too many scenarios where allowing someone who is wielding a one-handed (or versatile) weapon and nothing in the off hand to have a bonus action unarmed strike to be game-breaking. Seems like an easy call to me.
Yeah, especially when one is likely much more powerful than the other. If you are a monk with a sword you are wasting your time. If you are a Warrior* with a free hand you are wasting your time.
*Sorry, that should have been Fighter, I'm sick, and I've been reading too many variant rulesets while I'm sitting at home.
If you have nothing else to do with your bonus action that round then it isn't really a waste of time, no matter how bad it is. 1 damage is sometimes all you need.
So there's a few issues here:
- Unarmed Strikes do not require an open hand. Punches, kicks, and slams all count as the same Unarmed Strike
- If you were to allow this, there would be no reason to allow someone with two Shortswords or a Greataxe to do a BA strike
- ...which would then render the BA attack from Polearm Master moot since they no longer need a feat to do that
- I'll also note that the fighter with a sword in one hand and nothing in the other is likely using the Duelist fighting style, so that sword attack is effectively two die sizes larger. A Duelist Longsword is roughly equivalent to a Greatsword to put it in perspective
At the end of the day, allowing martials to perform a BA Unarmed Strike wouldn't be game breaking, but it needs to be applied universally which has secondary implications
As far as I remember the rules, unarmed strike damage is 1 + Str modifier (i.e., a 1d1 damage die). And anyone untrained in unarmed strikes (not monk, not having the Tavern Brawler feat or similar) couldn't add their prof bonus to the attack roll. This makes it significantly weaker than a proper dual wielding build or something like PAM, where the attacker typically gets a proper damage die and prof bonus. Which is why it doesn't seem like a big deal to allow it.
Unarmed strikes can be done for flavor with kicks, elbows, etc. But mechanically I'd allow it as a proper bonus action if the character were wielding a single weapon without a shield. Anyone can describe anything however they want for flavor, I'm just talking about balancing the action economy.
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Anytime a show or movie shows a sword fight where someone also gets punched in the face is just good choriography.
Also somewhat historically accurate. Ye olde sword fighting was basically just brawling with blades.
Depends on what era. In Europe, coats of plates didn't really appear before the 13th century and full plate armor wasn't developed until the late 14th century. Before that you mainly had people wearing chainmail and a helmet if they could get it, or gambesons (cloth armor).
At that time, weapons were still somewhat effective against armor. Spears, axes, and arrows could punch through chainmail.
When full plate armor was developed, only the very wealthy had access to it, and everyone else continued to just wear chainmail and gambesons. Fully armored knights effectively became tanks that could slash their way through all the peons.
The only realistic way the foot soldiers could stop them was to have several guys swarm an isolated knight, each grabbing a limb, and hold him down. Then they would either stab the knight through the gaps in his armor (like the eyeslot of the visor) or more likely would drag him off for ransom.
That being said, there are plenty of instances of 2 armored knights fighting each other, with them often half-swording or grappling each other to the ground and stabbing each other with daggers.
But my earlier comparison to tanks still stands. Most of the time, tanks are actually supporting infantry units, with tank v tank encounters being relatively rare. Similarly, knights spent most of their time in relatively small units killing a lot of unarmored opponents
There's a phenomenon in TTRPGs called a Mermaids Amulet. There was an item in a game that let a mermaid breathe in air, which was the ONLY thing that indicated they normally couldn't. In short, a rule was only shown to exist by an ability to overcome it.
Monks have the ability to make a bonus action unarmed strike after making an attack, which would be redundant if the dual wielding rules let you do that.
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People desperately need to understand that mechanical rules are there for balancing and taking them so painfully literally just isn’t necessary.
You only get one unarmed attack on the dice, but if you want to say you did the damage in two or three hits instead of one then go for it, it literally does not matter. You can even say you missed one attack and them wound up for a sneaky second one!
Follow the rules for number related things and roleplay and tell a story for being cool related things.
As DM, I'll have you roll the dice, tell you if it succeeded or not, and then have YOU describe what happens based on the roll.
But with this particular thing, it's not really about the story. It's the player trying to maximize their bonuses so the dice will be more favorable. In which case, sure. You can dual wield your hands. But you're still taking a penalty with your off-hand unless you have the feat that removes it. You ever try to punch someone with your non-dominant arm? You definitely take a penalty IRL, unless you're ambidextrous.
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Ugh, this is reminding me that my DM swears that my dual wielding, grappling rune knight/barbarian’s fists are not “melee weapons” and thus cannot use any of the runes that are activated by a melee weapon.
If Bruce Lee’s were licensed as lethal weapons, then why the hell can’t mine, Dan!?
The ones that say "when you hit a creature with an attack using a weapon"? Your DM is following the intended rules. In 5e, your empty hand can make "melee weapon attacks," but that attack is not an "attack with a melee weapon" or an "attack using a weapon."
Melee weapon attacks not being attacks with a weapon sounds like a prime example of badly written rules.
It’s because “attack” isn’t specific enough. Everything in DnD is either a weapon attack (typically a physical attack using whatever weapon you have equipped) or a spell attack. In general parlance, “I punch the kobold” translates to “I use Unarmed Strike to make a weapon attack on the kobold.” But that doesn’t mean the Unarmed Strike is a weapon. Since generic attacks aren’t allowed in the rules, you have to designate it as a weapon attack, instead of a spell attack. Oftentimes, the distinction is because there are certain spells or effects that use your weapon as a spell focus, or trigger when making/taking weapon/spell attacks.
For instance, Booming Blade requires brandishing a weapon to channel the spell before you make a weapon attack. The spell component literally lists “a melee weapon worth at least 1 sp, which the spell does not consume.” Then if you hit with the weapon attack, the spell triggers. So your fists could make a weapon attack (using Unarmed Strike) but would not count as a valid weapon for the spell. Even if you could convince the DM that your hand is worth at least 1 silver piece, it still wouldn’t be a melee weapon. So you wouldn’t be able to cast the spell if you were unarmed.
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Maybe. It's because "weapon attack" is the verbiage they settled on for hitting somebody with something that isn't a spell (spells make "spell attacks"). They could call them "weapon or unarmed attacks" but that seems unnecessarily verbose when 95% of them are going to be made with a weapon. You might think that for hand-to-hand combat you could simply refer to "melee attacks," but "melee" is a specifier that can be applied to spell attacks too, so it's out.
So the current situation is this: a rule can simply refer to all "attacks," or it can refer to "melee" or "ranged" attacks, or it can refer to "weapon" or "spell" attacks, or it can use both specifiers (as in "ranged weapon attack").
So if you want to fix it, you need a word to replace "weapon" that could include unarmed combat but excludes all spells. "Physical" might be good, but has some edge case problems: if I have a psychic "blade" that attacks your mind, it makes "physical attacks" despite being a non-physical object. If I have a spell that physically throws a boulder at you, it's pretty easy for me to remember that I should make a spell attack roll, but if you have a feature that defends against "physical attacks" you might think it should apply against the boulder when it doesn't. "Martial attack" might be getting at the right thing, but it sounds strange, and for new players who might be new to RPGs "martial" and "melee" are both uncommon words that kind of sound similar, and that might cause confusion. (Also "martial melee attack" sounds more natural than "melee martial attack," but then it has the opposite word order from "melee spell attack" and that's weird.)
There may be a perfect word out there, but in the end they decided "weapon" was the least confusing, despite requiring the caveat that attacking unarmed is a "weapon attack." And so everywhere that the rules say "attack with a weapon" instead, it is to specifically exclude unarmed attacks, although I admit that it's not always obvious why they want to do that.
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The whole basis of this (nonsense) argument, and related ones, is that "weapon" is defined as "one of the entries in the 'weapons' table in the DMG", rather than y'know, the normal meaning of the word. But there is zero indication that this'd be the case, it's just powergaming chudslop.
Treantmonk has been a disaster for tbe 5e community.
Jarvis, translate this comment into English
DMG: Acronym, Dungeon Master's Guide.
Powergaming [verb]: The practice of optimising games above all other concerns, even fun.
Chud [noun]: A horrible creature that lives in the sewers and survives by licking piss off of boots. Sort like a goblin or ghoul.
Slop [noun]: Art that is of low quality.
Treantmonk [proper noun]: popular Youtuber that designs genuinely impressive powergaming builds for 5e, but frequently uses bad-faith arguments like this.
"X has been a disaster for Y": A snowclone, ah, alas, I forget where this one comes from.
5e is the disaster
Stuff like this is why I like my DM so much. He has basically a "common sense" time for stuff like this where if an action makes good common sense within the world he's built (like a warrior type being able to punch someone after swinging a sword, or a brawler type being able to use both their fists without having to have some esoteric attribute attached to their character sheet), it's allowed, and you can roll for it.
Well, yeah. If the sword is so heavy that you need two hands to wield it...then, it's a two-handed weapon. It's only considered "dual wielding" if both your hands are holding separate weapons. So, sword in one hand and an empty handed attack with the other, counts.
but what if you hold 2 gnomes on both hands, can you then quadwield?
weird... am I the only one who grew up w/ 'dual wielding is two weapons of the same kind' table rule? hence, the dual label....
DW in real life means that you have two weapons, of any kind. It literally means that you are wielding two. Not a pair.
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Not the only one, but probably a minority. Dual-wielding identical weapons is mostly a meme popularized by fantasy literature and games, and the movies and pc games based on those.
In actual reality people are quite bad at coordinating similar weapons and don't get much benefit out of it. So the classical dual-wield is a bigger main weapon and a smaller supporting offhand, beginning with shields being used offensively (and getting smaller and more maneuverable with the main one becoming lighter and faster - see buckler) and ending with classic combinations like rapier & parrying dagger or Daishō (a katana & wakizashi pair).
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Rapier and main gauche was my first idea of dual wielding, shrug
To be fair, the official D&D rules call it "Two-Weapon Fighting". Not sure if it's to avoid this confusion.
Identical weapons are what I typically picture in that scenario, but it makes sense mechanically to allow different types (especially with a rapier/dagger combo being a thing in a lot of fantasy, and probably historically? I dunno).
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Unarmed Strikes are not just punches, they have nothing to do with how many hands you have. You can even Unarmed Strike with a weapon in each hand. If you want to "dual wield" Unarmed Strikes, go Monk.
Read it as dual welding and was quite impressed by the concept.
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