In my current campaign, I have added a new feat that intentionally makes Two-Weapon Fighting much stronger:
Dual Flurry
Prerequisite: Extra Attack, or an equivalent feature
Once per turn, when you perform Two-Weapon Fighting, you may make two additional attacks with the other weapon instead of one.
Now, I want to make clear: this is not a question about whether this feat is balanced. My group has already performed playtesting with this feat (alongside some other adjustments to how two-weapon fighting works) and have found the power level to be acceptable. With a caveat.
The issue I've run into is that due to ambiguity in the wording of the feat, it opens up the exploitable ability to make too many attacks with the same weapon in a single turn—something I didn't intend for when adding the feat for use in the campaign. This obviously isn't problematic in most situations: many characters use two of the same weapon when two-weapon fighting, so which weapon they use isn't meaningful. But there are many situations where characters might have a much stronger weapon in one hand than in their other; like, for example, an Eldritch Knight that has a summoned Shadow Blade in one of their hands.
My thought process was that the feat would permit a character [at level 5, the lowest level the feat can be legally obtained] to make four total attacks: two with one weapon, and two with the other. But per the wording of the feat, said character can instead make three attacks with one weapon, and one attack with the other, by using ordering like this:
- Character is holding a Shadow Blade in one hand, and a Shortsword in the other.
- Character takes the Attack Action, and makes an attack with Shadow Blade
- Due to the Extra Attack feature, they can make another attack; they use the Shortsword
- Two-Weapon Fighting is enabled (both weapons are Light weapons), so they make another attack; they attack with the Shadow Blade
- Dual Flurry allows the character to make two attacks instead of one with two-weapon fighting; they use the Shadow Blade again
I'd like to rewrite the feat in such a way that the extra attacks enabled by Dual Flurry require the character to "balance out" the weapons they're using. Considering the example of a Fighter at various levels of play:
Fighter Level | Maximum Attacks Weapon A | Minimum Attacks Weapon B | Total Attacks |
---|---|---|---|
Level 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
Level 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
Level 5 (with Dual Flurry) | 2 | 2 | 4 |
Level 11 | 3 | 1 | 4 |
Level 11 (with Dual Flurry) | 3 | 2 | 5 |
Level 20 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
Level 20 (with Dual Flurry) | 4 | 2 | 6 |
The problem I'm running into is that I'm struggling to come up with good, natural language that expresses this rule. I want the description of the feat to be intuitive and easy to understand, but not come across as clunky.
What would be a good way to rewrite this homebrew feat?