What to you...is the worst fighting style in DnD?

[rrwoods]

I stand corrected on the warblade thing. I'd somehow internalized their refresh mechanic as swift + standard (attack/nothing). ... Apologies for dragging this off topic briefly.

[Bucky]

Is that like a knife that you kick people with? If so, you should combine it with TWF so that you look as stupid as possible while doing it, as you alternate kicks between your feet. Make sure you avoid classes like monk that could plausibly teach you how to look graceful while kicking someone with one foot then the other in quick succession.

Blade boots are designed to be TWF'd... with a two-handed weapon. Which can be used pretty effectively in a 10'x10' cage fight, at the small cost of disabling 5' steps. In any other scenario, TWF is pointless because you can't stay adjacent to full-attack.

(That's not to say blade boots are bad. You just never want to use them when fighting on foot, unless you combo them with some sort of lockdown)

[StreamOfTheSky]

TWF gets far more sympathy than it deserves relative to other bad fighting styles (several worse!) in the same way that the "fighter vs. wizard" arguments make people think fighter is the most/only weak martial in D&D.

Unarmed is by far the worst fighting style, it requires so much investment and/or class features just to get back to equal with weapons-combat it's amazing.

Next up is one handed only style, where you try to leave one hand empty (or at least, no weapon or shield in it) and fight like a fencer. There's pretty much no benefit to doing so, at all. Even the scant abilities/feats requiring it (Duelist's precise strike, Einhander...that's about it actually) suck. It might actually be worse than unarmed, because while unarmed starts w/ a MUCH lower floor, at least it has a ceiling to look up towards.

Third worst I'd say is throwing. You can make it work with a lot of class levels in Bloodstorm Blade and Master Thrower (if you're a psychic warrior, you can replace BB with Telekinetic Boomerang power), but without that heavy investment, it's just awful. Short ranged for a ranged build, all the headaches of archery w/o the benefit of Arrow Mind spell, and w/o the above you can't afford enough magic weapons to hurl an entire combat.

Then there's sword and board, or as I like to call it, the "isn't aware animated shields exist" build. Not much benefit to using a shield in your hand at all, just saves some money. And it costs a feat and is an inferior weapon to an actual weapon, if you want to TWF with it.

I'd also say archery is worse. Aside from Hank's Energy Bow, you have no real way to crank up the damage. Relatedly, DR is huge a problem that requires Force enhancement to solve. Wind Wall just plain shuts you down (some argue Force doesn't even beat it, but I disagree). And pounce is cheap and easy, so your advantage of always full attacking is really not that much of an advantage.

TWF is better than all of those combat styles. It's probably the 2nd best after 2H fighting, in fact. It's plainly much worse than 2H fighting, but it's still better than all the above.

[Hal0Badger]

TWF gets far more sympathy than it deserves relative to other bad fighting styles (several worse!) in the same way that the "fighter vs. wizard" arguments make people think fighter is the most/only weak martial in D&D.

Unarmed is by far the worst fighting style, it requires so much investment and/or class features just to get back to equal with weapons-combat it's amazing.

Next up is one handed only style, where you try to leave one hand empty (or at least, no weapon or shield in it) and fight like a fencer. There's pretty much no benefit to doing so, at all. Even the scant abilities/feats requiring it (Duelist's precise strike, Einhander...that's about it actually) suck. It might actually be worse than unarmed, because while unarmed starts w/ a MUCH lower floor, at least it has a ceiling to look up towards.

Third worst I'd say is throwing. You can make it work with a lot of class levels in Bloodstorm Blade and Master Thrower (if you're a psychic warrior, you can replace BB with Telekinetic Boomerang power), but without that heavy investment, it's just awful. Short ranged for a ranged build, all the headaches of archery w/o the benefit of Arrow Mind spell, and w/o the above you can't afford enough magic weapons to hurl an entire combat.

Then there's sword and board, or as I like to call it, the "isn't aware animated shields exist" build. Not much benefit to using a shield in your hand at all, just saves some money. And it costs a feat and is an inferior weapon to an actual weapon, if you want to TWF with it.

I'd also say archery is worse. Aside from Hank's Energy Bow, you have no real way to crank up the damage. Relatedly, DR is huge a problem that requires Force enhancement to solve. Wind Wall just plain shuts you down (some argue Force doesn't even beat it, but I disagree). And pounce is cheap and easy, so your advantage of always full attacking is really not that much of an advantage.

TWF is better than all of those combat styles. It's probably the 2nd best after 2H fighting, in fact. It's plainly much worse than 2H fighting, but it's still better than all the above.

You did not leave much combat forms ? So, only 2 handed is good?

[SangoProduction]

Actually, no; that's a slightly different animal. Both TWF and Flurry of Blows lock you into full attacks, but FoB is disjoint from TWF because TWF requires a second weapon in your off hand, and there is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed. You can combine TWF and FoB using special Monk weapons, but it takes a rare sort of pigheadedness to work that hard at making your attacks suck with high vacuum.

Let's not get into an argument about whether off-hand unarmed attacks can work or not, that's been discussed plenty of times. Often with both sides just digging themselves deeper into their trenches

[Extra Anchovies]

You did not leave much combat forms ? So, only 2 handed is good?

THF, mounted charging, and natural weapons can all work pretty well (as represented by uberchargers, uberchargers, and the King of Smack). I also think Stream's assessment of unarmed isn't entirely fair; it takes a lot of resources to get up to par, yes, but at least it's possible to get up to par. Compare that to, say, one-hand-free, and it's pretty clear that unarmed at least has the potential to be better. Battle Dancer/Barbarian/Fist of the Forest/Bear Warrior/Warshaper works pretty well, for example, but I can't name a single build that is best used with one-hand-free combat.

[Taveena]

Unarmed has the advantage of a ton of feat support and being a large-dice bludgeoning weapon. CL 16 Greater Mighty Wallop boosts Superior Unarmed Strike to an 8d6 weapon that can be TWFed (certainly by City Brawler Barbarians, arguably not by Monks, and ambiguously by anyone else) or used with Hammer Arm to THF.

EDIT: I feel like the only situation in which Einhander could be said to be useful was a build where the damage did not multiply with a two-handed weapon AT ALL that was both too feat- and money-starved to take TWF or the Gloves of the Balanced Hand.

[TheifofZ]

I agree, actually. The base floor of unarmed is pretty much crap (1d4 nonlethal at a -4 to hit and provoke AoOs? No thanks.) and it might be intensive to make it viable, but there are so many options out there that it's very easy to find that the ceiling for Unarmed is actually pretty high up there.

Personally, I find low to mid level Enchantment Wizard is the worst. If the enemy makes a save, you wasted your action completely. If the enemy is succesfully enchanted, you have to blow spells to keep them on your side, and to top all that off, if the next enemy inconveniently strips the mind-control from your meat puppet, you now have an even harder fight on your hands. Once you get into the high end of things, spells like Programmed Amnesia and Mind Rape change that ball-game completely, but until then, Enchanter is just crap.

But that's my opinion. Which most of you will find horrendously wrong, but that's on you.

[Curmudgeon]

Unarmed is by far the worst fighting style, it requires so much investment and/or class features just to get back to equal with weapons-combat it's amazing.

You can go about unarmed combat that way; or you can find shortcuts.

Bracers of Striking (Magic of Faerûn, pages 155-156) grant the wearer Improved Unarmed Strike for the low price of 1,310 gp. That satisfies the feat prerequisite for Superior Unarmed Strike (Tome of Battle, page 33), which grants the unarmed damage progression of a Small Monk through character level 19. After that you just need one daily casting of Greater Mighty Wallop (Races of the Dragon, page 115) from your friendly party Sorcerer/Wizard to boost your unarmed damage by several virtual size increases, up to effective Colossal size.

You can add other improvements, but this (one cheap item, one feat, and one daily spell) is enough to make unarmed combat quite effective.

[StreamOfTheSky]

You did not leave much combat forms ? So, only 2 handed is good?

Well, I came to this thread and saw post after post claiming TWF was the worst, so I thought I needed to enumerate all the styles it's definitely better than. I think TWF is decent, could still use buffing. I also didn't mention natural weapons, mounted combat, and probably some others. 2H is the standard by which all combat styles should be balanced around, though.

THF, mounted charging, and natural weapons can all work pretty well (as represented by uberchargers, uberchargers, and the King of Smack). I also think Stream's assessment of unarmed isn't entirely fair; it takes a lot of resources to get up to par, yes, but at least it's possible to get up to par. Compare that to, say, one-hand-free, and it's pretty clear that unarmed at least has the potential to be better. Battle Dancer/Barbarian/Fist of the Forest/Bear Warrior/Warshaper works pretty well, for example, but I can't name a single build that is best used with one-hand-free combat.

Agreed, those are the good styles. And to be fair, I did mention that while unarmed starts off worse, it has options, while as 1H-only style basically has none, and mentioned that arguably makes it worse.

I agree, actually. The base floor of unarmed is pretty much crap (1d4 nonlethal at a -4 to hit and provoke AoOs? No thanks.) and it might be intensive to make it viable, but there are so many options out there that it's very easy to find that the ceiling for Unarmed is actually pretty high up there.

It's actually 1d3 :)
Unarmed does have a lot of options, but most just help make up for its deficiencies. The main thing that makes it viable (with heavy investment) is the existence of the Snap Kick feat. That's...pretty much it. The only other thing is how well it combines w/ natural weapons style (can chain them together and not even lose hand claw attacks like you would w/ manufactured weapons; Amulet of Mighty Fists and such tend to boost both forms of attack and thus pull double duty), but IMO such builds are primarily natural attacking ones, the unarmed plays a secondary role.

[Troacctid]

Unarmed has stuff like Stunning Fist, Scorpion's Grasp, Roundabout Kick, Martial Throw, Snap Kick, etc., plus a buttload of prestige classes based around it. It also has built-in synergy with spellcasting, and can't be disarmed or sundered. It has loads of support. There's no way it's worse than Einhander, which has like actual nothing.

[Masakan]

Unarmed has stuff like Stunning Fist, Scorpion's Grasp, Roundabout Kick, Martial Throw, Snap Kick, etc., plus a buttload of prestige classes based around it. It also has built-in synergy with spellcasting, and can't be disarmed or sundered. It has loads of support. There's no way it's worse than Einhander, which has like actual nothing.

I will admit that if you plan on einhandleing, and don't wanna dip into D20 Modern or Pathfinder, you gotta get creative.

[Troacctid]

If by "creative" you mean "homebrew", then sure, I guess.

[StreamOfTheSky]

If by "creative" you mean "homebrew", then sure, I guess.

If you have enough arms to 2H a weapon and still keep one hand unoccupied, it sort of counts, right?

[Masakan]

If by "creative" you mean "homebrew", then sure, I guess.

This is why i will never understand why people hate tome of battle so much, it makes these so called terrible fightign styles work.

[Vhaidara]

This is why i will never understand why people hate tome of battle so much, it makes these so called terrible fightign styles work.

Not really. Even in ToB, there is no reason to use einhander. Everything you can do is still doable with two handing, and usually done better.

Path of War (Third Party Pathfinder ToB) is a small improvement, since Scarlet Throne provides some support for it directly, though still not enough for my tastes.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Scarlet Throne Style/Dignity/Riposte are pretty strong feats though, and they can only be used with Einhander so there is that. They also work really well with Mithral Current.

[Necroticplague]

This is why i will never understand why people hate tome of battle so much, it makes these so called terrible fightign styles work.

Not really. It does almost nothing for archers, and a lot of the manuevers still use basic attacks at their core, so TWFing is bad with them outside of the one or two schools specifically meant for them (standard action strikes only attack once, regardless of weapon amount). As for einhander.....still no real reason for it. At best, you can use the maneuvers to compensate for the weak weapon choice.....but it would still be better with the strong weapon choice. While you could certainly make a viable Stone Dragon Warblade based around 1-handing a light mace, it would still be inferior to one based around 2-handing a Greathammer.

[Masakan]

Not really. It does almost nothing for archers, and a lot of the manuevers still use basic attacks at their core, so TWFing is bad with them outside of the one or two schools specifically meant for them (standard action strikes only attack once, regardless of weapon amount). As for einhander.....still no real reason for it. At best, you can use the maneuvers to compensate for the weak weapon choice.....but it would still be better with the strong weapon choice. While you could certainly make a viable Stone Dragon Warblade based around 1-handing a light mace, it would still be inferior to one based around 2-handing a Greathammer.

Meh. as long as it's functional, I honestly could care less if it's the "Best"

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Teleporting yourself into the air, trying to kill your foes by falling on them.
Setting yourself on fire and attempting to grapple foes.
Improvised weaponry by using a manufactured weapon wrong (Throwing a crossbow, holding the wrong end of a two-handed sword, so on)
Using the wizard's familiar as a thrown weapon.
Throwing your armor at people (Though you can in fact apply throwing and returning to armor spikes).
Using bluff checks to convince your foes you preformed attacks against them rather than actually attacking them.
Using fine weapons as a medium or larger creature.

I actually thought your whole post was a joke as most of these have joke builds. This isn't meant to be derogatory. It just means that what you thought was ridiculous someone else thought "that's ridiculous, but I can build something with it".

The first involves being obese (feat BoVD) and wearing armor to hit the 2000 pound mark and getting at-will short range teleports (best low level source I know is some kind of flying pet and the vestige that gives Benign Transposition) then getting the DM to use the large object rules.

Just be immune to fire damage.

Again pseudo viable, improvised weaponry has some "nice things". I'm not 100% sure on the rules legality of getting the benefits of a weapon's enchantments while not striking with the "correct" part.

Familiar tossing, you can make a familiar a furry ball of death and I think you can make throwing live creatures an effective combat style, but I don't think you could reasonably combine the two to create a "effective combat style". At a minimum you're dealing with ammunition issues. It could be a gimmick.

I don't find bluff optimization amusing, so I won't touch that one.

Hypodermic Needles-Fine Size Spell Storing Arrows.

[Taveena]

Not really. It does almost nothing for archers, and a lot of the manuevers still use basic attacks at their core, so TWFing is bad with them outside of the one or two schools specifically meant for them (standard action strikes only attack once, regardless of weapon amount). As for einhander.....still no real reason for it. At best, you can use the maneuvers to compensate for the weak weapon choice.....but it would still be better with the strong weapon choice. While you could certainly make a viable Stone Dragon Warblade based around 1-handing a light mace, it would still be inferior to one based around 2-handing a Greathammer.

I mean, for what little it's worth, if third party Pathfinder applies (and frankly most of these arguments do apply there as well) - PoW learned from that and A: allowed the TWF schools to make standard-action TWF strikes, and B: added a feat that allowed a free unboosted offhand attack on any single-attack strike.

They also added a feat for einhander, but even with that it's weaker than TWF. The Landsneckt might change that, but to be entirely honest I have not looked at that class in ages and I'm too tired to change that.

As a slightly left-field answer, I'd like to propose 'grappling without easy access to Dispel Magic', because even with all the feat and prestige class support... Freedom of Movement screws you so hard that even the dude einhanding a rapier is going to be doing more than you. And hell, the Travel Domain cleric and the Truenamer have literally had FoM from first level. At least you're not TOTALLY boned until enemies with it as a SLA become common.

Which they do.

[Vhaidara]

Meh. as long as it's functional, I honestly could care less if it's the "Best"

We aren't talking about the best. We're talking about the worst. There is no proper fighting style (ie, ignoring things like suicide drops and the like) with less support than Einhander. Hell, I think Improvised weapons actually have more support.

[Dondasch]

We aren't talking about the best. We're talking about the worst. There is no proper fighting style (ie, ignoring things like suicide drops and the like) with less support than Einhander. Hell, I think Improvised weapons actually have more support.

Drunken Master, CW giving them the possibility of reach and trip, being compatible with THF.
Yep, more support than Einhander.

[Masakan]

We aren't talking about the best. We're talking about the worst. There is no proper fighting style (ie, ignoring things like suicide drops and the like) with less support than Einhander. Hell, I think Improvised weapons actually have more support.

I've thought about that actually considering prestige classes like swiftblade and the like, I'm thinking that many at WOTC assumed people would just use magic to support one hand fighting you know the iconic image of a magic swordsman swinging a sword in one hand and casting spells with the other.
And also consider that imo you get more out of dex in gish builds than Str, but that's just me.

[Vhaidara]

Except that gishes are fundamentally better with Str builds. Between the fact that you can remove a hand and replace it as a free action (allowing you to cast with a two handed weapon) and the fact that Str is significantly easier to boost than Dex (Enlarge is a FAR stronger melee buff than Reduce, Polymorph tends to net higher Str boosts than Dex), you simply aren't right about that.

And for me, the iconic einhander has nothing to do with magic. It's a fencer, not a mage.

[Masakan]

Except that gishes are fundamentally better with Str builds. Between the fact that you can remove a hand and replace it as a free action (allowing you to cast with a two handed weapon) and the fact that Str is significantly easier to boost than Dex (Enlarge is a FAR stronger melee buff than Reduce, Polymorph tends to net higher Str boosts than Dex), you simply aren't right about that.

And for me, the iconic einhander has nothing to do with magic. It's a fencer, not a mage.

You do realize that there are 2 kinds of Gishes right?
The one you must be familier with are self buffers(which have a higher Mundane basis), I prefer role switchers(which have a higher caster basis.) Of course then you will probably be like "Might as well just go full caster then"

[Necroticplague]

Drunken Master, CW giving them the possibility of reach and trip, being compatible with THF.
Yep, more support than Einhander.

Don't forget Hulking Hurler, which gets its power from using really big improvised weapons.

[Jormengand]

Using the wizard's familiar as a thrown weapon.

I dunno, I wanna make a build that does this now...

Because the familiar actually gets its own actions, there must be something interesting you can do with that. Oh, and it can deliver touch spells!

truenamer of level 20 at each fight you start by deleting your allies with the level three utterance(which would allow you to delete the opponents too if you wanted)
then after that you transform the blade of the opponent temporarily in the material who can absorb souls then let yourself be killed by triggering the maximum number of AOO then your soul is in the blade and some time after the blade turn into normal steel definitively deleting your soul.

You don't even need to be level 20 for that. But I don't think it's the point, either: the worst fighting style is arguably to go pun-pun, and then murder your own allies, and then yourself, before the battle starts. But that's not really helpful here.

You do realize that there are 2 kinds of Gishes right?
The one you must be familier with are self buffers(which have a higher Mundane basis), I prefer role switchers(which have a higher caster basis.) Of course then you will probably be like "Might as well just go full caster then"

But both styles of gish are better off two-handing.

[Necroticplague]

You do realize that there are 2 kinds of Gishes right?
The one you must be familier with are self buffers(which have a higher Mundane basis), I prefer role switchers(which have a higher caster basis.) Of course then you will probably be like "Might as well just go full caster then"

That distinction is simultaneously completely arbitrary (You can switch roles by simply activating your combat buffs. Normally, sit back and cast. If need be, Polymorph, Haste and wreck face) and entirely irrelevant to the question at hand. Even if you switch roles, you're still better off with a two-hander. Use your weapon when you're in your 'fighting people' role, and put it away when you're in your 'caster' role (so you can hold more useful things, like wands, metamagic rods, or staves).

[Masakan]

I dunno, I wanna make a build that does this now...

Because the familiar actually gets its own actions, there must be something interesting you can do with that. Oh, and it can deliver touch spells!



You don't even need to be level 20 for that. But I don't think it's the point, either: the worst fighting style is arguably to go pun-pun, and then murder your own allies, and then yourself, before the battle starts. But that's not really helpful here.



But both styles of gish are better off two-handing.

Tell you what, you find me a 2 handed weapon, that is considered a light weapon for all purposes other than weapon finesse(That doesnt require me to waste a feat), and I will concede. Otherwise You can have fun getting hit by or wasting spells for everything that would hit with a 2.