Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition has me asking a lot of questions. Not necessarily about the game itself because I’d done my reading on it before and during play sessions to figure out how THAC0 is calculated and how spells-per-rest work. No, the questions I was asking were “why don’t RPGs do this anymore” to a lot of its features.
One such feature is weapon styles, something veterans of BG:EE will consider a “n00b trap”. The idea is that, depending on your class, you’ll be able to spend points on Proficiencies, which improve your effectiveness with certain weapons and styles. The first point in a specific weapon allows you to use it with no penalties to accuracy or damage; the second point will then increase accuracy and damage, and for Warrior archetypes you’ll gain an additional 1/2 attack. Some classes may only be able to put up to 2, 3 or 4 points into proficiencies, where a Fighter can place 5 points into a weapon proficiency and become a Grand-Master.
And then there’s weapon style proficiencies, which only allow at most the investment of two points. While they technically cover a broader array of weapons, in case you like swapping between different weapon types, the bonuses are a meagre improvement over individual weapon proficiencies. Plus, they don’t hugely affect a playstyle: a character doesn’t necessarily need Sword & Shield Style to perform as a tank; all it’s going to do is increase your defence against missile attacks by 2 per point, which is fine if you’re regularly fighting ranged combatants. Two-weapon style is quite typical of dual-wielding talents in other RPGs – you gradually lose the penalties to the point where you’re no longer a burden to your party.
The style that’s the most interesting to me, at least in Baldur’s Gate is Single-Weapon Style. To put it into non-D&D terms, you’re reducing the enemy’s ability to hit you with each point. You also critically hit on a roll of 19 on the dice (without modifiers from your primary attributes), where normally you’d have to roll a 20. From a roleplay point of view, I can see how this makes sense – you’ve trained with your dominant hand and positioned yourself in such a way that you know where to strike, and where not to get struck.
For some reason, this isn’t allowed any more. I don’t know what cult-like gathering this was decided at, but it’s now law that both hands must be occupied in combat. Nowadays Warriors and the like must have a shield for a defence bonus, or another weapon for additional damage at the cost of accuracy, or a two-handed weapon (which has its own helpful proficiency in BG:EE) that’s slow and heavy and if it misses it fucking misses. Sometimes this is understandable; rag as I might on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it’s balance is understandable when it comes to having both hands occupied – you can combine a weapon and/or shield with every school of magic, have two spells of the same school in two hands, dual-wield weapons of different types (silver sword and blunt weapon are my go-to’s). There’s no benefit to single weapon fighting, except I think you can hold a torch and whack someone with it to do burn damage, something you could invest talent points into learning in Two Worlds.
So besides numerical differences that will vary from game system to game system, what’s so good about Single Weapon fighting? If you are fighting with a single weapon, you have another hand free. It’s that simple.
Most of the time you’re playing a humanoid which typically assumes you’re a species that – regardless of origins – is currently evolved to use tools. Perhaps you’ve got claws, so you can claw and do bleed damage instead of wasting your innate ability holding a shield. If you’ve got stubby, fleshy tendrils like manlets however, you can compensate for the lack of rending talons with being able to open doors faster than someone who’s got something equipped in the other hand. You can pull a lever, flip a switch, take an item from your pack and use it, or pick up some dirt and throw it in an enemy’s face if only to temporarily throw them off balance. You can pull an enemy closer and give your rapier a tour of their insides, or push a friend out of danger. And if it’s a Medieval fantasy setting, go ahead and have a wangle.
In a turn-based game, you may have such a system as Action Points (AP). Each action has an AP cost; moving, attacking, consuming an item and interacting with the environment use an item. If I were to suggest implementing Single-Weapon combat in such a game, I’d make it so the Single-Weapon user didn’t have to spend as much AP as someone with both hands in use. Exceptions could be made for a Mage-like, who has a quarterstaff (a two-handed weapon) equipped. In some RPGs, it’s merely a focus for their power such as in World of Warcraft, the mage carries the staff on their back and casts spells from their hands. However, I would also argue that the penalty for interacting while both hands are in use even for magic users is because as soon as the player has interacted with the object, they spend AP readying themselves as they would any other time. So a shield user may be able to open a door using 2AP, but half of that was opening the door and the other was putting the shield between themselves and a potential threat behind the door. A Single-Weapon user would only use 1AP because they’re already prepared, and can move their free hand away faster than the greatest dual-swordsman or spellslinger or shield-bearer in the land.
Real time changes things, CRPG or otherwise. Used to be a time in the Elder Scrolls games you could be face to face with an opponent and clicking your left mouse bumper until it broke or swinging your sword clumsily from left to right, and still miss well over half the time. Nowadays if you’re in range with a melee weapon you hit, barring invisibility or other such magics that make someone go all wobbly and not there. With a single-handed weapon, you need to be able to dodge and/or parry for the duration of the fight, as you’ve no shield to block with effectively. Wearing down an enemy’s stamina gauge is also valid, especially if you’re the lighter fighter. And you should be; why cover yourself head to toe in heavy armour when you need only protect the side of your body which the sword is holding? Fighting side-on keeps your fleshy parts out of reach (mostly), and you can fill your inventory with defence-plus potions if the enemy’s brought a particularly horizontal slashing weapon like a great fuck off battleaxe.
Even without action points we can still see how single-weapon fighting is useful. There’s a particularly annoying delay in some CRPGs when using items, particuarly in Neverwinter Nights (I give a companion a healing potion, only for them to die and consume the bastard thing. Thanks Daelan), or Dragon Age: Origins. By being trained in single-handed weapons one should be able to remove a potion from one’s pack, uncork it and take a mighty big s l o r p in less time than someone otherwise occupied by their shield or dagger or great fuck off battleaxe, and still be able to concentrate on the foe in case they try to press the advantage. Single-weapon fighting style talents could provide bonuses to dodge/enemy miss rate/parrying, and an animation accompanying this would probably be fun. No less fun than missing while dual-wielding, or being glassed by someone who drank a potion with their free hand and smashed the bottle on my head for 1d4 bleed damage over 3 rounds.
I can’t continue to talk about it as a main fighting style until I know of ways it could be added to individual game systems, but there are still uses for this style. I’m going to be starting a video series called A Bit Of Dragon Age: Origins at some point for Let’s Play, and I’d very much like to play a Rogue. Rogues don’t get any advantages with sword ‘n’ board or two-handed weapons, but they can use bows and dual-wield. I’ll likely go with a ranged character for a change, but if ever an enemy decides to approach me in melee my only defence is Melee Archer. Even then it only prevents my draw speed from being interrupted, which I’d be thankful for were there not a great fuck off battleaxe splitting me lengthways. I could go for dual-wielding, but that means I have to raise my primary attributes even other areas even higher. That’s what Single-Weapon style fighting tries to fix; regardless of if a weapon is sharp or blunt, enchanted or otherwise, it’s something to fall back on without sacrificing too much. It’s the knife in the boot when you’re down, and the hand that lifts you up. As a primary fighting style it works; as a backup it’s even better. Dual-wielding in DA:O and other games is often intended to be a fully fledged fighting style, sometimes the main Damage Dealing one for melee. Failing that, grab some heavy armour to mitigate the damage you take from lifting and swinging a zweihander.
Above: A more innocent time. OK, Draenor was Hell then, but let’s pretend it was a more innocent time for the sake of an argument.
I don’t mean to go on at two-handers as much as I do, there’s a lot of appeal to them, especially if you’re a WoW Fury Warrior and carry one in each hand. It sounds cooler than it is in the current iteration of the game. Maybe that appeal is too great though – with different materials you can craft lighter or heavier 2H weapons, build them with a certain amount of blocking power, reach and of course power. It’s likely a fault of players too, and I’ll admit this myself; I’m trying to play the more maverick builds in games, but I’m always tempted with that safe option of even a small shield (not even daring to go for something less defensive such as a buckler), or dual-wielding two daggers because it’s only slightly less riskier than a short sword and dagger. I could go plenty more into WoW about things like the Protection Warrior’s “Gladiator Stance” talent being removed because Twisting Nether forbid a talent be fun but not as useful as something else in a raid environment. For all this #FunDetected stuff thrown at Blizz, it’s important to look at who’s doing the throwing as well. And if they’re doing it at the cost of half-action points or not.
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