Monk with an offhand weapon?!

Wowo

So my friend was playing with his monk and stuck a club in his offhand. That shouldn't be allowed, right?

What's more he kept his mainhand APR and got an extra attack with the club making him almost useful.

Not WAI surely?

Lord_Tansheron

This is I believe a fix that the EE brought. Before, monks were coded very weirdly and could not use offhands, but now they can. This functionality is, afaik, completely intentional.

"Almost useful" is pretty fitting though, Monks are still far from spectacular even with extra APR :P

bob_veng

this is so strange because it makes it look like monks fight with only one arm when unarmed.

Wowo

Lord_Tansheron said:

This is I believe a fix that the EE brought. Before, monks were coded very weirdly and could not use offhands, but now they can. This functionality is, afaik, completely intentional.

"Almost useful" is pretty fitting though, Monks are still far from spectacular even with extra APR :P

How can it be intentional when they aren't allowed to invest in two weapon fighting?

The whole premise of monk combat is that they use their whole body to fight and hence can't use a weapon.

Lord_Tansheron

I guess from a logic standpoint it's not THAT weird, you can use an offhand sword as an effective defense, while still attacking bare-handed. Well, still weird I suppose but not unheard of (I've seen this in some story at least once).

bob_veng

yeah it's sort of a trope, hybrid weapon/unarmed fighting you can see it in certain kung fu movies but why would the monk gain additional attacks? apparently because he was previously fighting with only one hand.

Lord_Tansheron

I guess you could argue that it's easier to find a fast rhythm of attack/deflect/counterattack if a weapon is involved, particularly if fighting people with weapons themselves (which you'd presumably have to dodge instead of parrying, costing time and rhythm).

Of course, in the end it's a bit of suspension of disbelief since naturally real martial arts fighting works quite differently from the D&D version...

GamingFreak

used to be a bug where you could get bonus APR for fists with off-hand Scarlet Ninja-to in BG2 as well, though I think they fixed it since last I checked it didn't give the bonus APR with fists.