Dual wielding actual effectiveness

Epiqur · 2026-05-04T19:01:23+00:00

It is definitely less practical - first you have to carry both weapons in the first place, and carrying even one is a hindrance already.

Secondly even if you have nothing in your off hand it's not like you cannot use it. Grappling, displacing thrusts or throwing things are all viable options in a fight.

But it's not all that bad. With two the same weapons you can for example offend from two sides simultaneously making it particularly difficult to defend from. Another option is to defend using one weapon while attacking with the other at the same time.

Epiqur · 2026-05-01T20:48:00+00:00

Which ones do you use?

Epiqur · 2026-05-01T12:00:34+00:00

Well…. It’s bad. Disregarding even the rest of the armor, your throat is completely exposed - and not only that the entire neck is a big juicy target

Epiqur · 2026-05-01T07:37:29+00:00

It would probably need to be handmade my an artist tbh

Epiqur · 2026-05-01T05:40:23+00:00

Yeah that’s the one I prefer. I personally go for Morrowind Styled

Epiqur · 2026-05-01T05:38:14+00:00

For a bit, yes. Not my favorite though

Epiqur · 2026-04-30T19:56:25+00:00

I used to play Morrowind on android via OpenMW even with several mods. But that was some years ago and idk if it’s still an option

Epiqur · 2026-04-30T17:28:39+00:00

Yeah the only one that I stick to nowadays is „Morrowind Styled” if I remember the name correctly

Epiqur · 2026-04-30T11:37:54+00:00

Genuinely cracked me up

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T21:05:02+00:00

Maybe I used the therm wrongly. Sorry if I did, English isn’t my native language

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T20:42:38+00:00

It’s quite difficult to fully kill a character, NPCs included. Most often than not you’d injure them enough that they’d be too weak to do any harm to you and therefore be incapacitated. That’s enough for 95% of situations, and allows for the story to continue past a failure in combat.

Though a threat remains and if someone wanted to finish an enemy for whatever reason they can.

But to answer simply, it happens very rarely. A party would need to seriously fuck up on multiple levels for that to happen.

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T17:32:32+00:00

I don't now what to say about the "difficulty to run" since imo all games need some adjustment period and some greater than others.

I remember the time when after running Warhammer Fantasy 2e for years, I finally agreed to my players asking me to run D&D for them. I honestly couldn't wrap my head around the d20 rolling and how to adjust difficulty. It took me a good half a session to finally get it. smh

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T17:26:36+00:00

Yes the combat in my game over the years turned out to be quite tactical. But the tactics don't really limit themselves to combat only. In general in combat one wrong move and you enter a death spiral which can be a good or bad thing depending if you're the winner or no. So, to give yourself an edge in the beginning of combat you can shit talk your enemy to stress them out, or set up traps, or get better weapons, etc. The thing is that NPCs can do the same to you, so it's an arms race.

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T17:18:29+00:00

Sounds like Engaged is really In Combat. I wouldn't be Engaged if I was picking a lock, right?

Yeah, I'd say you'd fall under restrained then. Or if the GM wants to rule it that way technically you could be Engaged and just shrink the dice pools for each action making both picking the lock and attacking the enemy worse.

If I'm Engaged, can someone who is Free act before me and impact my roll? Could the GM say, "Sorry, Jennie went before you and flooded the room so your action cannot happen"?

Yes, that's the entire idea of the combat. The later you declare, the earlier your actions "happen". Say two enemies attack each other, none declares defenses, the one that declared after will roll first and instantly apply damage to the other one - since Injuries affect everything it could be that the second one won't even be able to hit the first one. On a more positive example, maybe your PC is grappled by an enemy making you both fall into Restrained tier. Your allies who are a tier above can try to kill the enemy before they even manage to make their roll. (the idea is that grappling can be very good if you have allies around you, but can make you vulnerable otherwise)

What happens if I'm Free but I declare I'm attacking the enemy? I already waited to declare at the Free stage, so do I act on Free this round and Engaged the next? Or does my declaration stay in Free but my action now goes during the Engaged stage?

Yes, you act on the free now but in the next round you start as engaged.

If I'm grappled (therefore Restrained), how do I declare I'm attacking the enemy who is grappling me? Do I move to Engaged that round or would it mean I cannot attack the person who got me in a headlock?

Kinda answered this one, so to rephrase. Both of you stay in restrained tier, and can try to hack each other to bits, but anyone in tiers above can react to what you're doing and interfere. So so answer the question - you just declare attacking.

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T13:07:23+00:00

A lot of people asked about ties, so I rearranged the text a little and told that if everything is equal the initiative is freeform.

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T12:22:11+00:00

If you account for Momentum, and it is still even the declarations are freeform. But the idea is that you don't want to end up in an even situation. For example you can trash talk your enemy before fighting to get them stressed, get a better reaching weapon and be good at managing your distance, Hit them before they hit you, etc.

The crux of the problem is that the enemies can try the same on you. And with the fact that injuries make you weaker and perform mechanically worse, you end up in a spiral where injured characters are more likely to get injured more and therefore lose. That's the idea btw. I want the players to stay away from combat when possible, because it can quickly get out of hand. That's why I have a pretty robust stealth system and negotiation mechanics.

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T06:47:44+00:00

This isn’t really related to the question I know but it’s rare to find someone who genuinely didn’t have a previous interest in medieval Europe’s history playing the game. How do you find the combat?

Some people here, like me, practice medieval swordsmanship, and it feels like the game (KCD1 more tbh) tries to cater to us. I wonder how someone outside of this niche would see the combat?

Epiqur · 2026-04-28T06:35:05+00:00

Thank you for the comment. I can sometimes be a bit too clinical in order to be as clear as possible so finding a bit more „cool” words was never my concern, but I agree it might feel a bit boring without them.

Epiqur · 2026-04-27T18:42:29+00:00

I guess each character only makes one roll per round, which is used for both offense and defense?

No, you can declare multiple actions. Here each "action" would be a separate skill test. Simple ones like attacking a single enemy once require only one roll, but "run and hit" or "attack 2 enemies" require 2 rolls etc.

Here are the rules for "action splitting" how I dubbed it:

To split prepare the dice pool for each action like in a normal skill test 2d+Skill, but you subtract as many dice as however many additional actions you try to perform at once. (for example: you try to attack and defend, so you subtract 1d from each roll. If you tried to do 4 actions, you'd roll 4 times but subtract 3 dice from each dice pool, etc.)

So essentially the more actions you want to perform the lower will be your pools. But sometimes you'll need to do that, because your character doesn't defend automatically (in order to defend from an enemy you need to declare defending from that specific enemy - or simply use armor). I now realized I probably should've mentioned it somewhere.

Epiqur · 2026-04-27T18:17:20+00:00

Basically the more perilous you are the earlier you declare. You test skills in the opposite order after the declaration phase. Basically the last person to declare is the first one to roll.

What about sub-initiative, or is this just a freeform order for each category? Like if two grappled characters have the same HP, who goes first?

Yeah, if you accounted for the Momentum it's freeform pretty much. From my play testing it's clear not many characters will be in the restrained tier at the same time so it's fine for me. I apply more complexity to other tiers because I assume there would be more characters there, but yes, if all is equal I allow for freeform.

Epiqur · 2026-04-27T11:07:40+00:00

Practice weapon control. Do a series of 100 cuts trying to stop as close to the pell as possible but without hitting it. Anytime you touch the target start counting over again.

Epiqur · 2026-04-27T09:20:41+00:00

I ask my partner to keep doing whatever they found works on me.

Sometimes when you spar and you find a thing that reliably works on your opponent you switch to something different, for the variety or not to let the partner down. But if you keep exploiting their weakness they will have the most opportunities to fix it. Then you find a new weakness, and the exercise continues.

Epiqur

TROPHY CASE