@ RobbyPants
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that a free weapon wouldn't be a problem because if you aren't TWFing it's useless to you?
Yes, if I understood
you correctly. The idea is that the bonded weapon only works in pairs, right? So, you can't just give the other to your buddy or sell it at full price.
This approach is "balanced" in the sense if you don't worry about the number of magical weapons a person has, but you worry about their overall offensive output. The three general approaches people try are:
- Few (relatively) weak attacks + a defense bonus
- Many weak attacks
- Few strong attacks
Obviously, those are never fully balanced, and people tend to regard sword and board as a suckers game. That being said, depending on the build, TWF and THF can be somewhat balanced against each other. Once you start throwing feats like Shock Trooper or abilities like Sneak Attack on to get your actual damage up, the minutia of whether or not you are holding one or two magical weapons in your hands somewhat falls by the wayside. Class features/feats scale in damage faster than the weapon bonuses do.
Similarly,
without Shock Trooper/Sneak Attack, the benefit to having a second weapon dealing extra damage is offset by the investment in TWF feats you need and the -2 attack penalty to TWF in the
first place. Honestly, TWF is pretty underpowered unless you seriously spec for it.