When you choose to dual wield, your highest damage is from attacking one target with each sword.
Your to-hit bonus on this is the same as anyone's, but with a +1 to each attack (from Dual Weapon Focus).
If both attacks hit the same target, you deal an extra 4d6 on the second attack. This extra damage can't benefit from a critical hit.
Your to-hit is normally your proficiency bonus (+3 now, because you are 5th level), plus your ability score bonus (+4 from an 18 Dexterity), plus the +1 modifier from Dual Weapon Focus, making it +8. Then if you have a magical bonus you would add that. I believe you have two Perfect Quartz, one in each sword (I could be wrong). Those give +1/+1, so you would have a +9 to hit with each of your swords.
If you use Dual Strike to attack twice, you can't use the "two-weapon fighting bonus action". You can still use your bonus action for all manner of other things, of course.
If that's your plan, then that's it for [Important] stuff. But I do have a few more details and discussion that can be skipped without concern.
=====[Unimportant]=====
Unlike most classes, your ability to attack twice is granted by Dual Strike, not Extra Attack. Because ninjas are not meant to be generic masters of weapons like fighters, barbarians, paladins, and rangers, I created categories which give them these abilities. First I created the term "ninja weapons" and then the term "paired ninja weapons", both of which are defined, one after the other, in the level 1 ability "Ninja Training".
...ninja weapons, which are shortbows, darts, shortswords, longswords, and any simple melee weapons that don't have the two-handed or heavy property.Then:
You are wielding paired ninja weapons if you are wielding two ninja weapons, each in a separate hand, and you would qualify for two-weapon fighting with them bothThen I have to do a lot of work under Dual Strike I, which needs to give you:
1- The ability to attack twice with any ninja weapons.
2- A bonus if you hit the same creature with both attacks.
3- A much bigger bonus if they are paired ninja weapons.
And it needs to take away the normally present ability to use your bonus action to make a dual wield attack. If I didn't do that, dual strike couldn't deal a bunch of extra damage, and dual wield ninjas would be giving up damage to use their bonus action for anything else besides that- the two-weapon fighting bonus action is actually a curse when used for raw damage, and it's better to have that damage wrapped up somewhere else. The power of
elemental ray would be much better for a ninja with a katana instead of two short swords, for instance- the baseline dual wield feature generally scales poorly starting as early as 5th level for all the fighter types, and becomes substantially worse for fighters specifically with higher levels, and this prevents that problem.
This is how I did this (this is copied from the class document)
Quote:
Dual Strike I
The first time you take the Attack action on your turn, if you are only using ninja weapons, you can attack twice instead of once.
If both of these attacks hit the same creature, the second attack deals more damage. Select the option that applies. These extra dice are rolled then added as bonus damage, they are not damage dice of the attack and are not rolled extra times on a critical hit.
• Paired Ninja Weapons. If both attacks are each with a different paired ninja weapon (see the paired ninja weapons section in the Ninja Training feature), choose a weapon damage die you rolled for damage this action and roll that die four more times and add the total as bonus damage of the second attack.
• Other Ninja Weapons. If the above option does not apply, roll 1d6 if both attacks were melee attacks or 1d4 if either was a ranged attack, then add the total as bonus damage of the second attack.
If you make a second attack with this ability, you cannot use the two-weapon fighting bonus action this turn.
The values above are also present on the Dual Strike columns on the Ninja table, with “W” standing for your selected Weapon damage die.
The net effect of all this is that +hit is a bit more valuable for you than it would be for a fighter-type, and +damage is a bit less valuable for you than a fighter type whose damage is smoother. Hitting both times is more than twice as good as hitting once, after all. There's a few class abilities that play into this a bit too.
One concern Zem raised early is that the rounds where both attacks don't hit- which is definitely a thing that will happen- are very low damage turns, and statistically, you'll expect them to happen a few times in a row some time- that some fights even a perfectly normal set of to-hit rolls can result in a very low amount of damage. If you have a 60% chance of hitting a foe, for instance, then you will expect dual strike to happen about one out of every three turns. It's definitely worth using tricks like hiding or invisibility to guarantee advantage on attacks for this reason- or at least, that's the idea.
The average damage of the ninja is solid on a spreadsheet (especially at high levels when ki is plentiful and the damage/ki ratio is high), and it looked fine in the sample battles I ran way before the campaign started, but since you're the very firstest ninja, I'm eager to find out how it plays for real.
