SKT Episode 12: The Not-So Dandy Highwaymen

Starring Avengers Anonymoose:

*Jubilee was not an Avenger, sadly, but I’ll always think of Joffrey this way:

---

Author’s Note: Bit of an unusual session, a lot of talking, a lot of exposition by the DM and very little combat. This always worries the DM as I don’t know what the quieter members of the group think about all this.Are they sitting quietly and enjoying the banter or are they bored shitless and just want to hurt something?

Some of this week’s titles are brought to you by some classically naff but somehow still cool 80’s pap which features the other least-scary highwayman ever (and possibly the worst lip-sync ever):

---

That Which Must Be Repeated: This campaign contains hard encounters. It is often not required for all of you to kill all of them in order to succeed!

Season Recap: Chapter 1 – A Great Upheaval

– The party have save the fortified village of Nightstone from goblins following an attack by Cloud Giants from a floating castle (that went east).

– The characters travelled to Triboar and on the way met a cloud giant called Zephyros who travels in a floating tower. He explained that the ‘ordning’ (which regulates giant society) is broken and the players are destined to fix it.

– They helped defend the town of Triboar from a fire giant attack and delivered some saddles to the Hunt Lords in Noanar’s Hold. They killed the Hunt Lords and kept the saddles, obviously.

Pre-session Guff

Work stuff including having to work Christmas weekends was discussed. That went down well.

Mike lets everyone know that Regulus is now melee oriented.

The DM points out he spent a lot of time doing trivial stuff like flags and Cheese of the Week trophies instead of important stuff like making the minis for tonight’s session because he managed to forget about the important stuff for tonight’s session <sigh>

The name of the group was discussed:

So now we have an extended conversation in which the following points were made:

At this point Adam’s keyboard stopped working so he couldn’t alt-tab to his character sheet. He was roundly mocked for his inability to afford a new monitor but helpful suggestions were made about how a monitor is actually a benefit to someone with a new baby. He had to reboot and so disappeared for a few minutes.

The DM told them they had some time to decide on the group name and should think about it.

And even though you fool your soul your conscience will be mine

---

We start the session at Noanar’s Hold as they prepare to travel to Everlund with a stop at Olostin’s Hold. The DM asks Matt (picked at random) to roll a d100. They don’t know this but this is for a random encounter. The DM has one planned and will just wing-it for two others as it is a 100mile trip through a dodgy area.

Matt rolls two ones, the DM checks the encounter table… bandits. That could be problematical.

Adam returns:

Ooh! Challenge accepted: time, efficiency, predictability, my wits, sound tactical planning, politeness, respect, boars (barbequed), pigeon funeral rites, geometry, maths, physics, the rules, Thursdays, co-operation, commiseration, the Baconne Beutay supply (Matt), common sense, enemy armour class (Elvira), negotiation, navigation, orientation, the entire Bladesinger sub-class (Jake), consistency, competency, empathy, the concept of taking cover, the laws of probability (Matt), the concept of it being hard to actually die in 5^th edition (Adam), listening, learning, reading comprehension, decorum, both sense and sensibility, the institution of marriage (Drikk), the will to live, critical thinking, remembering even basic shit, the KKK’s dress code, attention to detail, attention to the blindingly fucking obvious, the word ‘malnourished’ (The DM), Christopher’s health, Matt’s parenting responsibilities, the wizard’s house, Gary’s free time, compassion, logic, animal welfare, plot hooks, the DM’s faith in the education system and the English language.

“I could go on but I won’t… but I could….

Ah! DIGNITY! Almost forgot to mention dignity.” – Handsome Jack

The final decision was for Avengers Anonymoose.

Jake was asked to roll a d100 and he actually managed to roll lower than Matt with a 7. Well… shit. That’s even more bandits then <sigh>.

I’m the dandy highwayman that you’re too scared to mention

So here’s my problem; in just the first round of combat the party can throw out a couple of Fireballs, a Shatter and a Call Lightning\Spike Growth and that’s not even counting the two fighters in the party just waiting to Action Surge and drop 8 attacks on anything unfortunate enough to have survived the AoE barrage. Bandits just aint going to cut it so we’ll have to play that out a slightly different way without doing a pointless combat… I hope.

The Evermoor Way now takes them along between the Evermoors and the High Forest.

High Forest

Although much less expansive than in ancient times, the High Forest is still vast and mysterious. Larger than most kingdoms, it encompasses mountains. The High Forest is home to treants of enormous size, stags with antlers as wide across as a wagon, brown bears bigger than large sheds, owlbears, wolves, unicorns, and many other creatures, including fiercely territorial wood elves and Uthgardt barbarians of the Tree Ghost tribe. The forest holds many hidden settlements, haunted ruins, fey crossings, and ancient magical wards.

In the outermost fringes of the forest, woodcutters ply their trade, and outlaws on the run might find refuge. But as everyone knows, those who venture too deep into the High Forest are often not seen again.

The Travel Chat; Part 1

The players immediately start eyeing up Shadowtop Cathedral and a couple of them ask questions about it so the DM gives the players some options regarding travel in general. This is a tricky subject in D&D because it covers the issue of player free will vs DM railroading which some people take entirely too seriously.

This chapter of the campaign involves a lot of travel, often without a very clear goal. As the campaign moves forward into later chapters, the options available to the players will become more focused and specific. For now though, they currently have several quests and assorted other things to do that mostly originated from Triboar. At some point that quest ‘chain’ will end and then they have three options:

1. Wing it – No DM input, total free will, go where you want.

2. Railroad – The DM will tell you where to go to most efficiently complete all the interesting things on the map. This does have some big advantages but it also sucks some of the fun out of it.

3. Some Guidance – When you complete a quest chain the DM will guide you on where the next main faction quest is or where the next chain starts. This will be done by hearing ‘There are rumours of trouble in…’ or by being approached by a faction agent. When they follow up on it and the route they take is entirely up to them.

Don’t worry, the DM has recently mastered a formidable tool for conveying subtle messages!

---

The DM told them not to worry too much about going out of the way to visit places as the various tasks they undertake will get them most locations. However, if they have a choice between two routes, choosing the one they haven’t been down before is never a bad idea.

Other methods of travel will open up as the campaign progresses but that will form part 2 of the ‘Travel talk’ at a later date.

Joffrey was happy with all this as long as he gets to ‘Maelstrom’ in the future. Maelstrom is way out in the sea to the south-west and the DM quickly looked it up.

It’s kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he’s making

A restful night’s sleep is taken without incident and they set out again the following morning:

What do your Druid eyes see?!

The following day Joffrey spots something

Isaac is left with the cart and, after they argued discussed taking the horses or not they headed over to investigate.

They came across a battlefield, about a week old, with the corpses of seventeen Uthgardt Barbarians and four Frost Giants. The giant’s pouches were empty.

The Gnomish Pontification System contains a certain amount of information about the main populations of The North:

Uthgardt Barbarians:

The Uthgardt barbarians are a black-haired and blue-eyed people — large, hale, bloodthirsty folk with inhuman dispositions. Few Uthgardt are willing to trade with civilized folk. Most are vicious raiders who pillage and destroy any caravan or homestead they come across.

Uthgardt barbarians take their name from Uthgar Gardolfsson, a great hero-chief who battled giants and conquered much of the North before ascending to godhood. In addition to revering Uthgar, each tribe venerates a totem animal spirit after which the tribe is named.

Numerous Uthgardt tribes have been vanquished over the years, and at least one tribe previously thought to be extinct has returned in force. There are currently eleven known Uthgardt tribes scattered throughout the North. Each tribe claims a vast tract of wilderness as its hunting grounds — territory that often overlaps with the hunting grounds of other Uthgardt tribes as well as land claimed by civilized races, orcs, dragons, goblinoids, and other monsters. Encounters with Uthgardt barbarians can occur almost anywhere in the Savage Frontier.

Uthgardt barbarians fear magic so much that they will attempt to kill and dismember spellcasters they meet.

Of all their enemies, Uthgardt barbarians hate orcs most of all. Even rival tribes will unite against a rampaging orc horde. The Uthgardt treat giants with similar contempt — the legends of the barbarians are replete with tales of how evil giants slew their ancestors and threatened Uthgar’s rise to godhood.

It must be DIGNITY DESTINY!

Joffrey’s religion check reveals he knows stuff about Uthgardt funeral rites:

Uthgardt barbarians bury their dead under cairns and earthen mounds. These burial sites are scattered throughout the North in out-of-the-way places.

Regulus asks if they can tell which tribe the barbarians are from and the DM engages waffle mode whilst he scans the source book and then sighs heavily when he sees which tribe occupies the Evermoors:

There was a discussion about disposal of the bodies:

Regulus> I’m not sure there’s anything else we can do here, they sound like a bunch of knobbers anyway, so should we go?

*Much as the DM hates pretty much everything about 2020 culture, Urban Dictionary does not include the 80’s definition of ‘Knobber’ and that is probably a good thing. The best modern definition is as follows: Knobber – A more polite way of calling someone a cock.

During the extended discussion that followed the DM left several verbal notes for himself on the recording. He then realised how that might sound and mentioned to the players that if they hear him say something a bit out of context, abusive and derogatory, then he probably triggered his push to talk by reflex when he didn’t mean to.

So, in a rather more polite way than was entered on the recording, the DM would like to take this opportunity to wonder why none of the players checked the area for tracks to see if there were any survivors who left the area to, you know, get the tribe together and come bury the dead, as a purely hypothetical example that totally probably wouldn’t have happened in order to time it so they get back at about the time these guys were burying the corpses.

They eventually decided to leave them all alone when it dawned on them that taking them to their burial ground had the minor drawback of them not knowing where the burial ground actually was.

Onwards we travelled to Olostin’s Hold.

Olostin’s Hold

A fortified keep that stands on the northern side of the Evermoor Way between Yartar and Everlund. Enclosed within the high walls of Olostin’s Hold is a small village with a market, a smithy, a caravan supplier, an inn called the Headless Troll, and a tavern known as the Flaming Flagon.

The inn gets its name from an incident involving a beheaded troll that wandered into village, caught fire, and nearly burned down the establishment.

The tavern is the namesake of an ordinary flagon that was ensorcelled during a wizards’ duel long ago and now floats and sheds light in the middle of the taproom.

Qua qua da diddley qua qua da diddley

The group decide this place is so cool they immediately start planning to see if they can just retire here <sigh>

Indeed.

*Babycham is the trade name of a light (6%), sparkling perry** invented by Francis Showering, a brewer in Shepton Mallet in Somerset, England. The brand was particularly popular during the 1960s and 1970s

**Perry is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented pears, similar to the way cider is made from apples.

Ok, the point of that little trip down the wikipedia wormhole was to see if Babycham (or the equivalent) could actually exist in The North and yes, yes it can!

There was now an aside where they asked about any rumours and heard about a pair of blue dragons causing trouble in the northern desert region. The DM invited them to travel over to Ascore and have a go if they felt they were hard enough. The felt they weren’t.

Hmm, it would seem they aren’t that stupid after all.

Abelas spends gold scribing spells from scrolls (50gp per level). This is one of the downsides of having a DM who thinks wizards should know a fuck-ton of spells (otherwise sorcerers are just better); it’s going to get expensive.

And so we moved on.

GPS> Everlund is forty miles away! To the north!

Camp that evening is made adjacent to The Silverwood.

Silverwood

Growing atop the rugged, hilly terrain between the Evermoors and the Nether Mountains, the Silverwood was once part of the High Forest, but over centuries, loggers working the woodlands on either side of the Evermoor Way have carved a great wound through the terrain. Bare hillsides littered with stumps line this gap.

Everlund

The following day the party arrive in the city of Everlund.

DM> We are about to change table so if anyone is using VR* and hasn’t told me, hang on to your lunch.

*Table Top Simulator does a full rotate and perspective change when you change tables. It’s a bit disorienting on a monitor. The DM can’t wait to repeatedly try it out on Jake when he has his VR set on.

Situated on the banks of the Rauvin River, Everlund is one of the North’s most active mercantile communities. A thick stone wall encloses the city, pierced in five places by gates. Like the spokes of a wheel, broad, straight avenues lead from each gate to the Bell Market at the city’s centre. The streets are clean and wide enough to accommodate large caravan vehicles. Soldiers of the city’s army make a show of patrolling the walls, to reassure citizens and visitors as well as to discourage attackers. The buildings of Everlund are stately and well maintained, with steeply pitched rooftops and tall spires that sport colourful banners. Two bridges span the river, which has parks and trees along its shores.

Until recently, Everlund was a member of the Lords’ Alliance. The five leaders who currently comprise the city’s Council of Elders voted three to two in favour of separation and, in a symbolic show of support for Sundabar, condemned the alliance for its failure to come to Sundabar’s aid during the War of the Silver Marches.

The most prominent edifice in Everlund is Moongleam Tower, a keep of black stone that serves as a Harper stronghold in the North. It rises from one of the higher knolls in the city and consists of four narrow, cylindrical towers joined together, surrounded by a dry moat that can be quickly flooded through a system of cisterns and pumps. Crowning the roof is an open turret, where a signalling mirror shaped like a crescent moon stands.

The city boasts many temples, the most prominent of which are dedicated to Helm, Mellikikkiki, and Corellon Larethian. Everlund also has many fine places to eat and rest, the oldest and largest being Danivarr’s House. Once a noble’s mansion, this rambling inn is a favorite haunt for adventurers. The Zoar family bought the establishment a few years ago, but leaves the running of Danivarr’s House to a one-eyed half-orc named Dral Thelev. Both the Harpers and the Zhentarim keep a close eye on this place.

So what’s the point of robbery when nothing is worth taking?

We had the ‘splitting the party’ discussion but despite the DM’s urging they decided not to. The DM did point out that this place looked as if legal advocates would be expensive.

They head to Danivarr’s House, a nice establishment, and the one-eyed half-orc behind the bar greets them warmly:

Regulus flashes his Harper badge at him and Dral responds with a slow wink. Regulus hands over the ‘coin’ <sigh>

It’s a fucking badge.

The group find themselves in a well furnished parlour in Moongleam tower populated by 6 or 7 flying cats called Tressym. Shortly after an elderly human appears and introduces himself as Krowen Valharrow, the resident Archmage of the tower.

Regulus relates the party story so far and Krowen is very interested in what Zephyros had to say about them being destined to stop the giants and where that information came from.

Joffrey shows interest in the Tressym:

DM> Seeing your interest, Krowen offers to bequeath you one Tressym, but no more that one. He glances around everybody and says “It will bond with the first one to earn its trust”.

Joffrey them promptly cheats and turns into a Tressym, has a quick chat with it, passes the Animal Handling check and succeeds in bonding with the winged feline, which he calls Solo.

DM> I give that things life expectancy as even less than Binky’s but you never know.

The DM posts the Tressym stat block in Discord.

Three minutes and forty four seconds ladies and gentlemen. That’s how long it took from DM clearly stating “but only one”. <sigh> Attention span of a fucking goldfish; Ooh a bridge! Nice castle! Ooh, a bridge!

Krowen leads them to a room at the top of the tower in which there is a teleport circle. He shows them the address for both Moongleam Tower and Yartar and they can now freely use those two circles. Other circles exist in Neverwinter, Waterdeep, Mirabar (up in the snowy north) and Loudwater (south of the High Forest) but to use those the characters will have to travel to the circles first.

Krowen hands Abelas a scroll case, a present from the Lord Protector, that he doesn’t need. The spells are: Dispel Magic, Fly, Magic Weapon, Sending, Tongues and Water Breathing.

They sell the saddles for 800g, give a chunk of it to Abelas for scroll scribing and buy some healing potions. This one sentence encompasses about forty minutes of bickering ‘spirited’ discussion.

Joffrey then attempts to get barding made for his cat, spectacularly fails on the persuasion check for the armourer and gets charged the equivalent cost of horse barding and it will take a week or two. Joffrey is warned to watch how much he feeds the cat as the armour is tailored to it. The armourer takes no liability for a fat cat not fitting into it.

At about this time the DM dearly wished he had left them to wander off into the Great Forest in search of Shadowtop Cathedral <sigh>

And so we depart the civilisation of Everlund for the er.. also civilisation of Silverymoon.

Silverymoon

Silverymoon is two days travel from Everlund but these are two of the major cities in the North and the road is pretty safe.

The Gem of the North is a fitting epithet for Silverymoon: a beautiful, tranquil city where trees and gardens live in harmony with buildings, bridges, and sculptures. Silverymoon is an enlightened place, with a great library, breathtaking temples and shrines, and respected schools of magic, art, and music. Its beauty awes visitors and is the subject of many bardic songs and tales.

High Marshal Methrammar Aerasumé, the city’s lord, resides in a tall, slender palace on the east side of the city and commands Silverymoon’s knight-defenders. The city’s magical defenses are even more formidable than the knights and have served the city well for years. Silverymoon is also a haven for Harpers — not surprising, given that many Harpers are wizards and bards.

Grand and enlightened though the city may be, Silverymoon’s reputation was tarnished by its halfhearted efforts in aid of Sundabar during the War of the Silver Marches. The city remains a powerful and influential member of the Lords’ Alliance, however.

We’re the dandy highwaymen and here’s our invitation

The DM manages to make a Silverymoon map on the fly because that’s one of the things he forgot when he was doing important shit like trophies and flags.

<sigh>

The DM delivers the Silverymoon monologue above but then suffers a mishap:

Indeed.

DM> Harpers, when you are in a major city, you can make an investigation check to locate a Harper safe house. If you succeed, you will find out information about the city and its inhabitants and gain a safe refuge. If you fail, you must wait a day before trying again.

Both Joffrey and Regulus manage to score exactly the 15 Investigation check needed. They learn that there are rumours the Margaster family are dabbling in demon worship. People have gone missing in the area of their estate and some enterprising ‘property relocation specialists’ that have broken into the estate have never been seen again. The Harpers have not investigated further as the Margasters are not deemed a sufficient threat to warrant intervention but they are on the watch-list.

It didn’t take much to convince Regulus to rob the fuck out of the place (that is technical criminal terminology). The others were already convinced.

They rock up at the estate after dark and find that it consists of a walled compound containing a large fortified stone tower and a carriage house. The gates of the compound are open, the doors to the tower and the carriage house are closed.

The carriage house is a two story structure, 30ft square and the carriage has been backed in through the double doors for a quick getaway. Two horses are hitched to the carriage. There is a set of stairs in the back-left corner that lead upstairs to guard’s quarters.

Joffrey immediately announces that he has an amazing plan for infiltrating the tower in spider form. If it wasn’t getting late the DM might have been tempted to let him try it but then we’d have to have Adam roll new stats and then that would be a really late finish.

Instead, the DM reminds them that the stash of items is under the driver’s seat.

We’re the dandy highwaymen so tired of excuses

Then we had the Detect Magic discussion. Again. <sigh>

How quickly they forget:

---

So the party are now at the gate. Somewhat disturbingly, there is still an hour of the recording left and the DM was sure this was a pretty short encounter before we ended it, so what the fuck took an hour? Let’s find out shall we?

The devil take your stereo and your record collection

Planning took place and involved the following:

The owl plan was put in motion and Joffrey spotted two human guardsmen seated at a table on the first floor. The DM did briefly go all American and called it the second floor <sigh>

The DM calls for a 5 minute break because, even though he made the damn minis for the fight, he can’t find them <sigh>

It took six minutes to find the art work, resize it in gimp, cut and paste it into the standee template, import the artwork into TTS and then make the ‘shonkiest mini ever’. Not bad, but it would have been quicker if I’d remembered where the fuck the originals went.

They re-iterated the plan; sneak up, pick lock, steal stuff, get out.

Ok, the DM silently in the background is now rapidly scanning the book and realising that the Alarm spell is set off by opening the box. There is nothing about just stealing the carriage.

Well… shit.

This could bypass the entire combat encounter. Fuck.

Never fear though, gentle reader, despite having an amazing solution to the task, they didn’t do it.

A group stealth check was made and they barely made it across the gravel path to the doors of the carriage house undetected.

The doors were investigated and appeared to not be trapped.

The doors were perceptionated and they appeared not to be locked.

However, the DM noted the doors, and particularly the hinges, were not in the best condition.

The DM apologises because he is currently stuffing his face with a mini-roll which prompted a short discussion on whether the emergency mini-roll is still in the trophy on the cabinet in the old D&D venue.

It was ok, it was about doors dragging on the ground but these don’t.

However, the inaugural award of the new digital Cheese of the Week trophy was not postponed for long:

Now the DM might have sounded a bit grumpy (I usually do!) but being a fairly good practitioner of the art, he does appreciate a good sophistry attempt. Notwithstanding that however, congratulations Clay:

---

Bombshell confession time!

The DM, whilst writing this and having just checked something, feels he should point out at this time, because he feels he should be fair, that not only can Isaac learn Detect Magic, but that he actually already has it memorised and thus can cast it as a ritual.

Oops.

As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said: Look Buttercup, I think we need to have a discussion about your propensity for blabbing unnecessary bollocks to people who really don’t need to know that shit. Take it from someone who has been married to a bloodsucking she-demon, what they don’t know won’t hurt them… but it might just end up fucking you the fuck up!

And moving swiftly onwards…

They open the doors, apparently unnoticed.

All kinds of checks were successfully made and the party are fairly sure the horses are not some kind of evil shape-shifting demon-horses that are about to try and kill them.

Everyone except Isaac went into the carriage house and after thoroughly inspecting the box under the driver’s seat for traps, they opened it.

And then it all went to shit, obviously.

DM> An audible alarm at about the level of a hand bell starts ringing out to 60ft and the doors of the stable slam shut. You have just triggered an Alarm spell <if only they had Detect Magic!>. Can you all please roll initiative.

As part of his opening of the box action pre-combat, Regulus snagged the several items in the compartment; a pair of goggles, a pair of spectacles, two* spell scrolls and a red potion.

*This is a retcon from one scroll for reasons that will become apparent next week.

Clay takes up position opposite the stairs and preps an attack with a javelin. He did prep it for the ‘first guard that came down the stairs’. This could have been an issue but that would have required the DM to be a much bigger dick than usual, and that’s going some.

The two guards transformed into Cambions; evil shape-shifting devil-guards that are about to try and kill them.

Clay throws and hits with his spear, it doesn’t do the full amount of damage though.

The Cambions have a flight speed of 60ft which gets the first one into melee range of both Clay and Joffrey. It makes an attack against each, hitting both for 8 piercing and 3 fire damage.

This fight is rather congested as it’s a small building with a big carriage in it. The second devil makes it to the ground floor but can only see Joffrey and Clay and it makes a ranged fire attack but misses.

Joffrey casts Tidal Wave in the confined area and flattens the first Cambion, the second makes the save and does not get knocked prone.

Joffrey then runs around to the other side of the carriage. The prone Cambion attacks at disadvantage but misses. Isaac, out by the gate is not going into the compound and so he casts Scorching Ray at the doors and damages them a bit. Elvira does some double short-sword slice and dice on the prone devil and hits twice.

Abelas uses some poison ray bollocks and hits the standing Cambion for 12 but that gets reduced to 6 because he made the save. They have +6 to Con or as Joffrey put it “Particularly Constrous”.

Regulus rumbles over to the downed devil spawn and punches the crap out of him with his ‘fisting radiance’ attack. That’s not what he calls it but it makes me laugh and I’m doing the write up.

End of round.

End of Session

Next time on Ten-foot Squares:

Tune in next week to find out!

Post-session Guff

Adam suggested not only stealing the carriage but painting it black with a red stripe for the A-Team <sigh>

The DM is marginally surprised that half the table actually know who the A-Team are.

The DM hopes this write up will be significantly shorter than the last one.

Fuck me d&d is complicated – Dual wielding\Two-weapon fighting

I am going to try and make this as simple as I can because frankly it can be a mess of a subject.

You typically get one Action, one Bonus Action and one Reaction per turn unless you do something cheesy like Action Surge.

If you use your Action to attack with a light melee weapon (Dagger, Scimtar, Shortsword etc) you may then spend your one Bonus Action to make an attack with the weapon in your off hand. You do not add your Str or Dex bonus damage to that attack.

If you have multiple attacks, you may them make another main hand attack but you do not get another Bonus Action if you have already used it. You do not get another Bonus Action if you Action Surge!

You cannot roll and then decide what kind of action you are using, you have to say what you are using and then roll it. Unless you specify otherwise, the DM will assume you are making a main hand attack then a bonus attack and then another main hand attack.

This is because anyone who has actually tried fighting with two weapons (stick fighting in the DM’s distant past) will tell you that hitting twice with the dominant hand and then hitting with the off hand is fucked up and wrong. You hit with the main hand, then hit with the off hand while the main hand resets.

Also, two-weapon fighting is really hard and makes you look like a complete twat when you fuck it up and hit yourself in the face.

The Fighter and Ranger classes have fighting styles that let you add your bonus damage.

The feat Dual Wielder adds +1 to AC and lets you dual-wield non-light weapons.