Beastmaster: A dual wielder who doesn't dual wield

Edit: Thanks everyone for the discussion! There seems to be no clear consensus, but a majority of people lean against allowing this interaction for various reasons, with pretty solid arguments.

Hi everyone, I figured I'd share and get some input on the concept behind a build I've been working on: a beast master Ranger. Please lmk what you think, any improvements you spot and if you see anything why this wouldn't work :)

Build theme: Forest gnome riding a wolf into battle and hitting people with a stick. Fakes them out with the dagger while the wolf chomps down.

TLDR: Use Shilleilagh (now SL) with a club and a dagger, get the dagger nick extra attack but forego it to command your beast without using your BA, leaving it free for other things, such as HM. Doing so actually boosts the ranger's damage by a lot, partly due to making it SAD. The numbers make it the most damaging ranger (considering only 2024 content) I have seen to date, particularly at higher levels where rangers struggle.

Ive been thinking for a while that SL is a good cantrip given its damage scaling. This is particularly true for clubs, which usually just have a d4 damage die. They also have the light property, which immediately made me think of more attacks with the damage boost, but this is unfortunately not possible, as SL doesn't work on more than one weapon.

Separately, I grew a bit frustrated at the anti synergy of the beast master with one of the rangers core damage boosts in HM: you need your BA to command the beast and to cast/move HM, even though your beast benefits from HM! You could also give up an attack to command the beast to attack, but you wouldn't want to give up your own attack, because its bound to be better than the beasts.

But I realised the two actually help solve one another. By wielding a club und a dagger, we can get one more (bad) attack with the dagger, which we give up to command the beast to attack, thus keeping both of our attacks and our bonus action. It also allows us to make our attacks with Wisdom, same as the beast attacks.

Assumptions:
- While I am assuming that you can keep SL up most of the time in dangerous zones (if the barb can keep rage going as a BA, we should be able to keep SL up), If not it's not a big deal, as we will be able to cast it with our BA. it does hurt our round 1 damage since we don't have HM up.
- We can give up the Nick attack to command the beast. The text for commanding the beast says: "You can also sacrifice one of your attacks when you take the Attack action to command the beast to take the Beast’s Strike action". I don't see how this would be incompatible, but some DMs might rule otherwise.
- assuming Tier 2, +4 primary ability score mod, +3 secondary.
- we get the charge bonus 50% of the time. and the charge damage is once per turn (rules are ambiguous, I would say you can use it on every hit, but oh well).
- getting SL is pretty easy. We can do it using our fighting style or with Magic initiate druid from Guide. I think I prefer the former, as the next best FS is defense, and I think Alert beats +1 to AC.
- We are riding our beast

How does this compare to a TWF Ranger? the TWF ranger will do 60%*3x(2d6+4)=19.8 assuming HM. I will keep his BA free for the HM upkeep. Alternatively with BM using your BA every turn to attack its 60%*3x(1d6+Dex)+50%*(1d8+5) = 20. accounting for the different hit chance due to WIS/DEX. This ranger (post lvl 5) does 60%*2*(1d10+1d6+4)+60%*(1d8+6+1d6)=24, more than 10% over the pure TWF ranger. At this point it's not better, but it scales nicely too.
This gets even better post lvl 11, where the beast gets 2 attacks, and benefits from HM once per turn. And SL scales to a d12. This means our damage goes to 60%*2*(1d12+1d6+5)+60%*2*(1d8+7)+84%*(1d6+1d6) = 37.68DPR, or 39.98 including critical chances. (the 84% is because only one of the beasts attacks must hit to do this). This is without really spending resources (you get 4 free HM casts per day). For reference, this is higher than any of the ranger builds from Treantmonk at this level, and those incorporate the use of resources for damage (such as summoning).

Extra things to consider which might boost our damage:
- Summon Fey/Beast, particularly as we get to higher levels, can boost our damage for important fights.
- Advantage from knocking Large or smaller enemies prone on the beast's charges. I think this is a big boost, but impossible to say how often you will fight qualifying enemies. With advantage our lvl 11 dpr goes up to 55.54, just edging out the berserker barb at 55.3.
- Both our attacks and the beasts attacks (post lvl 7) do force damage, circumventing resistances.

Main post ends here, lmk what you think about the concept :D

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My build ideas:
- Species/Concept: Forest gnome riding a wolf into battle and hitting people with a stick. Fakes them out with the dagger while the wolf chomps down.
- Guide (+2 WIS, +1 Dex), SL, Guidance, Healing Word
- Pure BM to high levels
- Inspiring leader at 4, +2WIS at 8 (or Res Wis/warcaster at 8 and Fey touched at 12.)

Some more thoughts:
- Keep in mind that the level 7 feature for commanding your beast and letting it dodge/disengage/dash in addition to attacking doesn't work with this, you need to use the BA for that.
- having adv. 5x per day against creature without blind/truesight using a BA from level 14 is good for scaling.
- free adv. with HM at lvl 17 is also sweet.
- conjure woodland beings would be my choice for damage boosting post lvl 13 (although our concentration is horrid).
- SL scaling gives us another boost at 17, albeit small.
- Inspiring leader is a huge benefit on this character as one of the WIS improvement feats, granting THP to the beast as well.
- A war cleric MC might be nice post lvl 15, as our spells target both us and the beast now. So sanctuary, healing word are much better. I'm not sure if bless would just allow another target, but if so that's nice too. The 5x BA attacks per SR can also be useful.