Just something I haven't seen explicitly pointed out yet, but TM is unique in DR, in that it offers a complete second damage channel.

Every character can use weapons. But each weapon 'locks' the other one out, since you can't do another attack while you're swinging the first one, and you can't do a left/right attack. But you can do a target, attack, cast, routine, which gives you vastly higher damage per unit time than simply swinging a weapon.

And you might say you don't care, which is fine. But this type of thing comes in to play when you're doing some invasions, or in the Duskruin arena, or the Keep-quest right now when you're tasked to kill enemies.