Rebalancing Exotic Weapons

[bkdubs123]

So after rebalancing feats and spells I decided something needed to be done with Exotic Weapons. They are just never worth taking a feat for, or if they are the weapon just ends up being too good. So I mulled the idea over, and I couldn't come up with any direction to go in, but then I brought it up to a friend who immediately thought to give Exotic Weapons requirements, like feats have, in order to wield them. Such as:

Bastard Sword - Requirements: Str 13, Balance 4 ranks
Dwarven Waraxe - Requirements: Dwarf, or Str 13 and Con 13
Whip - Requirements: Dex 13, Sleight of Hand 4 ranks
Orc Double Axe - Requirements: Str 15 and either Orc, or Balance 4 ranks
Double Sword - Requirements: Str 13, Dex 13, and Balance 4 ranks
Net - Requirements: Wis 13, Escape Artist 4 ranks
Spiked Chain - Requirements: Base Attack +5, Str 13, Dex 15, Wis 15, Balance 5 ranks, Sleight of Hand 8 ranks (yes, I hate the Spiked Chain, but it is also far and above the most difficult thing to wield in the above list)

Thoughts on the above? Any other thoughts to rebalance exotic weapons?

[Jradd7]

For Net would Escape Artist or Use Rope or Escape Artist and Use Rope be more logical?
For Spiked Chain would adding a Use Rope ranks or having the option of switching Sleight of Hand for Use Rope make sense?

Further, as far as non-exotic weapons, should better stats or ranks in skills allow more unorthodox usefulness in those weapons? Part of the reason that exotic weapons are better than the others is that most of them have some special use (trip bonus, disarm bonus, finessable, etc). If a character has a high Sleight of Hand or Dexterity, should they be able to disarm or trip with a light/heavy pick? It's somewhat curved like other weapons that get that use. I think things like that should probably be taken into account.

[RobbyPants]

Are those requirements in additon to the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat or are they a replacement?  I'm getting the impression you meant the latter.

The four ranks of balance will keep several classes out until 5th level.  Weapons like the waraxe will be trivially easy for any melee type to qualify for; this will make the battle axe obsolete.

[bkdubs123]

Are those requirements in additon to the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat or are they a replacement?  I'm getting the impression you meant the latter.

The idea is meant to replace the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat.

The four ranks of balance will keep several classes out until 5th level.

True. Is this a problem?

Weapons like the waraxe will be trivially easy for any melee type to qualify for; this will make the battle axe obsolete.

Okay, I understand the problem here.

@Robby: What do you think of the premise in general?

@Jradd7: I thought about Use Rope, but since I plan to eliminate the Use Rope skill I opted away from that. The idea about non-exotic weapons getting additional usefulness because of skill ranks or stats is an interesting one, and something I may explore. Something to keep in mind, once I get to rebalancing skills, things like Balance and Sleight of Hand will have new and interesting uses of their own, some of which I plan to make useful during combat and may well involve weapon tricks.

[Jradd7]

Weapons like the waraxe will be trivially easy for any melee type to qualify for; this will make the battle axe obsolete.

@Jradd7: I thought about Use Rope, but since I plan to eliminate the Use Rope skill I opted away from that. The idea about non-exotic weapons getting additional usefulness because of skill ranks or stats is an interesting one, and something I may explore. Something to keep in mind, once I get to rebalancing skills, things like Balance and Sleight of Hand will have new and interesting uses of their own, some of which I plan to make useful during combat and may well involve weapon tricks.

Cool, cool. Yeah, see, I'm thinking, in part here, that simpler weapons being able to gain better uses through advanced ranks, etcetera, might help to preserve their usefulness.

[SiggyDevil]

Modular weapons with Build Points was a better idea.
Exotics would have the most points and diversity but require the higher degree of investment to use without penalty.

[bkdubs123]

Modular weapons with Build Points was a better idea.
Exotics would have the most points and diversity but require the higher degree of investment to use without penalty.

Should I have any idea what you're talking about?

[RobbyPants]

The four ranks of balance will keep several classes out until 5th level.

True. Is this a problem?

Well, it's a problem compared to people normally taking EWP at 1st level, but I don't know that it's a problem balance-wise.  I guess the idea is you spend four skill points instead of a feat to get +1 damage on average.  I suppose ranks in Balance could be handy anyway, because five ranks keeps you from being flat-footed while balancing.

@Robby: What do you think of the premise in general?

The general premise is kind of interesting.  It saves feats, but with some skills being cross-class skills, I'm not sure how useful it would be.  I think this will result in some weapons being very optimal for certain classes, and other weapons never being used.  I'm not saying it's bad for balance, but it will probably be what you see in actual game play.

[RobbyPants]

Modular weapons with Build Points was a better idea.
Exotics would have the most points and diversity but require the higher degree of investment to use without penalty.

Should I have any idea what you're talking about?

I don't know the specifics, but I think the idea is certain aspects of weapons (damage, crit threat range, crit multiplier, etc) are worth points, and you have so many points to create a weapon.  So you can increase the crit by decreasing the damage.  Exotic Weapons would have more points.

Although, this is really how the current system works; you just can't customize it on your own.

[woodenbandman]

Yeah that spiked chain has retarded requirements. Nobody except maybe a monk could wield that bad boy. This is a good idea, but FFS reduce the prereqs on the Spiked Chain. It's not like Guisarme +Spiked Gauntlet hasn't been around for forever.

[Jradd7]

Yeah that spiked chain has retarded requirements. Nobody except maybe a monk could wield that bad boy. This is a good idea, but FFS reduce the prereqs on the Spiked Chain. It's not like Guisarme +Spiked Gauntlet hasn't been around for forever.

I believe that Bkdubs has not made it clear enough that he will also be making changes to how skills work (mentioned that he is removing Use Rope, probably among others, and changing usefulness of certain skills, etc). I'm sure that eventually part of the process will be balancing skills in such a way that these pre-requisites will be more viable or as restrictive as they need to be. To your credit, without insight into how much skills will change and without a comprehensive list, it will be difficult to make a full judgment on any given possibility that he has posted thus far. Basically, who knows if these requirements are going to be all that ridiculous compared to the others since we don't know what is going on with skills yet in his rebalancing project, especially if skill pre-reqs are generally going to be the norm for weapons? As far as the ability score stuff goes, Druids or Cleric among a few others, might meet the requirements as well.

[RobbyPants]

Either way, it will take forever to qualify for the spiked chain.  It's not so much that the requirements are steep, but more that they don't really synergyze with eachother, so almost no character is going to have a full BAB, Sleight of Hand and Balance as class skills, and have the required ability scores.

I'd say, if the weapon bothers you that much, just get rid of it.  Alternately, use the whip dagger.

[bkdubs123]

The point isn't that I hate the weapon (of course I do), the point is that the Spiked Chain would be incredibly difficult to wield with any sort of proficiency, or without hurting yourself. I mean, yeah, I don't know if those requirements are too high, but I want them to be pretty harsh because the weapon is going to be hard to use. I'll be working on rebalancing other exotics soon, and then after that probably adjust some of the effects/stats of weapons to reflect how difficult the weapon seems to be to wield.

And actually, the Warlord and Sohei both have Balance and Sleight of Hand as class skills (as well as full BAB).

[RobbyPants]

There is a similar weapon based in reality called the kau sin ke.  It's shorter and blunt, but the basic premise is the same.  I'm not sure if it's long enough to trip people or profide reach.



I do agree that weapons like this would be more difficult to wield, but I'm not sure the requirements should be so steep.

[woodenbandman]

I think that this is a point in the game where disbelief must be suspended because it's more fun that way. Just say a wizard did it.

[Jradd7]

I have to agree with Bkdubs as far as the difficulty in use. If you are, in RL, a well-trained martial artist who knows how to use those oriental, exotic weapons that we see in the movies, you still would probably be cautious about picking up something like the spiked chain. Just about anybody can pick up a sword and hurt someone with it without hurting themselves, the spiked chain... more doubtful that someone could do serious damage to someone else without hurting themselves in the process. Basically, we're talking about requirement differences of at least 5 levels, right? How long would you expect a martial arts master to take to be able to wield a spiked chain as well as they wield a normal sword? I mean, I'm sure that people don't look at a wall of weapons and figure that the kau sin ke is only going to take a couple of months to learn how to use it really well.

As he points out, these go hand-in-hand with the rebalanced classes (and other rebalances that he's doing; I mean skill sets of all the classes are obviously going to change some if he's removing some skills completely and changing things around in that way) that he's already made and two of the classes that are meant to potentially be veritable masters of weapon combat if they want would not have nearly as tough a time using the weapon. In a way giving it steep penalties gives those classes more of their own power because of how much more it would take others to attain its usefulness.

[woodenbandman]

I agree that it makes logical sense, but it makes zero mechanical sense. In a world where you can buy proficiency in a weapon for a +1 bonus, it's ridiculous to make people spend one of their 6-9 feats that they ever get to learn to use a weapon. I like the tome's way of doing this: you train for a week and you can use the weapon.

[veekie]

I agree that it makes logical sense, but it makes zero mechanical sense. In a world where you can buy proficiency in a weapon for a +1 bonus, it's ridiculous to make people spend one of their 6-9 feats that they ever get to learn to use a weapon. I like the tome's way of doing this: you train for a week and you can use the weapon.

Weapon Groups are a nice middle ground, with wide spanning proficiencies. You can wield anything reasonably similar to anything else you can wield.

[bkdubs123]

I agree that it makes logical sense, but it makes zero mechanical sense. In a world where you can buy proficiency in a weapon for a +1 bonus, it's ridiculous to make people spend one of their 6-9 feats that they ever get to learn to use a weapon. I like the tome's way of doing this: you train for a week and you can use the weapon.

Are you thinking of the +2 Skillful enhancement or is there a cheaper knockoff version? Either way, with my sweeping revisions I'm hoping to make things more logical, and eventually I'm going to drastically rework how wealth-by-level works. I personally am not a fan of Tome's way of doing it, but to each his own.

Weapon Groups are something I'm going to work with, so there will be a Sword Proficiency feat granting proficiency with all weapons in the Sword group, and maybe a small bonus to damage as well.

[Midnight_v]

The four ranks of balance will keep several classes out until 5th level.

True. Is this a problem?
Well, it's a problem compared to people normally taking EWP at 1st level, but I don't know that it's a problem balance-wise.  I guess the idea is you spend four skill points instead of a feat to get +1 damage on average.  I suppose ranks in Balance could be handy anyway, because five ranks keeps you from being flat-footed while balancing

Personal dislike affects your decision making when you "Hate" a specific part of the game. So it kinda reflect as you went overboard on the spiked chain pre-reqs'.
Its actually "Worth" a feat in probbably, but keeping people out of the weapons they want to use till X level seems like a bad idea. Depending on the reasoning.
You basically can't use that thing at first level. Terrible.