Weapons Redesign

[Sinfire Titan]

Cross-Posted.
ALPHA-TESTING REQUESTED!


As I've been working on this for a few months now, I feel this is ready to get off the ground. Yes, I am aware that not every magical enhancement is included in this document; I plan to expand upon this later on.

What I'm Looking For

• Inter-weapon Balance. No singluar weapon should be an automatic choice for every character. However, the weapons have not been designed to be balanced between proficiencies (Exotic Weapons are designed to be inherently superior to Martial, Martial to simple, Simple to Natural, Natural to Improvised).
• Pricing. Augments are intentionally designed to be cheaper than a +10 weapon. However, the prices I'm concerned about are the actual weapons themselves. I do not want the GP cost of the base weapon to be used as a balancing point.
• Ease of use. Anyone familiar with Fable and 4E should be able to look at this and fill it out intuitively. The rules may need some editing, so please point out any and all glaring errors or counter-intuitive examples. Please, do not chew me out for the missing sample Fighter, that will be included in the finished product.

[GawainBS]

I don't agree on several issues:

• Automaticly excluding Finesse & Power Attack. If you're going for Finesse, you're already handicapping yourself enough.
• Not being able to TWF with Unarmed Strikes. To me, there never was an issue: you can fill each "hand" with an unarmed strike, but as a bonus, even if both hands are full, you can still TWF with it. (Knees, feet, headbutts.) The feat investment in it is enough of a punishment. (TWF, Improved Unarmed Strike.) On a sidenote: let's not start this whole discussion again.
• 90% of the weapon imbalance can be solved by banning the Spiked Chain (or taking away its reach), or my preference: make a new feat called "Close In Fighting" which grants reach weapons a way to threaten in natural reach, without the inane PHB2 Swift Action requirement. (Spiked Chain has some other variants with the same issue, same goes for them.)

[Sinfire Titan]

• Automaticly excluding Finesse & Power Attack. If you're going for Finesse, you're already handicapping yourself enough.

I felt that weapons capable of being Finessed are more or less Light weapons anyway.

• Not being able to TWF with Unarmed Strikes. To me, there never was an issue: you can fill each "hand" with an unarmed strike, but as a bonus, even if both hands are full, you can still TWF with it. (Knees, feet, headbutts.) The feat investment in it is enough of a punishment. (TWF, Improved Unarmed Strike.) On a sidenote: let's not start this whole discussion again.

This was going to be taken care of with a different line of feats.

• 90% of the weapon imbalance can be solved by banning the Spiked Chain (or taking away its reach), or my preference: make a new feat called "Close In Fighting" which grants reach weapons a way to threaten in natural reach, without the inane PHB2 Swift Action requirement. (Spiked Chain has some other variants with the same issue, same goes for them.)

And the Bastard Sword sucking compared to both the Longsword and Greatsword? Stuff like that was what I was more concerned with. The adjustments I made were twofold: Bring other weapons up a little in power and bring weapons like the Spiked Chain down a little. Effectively, I am trying to remove automatic choices from the base weapons.

[GawainBS]

Combining Finessable weapons with PA is one of the only ways to ensure steady damage combined with Finesse.

If TWFing with IUS gets done by other feats, no complaints.

I agree there are some issues with weapons, hence the "90%". Part of the problem is nomenclature, though: a real Bastard Sword would be hard to distinguish from a Longsword being wielded twohanded. Further, once you wield your Longsword in two hands, you might just as well go for a Twohanded Sword. (Unless you're an Elf Swiftblade or something and lack the proficiency.) Wielding a longsword in one hand is suboptimal in all cases: TWF is a pain, Sword and Board is inferior,... This shows the inherent problem 3.5 has with non-twohanders.

Apart from that, I like the augments. It's cool to be able to upgrade weapons without going magic.

[Sinfire Titan]

Combining Finessable weapons with PA is one of the only ways to ensure steady damage combined with Finesse.

If TWFing with IUS gets done by other feats, no complaints.

I agree there are some issues with weapons, hence the "90%". Part of the problem is nomenclature, though: a real Bastard Sword would be hard to distinguish from a Longsword being wielded twohanded. Further, once you wield your Longsword in two hands, you might just as well go for a Twohanded Sword. (Unless you're an Elf Swiftblade or something and lack the proficiency.) Wielding a longsword in one hand is suboptimal in all cases: TWF is a pain, Sword and Board is inferior,... This shows the inherent problem 3.5 has with non-twohanders.

Apart from that, I like the augments. It's cool to be able to upgrade weapons without going magic.

I know what you mean about the Finesse problems. The Devs really hate letting concepts work. THis fix isn't complete yet (hence the paytesting), and as it gets closer to completion I'll be altering things to match feedback. I really dislike the idea of PA with a Finesse weapon.

This isn't going to be the extent of the augmentation system either. I'm going to mess with armor and shields too, and eventually Legacy Items.

[GawainBS]

Well, Midnight has a Power Attack variant for Light Weapons/Onehanders.

[Sinfire Titan]

Well, Midnight has a Power Attack variant for Light Weapons/Onehanders.

That's more or less what I'm going ot be doing with the Feats section.

[awaken DM golem]

A strange thing 1e did, and kinda real world-ish too, was each weapon effected each type of armor differently.

Some weapons were better against Shields.
Some weapons were better against Cloth / Leather / Hide.
Some weapons pierced through metal armors better.
Some weapons were specific to mounted combat.
Some weapons were specific to opposing mounted combat.
etc ...

In a 4e-ish sort of way, each weapon could have a +1 (or better) non-magical versus: Specific circumstance X
where X is different for each weapon.
And X is a reasonably balanced combat related something.

[GawainBS]

A strange thing 1e did, and kinda real world-ish too, was each weapon effected each type of armor differently.

Some weapons were better against Shields.
Some weapons were better against Cloth / Leather / Hide.
Some weapons pierced through metal armors better.
Some weapons were specific to mounted combat.
Some weapons were specific to opposing mounted combat.
etc ...

In a 4e-ish sort of way, each weapon could have a +1 (or better) non-magical versus: Specific circumstance X
where X is different for each weapon.
And X is a reasonably balanced combat related something.

Second Edition did this too. While I agree it's "realistic", I think it adds too much detail and bookkeeping.

[veekie]

A strange thing 1e did, and kinda real world-ish too, was each weapon effected each type of armor differently.

Some weapons were better against Shields.
Some weapons were better against Cloth / Leather / Hide.
Some weapons pierced through metal armors better.
Some weapons were specific to mounted combat.
Some weapons were specific to opposing mounted combat.
etc ...

In a 4e-ish sort of way, each weapon could have a +1 (or better) non-magical versus: Specific circumstance X
where X is different for each weapon.
And X is a reasonably balanced combat related something.

It could be done, in a matter similar to RL, if you gave armor types different secondary features(DR/damage type), instead of focusing solely on AC, and the weapons would naturally be geared against specific types of armors based on it's attributes..

[GawainBS]

A strange thing 1e did, and kinda real world-ish too, was each weapon effected each type of armor differently.

Some weapons were better against Shields.
Some weapons were better against Cloth / Leather / Hide.
Some weapons pierced through metal armors better.
Some weapons were specific to mounted combat.
Some weapons were specific to opposing mounted combat.
etc ...

In a 4e-ish sort of way, each weapon could have a +1 (or better) non-magical versus: Specific circumstance X
where X is different for each weapon.
And X is a reasonably balanced combat related something.

It could be done, in a matter similar to RL, if you gave armor types different secondary features(DR/damage type), instead of focusing solely on AC, and the weapons would naturally be geared against specific types of armors based on it's attributes..

Then again, we all know that most DR becomes obsolete after the first levels, unless you go with higher numbers, like 10-15-20, which would make it impractical for low lvl NPCs...

[veekie]

True, but theres always scaling DR with armor enhancement.

[GawainBS]

True, but theres always scaling DR with armor enhancement.

I'd combine it with a level-based benefit.

[awaken DM golem]

Yeah (sigh) , bookkeeping does suck.

Perhaps DR can be more useful by having it resist spell levels, that ascends with the full casters.
OK that sentence doesn't look good.
Something like: DR / (2nd level spells)
This way generic 1st level magic doesn't work, but any 2nd level spell based whatever, still does.
And then it could "augment" to:
/ (3rd level spells) or
/ (2nd level Transformations) where a 2nd level T spell can get by it, but other 2nd level spells can't.
etc
all the way up.
It's kinda like Minor Invulnerability Sphere or Anti-magic stuff.

Re-reading this ... it needs major editing and work, to actually work. It's just an idea, not that well expressed.
 

[GawainBS]

Yeah (sigh) , bookkeeping does suck.

Perhaps DR can be more useful by having it resist spell levels, that ascends with the full casters.
OK that sentence doesn't look good.
Something like: DR / (2nd level spells)
This way generic 1st level magic doesn't work, but any 2nd level spell based whatever, still does.
And then it could "augment" to:
/ (3rd level spells) or
/ (2nd level Transformations) where a 2nd level T spell can get by it, but other 2nd level spells can't.
etc
all the way up.
It's kinda like Minor Invulnerability Sphere or Anti-magic stuff.

Re-reading this ... it needs major editing and work, to actually work. It's just an idea, not that well expressed.
 

Too powerful on mundane stuff.

[awaken DM golem]

Yeah ... 1e and 2e had this anyway. If your level / hd / special ability was high enough, weapons below a certain power level didn't work at all.
It needs scaling. It needs balancing and work.
Maybe the +3 type Weapons are a good point to start something like this.

[Brainpiercing]

I've looked over the PDF - skimmed it, as of now, to be exact. It looks nice, overall. I see you've adjusted the damage dice in places, and I see a lot of D6s where I think there used to be larger dice.

I've also noted a couple of 20/x4 martial weapons. I must say I find even x3 weapons to be a little difficult to handle, since a crit will usually insta-gib anything at lower levels, a x4 weapon is worse. As these effects occur only rarely, it's a questionable boost, IMHO.

I've also been thinking about the Weapon Finesse thing: How about changing that feat entirely, or rather, adding a significant detail: If you use weapon finesse on a weapon you may choose on your turn, before making your first attack roll, to forgo your Dex bonus to AC for one round, and instead add it to damage rolls? Off-hand weapons can only gain 1/2x Dex bonus, as per usual rules.

[GawainBS]

I've also been thinking about the Weapon Finesse thing: How about changing that feat entirely, or rather, adding a significant detail: If you use weapon finesse on a weapon you may choose on your turn, before making your first attack roll, to forgo your Dex bonus to AC for one round, and instead add it to damage rolls? Off-hand weapons can only gain 1/2x Dex bonus, as per usual rules.

It kind of defeats the point of Weapon Finesse: people who take it want to be dodging, unhittable swashbucklers. As is, they generally get ignored because they're no threat due to low damage, BUT they're still unhittable, for what it counts.
If they use your option, they are no real threat (at max some 11 extra damage on each attack), but now they're sitting ducks.

[Sinfire Titan]

Version 1.1


Steadfast deleted, typos corrected.

[Empirate]

Minor quibble: Its not a Flameberg (is that the opposite of an Iceberg or what?!), it's a Flamberge (French word). I think it's really inappropriate to make the Flamberge of all things a Quickdraw weapon, especially since all the really light-weight weapons (daggers, rapiers, short swords) don't have this ability.

I also miss the Glaive and Guisarme among your polearms, and can't really relate to your take on the Harpoon. Wasn't this supposed to balance weapons? Your Harpoon removes none of its ridiculous OP potential. You should probably add a hefty penalty to its use. That trailing rope must make it harder to throw accurately than a javelin. And why is it in the Polearm section? Not your classic piece-of-metal-on-a-really-long-stick, is it?