[3.5] Would more characters take the Weapon Focus Line if it was improved?

[gorilla-turtle]

I have been toying with the idea of a few different house rules, and one thing that always seems to catch my eye is the weapon focus line. I am entirely aware that the feat line is no substitute for genuine class features, and that the feats are inferior to most other options in the game by virtue of options being better than simply larger numbers. That is a discussion that need not be hashed out here again.

One of the reasons the feats are so overlooked is because the rewards are static bonuses, and incredibly minor compared to other feats that all gain in usability, if only slightly, as the character increases in power. Additionally, the feats all require advancing levels of the Fighter Class or classes that count as Fighter levels, which sharply limits the number of characters that can take the feats: a Ranger with Supremacy in Archery, a Rogue Crossbow Master, or a Barbarian incredibly talented with his Great Axe (beyond simply charging things into blood-colored mist) are all incredibly valid concepts.

I would thus like to present a modified series of feats to replace the Weapon Focus Line in this matter. The fighter level limitation is to be removed, and each feat provides benefits that are either incredibly valuable, or offer increasing bonuses over time. Other than that, the feats remain unchanged.

I toy with the idea of Bab replacing the fighter level requirement, and acknowledge that these were hastily written. Still, input would be appreciated.

For each fighter bonus feat you possess, including this one, you gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls you make using your chosen weapon.

For each fighter bonus feat you possess, including this one, you gain a +2 bonus on all damage rolls you make using your chosen weapon.

Once per round, you automatically reroll one missed attack roll. Additionally, your weapon deals damage as if it were a size larger. When you make a full attack action, you may add +5 to any single attack beyond your first attack.

You no longer automatically miss on a natural 1 with your chosen weapon.

You no longer need to confirm a critical hit that you threaten using your chosen weapon. It is automatically confirmed.

You no longer need to roll your damage dice on your chosen weapon. It automatically does the maximum damage of the dice normally rolled. Once per round, you may treat one of your attack rolls with your chosen weapon as a natural 20 (including automatically hitting and producing a critical hit). You can wield your weapon against a foe who grapples you without penalty and without first making a grapple check. In this situation, you can take a standard action or a full attack action as normal. When you make a full attack with your chosen weapon, you may add +10 to any single attack beyond your first attack.

One per round, you may roll an attack roll twice and take the better of the two results.

The critical hit multiplier of your chosen weapon increases by one.

[jaybird]

Well, Fighter is effectively useless if you replace levels in Fighter with BAB, but that isn't much of a change. The main change would be that the WF feats would actually be recommended to a newbie as the most beginner-friendly selection. For players who want more complexity, they still won't be taking WF feats.

[Nettlekid]

These fixes are pretty all over the place. Generally, feats that just make numbers bigger aren't really worth it. So your Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, half of Weapon Mastery, and Epic Weapon Specialization are still pretty useless. Both of the Epic feats are underpowered for being Epic.

But that said, a couple of feats among these fixes are suddenly really powerful for a pure melee type, and might warrant taking the other fixes as feat tax. Weapon Supremacy is obviously overpowered with a 1/round Nat 20, meaning that suddenly Vorpal kills everything not immune to it. Since you can take Weapon Focus (Ray) or other weapon-like spells, Weapon Supremacy gives you free Maximize on all those, and 1/round crit, which is better than the Epic feat Enhance Spell. (I know it would be nearly impossible for a caster to get it, but it bears thinking of in Gestalt.)

That Greater Weapon Focus is probably the most balanced, because it's like "Yeah, if a melee warrior is super-skilled with this weapon then even at the worst of times they aren't going to dork out and auto-miss." That would be a great boon to TWFers like Dervishes who make tons of attacks.

So yeah, actually, I think that since your goal is "Make newbies want to take this line but more optimized characters won't," these are actually pretty good fixes.

[JungleChicken]

I can see it now. Legions of fighters with keen bursting scythes and x5 crit multipliers or duel wielding vorpals

[Novawurmson]

I'll touch briefly on the new Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization: Those bonuses are simply too good. The Fighter is getting a minimum of 11 Fighter feats over the course of his career, so that's a minimum of +11 to attack rolls and +22 to damage rolls. That's basically like multiplying their BAB by 150%.

I'd recommend having them scale with BAB, similar to Pathfinder's Power Attack. This lets them scale in a more level-appropriate fashion and rewards taking more levels in full BAB classes instead of dipping for as many feats as possible.

Weapon Focus: Bonus increases by +1 at base attack bonus +4 and every 4 base attack bonus thereafter.

Weapon Specialization: Bonus increases by +2 at base attack bonus +4 and every 4 base attack bonus thereafter.

Note that these bonuses may still be too good for a single feat.

[ericgrau]

The feat is fine in core or similar optimization, but every single core feat doesn't hold up to splatbook tricks. Unless it's a prerequisite for a splatbook trick.

If you only start throwing around big numbers it won't accomplish anything. You won't hit the thousand damage of an ubercharger, yet it will be too much for casual play. High optimization doesn't need bigger numbers, it wants more tricks instead. And low optimization will easily be overwhelmed by anything more than what's already there.

[gorilla-turtle]

@ jaybird, I suspected as such for all of that.

@ Nettlekid; thank you for a very detailed post. For thought; the Epic Feats I knew would be underpowered, but for some reason thought they could be continuously taken and stacked on themselves at that point, so that you could continuously improve your critical modifier and your chances to hit on every attack you made, for example. I know it is still worthless, but still an improvement over the first versions of them, or so I assumed. That said, Novawurmson seems to disagree with you concerning Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization: maybe you did not notice that those scaled?

While I'm not quite as concerned with a caster using ray spells with Weapon Supremacy as I might need to be (in gestalt, let alone high level gestalt, balance is already in tears anyway), Vorpal was not something I had considered. As you can see, after basic specialization, I had designed all of the feats to provide a non-numerical bonus of some kind that would encourage their usage, letting the numbers themselves be covered under the ever increasing Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization. Maybe a Natural 19, with Weapon Mastery upgrading the weapon's base critical range by 1, would achieve a similar desired effect?

Admittedly, I ran out of inspiration a bit for useful yet sensible effects that could be supplied by these feats.

@ Novawurmson, would you believe those bonuses scaling as so was actually fully intended? That, rather than being entirely reliant on hoping that the caster in the group chose not to summon something that does the job of the fighter better and buff it, the fighter himself, or whom ever decided to choose to focus on being superb with their weapon, would genuinely be good with their weapon?

I feel like this might be a byproduct of myself being green, but I fail to see the abuse in the fighter 20 who has dedicated his life to the blade receiving a reward for doing so, particularly if that reward still pales in comparison to what a caster 20 who has similarly mastered spells is capable of. As for dipping for feats, how many fighter levels, just for the sake of a scaling bonus to hit and damage, is the average build really to consider, over the additional options a class is normally to consider?

I would actually like to play test the end results of this thread out, so I appreciate the input.

[OldTrees1]

Weapon Focus tends to be a prerequisite for my Warriors so nothing changes there.
My Warriors already deal enough-too much damage so Weapon Specialization is not worth it.
Weapon Mastery would be worth considering but it would require taking Fighter 3 and is not worth the cost of 2 feats and a dead level.
None of the deeper feats are worth taking the prerequisite chain for my Warriors.

[Novawurmson]

@ Novawurmson, would you believe those bonuses scaling as so was actually fully intended? That, rather than being entirely reliant on hoping that the caster in the group chose not to summon something that does the job of the fighter better and buff it, the fighter himself, or whom ever decided to choose to focus on being superb with their weapon, would genuinely be good with their weapon?

I feel like this might be a byproduct of myself being green, but I fail to see the abuse in the fighter 20 who has dedicated his life to the blade receiving a reward for doing so, particularly if that reward still pales in comparison to what a caster 20 who has similarly mastered spells is capable of. As for dipping for feats, how many fighter levels, just for the sake of a scaling bonus to hit and damage, is the average build really to consider, over the additional options a class is normally to consider?

I would actually like to play test the end results of this thread out, so I appreciate the input.

Here's the thing: The fighter (and every other full BAB class out there) already doesn't have much of a problem hitting things. The fighter can already hit and do damage - he does these things, and does them well. With good Strength investment, full BAB, and appropriate WBL, you will hit everything easily. I did a little table a while back showing that the average Warrior with Power Attack can generally kill any CR-equivalent encounter in two full attacks (granted, that was in PF, but people on these boards will tell you Pathfinder nerfed Power Attack).

Simply standing next to someone and smacking them is easy for the fighter - what the fighter needs is ways to deal with things they can't perceive, get to things out of reach, and generally contribute to the party in ways other than damage. While I applaud your idea of making Weapon Focus a better feat, the bonuses you're offering are just unbalanced.

You're saying the problem with Weapon Focus is that its numbers are behind those of other feats. If all you do is increase the numbers of Weapon Focus to be greater than the other numbers, then everyone just takes your reworked feats instead of the other feats, and gets bigger numbers. All you have done is changed the words on their character sheets.

Another question that I often bring up: Are you going to do the same for defensive options? How are your players going to survive that kind of accuracy and damage from NPCs with Weapon Focus? There becomes even less reason to try to improve AC or anything beyond raw rocket tag.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

One thing I'd throw out there is considering more of the "Improved ___" stuff - (bull rush, trip, disarm, sunder, etc.)

A lot of those are frequently neglected, because while they might be nice *sometimes*, they're not worth spending a feat on, cause you won't be using them all the time. I think it might be reasonable to have a feat that said, basically, "You gain the benefit of all of those, but only with a given weapon."

I might stretch it even further - for instance, another feat could give them the option that, whenever they get a critical, they could choose to forgo the extra damage in exchange for getting a free use of one such maneuver.

But, in short, I agree with what seems to be the general ruling - the problem here isn't that fighters numbers aren't high enough, it's that they can't do anything fun with those numbers, or have a chance at applying those numbers to difficult circumstances.

[Seerow]

Personally, I think my solution for weapon focus/specialization is the most fun one.

In my games I have a Weapon and armor rebalancing (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202722) which includes Masterwork weapons gaining bonus customization options instead of the normal +1 to hit. These include things like gaining bonuses to combat maneuvers, gaining reach, making a weapon throwable, increasing crit range/damage, and so on.

So Weapon Focus got changed to granting 1 bonus customization that you can switch as a swift action. Greater weapon focus gives a second slot and lets you switch as an immediate action.

So now your Longsword specialized fighter can use his longsword in ways other people can't really comprehend. He can throw the Longsword with a 30ft range increment (or at a 10ft range increment and actually have it come back to him). He can attack with his longsword as a reach weapon. He can finesse it if he desires. He can use it as a tripping weapon and get +4 on the attempt. He can use it in a grapple. He can choose to make his attacks nonlethal at no penalty. He can use it to set against a charge. He can treat it as a double weapon (and thus two weapon fight with just a single longsword). Or if none of the utility things are useful to him, he can just get a flat accuracy or damage boost.

Basically the change makes it so Weapon Focus makes a character an actual badass with the weapon, letting them do extraordinary things that defy logic, without treading into supernatural territory.

[Novawurmson]

Weapon and armor rebalancing (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=202722)

Whooooa. I'm going to have to check this out some more.