Weapons and Feat Support: Problem or No Problem?

[Easy_Lee]

As everyone knows, not all weapons have equal feat support. The two weapon types with the most feat support are the glaive / halberd and hand crossbow. Every other weapon type has less feat support. On paper, this makes polearms and hand crossbows the best weapons overall.

On the other hand, both of these weapon types are rare. As with the Holy Avenger thread, players often must choose between a superior weapon type and a superior (or legendary) weapon that they happened to find. Magical longswords are quite common in spite of them generally being a poor weapon type for a dedicated, damage-focused martial.

Does this work out evenly? Does the existence of practical downsides justify the exceptional feat support of certain weapons? Do you think it matters?

[Theodoxus]

I took the Kirk option in the Kobyashi Maru. I changed the rules.

Now, long story short, I removed attributes and kept modifiers, so everyone simply has a range of -1 to +5. This is important, as it forced me to make every feat a 'half' feat, and removed the ASI portion of every feat.

So, I took GWM and split it into Cleave, usable with any weapon. And Power Attack, usable with any heavy melee weapon and all ranged weapons that use ammunition (note to self, add the 'ammunition' requirement to the Homebrewery doc).

I also changed Power Attack to read as "You may subtract up to your Proficiency Bonus to hit and add double that amount to damage."

Thus, Power Attack covers the ranged damage portion of Sharpshooter as well, allowing me to change SS to simply read "You double the effective range of ranged attacks, though the maximum range remains in place. Also, you treat Half cover as partial, and partial cover as none."

I also opened up PAM to all polearms, and other cosmetic changes.

Oh, and then I granted a Feat (but not ASI) to every odd level, and kept ASIs at 4,8,12,16 and 19 (so 19 gets both ASI and feat) - and the bonus ASIs that rogues and fighters get (though again, not feats).

I also added a ton of new feats; 1st level only feats, racial feats, class specific feats, multiclass feats... there's so many choices, that unless someone really wants to cookie cutter, no two characters should feel or play the same way.

TL;DR - yes, there's a problem, and I decided to rewrite everything (with a lot of playgrounder's help and input) to correct it.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I've found it generally doesn't matter, but I'm easily the best optimizer around my gaming circles and usually the DM. I help get other players up to snuff, doing my best to optimize their vision rather than whatever pumps out the ultimate best numbers, very often leading to them wielding sub-optimal weaponry and not always grabbing appropriate feat support (one player has the weirdest love affair with the Actor feat).

I find that, in practice, it's not too obvious. Players are rarely useless, and no one seems to mind when one player's a little better at something.

All that said, I love numbers and there's certainly a lot of room to work in support for different styles and better balance, and I don't think any player is going to hate that. I'd say "It's no problem, but optimizers will thank you and laymen will still think it's cool".

[Kryx]

There are many fighting styles that work in 5e:

Polearms (Halberd, Pike, Glaive)
Great weapons (Maul, Greatsword)
Shield + 1d8 weapon
Hand Crossbow

Most everything else needs a buff. The balance here definitely matters as those other fighting styles/weapons are generally not as viable as those listed above.

Dueling for example needs a feat to help it along.

It's not so hard to fix some of the issues. My houserules adress TWF quite easily. Greataxe can be fixed by changing GWF to the following:

Great Weapon Fighting. When you roll damage for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding in two hands, you can roll one extra die of the weapon’s base damage dice and discard the lowest of the weapon’s base damage dice. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.
A greataxe then does 8.49 damage while a greatsowrd/maul does 8.46 damage.

I think some weapons are fine as niche weapons. Daggers provide more utility than swordswords for the trade off in damage for example.

-5/+10 is the biggest offender - there have been hundreds of threads about it. Ranged attacks being able to ignore cover rules is really bad for the balance of the game imo.

[Talamare]

Remove Accuracy Reduction/Damage Bonus from GWM and Sharpshooter
Keep both feats existing, but feel free to grant them +1 Stat if you want (probably isn't needed)

Introduce a new Feat called

Power Attack
Before you a Weapon Attack you can make it a Power Attack.
Power Attacks do not gain the Proficiency bonus to the Attack, but instead gain a Proficiency bonus to the Damage.
Two handed Weapons gain double Proficiency bonus to damage

If you don't want this to be used by both Melee and Ranged, make both Power Strike (for Melee) and Power Shot (for Ranged)

[Chugger]

From an AL standpoint I think it remains unbalanced as you point out - and scarcity sort of helps but not really. 2-handers in general should be added because of gwm, though yes, pole arms and hand xbow get more love, as you point out. All magic weapons are rare. But in AL you can do Fei Chen, the trading market, and trade any uncommon magic item for a "any +1 weapon" certificate - and just make that a glaive or a hand xbow of +1 - or a +1 2 hand sword or w/e.

You can also do a secret mission for your faction after lvl 5 and buy with like 50 d.t. and either 500 or 1000 gp any +1 weapon of your choice.

So in terms of AL there is no balance. Anyone who asks questions and digs and figures out how to take advantage of these features - and goes to a con or does a secret mission - can easily get a magic weapon in glaive or hand xbow.

In AL you can't "homerule fix" it. So not sure what to do. Two weapon fighting needs some attention - as we know - but a better scaling for that would possibly help. That pals and now locks can smite helps give them a competitive edge - but they can use a polearm and ... gah. So yeah it's a bit of a mess. I'm worried that my SS archer is too overpowered ... am seriously thinking about deliberately not going -5 +10 as often just so I don't make the rest of the table stare at me funny. I mean yeah, that one heroic a.s. round in a tough fight - they're happy - but when my normal shot is three times their normal shot round after round ... it starts to wear on them.

[gloryblaze]

From an AL standpoint I think it remains unbalanced as you point out - and scarcity sort of helps but not really. 2-handers in general should be added because of gwm, though yes, pole arms and hand xbow get more love, as you point out. All magic weapons are rare. But in AL you can do Fei Chen, the trading market, and trade any uncommon magic item for a "any +1 weapon" certificate - and just make that a glaive or a hand xbow of +1 - or a +1 2 hand sword or w/e.

You can also do a secret mission for your faction after lvl 5 and buy with like 50 d.t. and either 500 or 1000 gp any +1 weapon of your choice.

So in terms of AL there is no balance. Anyone who asks questions and digs and figures out how to take advantage of these features - and goes to a con or does a secret mission - can easily get a magic weapon in glaive or hand xbow.

In AL you can't "homerule fix" it. So not sure what to do. Two weapon fighting needs some attention - as we know - but a better scaling for that would possibly help. That pals and now locks can smite helps give them a competitive edge - but they can use a polearm and ... gah. So yeah it's a bit of a mess. I'm worried that my SS archer is too overpowered ... am seriously thinking about deliberately not going -5 +10 as often just so I don't make the rest of the table stare at me funny. I mean yeah, that one heroic a.s. round in a tough fight - they're happy - but when my normal shot is three times their normal shot round after round ... it starts to wear on them.

I think the point is that while it is relatively easy to get +1 or +2 versions of all weapons, including glaives and hand crossbows, you can't get a Flametongue Glaive or a Frost Brand Glaive or a Vorpal Halberd or a Holy Avenger Halberd or an Oathcrossbow. On the other hand, you can get a Flametongue Scimitar or a Frost Brand Shortsword or a Vorpal Longsword or a Holy Avenger Greatsword or an Oathbow. Meaning that the suboptimal weapons (swords and bows) get more powerful and unique items than the optimal ones (polearms and crossbows).

[GlenSmash!]

A small problem. I wasn't a huge fan of the implementation of most of the Weapon feats in that UA, but I did like that they were thinking about weapon feats.

[Chugger]

I think the point is that while it is relatively easy to get +1 or +2 versions of all weapons, including glaives and hand crossbows, you can't get a Flametongue Glaive or a Frost Brand Glaive or a Vorpal Halberd or a Holy Avenger Halberd or an Oathcrossbow. On the other hand, you can get a Flametongue Scimitar or a Frost Brand Shortsword or a Vorpal Longsword or a Holy Avenger Greatsword or an Oathbow. Meaning that the suboptimal weapons (swords and bows) get more powerful and unique items than the optimal ones (polearms and crossbows).

You can get a flametongue glaive in AL - there are at least two, maybe 3 modules that grant it as a reward - i.e. if you win the item you get flametongue put on any melee weap you want.

Also while you make a point that's not invalid, I took the op to mean more you don't have much control over what you get in terms of big or legendary. In AL you can as a DM gift your characters any magic item from any module you've run - and there are many ways to "pick" a magic item - in AL.

[rbstr]

Regardless of the actual balance I feel like most styles have representation in feats. Almost any weapon/style you go for up has something for it, even if people seem to tend to poo-poo Dual Wielder and Defensive Duelist. Heck, even unarmed fighting has Tavern Brawler.
Certainly the relative power is a bit too disparate, the balance is off...but I also wouldn't want every style to have a feat for -5/+10 or bonus action attack. I Prefer weapons not being simply different colors of the same damage/mechanics.

The one style that comes to mind as being nearly completely unsupported is using Versatile weapons with two hands. There's no reason to use a Longsword with both hands as a strength-fighting character. I think that's really weird since that style is pretty dang common in fiction.
There should be a versatile feat that takes into account the character switching to one-hand with a shield or going two-handed.
And also a Fighting Style. I suggest the simple +1 attack/damage when using a versatile weapon.

I certainly hope a UA/Book in the future works add more weapon/style feats to round things out for the undeserved weapons.

[djreynolds]

Remove Accuracy Reduction/Damage Bonus from GWM and Sharpshooter
Keep both feats existing, but feel free to grant them +1 Stat if you want (probably isn't needed)

Introduce a new Feat called

Power Attack
Before you a Weapon Attack you can make it a Power Attack.
Power Attacks do not gain the Proficiency bonus to the Attack, but instead gain a Proficiency bonus to the Damage.
Two handed Weapons gain double Proficiency bonus to damage

If you don't want this to be used by both Melee and Ranged, make both Power Strike (for Melee) and Power Shot (for Ranged)

I like this, this is very good. Simple

[JackPhoenix]

You can get a flametongue glaive in AL - there are at least two, maybe 3 modules that grant it as a reward - i.e. if you win the item you get flametongue put on any melee weap you want.

Also while you make a point that's not invalid, I took the op to mean more you don't have much control over what you get in terms of big or legendary. In AL you can as a DM gift your characters any magic item from any module you've run - and there are many ways to "pick" a magic item - in AL.

Can you name which modules are those? In spoilers, please... I'd like to check the wording for myself, if it allows to bypass the "swords only" from DMG.