New Weapon Properties

[Trask]

Has anyone ever messed around with making new weapon properties?

I've considered creating a "Critical" property for axes that allows you to re-roll one of the dice on a critical hit and a "Crushing" property for hammers that gives advantage to hit a creature wearing Heavy Armor, just to differentiate the Blades, Blunt, and Axes.

Feel free to share anything similar you have made

[Mjolnirbear]

I've introduced Disarm and Trip, where you can forego damage to inflict the relevant effect.

[Ganymede]

Has anyone ever messed around with making new weapon properties?



Nah. I save that stuff for class features, not weapons.

[Ninja_Prawn]

We do, fairly regularly. Submortimer wrote a load of new properties for this exotic weapons post (http://mfov.magehandpress.com/2017/04/exotic-arms-and-armor.html), and we've used still more for firearms (http://mfov.magehandpress.com/2018/04/firearm-rules-redux.html) and other special weapons.

Essentially, we follow Kryx's template of a property being either a positive or negative thing, and adjusting the damage die to match (so a standard martial weapon is d8, d10 if it's two handed, d12 if it's two handed and heavy etc.).

[Cybren]

I have a rough draft somewhere of rules for masterwork weapons, where I used special masterwork properties to represent weapons of superior make, while secretly being a way to be a backwards compatible way to make the weapons table slightly more complex and significantly more diverse.

[Spectrulus]

I've allowed my players to use items from Magwa's magic Item Compendium without concern so far.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.knightsofvasteel.magwasmagicitemcom pendium

It's an interesting mobile app that I like to explore, and the bonuses are on average appropriate for the rarity or only one notch higher in my opinion.

[N810]

Here's some ides from another thread.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?420058-5e-advanced-weapon-properties-(a-gnomish-look-at-it)
and a crazy extensive weapon overhaul from this site.
http://connorscampaigns.wikidot.com/all-weapon-stats

[GlenSmash!]

Kobold Press had a product all about new weapon properties.

https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/beyond-damage-dice-new-weapon-options-for-5th-edition/

[Oramac]

I've used a few of the ones listed above.

I also created a bunch of magic items (with several weapons). See my homebrew list in my sig.

The one I'm most excited to about, but have unfortunately not had the chance to see in play, is the Sword of Impending Doom. Basically, it's my take on an Adamantine Weapon, and it increases your critical range with each non-critical hit.

The one I have seen in play is my Radiant Hammer (in the same document). It's a powerful PROC effect on use of a healing spell. It doesn't work often, but the times I've seen it work, it took a guaranteed TPK and turned the battle around. The players absolutely ****ing love it.

[Mr.Spastic]

I have made a few for my personal games that are used to pair well with certain classes or themes.

Versatile Finesse Pretty simple. If you are using the weapon in both hands you can use your dex. I put this on things like Katanas. This is for a player who wants to be Samurai Jack. I paired it with a custom fighting style that improved fighting with versatile weapons by allowing a reaction to give +2 ac against attacks from one creature.
Bashable This makes a shield count as a light weapon that does 1d4 damage. Works well for a marauder type. 1d4 because it gives ac and a short sword does 1d6
Sweeping This was for mostly pole arms. It allows you to use a shove attack at the reach of your weapon. This enables a character to trip somebody within the weapons reach. I allowed this to be used on the bonus action attack from pole arm master as well.

[Talyn]

Other than some 17th-century-esque firearms rules, I haven't really created any new weapon properties. I did however tweak some of the weapons to give them slightly different stats than the PHB provides, mostly to provide a reason to use certain weapons.

- Maces are given the Versatile (1d8) property.
- Added the 'Broad sword' weapon, a martial weapon that deals 2d4 slashing damage, but is NOT finesse or versatile.
- Added the 'falchion' weapon, a martial weapon that deals 1d10 slashing damage, and has the two-handed and finesse properties.
- Flails now do 2d4 bludgeoning damage.
- Morning stars now do both piercing and bludgeoning damage (whichever is better, if resistances and vulnerabilities are relevant).
- Halberds can do both piercing and slashing damage, but are more expensive than other polearms.
- 'Glaive' has been replaced with 'polearm,' which is a catch-all term. When you buy one, you state whether it deals slashing (i.e. a glaive), piercing (half-pike), or bludgeoning damage (footman's mace).
- War Picks now deal 2d4 piercing damage.

Nobody ever picks flails, morning stars, or war picks, because they are strictly worse than war hammers and rapiers. Now a player could conceivably want to pick them.

[Mr.Spastic]

Nobody ever picks flails, morning stars, or war picks, because they are strictly worse than war hammers and rapiers. Now a player could conceivably want to pick them.

So made it so they could Pick a war pick. I love it.