Tasha's Tool/ Weapon proficiency swaps

[sambojin]

Do many people play with this rule? And how do you go about implementing it?

It kind of seems strange. A Fighter has all Simple and Martial weapons. Could they swap out their Simple Weapons for a Tool proficiency, or can they gain *all* the Tool proficiencies if they don't use Simple Weapons? Or a smattering of both?

Because, by RAW, it seems like a Druid could swap their Scimitar for a Halberd (or Hand Crossbow or Whip or whatever Martial weapon), and say the Club + Mace + Sickle + Dart Simple weapons for three more Tool proficiencies and Short Bow proficiency, and Medium Armour for Lance or Great Sword proficiency. Which is a lot, and makes them incredibly flexible.

Is it one for one, but only one swap of each category allowed (still very useful for a Druid to get a free tool/shortbow proficiency from something useless, and to swap out Scimitar for something juicey)?. Or do you swap all for one, or all for all? Say, all your simple weapons as a Druid for one specific weapon or tool proficiency? Or are they individual as above? It seems silly for a non-weapon user be almost as good or better than one that specifically uses weapons for the swapping part.

Maybe just one from each category would be best, but still uber useful for weapon limited characters. Backstory it in. PAM/GWM or CBE/SS builds, here we come :)


((Yep. A druid with shortbows for club, halberds for scimitar, great swords or hand crossbows or nets for medium armour, or just three extra tools with no great melee loss sounds pretty good))

[GeoffWatson]

It's intended for RACIAL bonus proficiencies only.

[sambojin]

Lol, silly me. Removing post.

It does make Dwarves, Elves and Half Elves etc look a bit nicer though.

[Damon_Tor]

Lol, silly me. Removing post.

It does make Dwarves, Elves and Half Elves etc look a bit nicer though.

A bit? Mt. Dwarves and/or Half-Elves are gold-ranked for just about every class now.

[Khrysaes]

A bit? Mt. Dwarves and/or Half-Elves are gold-ranked for just about every class now.

I understand mountain dwarves, because with the tool and weapon proficiency swaps, combined with +2/+2 and the racial ability score swaps.

But the tool/weapon proficiency swap doesn't affect half elves.
Unless you were strictly talking about the racial ability score swaps.

[sambojin]

There's a fair few variant racial options for Half Elves that include weapon proficiencies. High/ Moon/ Sun/ Wood Elf descent can come with "Elf Weapon Training" (Longbow/ Longsword/ Shortsword/ Shortbow proficiency) as one of the options you can choose, but you lose your choice of two skills for it.

That's 3 martial and 1 simple weapon, which offers a lot of weapon and tool flexibility on character creation if swapped out (alongside being stat-astic and having darkvision). Most classes get enough simple weapons to function well enough, but getting plenty of tools/ martial weapons isn't a thing for all of them. Even a Fighter/ Pally/ Barb with a Herbalism Kit, Thieves Tools, Smith's Tools and Leather-working Tools or Bowyer's/Fletcher's Tools or Cook's Utensils looks a bit better rounded than "no tools" on character creation. You might even snag half-price half or full plate if there's plenty of downtime in the campaign.

Milking Druids in Giant Poisonous Snake form can be a good supply of Serpent Venom if you grab a Poisoner's Kit, plus they might know a bit about other poisons too, if you want to go down that path (it's a pretty unchivalrous thing to do, but you might be more of a murder-hobo than a knight-in-shining-armour type anyway). It still costs gold, it's really low DC, but it's there. And everyone usually has a few spare daggers squirreled away somewhere....

Is it worth losing two skills for? Maybe, depending on class and background chosen. But it's there for more build options if you want to try it. Skills are powerful, but so are offbeat weapons and tools for some classes.

(Just google "5e Half Elf variant" for reference, if you haven't seen it in the books you have. There are a lot of options these days)

[Khrysaes]

There's a fair few variant racial options for Half Elves that include weapon proficiencies. High/ Moon/ Sun/ Wood Elf descent can come with "Elf Weapon Training" (Longbow/ Longsword/ Shortsword/ Shortbow proficiency) as one of the options you can choose, but you lose your choice of two skills for it.

That's 3 martial and 1 simple weapon, which offers a lot of weapon and tool flexibility on character creation if swapped out (alongside being stat-astic and having darkvision). Most classes get enough simple weapons to function well enough, but getting plenty of tools/ martial weapons isn't a thing for all of them. Even a Fighter/ Pally/ Barb with a Herbalism Kit, Thieves Tools, Smith's Tools and Leather-working Tools or Bowyer's/Fletcher's Tools or Cook's Utensils looks a bit better rounded than "no tools" on character creation. You might even snag half-price half or full plate if there's plenty of downtime in the campaign.

Milking Druids in Giant Poisonous Snake form can be a good supply of Serpent Venom if you grab a Poisoner's Kit, plus they might know a bit about other poisons too, if you want to go down that path (it's a pretty unchivalrous thing to do, but you might be more of a murder-hobo than a knight-in-shining-armour type anyway). It still costs gold, it's really low DC, but it's there. And everyone usually has a few spare daggers squirreled away somewhere....

Is it worth losing two skills for? Maybe, depending on class and background chosen. But it's there for more build options if you want to try it. Skills are powerful, but so are offbeat weapons and tools for some classes.

(Just google "5e Half Elf variant" for reference, if you haven't seen it in the books you have. There are a lot of options these days)

The variants from SCAG yeah, that makes sense. I just never think about them because I always think that the skills are better.

[Falconcry]

I have a wood elf ranger with six tool proficiencies that had to buy a handy haversack to carry the weight of the actual tools.