Zman's 5e Tweaks: Tweaks 2.0, Weapons and Armor, E10, and Monster Manual Expansion

[Kuulvheysoon]

Spoiler: Passingly relevant quotes

Show

My one critique is on the improvements on the base damage on the mace. I can understand why- the real weapon is a monster in close combat and is notably better for dealing with armored enemies than more common bladed weaponry, and it really helps out melee clerics that aren't tempest or war. But from a balance perspective, this underrates martial weapons for any Strength-based sword n' board user by making it identical in damage capacity to anything from the martial list. The poor warhammer in particular can go weep softly in a corner, since it deals the same damage type too. The versatile trait isn't enough to make up for this, since it's rarely used as it is.

I don't think offering a side benefit to martial one-handers would break the game all that much if you'd prefer to keep the mace's d8. Maybe strip the side benefits off of the 'Feats' UA and make them bog standard for martial weaponry? Not the +1's, oh god no, but things like the OA buffs to swords. It would make using a longsword over a mace desirable if you can get it, and let the warhammer put down that Ben and Jerry's and rejoin the usable weapons list.

The Mace... yep, the good old fashioned mace is kind of between a rock and a hard place. I agree that making it a d8 took some of the thunder away from the versatile Longsword, Warhammer, and Battleaxe. But, versatile is something that can come up in play, and the rest of my rules make using a Versatile weapon more viable. What is the other option? Leave it a d6 where it is inferior to spears, javelins, and quarterstaffs. Worse, as a d6 under stock 5e it is strictly inferior than spears, javelins, quartersaffs, and even handaxes.

At least this way it fills a niche on the table and isn't as good as a Martial weapon, but isn't strictly inferior to any other weapon. One goal of my rebalance of weapons is that no weapon is strictly inferior to a comparable weapon.

GWM: There have been several threads lately that talk about making -5/+10 and its variations into a generic feature that is available to all weapons. Using -5/+10 or its variations once per turn wouldn't be fully balanced across classes most likely, but at least offering it to every build would bring a better baseline balance for this feature. I'd also suggest making it scale: use Disadvantage instead of -5 and Prof*2 instead of -10. If disadvantage is a problem then you can keep a static negative, though I'd heavily encourage not using -prof as a downward scaling feature would lose value as you level for most builds which doesn't make much sense.

This has me thinking about the weapons list and differentiating everything in general. In practice, there's no real difference between a greatsword or a maul, though conceptually they're extremely different. I wouldn't want to screw with the damage dice (and there's only so much you could do that anyway), so that leaves any changes to be up to traits.

4e attempted something like this, but I'd rather not reintroduce martial powers. The feats UA had a couple good ideas, but the +1 to hit screws with bounded accuracy and it shouldn't take a feat to tell that these weapons do different things. Part of the problem is that resistances to specific physical damage sources (B/P or S, and not just all three) are extremely scarce. In fact, I don't think they exist in any official monster lists at all.

I'm not sure which would be easier- increasing the instances of specific B/P/S resistances or find good powers that don't screw with the flow of the game.

So something I was thinking about on the walk home: what if you took the -5/+10 mechanic out of the relevant feats and instead imposed a system-wide ability to do -prof./+2*prof., but limited it to martial weapons? Really give the martial weapons a true distinction from the simple weapons besides a couple of extra damage points? Then you can keep increased damage die sizes, and you won't have to fear about the martial ones being outclassed, eg. mace vs warhammer.

Did you purposely not include base (bludgeoning) shield bash damage on your weapon table? Not saying that that's a bad thing, I was just curious.

Are you going to be implementing a special materials section? I've got some very minor special material rules that I use at my own table (I'm a 3.5e grognard, what can I say?). Just little things, like mithral armor not having a strength requirement and the like.