While the five previewed classes are nothing to sneeze at (and the changes to the Warlock cannot be understated - though I imagine I'm not alone in my hopes that they seriously revisit the change to their spellcasting system, which I think turns the Warlock into a different class and not one I'm as excited to play) I think the real exciting highlight of One D&D's 5th playtest packet is the introduction of Weapon Masteries.
I talked about these when the packet first came out, but I wanted to focus purely on the mastery effects themselves and talk about what I think about them.
Cleave:
This is one of the strongest of the masteries, and has a lot of great flavor to it. I'm not sure if this is the case, but I think the use of 'Cleave' to describe attacking two foes with a single swing might have originated in World of Warcraft (the game that inspired the creation of this blog,) but that's a storied and established-enough game at this point (when the new core rulebooks come out, it will be 20 years old, and I'll have played it for eighteen of those) that I think it's fitting enough to let it contribute this to the RPG lexicon.
Anyway, Cleave is strong, doing a lot of damage, but only in the right circumstances. I think it's an attractive mastery. My only issue with it is that it sits in some redundant territory in terms of flavor.
Great Weapon Master has changed in One D&D, but it still retains its bonus action attack when you score a critical hit or reduce a foe to 0 hit points. In both cases, I've always interpreted this as the weapon hitting with so much momentum (either from a particularly strong swing or because the foe it hit has been cut in half and no longer resists it) that you can strike another nearby enemy. But this is also, I think, very similar to the flavor of the Cleave mastery.
Now, mechanically, this plays well with Great Weapon Master, as the bonus attack from Cleave does not require a bonus action, so it remains very strong. Cleave will be fantastic when facing tightly-packed foes, though it's a bit all-or-nothing, and so players might wish to hold onto another weapon if possible when facing a single enemy, or spread-out foes.
Flex:
Ok, we go from one of the strongest masteries to what has got to be the weakest of the bunch. Versatile as a feature on weapons is good only because there is no downside to it. But Flex's downside is that you aren't getting one of the many other good masteries.
Upgrading from a d6 to a d8 or a d8 to a d10 only gives you a single extra point of average damage. In the grand scheme of things, this is going to be kind of negligible.
Now, there are Fighting Styles that don't really give you much either - I remember being kind of surprised to realize that Great Weapon Fighting only gives you 1.33 extra damage on a Greatsword or Maul, which makes it worse than Dueling or Two-Weapon Fighting. But at least this has a certain "feels better" effect, as you're less likely to be distraught when you roll double ones on your damage dice.
But as it currently stands, I'll almost always want a Battleaxe over a Longsword or a Trident over a Warhammer (at least if I'm not on a Fighter, who will be able to swap Flex out for something better).
Graze:
In terms of direct damage-increasing masteries, I think I might like this the best, even if I don't know that it's the most powerful. One of the most frustrating things a martial player can feel is when they miss on all their attacks, and feel like the entire turn is wasted because of some unlucky rolls. Giving you a bare minimum of damage to deal gives you a way to feel like you're at least helping a little bit.
Indeed, I'd almost be tempted to say that this is too powerful, but if an Evoker can roll half damage even on cantrips, perhaps it's ok that you can get that minimum damage on misses.
That said, a tier 4 fire bolt is doing 4d10+5 damage on an Evoker, or about 27 on average, halved to 13 (or a minimum of 4). A level 18 Fighter with a Greatsword who misses every one of their attacks is going to still be doing 20 damage.
So, this comes online immediately (the Greatsword is an option for starting equipment for Fighters) and might be a little powerful for those early levels. But still, I like this one.
Nick:
Ok, so Nick is great. The problem is that I think we all preferred when the functionality of Nick was baked into the Light weapon property, as it was in previous playtest packets.
I think basically every single person who read about this change to the light weapon property prior to packet 5 loved it, as it made dual-wielding work the way it always seemed it should.
Now, to be fair, Nick is only required for the off-hand weapon, so you can take other properties (likely Vex) on your main hand and get the full benefit of both. But we don't yet know to what extent Paladins, Rangers, and especially Rogues (who are often left out of the 'universal martial features' club) will be able to make use of this. Rogues in particular would benefit from having this, given both their love of dual-wielding and their frequent use of bonus actions.
If weapon mastery is given out freely to basically every class that fights with weapons, this might not be a problem. But I think it would be more elegant if this were baked into the Light property as it was before. Perhaps Nick, then, could instead be something else. Just based on the name, it sounds almost like it could be a less powerful version of Graze, but I'm going to keep a lid on the speculation here.
Push:
Finally, we get to a mastery that doesn't directly affect damage you deal. And as someone who loves Repelling Blast on a Warlock, I think Push is a fantastic thing for martials to get their hands on - reliable battlefield manipulation.
The only thing here is that this would seem to make shoving pointless in most situations. If you can push a target twice as far as you could shove them, especially based as an attack roll (which I think tend to hit more frequently than a successful contested athletics check) you're going to have a lot of fun with this one.
The real limitation here is simply with your own movement speed. The more attacks you get, the more you'll have to run to catch up with your foe to push them again. That makes this arguably more powerful on a ranged weapon, and only one ranged weapon has this naturally.
But I think this is great.
Sap:
So, this one I think is interesting. It's good, but weirdly gets better when you can spread your attacks around - which I usually tend to avoid as it's generally better to down one enemy before attacking another.
The other thing that's interesting about this one is that it only comes on a small number of weapons that are then severely limited as to which masteries can be swapped onto them, and because the limit is that the weapon cannot have any other properties, no weapon that doesn't already have Sap on it can gain it via a Fighter's ability to swap weapon masteries.
This requires a strong commitment to playing defense, so while I'm sure there are some character concepts that will like it, I'm not particularly drawn to it.
Slow:
Slow is not as cool as Push. I think that's really the main drawback to it. In a vacuum, it's simple but useful. This is, honestly, probably the most uncontroversially "balanced" mastery, feeling like it has a noticeable and useful effect while not really breaking things due to being overpowered.
The only thing I'd worry about with this is that it will often not really affect the battle in any significant way. If you slow an enemy who's already in melee, wailing on you, they're not going to worry much about their reduced movement speed.
Thus, this becomes a bit more helpful on a ranged weapon - and it does find itself on a lot of ranged weapons. And there, I think it's fine, basically working like Ray of Frost.
Topple:
Now we're freaking talking. Topple has some oddities to it - I think it's strange that the target makes a Con save instead of a Dex or Strength one - but even if those saves often succeed, the fact that it's less reliable actually makes it more dynamic, and makes its powerful effect less overpowered.
A few issues, though:
First off, this can technically go on a couple of ranged weapons, but unless you just want to set up your melee allies, you don't want to use this (it doesn't come naturally on any, so this isn't that much of an issue).
Second: is this not just better than Slow? I guess it doesn't automatically succeed, but unless the target's speed is less than 20 feet, knocking it prone will do more to slow it down than the Slow effect will.
The biggest problem, though, as pointed out by D&D Youtube Channel Treantmonk's Temple, is that this will force way more saving throws to be rolled in the middle of combat, potentially bogging down the flow of play.
I might be willing to pay that price, but it is something to consider.
Vex:
Ok, now this might be the most powerful mastery. Getting rolling Advantage on attacks is pretty great. Actually, the Armorer Artificer can get something like this effect with their Lightning Launcher at high levels. And boy howdy will Rogues absolutely love this if they can get their hands on it - genuinely, I think it would make a feat investment in Weapon Master well worth it (assuming they don't automatically get some form of Weapon Mastery in the Expert Class revisions).
The only reason not to like it is if it's too powerful.
But it has a few things going for it: it's attractive (the power helps,) and it's pretty simple and straightforward. Not much else to say.
So there you have it. I'm kind of amazed that the Trident has gone from one of the least exciting weapon options to now one of the best you can get as a sword-and-board build, and as I've said before, I cannot wait to jump back into my Fighter at some point and start blasting foes around the battlefield with my battleaxe (putting Push on it until I can have both Push and Topple at the same time).
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