One of the ideas coming in D&D's 2024 Player's Handbook, and which should see testing once we get the Warriors and Mages test packet, is Weapon Mastery. Weapons will get new properties that are only unlocked by characters who have the appropriate class features to use them (I'd guess we'll also see feats for them). Part of the reason for this is to better distinguish weapon types. Currently, for example, there's no real difference (apart from weight and cost) between a Longsword and a Battleaxe when it comes to mechanics. The second reason is that they want to give more flexibility to weapon-focused characters, and particularly the Warriors who generally don't use spellcasting.
Now, as far as I know/remember, we've gotten scant details about this from the D&D Creator Summit, a gathering of D&D online community members to discuss the game, partially to address cultural and corporate aspects (and deal with the way that content creators have had to shoulder a lot of the outrage over things like the OGL debacle) but mainly to talk about the new iteration of the game.
As far as I know, we only know the following:
Daggers will have a property called "nick," whose function is unknown.
Tridents will be better than Spears thanks to a better mastery feature of some sort, to reflect that they are martial, rather than simple weapons.
Greatswords will have a mastery that allows you to deal damage even if you miss (presumably less - I believe it's just your damage modifier, almost as if you rolled a zero on your damage dice somehow).
Fighters will be particularly adept at mixing and matching masteries, possibly using two masteries on a single weapon and swapping out the masteries of one weapon for another.
...And that's about it.
Now, once we get that next UA packet, this post will probably be obsolete, or at least outdated. I wanted to look through some of the existing weapon types and consider what properties they could have. None of these, I think, can be too powerful (though the one I described for the Greatsword is actually massive - I know that the new version of Great Weapon Master is nerfed, but I'd still assume that you can't get the bonus damage from even the new version when you miss here).
Also, the current plan (one I hope remains) is to allow Pistols and Muskets as martial ranged weapons in the PHB. These weapons are not significantly more powerful than other ranged weapons, and have both a high cost (though if chosen as starting weapons, that's less of an issue) and short ranges (which is, I think, the true limiting factor on them). I'll be considering these part of the standard options for characters along with those found in the 2014PHB.
There are a lot of weapons to look at, and I don't have solid ideas for all of them. But I'll see what comes to mind.
Club: Here we might actually have a hint - the mastery is said to slow the target after you hit them, kind of giving them a dazing blow (though I think Dazed is a new condition, so perhaps this would be called something like Hobble.)
Dagger: Nick is the mastery that they named, but I don't think it was described. In all honesty, I think this makes the most sense as a "do a little damage even if you miss" mastery, and perhaps we'll actually see Nick show up on a lot of bladed weapons, specifically sword-like blades. However, if that's not what this gets, and Nick is instead something totally unique to the dagger, I think it could be something like being able to avoid breaking stealth when you hit with it (maybe not automatically doing so, but getting to do a stealth check at a severe penalty,) which would fittingly encourage Rogues to fight with daggers.
Sling: One of a number of low-damage weapons that don't really have any advantage over something like a shortbow, I could imagine Slings maybe imposing some detriment that makes it harder for the target to hit you. Call the property something like "Knock," and the target either gets disadvantage on their next attack or a penalty, perhaps based on your Dexterity or proficiency bonus.
Warhammer: While I think in fantasy we tend to thing of warhammers and mauls as being giant-headed sledgehammers, historically the heads of these weapons were fairly narrow, with the idea being that you could focus a lot of force into a small area and thus create a shock of pressure that could puncture thick armor. I think even the more fantastical, thick-headed hammers (think Mjolnir, including its interpretation in Marvel Comics) overwhelm armor by just hitting so damned hard. Given that D&D abstracts both the thickness of armor and the evasiveness of a creature into a single stat, I might not simply have these lower a target's AC, but instead perhaps have a property where creatures above a certain AC (say 15, which is the highest a naked humanoid can get with maxed out dexterity) take a penalty to their AC against attacks with a weapon that has Armor Penetration. This makes these weapons great for going after thick or heavily-armored things like golems and death knights, but is only as good as other weapons against a beast that just happens to be big and meaty. Alternatively, rather than lowering the AC, perhaps these weapons deal extra damage to heavily-armored foes. To be fair, a whole lot of weapons could have this mastery - it would make sense as well for War Picks, Morning Stars, Pikes, and, frankly, Pistols and Muskets (firearms kind of helped to end the use of plate armor, even if I think the earliest firearms predated its development).
Flail: The Flail is one of those historical weapons that I think was far less often used than it has been depicted in fiction. And to a large extent, that's because if you weren't good at using one, you'd be very likely to kill yourself rather than your foe. But, the erratic movement of the Flail, and particularly its arcing swings, makes me feel that if any weapon deserves to be able to "Cleave," and hit a second target (likely for reduced damage) it should be this one.
Blowgun: Blowguns should probably be used to administer poisons (poison in general could use a lot of reworking in D&D to make it a viable thing for players to use). Given that blowguns effectively use a d1 for damage, getting an option to put a lot more damage onto that could be great. This might be stealing too directly from Starfinder, but "Injection" could be a good mastery for this.
Whip: This is probably already cool enough as a weapon that has finesse and reach, but I think it would be a lot of fun to also give it a "Grab" property. Sure, it doesn't often make sense how someone like Indiana Jones can somehow get the whip to wrap around a tree branch or something and hold secure enough to swing from it, and then just flick his wrist and get it back, but this is a fantasy game, isn't it? Let this be the nonmagical mage hand, and maybe the pit-swinging mastery.
That's pretty much what I've got. The feedback survey for Druid & Paladin has ended, so I'm hoping our next packet is coming soon.
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