D&D 5E Fixing the terrible Weapon Master feat

How about this?

• Add 1 to your Strength or Dexterity score.
• You gain proficiency with four weapons of your choice. When wielding one of those weapons, if your ability score modifier is less than 3, treat it as 3 for attack and damage rolls.
• Starting at level 5, when you take the Attack action with one of the chosen weapons, you can make two attacks instead of one. You can't use this ability again until you complete a short or long rest.

The idea is to preserve the feat as a way for non-martial PCs to gain a reasonably effective weapon attack, without stepping on the martials' toes and without having to invest a lot of stat points. You're guaranteed a basic level of competence, and once in a while you can Extra Attack when things get hairy--but you can't Extra Attack every round, and you can't ever reach the pinnacle of skill that comes from a maxed-out attack stat.

(I will add that I don't see any reason for conflict between optimizers and non-optimizers here. The feat is doing its job for the non-optimizers, providing a means to gain proficiency in your preferred weapons. As long as it continues to do that job, why should we not bring it up to what an optimizer would consider reasonable? Then it can work for everybody.)

(Oh, hey, I already replied to this thread two years ago. Hmm, I like my previous solution too. Interesting how perspectives change, though. )

This is evolving into a discussion of depth versus breadth.

And in general, in any RPG it is much better to be a master of at least one thing than to be OK at a lot of things. One reason for this is that you are part of a team, and if you are just OK at a lot of things, you'll typically always find that someone other than your character should be taking the lead role. Another reason for this is that it is usually much more costly to get good at many things than it is to get really good at one thing, and as such a big hammer that can treat every problem as a nail is typically better than a partial tool chest of specialized tools that are only usable in some cases and cost as much as the big hammer without solving any problem well.

However, in my experience "power gaming" that is strictly depth only is something that is actually going on unwitting cooperation with a GM, because the GM is pretty forward a series of nails to hit and wondering why the players only develop hammers. A lot of power gaming can be mitigated by good encounter design and good campaign design that gives the power gamer a reason to want breadth because he sees how mitigating his character's weaknesses is every bit as important to survival as developing his character's strength. A good GM tends to hit you just as much with the question, "If this character is going to die, how is that going to happen?" or "If this character is going to feel unheroic, when will that happen?", as questions like, "If this character is in a damage race, how will you assure he wins?"

This feat is a 'breadth feat'. It gives options at a low opportunity cost to classes which don't have a lot of weapon options. For them, it's equivalent to +1 to an ability score AND +1 to damage dealt.

One possibility you could add to give this a "depth feat" feel is change it to, "Choose 4 weapons. If you are not proficient in those weapons, you gain proficiency in them. Otherwise, you do +1 to damage when attacking with those weapons." However, I'm not at all sure that is a desirable change.

Count me in with the "its a feature feat not a power feat and so its fine for those who pick character choices for more than power."

Especially given it is a +1 score half-feat, i am really fine with its current state.

One exception, i would treat it as martial weapon proficiency (if you have simple) period. that way it is more reflective of a broader training and can serve you through the campaign as various items and circumstances may make different weapons necessary from time to time. Just like they do with the armor feats, you get all mediums or all heavies etc.

But, if i were really upset about it power-wise, i would scrap it and the armor proficiency feats and create one or two "combat training" feats which combined armor proficiencies and weapons training into two packages.

So one feat "skirmisher" might give you light armor, medium armor and simple weapons plus 4 martial weapons (themed like the dwarves and elves have) and another might "heavy trooper" gives you heavy armor, shields and full martial weapons. But neither of those would boost an ability score.

So, to me the biggest wrinkle is them splitting the armor and weapons proficiency into two different feat trees so they could tag on ability score half-bonuses. That middied the waters a bit much.

Me too! I went to give xp to a nice idea in a post, but noticed I'd already done so. Two and a half years ago...

We changed this one a long time ago:

1. You gain a +1 Str or Dex.
2. You choose one weapon you are proficient in and gain a +1 to attack rolls and a +1 to damage rolls. You also have advantage on any save or ability check to maintain control of your weapon should you be targeted by a feature to disarm you.

Our DM has it written up "better", but that is the idea of it. It is like the weapon specialization from earlier editions.

doctorbadwolf said:

I also think that the armor proficiency feats are basically worthless.

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I never thought they'd ever see use in a game. But my figure will be taking Moderately Armored at 4th level, and another poster in another thread recently mentioned playing a wizard with Lightly Armored. For both characters, what make the feats useful was that we had our Dexterity scores, so we were getting everything we would from +2 to Dex, plus a little AC boost.

They're situationally useful.

One quite powerful version of this I've seen is from the Dawnforged cast. If memory serves me you get to pick four weapons (Longswords, daggers, mauls, ect) and you can add your proficiency bonus to the damage you do with those weapons

It makes a significant impact, but it also allows for builds that otherwise would be lower on damage to keep up like a Barbarian with a shield and shield master, who I built to the party tank, or if you want to be a rogue who specializes in daggers but losing out on that 1d8 from rapiers hurts to think about.

AlexSledge said:

I feel that weapon master, as a feat, would only feel at the appropriate level "power" wise in a campaign containing many exotic weapons each requiring their own proficiency, that also happened to be martial/basic weapons. But its not great as it is.

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Eleven years of lurking before posting is pretty impressive, friend

Eis said:

Eleven years of lurking before posting is pretty impressive, friend

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You're doing a pretty decent job, yourself.

We joined at the same time and, this being post 4456 for me, I've got more than 40 times more than you. That makes you the clear winner, I'd say.

Satyrn said:

You're doing a pretty decent job, yourself.

We joined at the same time and, this being post 4456 for me, I've got more than 40 times more than you. That makes you the clear winner, I'd say.

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Phassah! That's nothing! You're barely over 100 posts a month and I am nearly 150 a month so far! I'm going to totally eclipse you in about 8 years or so LOL!