Ya I figured I had to disclaimer myself after I went back. Its hard to tell the difference between trying to push a point and being a jerk in text talking to someone you don't know well enough to get where they are coming from. So just understand as you continue on, I mean not personal offense, I exaggerate, I used bad examples, and write with passion that might be mistaken as anger or inertance but that's just because in the head of the reader inflection is added that I don't intend and an air of seriousness is added beyond that appropriate discussion of gaming on a forum of strangers.
No harm no foul
Well the Reaper Strawman was intended to be an obvious strawman simple to highlight a point, but rogues get the majority of their damage from backstab not the 1d4 - 1d8 damage of the dagger. Choosing to use two 1d4 daggers instead of two 1d6 short swords or a 1d8 rapier will change your average damage by at most 2 points. While backstab at 20 will add around 35, and the +1 to hit is a 5% increase in trigger that damage has a significantly larger impact. Add to that, no one wanting to power game as a "damage machine" is going to hold back form taking this feat with two shortsword fighter or rogue. Add to that a fighter with sword and board can already use Dueling to add +2 damage since a shield is not weapon... and that makes this feat as a damage buff doubly redundant. Not to mention that the point of taking a shield is greater defense not greater offense.... your just saying you want it all without a choice.. that's really … (and please understand I am not trying to make this personal I just don't know a better kinder way to say this.) … selfish. If your Offensive and tank that's fine, but then leave being a "damage machine" to the player who is not a tank so they have something to do in a fight. If your a rogue your likely the scout... so scout and let the barbarian who only does damage be good at doing damage. If you want to be a damage machine of death, ignore your lack of defense, don't try to scout, or be a healer, just do damage. It sounds like your trying to take as many party roles in a group as you can like your playing a solo game as a result your pushing out your group. Pick one, do that, be part of the group. D&D is not a solo game.
DnD isn't a solo game, but it is a group game. And groups can be small. The game where I had a barbarian with this feat had a standard of three or four people in it. We are getting into the specific minutia here, but we had no rogues, no tanks except for me, and a veritable horde of multi-classed monstrosities. That 1d8+11 I could do with this feat and rage? It was the lowest damage in the party. The cleric was hitting for something like 5d8+5 at-will. So, especially in that instance I was being far from selfish, I was just trying to keep pace and fulfill my role.
Frontliner, great defense, decent but not OP offense. Stick in some enemies craw and let them choke on me while my party did the rest.
Also, I think "damage" is so easy to pull off that it is essentially a non-role. Being a tank and a damage dealer, or a sneaker and a damage dealer, is pretty much baked into the game anyways. And the type of people who care about you maybe dealing more damage than them are going to be doing way better than the guy who is playing a shield barbarian with a one-handed weapon.
No, they are already weapons masters as you said, a caster who wants to wield a melee weapon maybe with booming blade takes it instead of multi-classing because they don't want to multi-class they just want access to some weapons. Wizards for example have a really good capstone and while you might never make it there it reasonable not to want to lose that option incase you do, just because you want to use a longsword or rapier.
I'm responding down the line, so I don't know if you go into more detail later, but a wizard taking booming blade is doing something really weird. They are going to have to have at least decent dex or str (likely dex) to be able to hit with the weapon, because booming blade is a weapon attack. Sure, it has a nice effect, if you are darting in and out of combat. Which is not a specialty of the wizard with it's low AC, low HP, and general focus on not being on the frontlines.
Not saying you can't do it, but you are jumping through a lot of hoops to do it, and it is about the worst possible place you can put your wizard.
This assumes every player is a DPR optimizer/power gamer. Your points are entirely mute if you just want to do something because its cool. This often happens for 2 reasons. 1. New players who don't often know the rules making characters right before a game will just take what sounds cool and have fun with it. 2. Players who have been around for a while will sometimes start playing with back story and roleplay concepts as much or more than looking at power building / optimizing. So sure they could cast toll the dead as a warlock but instead they took pact of the chain, high strength and want to wield a long sword, then for spells they focus on control spells. That means primarily they casting hold person while the party beats the crap of the target and they also hit it in melee for a little critical damage. Will they do much DPR even with this? No of course not, they just don't want to stand their and it means they can make opportunity attacks with that cool magic longsword the party tank through out when he upgraded. Nothing wrong with any of this. Your assertion is that you have minim levels of DPR at your table so you want to make this a way to get that. I am just saying it has value at other tables it doesn't at yours.
I don't think it is about DPR optimization though. I play things because they are cool, got a Fey Pact of the Chain right now, with an awesome backstory, whose combat potential is nowhere near where it could be (still decent because party of 3, I need to pull weight in combat, but very much built for non-combat roles). But when you build a "cool" concept, you pick the cool thing you want to focus on. And if you want to be a sword wielding warlock, there are options for that that do not take your feat.
And remember, this is a feat. Unless you are playing human you are getting this at 4th level (and you are either not playing a dwarf or an elf or want something they don't provide) which means you were probably doing something else for the first three levels. And if that something was eldritch blast, you see your attack you've been using, look at the new weapon, and it is plain that smaller dice are worse. It actually takes someone whose been around for a while to know it is an average of +/- 1, and even then it is hard to justify using a worse attack during combat (at least for me)
And, I look at that warlock, and I just don't get what value the sword has to the design space. You want to cast hold person with a low spell DC? You are just wasting actions if it is low enough (and trust me, that is a pain I've seen many, many players go through) and you get the same damage with a staff, especially since warlocks don't get shields by default.
So, you need a player who definitely wants magic swords, but doesn't want to play anything centered around getting magic swords, except for taking a feat partway through the campaign that only gives them the ability to wield swords worse than if they had just built for wielding swords from the beginning.
And, let us not forget, you can wield any weapon anyways. You just don't get your proficiency bonus to hit if you aren't proficient. So, it is a feat that only increases your accuracy to hit.
Xanathar's system does not allow for weapons proficiency training and since stealing other classes abilities with out cost is the definition of mechanism many GMs will deny it on that alone. Taking this feat is the request cost many GMs require. Even so I have seen a wizard take this feat and still have to roll play training with the party tack to actually be able to use it. Story GM.
Yeah, sometimes people are jerks. Weapons matter so little in the grand scheme of things that I would have no problem if someone wanted to get a specific subset trained into them. I'd say more than likely your Story GM just didn't want the wizard "Suddenly Knowing" how to do something because of the feat, not really about the mechanical imbalance of allowing him to pick up a longsword and hit slightly more often.
How underpowered would upgraded armor and four weapon proficiencies be? I would say that is a lot of mechanical advantage for a feat and where it applies, good flavor.
Well this already exisits. As a variant human take an armor feat if needed at first and wepaon master at 4th. You give up a single ASI for weapons and armor.
I see nothing wrong with this feat at all. Half feats are just that. You give up one point (single) for extra weapons. Perhaps this only means you are more likely to find magic weapons such as a longsword. That could arguably be more powerful than a single point of ASI.
Take an arcana cleric and heavily armored and weapon master. Now you're swinging martial weapons with gfb/B.B. in heavy armor (as just one example) for the price of one ASI (two half feats would give you these options plus equivalent of an ASI with two individual points of ability scores combined).
Just had to dissent after seeing this feat disparaged regularly over the years. I just can't go with the pack on this.
Why not magic initiate shillelagh and do the same as those longswords and axes with a club or a staff with the advantage of using Wisdom? (or play elf or dwarf) And you get some 1/day spells.
This is one of the few feats that I think deserves it's RAW reputation. There are just so very very very few concepts that benefit from it, and it is just an accuracy increase with those weapons.
Actually, that is a RAW that I often forget and probably bears repeating.
Wizards can use greatswords from level 1. They just can't add proficiency to hit. If you want that magic sword, you can already use it. IF you like the imagery, you can already have it. The bonus of being proficient is accuracy when using the weapon. So Weapon Master at 4th level could accurately read "+2 to hit with four weapons of your choice you are not already proficient in"
Which is... really underwhelming.
