DracoSuave
First Post
DM can always say no.
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Would removing Superior Weapons open the game up more?
- Thread starter Herschel
- Start date
DM can always say no.
No.
Wait, hold on, let me think-no.
Superior Weapon Proficiency is becoming a more and more worthless feat. It should only be taken if your player's have some specific exploit their planning on, and it hinges around weapon type, such as using a Gouge for all the charging support + rain of blows + Axe feats, or Spiked Chain stuff. Another cast is if the weapon type their looking at just has no good options in millitary, such as the case with non-glaive reach weapons. The only other reason to do so is because their a striker trying to eke out as much damage as possible, such as Rogues with Rapiers and Rangers with their death-dealing implement of choice.
The difference between a Bastard Sword and a Longsword is about 1 damage, more or less. That's it. There are other feats which give you far more bang for your buck. A fighter gets way more out of Marked Scourge or Battlewise than he does Superior Weapon Prof. If your players are taking Superior Weapon Prof for any reason other than those outlined above, its their fault for lacking the effort to find something more interesting/optimal to take. Its not anywhere close to a feat tax, and removing it from the game only depowers those cases like I mentioned above.
Also: Taking away superior implements is just... cruel. Fighters will still have Mauls and Longswords when you take away his Superior feats. Spellcasters get no easy way to improve their stuff without resorting to optimization. The game works without the feat, I just wouldn't trade it for anything.
Wait, hold on, let me think-no.
Superior Weapon Proficiency is becoming a more and more worthless feat. It should only be taken if your player's have some specific exploit their planning on, and it hinges around weapon type, such as using a Gouge for all the charging support + rain of blows + Axe feats, or Spiked Chain stuff. Another cast is if the weapon type their looking at just has no good options in millitary, such as the case with non-glaive reach weapons. The only other reason to do so is because their a striker trying to eke out as much damage as possible, such as Rogues with Rapiers and Rangers with their death-dealing implement of choice.
The difference between a Bastard Sword and a Longsword is about 1 damage, more or less. That's it. There are other feats which give you far more bang for your buck. A fighter gets way more out of Marked Scourge or Battlewise than he does Superior Weapon Prof. If your players are taking Superior Weapon Prof for any reason other than those outlined above, its their fault for lacking the effort to find something more interesting/optimal to take. Its not anywhere close to a feat tax, and removing it from the game only depowers those cases like I mentioned above.
Also: Taking away superior implements is just... cruel. Fighters will still have Mauls and Longswords when you take away his Superior feats. Spellcasters get no easy way to improve their stuff without resorting to optimization. The game works without the feat, I just wouldn't trade it for anything.
The problem, as always, is simply how much performance it gives you. Now, I don't think it is quite as game-changing as some feel, and not as bad as Expertise - but it is up there. And in pretty much every game I've played in, the majority of characters have ended up taking it at some point, usually relatively early on.
Choices that become the default... well, they bug me. Especially in this case, where it ends up rendering these cool and interesting weapons... mundane. And I'm more inclined to try and find a way to fix the flaw in the system rather than just blame the players and just pretend the problem isn't there.
For me, that consists of giving out such options as rewards - retaining their presence as exceptional items, keeping them rare and unique, and freeing up feats for PCs to spend on more robust choices.
keterys
First Post
Unless you get a proficiency bonus (greatspear), cross-weapon-group support (gouge), or a significant damage boost (fullblade), sure.
Or, if you get in via Dwarven Weapon Training, Elven Weapon Training, Gith Weapon Training...
Or are high enough level that you deal enough Ws consistently that even pure damage (ex: Mordenkrad) is still worth the upgrade.
And Superior Implement is almost always worth taking, since it always can satisfy one of those options.
The real time you avoid them is when you do a mix of weapon and implement powers, so don't get full use out of the feat expenditure.
If you note I addressed all of those point in the post, save for the Racial Weapon Training, which I left out because those feats are either just as good as or strictly better than SWP. The better ones are great... if you were going that route anyway. Githzerai Blade Mastery is just about worthless to the Spike-Chain Weilding Githzerai Theif.
I specifically mentioned everything you brought up as a counter example, either explicitly (gouge) or with it in mind (read the section on there being no good martial polearms besides the Glaive and then consider your Greatspear example). Did you read my post at all?
Also, unless your dealing 4[W] or higher with EVERY SINGLE ATTACK, a Mordenkrad is strictly worse than a Maul with Weapon Focus. The difference between 2d6 and 2d6 Brutal 1 is one point of average damage. This is further compounded by the fact that you can get that extra damage back by using a Maul with Gauntlets of Destruction.
Early on in the game, yes, Superior Weapons made or broke a character, but that was because we literally had no options at the time. Now, with so much stuff competing for feat slots Superior Weapons is slowly being marginalized and outclassed. Its popularity can probably be attributed to those early days when everyone thought they needed to have it, and by the fact that it is an obvious and intuitive path to power. Mark of Storms can net you way more damage in the long run than weilding an executioners axe can. Permafrost gets way more attack and damage than Proficiency and Focus for the same cost. A fighter is getting more out of Polearm Gamble with a Glaive than a Greatspear without Polearm Gamble. Its not a terrible feat, and as you redundantly pointed out there are cases where it is good: but it is not such an overwhelming good or necessary feat that its killing the game, and if player characters can't come up with a better idea... well, that's their fault.
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The same is not wholely true of Superior Implement, which are very much a tax on implement users to stay comparable with the crazy support martial weapon users get. Taking that away doesn't open up more options: it just nerfs implement users. Granted, there are still better things to take than SIP most of the time as well: its just far more narrow.
Very true.
One of my players has found that by not using Superior Wepons and more thematic ones he finds ones with cooler enchantments also.
@keterys -- Sure. But house rules like this aren't relevant in LFR anyway.
@Nyronus: Superior Weapon prof varies a lot in facility -- which I think is most of the beef the OP has with it, really, rather than the feat tax issues. Two handed weapons usually have good or great SWP options; so do full one-handed options. But throwing weapons have no superior weapon options (that do more damage than non-superior weapons; mostly the superior thrown weapons are only made worthwhile via feats, or have combinations of abilities -- like the Cahulaks; a superior thrown double weapon with reach; weapon of choice for a ranger who prefers to be able to do everything reasonably than once thing well, or maybe a fighter who wants to use dual strike without being a tempest? Arena, maybe), and dagger features don't usually work with superior [parrying] daggers.
This is actually probably more of a problem for people who can take superior weapons -without- the feat. Dwarves, Eladrin, and Gith are going to start out looking for superior axes, spears, and heavy blades (well, bastard sword and fullblade), as are Arena fighters. So it's pretty tough for a player playing an Eladrin to go for throwing build when they could be using a Greatspear, or a Dwarf to throw axes/hammers when they could be using waraxes instead. IMO, the real solution is to provide superior weapons in the missing categories -- or to do it ad-hoc as Klaus suggests.
Similarly, I like superior implements in principle. Accurate implements are kinda boring (if often optimal), but the rest provide interesting flavor.
Now, here's the problem I have with superior whatzits: They make you boring. And they punish you for diversity. This actually isn't as much of a problem if you're getting multiple superior profs at once; a dwarf can carry around hand-axes for thrown use, an execution axe for slugging it out, and a gouge for charging and make use of what's appropriate; an Eladrin can switch between a gouge and a greatspear depending on whether they need the reach or the damage, with some tridents in reserved to throw. But it really punishes characters who use both weapons and implements, who have to choose which path to ignore (hmm. I could actually see tradeoff feats that let you deal with double-specialization options in a novel fashion; either ones that lock you into a single item type for both weapon and implement but let you grab, say, both a superior implement and a superior weapon on the same weapliment type, or feats for classes like Avenger, PH Paladin [huh. Why didn't they come up with a new name for that?] and Templar that lets them trade a small penalty (probably something minor-but-important like -1 to a defense) for two proficiencies. The problem being, of course, that two for the price of one is strictly better than one for the price of one even if you don't planning on using both (the issue with Versetile Expertise in its original setting; it would be fine now if you changed the breakpoints on the bonuses to 11/21), so unless you're going to class-lock such boosts [which is bloaty], you have to give them some other disad.
@Nyronus: Superior Weapon prof varies a lot in facility -- which I think is most of the beef the OP has with it, really, rather than the feat tax issues. Two handed weapons usually have good or great SWP options; so do full one-handed options. But throwing weapons have no superior weapon options (that do more damage than non-superior weapons; mostly the superior thrown weapons are only made worthwhile via feats, or have combinations of abilities -- like the Cahulaks; a superior thrown double weapon with reach; weapon of choice for a ranger who prefers to be able to do everything reasonably than once thing well, or maybe a fighter who wants to use dual strike without being a tempest? Arena, maybe), and dagger features don't usually work with superior [parrying] daggers.
This is actually probably more of a problem for people who can take superior weapons -without- the feat. Dwarves, Eladrin, and Gith are going to start out looking for superior axes, spears, and heavy blades (well, bastard sword and fullblade), as are Arena fighters. So it's pretty tough for a player playing an Eladrin to go for throwing build when they could be using a Greatspear, or a Dwarf to throw axes/hammers when they could be using waraxes instead. IMO, the real solution is to provide superior weapons in the missing categories -- or to do it ad-hoc as Klaus suggests.
Similarly, I like superior implements in principle. Accurate implements are kinda boring (if often optimal), but the rest provide interesting flavor.
Now, here's the problem I have with superior whatzits: They make you boring. And they punish you for diversity. This actually isn't as much of a problem if you're getting multiple superior profs at once; a dwarf can carry around hand-axes for thrown use, an execution axe for slugging it out, and a gouge for charging and make use of what's appropriate; an Eladrin can switch between a gouge and a greatspear depending on whether they need the reach or the damage, with some tridents in reserved to throw. But it really punishes characters who use both weapons and implements, who have to choose which path to ignore (hmm. I could actually see tradeoff feats that let you deal with double-specialization options in a novel fashion; either ones that lock you into a single item type for both weapon and implement but let you grab, say, both a superior implement and a superior weapon on the same weapliment type, or feats for classes like Avenger, PH Paladin [huh. Why didn't they come up with a new name for that?] and Templar that lets them trade a small penalty (probably something minor-but-important like -1 to a defense) for two proficiencies. The problem being, of course, that two for the price of one is strictly better than one for the price of one even if you don't planning on using both (the issue with Versetile Expertise in its original setting; it would be fine now if you changed the breakpoints on the bonuses to 11/21), so unless you're going to class-lock such boosts [which is bloaty], you have to give them some other disad.
That's 1 damage per W, which is going to equal or beat the effectiveness of other damage-boosting feats for most weapon-using classes. Not that anyone is going to take, say, superior weapon prof and not also take weapon focus (or whatever).
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DracoSuave
First Post
Once you get to levels where the [W] matters enough to be meaningful, it's still a drop in the bucket.
