D&D 5E Longswords
Arial Black
Adventurer
True. My first 4E PC was called Arial Black and had to be a Rogue rather than a Fighter in order to realise the concept.
She was also the only human PC I saw in my time playing that game(?).
Also, even though the Rogue class was intended to also cover the swashbuckler concept, Rogues were not proficient with rapiers! You had to spend a feat!
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I thunk up another Fighting Style fix.
Dueling.When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, add both your Strength and Dexterity modifiers to damage rolls with that weapon.
This is a huge buff to people who invest in both Strength and Dexterity, and a bit of a nerf to people who choose one or the other. So now the profile is:
Greatweapon = high Str
Dueling = mix of Str and Dex
Archery = high Dex
Two-Weapon = either high Str or high Dex
That's kind of nice because I've been feeling like mixing Str and Dex is generally a poor choice in 5e and this would give the classic Str+Dex build a reason for existing.
Edwin Suijkerbuijk
Explorer
You might add another sword to take the rapiers place.
If you look at DnD the blades seeom to go Dagger, short sword,longsword, greatsword.
Looking at how historians categorise blades it tends to go : ( lengths given are high end)
knives
dagger (50 cm)
arming sword (90 cm)
longsword ( 130 cm)
2 handed sword. (180 cm)
in DnD the long sword is often used as a one handed sword, while in the istorical list the arming sword is the dedicated one handed sword, the long sword is mostly used 2 handed.
the armng sword actualy looks like what many people think of when they think of a Dnd longsword http://www.valiant-armoury.com/image/cache/catalog/va-408-the-crusader-1200x800.jpg
While many of the short swords in DnD would be considerd daggers.
So using this list and deleting the rapier it would go.
Knives (1d4 damage finess) what DnD now calls daggers.
Daggers (1d6 finesse) what DnD now calls short sword
Arming sword (1d8 slashing finesse) single handed and replaces rapier
longsword remains the same as Dnd longsword
Greatsword remains the same as Dnd longsword
Prism
Explorer
That's pretty much what we do. For a more D&Dish name for the arming sword we use the names broadsword, sabre, elven thinblade, and falchion to represent the same thing in (ie 1d8 slashing finesse)
I'm surprised that when they didn't convert the longsword to its historical version, that they didn't include a 1d8 slashing version as well. Then again, people do like their rapiers and maybe they were short on space
The rapier is over budget for a one-handed martial melee weapon; the best fix is simply to remove it, or rename short sword to "light blade" and have it encompass both short swords and rapiers.
This has the ancillary benefit of enabling rapier-and-dagger fighting, which historically was an actual thing.
This has the ancillary benefit of enabling rapier-and-dagger fighting, which historically was an actual thing.
Arial Black
Adventurer
I like 5E a great deal, but one of the things I don't like is that your attack stat is either Str OR Dex. When in reality it's better to have high ratings in both, in 5E you only benefit from one (as your attack stat). So, unless you are a barbarian, only one of these two stats counts. Since a poor Dex doesn't negatively impact your AC if you wear heavy armour, a warrior either chooses Str and heavy armour or Dex and light armour.
What makes this even worse is the prevalence of point-buy; if you have 16 Dex (or Str), it is a complete waste of points to assign any points at all to Str (or Dex)! With point-buy, as a (non-barbarian) warrior you have either Str 16/Dex 8 OR Str 8 Dex 16, and any other choice is a waste of points. It also renders medium armour unused by non-barbarian warriors.
DM: I see you have Dex 16 and Str 8 (again!); would you like a free extra four points of Str, no strings attached?
Player: Are we using variant encumberance?
DM: No.
Player: Errm....no, not really. There's no point.
That's the problem: an unrealistic realisation that if you are a melee warrior and attack with one stat then it's actually better to have a low score in the other, because then you have more points to spend on other stats. This is absurd! Every warrior should want, and benefit from, high scores in both stats!
I remember Chaosium games from the '80s, where the attack modifier was made up of modifiers from four stats: Str, Int, Pow, Dex. Parry modifiers were from Str, Pow, Dex and the inverse of Size (being smaller made it easier to parry, being larger made it harder). Damage was from Str and Size (being bigger meant you hit harder). This meant that you wanted to be good at every stat, except Size which was a double-edged sword, as it were. This had the benefit of making sense!
So maybe the solution is to remove the concept of finesse weapons, and make the attack modifier be an average of Str AND Dex for every weapon.
In a lot of other games, all attacks are based on Dex and melee damage is based on Str, thus providing a super clear trade-off between the two.
I'm not sure that approach would work well in D&D (it feels like a nerf to warrior classes, and would make mental ability scores even less attractive to them) but it would certainly be an easy house rule to implement.
Prism
Explorer
I am interested to know what secondary stats are those characters focusing on then. Various people in this thread are saying that the dump stat is Int, Cha, Dex (or Str). Isn't the point that you focus on 1 stat and then use the others to round out your character however you want?
Wouldn't it be a bit unfair on melee types if they are the only ones who need two stats to operate effectively. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the 4e style where 2-3 of your stats were accounted for by your combat style leaving everything else to be dumped
In our games medium armour gets a fair bit of use by (cleric, barbarian, bard and warlock). So far its about equal to heavy and light armour
Arial Black
Adventurer
I'll tell you: If I have, say, 16 Dex I still want as high a Con as I can so points spent on Con are worth it, but I have no use for Str at all so any points spent there are wasted. If you have Str 16 then any points on Dex are wasted.
I'm confident that each spellcasting stat could be made into a modifier that draws from both the current stat and a second mental stat.
In my post I indicated that I was talking about non-barbarian warriors; you don't have any in that party.
If you are a fighter, monk, paladin or ranger, then you either choose Str and heavy armour because you can dump Dex completely instead of wasting 7 points raising Dex to 14, or you choose Dex and dump Str completely. If you choose Dex then 20 Dex (which is a priority for Dex based warriors) and studded leather gives AC 17, or AC 18 if you can get mage armour or Draconic Resilience. Meanwhile, medium armour only allows +2 from Dex, so AC is 16, or 17 if you don't mind disadvantage on stealth.
The only time medium armour is viable is if you don't intend to raise your Dex above 14; perfectly viable for casters who will increase their casting stat instead of Dex, but not viable for either Dex based warriors who certainly will increase their Dex (and so end up with a better AC with light armour) OR Str based warriors (who have heavy armour so don't waste 7 build points on a useless stat).
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