D&D (2024) New One D&D Weapons Table Shows 'Mastery' Traits

The weapons table from the upcoming Unearthed Arcana playtest for One D&D has made its way onto the internet via Indestructoboy on Twitter, and reveals some new mechanics. The mastery traits include Nick, Slow, Puncture, Flex, Cleave, Topple, Graze, and Push. These traits are accessible by the warrior classes.

 

[Lanefan]

Previous generations had access to many mythical warriors that carried out feats of insane effect. They had heroes from Various holy texts, Greek mythology, Norse mythology and sagas and so on.

With few exceptions, those heroes were either deities, proto-deities, or directly descended from deities. Kinda hard to apply that template to every warrior in the setting (and yes, PCs warriors are still a part of their setting just like NPC warriors).

I still think it is more of a personal short sightedness than media availability. I mean in most cases they have to actively ignore or change what HP are to get to their positions.

Not sure how you get to the bolded claim. What's being ignored or changed?

 

[Lanefan]

I believe that there is a pervasive attitude that the fighter should be (is?) "the easy intro class."

Which begs the question: if the Fighter is no longer to be the easy intro class, what class takes its place?

 

[Eubani]

Which begs the question: if the Fighter is no longer to be the easy intro class, what class takes its place?

The Barbarian could be made simple. A magic user that shoots magic bolts and a couple of times a day an aoe. A cleric that does basic attack or a ranged holy beam + heal so many HP per day. There are many ways to do simple classes, there is no reason for the fighter to bare that burden alone. Hell you could do a separate martial class lets call it the Warrior, that is all about simple basic attacks.

 

[Lanefan]

Be careful painting all the opposition with a single brush. I would love to see Fighters get improvements. But the swordsman in me (and yes, I actually train in and teach the subject) can't get on board with "damage on a miss." For me, there is no reason to have damage on a miss. I would, however, be totally okay with "carry-through damage" (where one attack levels 10 guys) or characters who get so strong/skilled with their weapons that they can produce shockwaves of force, or whatever.

We added a very rough follow-through mechanic as a houserule many years ago, just for kicks. How it works, most of the time, is that if you overkill something by quite a bit, particularly if you're super-strong and-or using a big weapon, you might follow through into something else within reach...which may or may not be something or someone you in fact want to hit. A second to-hit roll occurs, and if the roll is good you might hit a second enemy, or the floor, or sink your sword into a tree, or even hit an ally.

Other people may have different objections for different reasons, but that's mine. I have thematic problems with some of high-level D&D, but Fighters who could pull off feats like Beowulf, Cu Chulainn or any one of a number of Greek Demigods is not one of them.

At very high level, this is fine.

My concern is there's some who seem to want these sort of feats to happen right out of the gate at 1st level.

 

[Lanefan]

Of course, casting fireball into a 30 by 30 room is a deathtrap since there is no space that isn't engulfed by fire in that room.

But I think it speaks to the audience here that people are far more willing to sacrifice half damage for fireball and dragons breath rather than give martials DOAM.

I could get behind reducing the damage on such spells/effects by a bit and ditching the save-for-half. The only save would then be to take nothing if you're very close to the area's edge and maybe dodged out of the way...or into it....

 

[Lanefan]

Note, according to the guidelines in 5e, that’s how damage should be described on a character at half HP or less. Above half HP, a character isn’t yet showing visible signs of injury; they’re just getting tired out.

Which is fine except it completely runs aground once poisoned weapons enter the picture.

My character could be at fully healthy at 85 h.p. and take 1 point damage from a snake bite...but if that snake is venomous I gotta save against that venom, which means that snake had to physically injure me in order to inject the venom and thus force that save.

 

[Lanefan]

To me, after a fight, your typical D&D party is banged up about like Indiana Jones. Give them a bucket of hot water, some bandages and a little whiskey or vodka and they're basically right as rain, because they were never that hurt.

"Bloodied" (which I too miss, by the way) would be like when Indy actually gets shot in the arm during the truck sequence (or knocked flat by the big mechanic during the airplane fight in the previous encounter, right before the propeller blades finish the guy off), or that scene in The Fugitive where Dr. Kimball stitches up the cut in his side. It woulda gotten to him if he hadn't treated it, but after a little first-aid, he's fine.

Note by my two Raiders of the Lost Ark examples that I tend to think that Indy recovered all his hit points between the flying wing fight sequence and when he takes off after the truck on horseback. I might also claim he used an action surge to recover a bunch of hit points right before doing the slide under the truck, but I don't think that's RAW possible for a character in 5e. But it probably should be.

That's one of the very few things that really bug me about the Indy films - either he has the resiliency of a Toon or the film does a really bad job of indicating how much time passes between those encounters. Same thing holds for many other non-supers "action heroes" - they're far too unrealistically resilient.

 

[Lanefan]

The Barbarian could be made simple. A magic user that shoots magic bolts and a couple of times a day an aoe. A cleric that does basic attack or a ranged holy beam + heal so many HP per day. There are many ways to do simple classes, there is no reason for the fighter to bare that burden alone. Hell you could do a separate martial class lets call it the Warrior, that is all about simple basic attacks.

I'll give you the Barbarian here, but any class that casts spells is automatically excluded from the "easy starter" list if for no other reason than that spells are complicated.

 

[Eubani]

I'll give you the Barbarian here, but any class that casts spells is automatically excluded from the "easy starter" list if for no other reason than that spells are complicated.

Did I mention spells in my descriptions? There were magic users that did not use spells in my ideas.

 

[Minigiant]

The way you described hits in a different (HP reducing heavy wounds to scratches) in my opinion is totally consistent woth Damage on a Miss.

If a hit is not really a solid hit, why should a miss not be enough to whittle down some HP?

What I could really get on board with would be that a miss can never reduce some creature below 1 HP.

Fighting game players would okay with high level warriors killing foes with blocked chip damage and getting their cheese win.

Shinkuuu....Hadoken
Chipchipchipchip...crumple