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.

 

[Minigiant]

Citation needed.

The CR calculator they use internally isn't fundamentally different than thst in the DMG, it's more detailed because it's a multifaceted Excel document per Mearls back in the day. The DMG version was a quick and dirty estimate version, that got similar results in simple situations. But they could update their Excel version when playtesting Adventures over the years, and corner cases are wonky with the quick and dirty estimate version (and corner cases are easy to find in practice).

The DMG CR guidelines are actually wrong

 

[Gorck]

The DMG CR guidelines are actually wrong

I’ve been saying that for years now. I take a random monster from the MM, MTOF, or VGTM and follow along their method in the DMG but it never seems to match.

 

[Pauln6]

Spoiler: Dumb tangent about Hercules not being a barbarian

Hercules' strength was a product of his divine birth, not rage. And the fact that he killed one guy because he was angry once doesn't make him a barbarian. And if "killing someone while angry once or twice" is the requirement for being a barbarian, almost all of the Greek Gods (and a whole lot of heroes) would be Barbarians. Hercules didn't fuel his fighting style with anger most of the time. Normally he was pretty smart and tactical, quite often solving his problems with his charisma or wit instead of brute force (figuring out how to kill/beat the hydra, tricking Atlas to retrieve the Apples of the Hesperides for him, convincing Hades to let him take his dog on a walk to his cousin's house, etc).

So, Hercules' strength and fighting capabilities didn't come from anger, his one case of "going mad" and killing his family was godly-induced, and he often used his intelligence and charisma to solve his problems, even when it could have been solved with brute strength. If anything, Hercules was a Fighter, not a Barbarian. Battlemaster, probably. Or maybe a Paladin, given his divine connection.

It's a dumb tangent but also relevant in the context of refluffing black and white text to fulfill a concept. It is true to say that there are number of ways to replicate a Hercules type build but without a boon or magic girdle, the bear totem barbarian gets closest.

It might be interesting to consider what class features, feats, and skills might replicate that type of character, assuming that he only epic boons he gets are from divine heritage and suckling at Hera/Juno for +4 strength.

I'm unconvinced that this weapon mastery comes close to freeing up much design space but there might be something in the new fighter features I suppose.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The difference between the Barbarian Class feature and the lion skin sounds like fluff to me.

The Nemean Lion pelt is literally invulnerable. It wasn't an AC boost. It was an invulnerable magic item that made Hercules immune to physical damage while wearing it.

Gygax may have said that, but all the iconic Narbaroan PCs I've seen are keying off of Conan to some degree or other. Gygax said a lot of stuff that not even he could have possibly believed was true.

So your position is "Gygax lied sometimes, so that doesn't matter"? And it wasn't just "Gygax said Conan was a Fighter/Thief", he made an official stat block for Conan that was a Fighter/Thief multiclass.

According to the only official D&D sources, Conan is not a Barbarian. And I highly doubt that Hercules would be, either.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It's a dumb tangent but also relevant in the context of refluffing black and white text to fulfill a concept. It is true to say that there are number of ways to replicate a Hercules type build but without a boon or magic girdle, the bear totem barbarian gets closest.

It might be interesting to consider what class features, feats, and skills might replicate that type of character, assuming that he only epic boons he gets are from divine heritage and suckling at Hera/Juno for +4 strength.

Eh, I think Battlemaster Fighter or Oath of Glory Paladin would be better for Hercules. With a handful of important magic items (Girdle, Nemean Lion Coat, etc) and either a Demigod lineage or supernatural gift to account for his various powers.

 

[Parmandur]

The DMG CR guidelines are actually wrong

Yes, they said this year's ago, Mearls went into some detail on the Happy Fun Hoir ~2018: it's a simplification the spreadsheets they use for building products. They couldn't put an interactive multi-sheet Excel file on a book, so they cooked up a quick and dirty estimate version. Sounds like in 10 years they've figured out a better way to get aomeething like their playtest spreadsheet tools into a book form.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Some really good changes in the weapons table, that I don't see mentioned in this thread yet (drawing on this discussion):
1. The Lance has been re-fitted without its special qualities. This makes it functionally a greatspear, strictly better than the pike.
2. The Trident is now better than the spear (+1 average damage). Finally has a place on the martial list.

Things I'd like to see fixed:
1. Find a niche for the pike, or cut it (or return special features to lance).
2. Keep Short sword in simple weapons.
3. Introduce some differentiation between the longsword and the battleaxe.
4. Where are the special weapons? Is the net gone? It would be terrible to finally fix the trident, and leave the poor retiarius without a net.

There are other things I'd like, but I know I am not going to get: a sap, a finesse weapon doing 1 pt bludgeoning damage; less extreme long ranges, but the ability to (say) double the range against non-moving targets; humanoid natural weapons like claws doing 1d4 not 1d6; etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don't buy the idea that wotc couldn't possibly share a spreadsheet unless the problem is that it would expose GiGo & bad assumptions in the math. You can download charactersheets & lots of other stuff from wotc. an excel spreadsheet is not so obscure that it wouldn't have wide appeal. This is also the day & age of online spreadsheet tools like google sheets & officeonline, Heck here & here is an excessive & wonky one on sheets while here is one even more overdesigned with a required developer stream beta feature (lambda) heavily used.


The TTRPG community is extremely well versed in & willing to make use of spreadsheets for a game that doesn't involve money or prizes.. Possibly second only to eve online folks with excel features literally built into a video game.

 

[Lanefan]

Think Oberyn vs. The Mountain, where he uses lots of quick cuts that singly, would not kill, but cumulatively deplete his HP by attrition... a shame he failed his Perception check at the end!

Good timing - we're rewatching GoT and that one is the next episode up!

 

[Kobold Stew]

Because he had the Nemean Lion's coat, which made him practically invulnerable while wearing it. He used a magic item in place of armor.

One of the problems when using mythical figures is that their nature changes so significantly over time. What's true fo Homer's Heracles is not necessarily true for Euripides' Heracles, or Seneca's. So one needs to be clear which Heracles/Hercules you are talking about. There are probably other sources that are relevant, but here are a handful of specifics showing how this one issue changes over 1200 years:

1. The idea of the labours predates Hesiod (7th c. bce) but what was done with that idea changes:

2. 5th c. bce Bacchylides (fr. 13) first explicitly says that the skin can't be pierced. It's an element that probably exists before this, but here's when it occurs earliest, I believe. [In game terms, we might say it's resistant to piercing or slashing damage. Accounts have Heracles take a club or strangle the creature -- i.e. using bludgeoning damage.]

3. 3rd c. bce Theocritus (Idyll 25) first explicitly says that its claws can pierce the skin. [Compare the effect of the vorpal sword which can bypass slashing resistance but not immunity -- they effectively are vorpal claws.] Several later sources show that this is not the mainstream view; strangling is far more common, and persists through Seneca (Hercules Furens), Statius (Thebaid 4, 6), and on to Nonnus in the 5th c. CE.

4. 1st c. bce Diodorus (4.11.3) first explicitly says that wearing the lion skin offers some sort of protection (though with no totalizing claims). The claim is repeated in Hyginus Fab. 30 (2nd c CE), but I don't know of anywhere else. [This is similar to the benefits of the boon of resilience (Heracles by definition is level 20+), and cf. the armor of invulnerability]. Ovid, Heroides 9, says that he wears it on his left side, but not that it offers particular protection.

I think the reality is that most ancients didn't think in terms of optimizing Heracles in combat, because it was beyond question that he was extraordinary. To generalize about him, though, eliminates the complexity of ancient myth.