AuraSeer said:
If a fighter wants to really master a weapon he's never used before, he needs to spend a bunch of feats and make slow progress.
Not to be rude, but...bull. There are any number of feats that one can take that apply with all weapons. Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Expertise, Mounted Combat, etc, etc. And if you think that 20 levels of fighter taking those feats is not a 'world class master' then, frankly, you have a really strange definition of the term. (Especially when this 'non-master' would hit faster and more often than a 10th level fighter with the 5 'master' feats you desctibe.) Such a fighter is just as good with the sword he has used every day for the past 20 levels as he is with an axe, even though he hasn't touched an axe since level one.
You can't tell me that the same techniques work when applying Cleave to a rapier as opposed to a greataxe. Hell, you can't even tell me that all of the same techniques work when applying your base attack bonus. (You know, the thing that fighters get with
any weapon they pick up?) Your stance is different, the muscles you use are different, the timing's different, the weapon handles differently...and yet, you can use your full BAB and all of your feats (barring weapon specific ones) with any weapon.
Sure, there are similarities between the various weapons, but there's similarities in different kinds of Perform as well. Timing, reading the audience, reading the other performers, musical theory, improvisation...
Fighters are supposed to be combat badasses. That's why they can pick up weapons that are completely unfamiliar to them and still use them effectively. Bards are supposed to be performance badasses. Why
not let them do any kind of performance well?
My question still stands: why is this level of abstraction acceptable for combat - which is a
huge part of the game - and not for Perform - which is a miniscule part of the game?
J