Arcana Unearthed - Varient Weapons Groups

[gravyboat]

I heard a little about the variant Weapons System from Arcana Unearthed. Anyone knowledgeable about this care to explain it in their own words or give us their thoughts? Do you think it is simpler and better than the core rules system, or just so so?

 

[Henry]

Moved to d20 Systems.

There's really not much different: the only thing is that Exotic weapons proficiency is broken into two feats (Exotic:Heavy and Exotic:Agile), and each grants you access to the whole slew of Exotic weapons in whose category they fit. So you only have to spend two proficiencies instead of a bunch of them.

There are new exotic weapons (sword-axes, spikesticks, manglers, dire weapons, etc.) which fit in these categories.

 

[Shazman]

Basically, it divides all weapons into groups. Each group has it's own proficiency. You get a certain number of weapon group proficiency feats based on your class. It makes more sense to me than the current system. How many warriors would really have training with every non-exotic weapon anyway? It also presents a variant rule that allows weapon specific feats like weapon focus and improved critical to apply all weapons in a group instead of being limited to just one weapon. This also makes sense and could be implemented very easily.

 

[DMScott]

Only things I'd add to what Henry wrote is:

- the AU equivalent of mithral weapons are all considered exotic (light) weapons, so you need the proficiency to use them

- some D&D exotic weapons aren't found in AU (the spiked chain, for example), either because of Monte's taste in weapons or because he felt they were unbalanced.

I like the AU approach because it tempts PCs to blow a feat on the proficiency, and the returns are pretty reasonable. Of course, in part that's because AU characters have an extra feat to blow. There's also an exotic armour proficiency that gives access to some higher bonus armours as well as all of the mithral-equivalent armours. That also seems to work well.

 

[tecnowraith]

Do mean Unearthed Arcana and not Mnite's book?

 

[Shazman]

Basically, it divides all weapons into groups. Each group has it's own proficiency. You get a certain number of weapon group proficiency feats based on your class. It makes more sense to me than the current system. How many warriors would really have training with every non-exotic weapon anyway? It also presents a variant rule that allows weapon specific feats like weapon focus and improved critical to apply all weapons in a group instead of being limited to just one weapon. This also makes sense and could be implemented very easily.

Sorry, I got mixed up. I was talking about unearthed arcana. How embarassing!