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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7444659" data-attributes="member: 7006">In terms of weapon feats... as you say, avoiding making them weapon-specific is an important necessity. Even making them style specific (like all long blades, all axes, all hammers etc.) is too restrictive when you take the possibility of magic item appearance into account.So my feeling is that probably the best way to give feat options to weapons while also help boost the ones that need it are by going the bludgeoning / piercing / slashing route.  Three separate feats (or if you want to go even further into the weed, three separate feat chains) that buff the weapons in each of the three categories.Because if we take a look at the different weapons groups, my personal thought is that the "weakest" group-- and by weakest I mean has the less likely magic item appearances on the random tables, has the weapons show up less when you take both STR and DEX fighters into account, and even base damage on their own-- is the Bludgeoning group.  They are the ones that could probably do with the strongest weapon group feat.After that... it's kind of a toss-up.  The Piercing group encompasses pretty much all the strongest ranged weapons (especially when you take the fighting style and the CE into account) as well as the primary weapons of the DEX users (the finesse category).  The Slashing group I would ordinarily say was the strongest of the three before you were to nerf GWM (because its usually the greatsword/greataxe that gets used) or Polearm Master (because of halberd/glaive).  But if you nerf both GWM and PE, then the Slashing group comes back down to earth a bit.  So then you can make Piercing feats and Slashing feats more based on the flavor of the style rather than needing to boost one against the other.Now what the Bludgeoning Weapon Expert, Piercing Weapon Expert, and Slashing Weapon Expert could be... that's beyond the scope of what I can provide.  Since I really don't know just how bad the disparity is in your games between the hammers/maces/flails versus arrows/bolts/spears/shortblades vs longblades/axes, it's hard to say how you should go.  My instinct would be to give the Bludgeoning feat a "Stunning Strike" type of effect (to symbolize getting your bell rung)... but without the Ki points of a monk to help regulate its use plus the possibility of getting this feat at 1st level... doing an exact port of the monk ability wouldn't work.  You would need to create a lesser version of Stunning Strike since it'll occur more often and at a much lower level to start with, plus you don't want to take away the Monk's best schtick from him.  But at least that's a possible starting point.</blockquote>

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