How stereotypical is Weapon Specialization at 4th?

[Marimmar@Home]

Hmm, good point Darklone. That's why I usually wait with Weapon Focus until level 3.

 

[Marimmar@Home]

It really depends on how you plan out your fighter. Some players will find great cleave more useful as at this level you still may face a lot of one hit kills.

This would confirm my suggestion that a strong fighter with a two-handed weapon might bypass it in favor of extra attacks which could add up even more quickly in damage dealt.

Spring attack is very useful as well and is still useful at higher levels.

Well in my experience all Spring Attack accomplishes is that the enemies concentrate all their attack on those party members that do not dance around, thus leading to the bad situation of having the damage not spread out evenly. For the one who Spring Attacks it's great though (until his friends are dropped.)

It is almost always though a good feat at the point you take it, its in the longterm that the usefulness is put in doubt.

True, OTOH the DM might be a nice one (after some prodding or blackmailing ) and give you a nice weapon you focused on.

As a DM I regret it always a bit when the party's fighter specializes. All cool weapons with lots of background and mighty enchantments just get tossed in the 'FOR SALE' bin if they aren't of the right type.

~Marimmar

 

[Norfleet]

As a DM I regret it always a bit when the party's fighter specializes. All cool weapons with lots of background and mighty enchantments just get tossed in the 'FOR SALE' bin if they aren't of the right type.

~Marimmar

You can strongly discourage this tendency by inducing characters to regularly change up on their weapons: This is best done early on in their careers: When characters are using normal weapons with no magical goodies whatsoever, sunder. Do it constantly, but always leave plenty of weapons lying around for the characters that use weapons to use...of many different types. Since the weapons are all cheap "normal" weapons anyway, it's not unreasonable for someone to sunder them, as he certainly won't care for them as loot, and the player won't be really upset, since it's not like it was valuable.

However, it does transmit the valuable message that characters should not so quickly become married to a specific weapon type, since they frequently use many different weapons.

Other techniques to encourage this include the insertion of enemies and tactical situations where different weapons are clearly more effective. Do all of this before a player ever starts going along the focus/spec path: The player can't feel as if you're deliberately trying to screw him over if you're not destroying things which are worthwhile, or consistently rendering his feat choices useless. Instead, he'll simply be discouraged from taking the feats in the first place, since it'll now be a preexisting condition.

The key to properly screwing players over is to start doing it before it would actually screw them over.

 

[S'mon]

I like to see Fighter-type PCs get and keep 'signature' weapons - 3e makes it possible to 'power up' weapons as the PCs advance in level, so they can plausibly keep the same weapon from level 4 to 20 and it grows in power throughout the campaign. A PC may prefer to stay a Conan-type generalist and not specialise, that's fine too.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Out of five fighters played by three different people, none has taken weapon focus or weapon specialisation to date.

The fighters have all preferred to go for more general use feats which they can use with any weapon.

I imagine that this would be very different in a "magic shoppe" campaign where it is easy to obtain magic weapons to your own specification; the decision to not allow this (we all hate the idea) almost certainly has an influence.

FWIW in my campaign I made weapon specialisation a general feat available to anyone with BAB 4+ and weapon focus (so even the most dedicated non-fighter can't take it until 6th at the earliest) and it still hasn't been taken by any of the PC's.

Other feats give better tactical options (expertise/imp disarm/sunder/trip/bullrush etc, spring attack/missile weapon tree/etc) and the PC's focus on those rather than simply doing that little bit more damage.

p.s. Marimmar - IMC Spring attack has been a necessary life-saver for the main fighters. Without it, their only option when facing a giant or a dragon is to go toe-to-toe and swap full attacks... and at 11th level their full attacks do a heck of a lot more damage. If a parties tactics are "encircle the beast and hack away" while someone spring attacks in and out, I can see things working out as you describe; in tactical dungeon based situations though I see it as much more useful. Mobility is *so* important!

Cheers