Melee and Ranged Weapon Mastery

[Gabriel_Penn]

Hello All!

I need a ruling here! I tried posting this for the WotC guys, but they won't answer any questions not related to v4.0. I'm a DM of 15 years and I just can't accept the WotC rules and official errata on the Melee Weapon Mastery and Ranged Weapon Mastery feats. In fact, I was sure it had to be a misprint. Please let me know what you guys think!

I need a clarification on the rules for the feats Melee Weapon Mastery and Ranged Weapon Mastery from Players Handbook 2. A player of mine, who already has Weapon Focus (Rapier) and Weapon Specialization (Rapier) wants to pick up the feat Melee Weapon Mastery (Piercing). According to what the rules seem to imply, that would give him a +2 attack and damage bonus with all piercing weapons. No problems there...yet. Now here’s where I think we’re either reading it wrong, or it’s an insanely overpowered feat. The errata specifically states as follows:

Does the bonus from Melee Weapon Mastery (​

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Player’s Handbook II, 81) stack with bonuses from Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization?​

Yes. A character with Weapon Focus (longsword), Weapon Specialization (longsword), and Melee Weapon Mastery (slashing) would have a +3 bonus on attack rolls and a +4 bonus on damage rolls with longswords, and a +2 bonus on attack and damage rolls with all other slashing weapons.​

How can this possibly be balanced?

To consider in your ruling, I’ll compare this feat to two feats in the Players Handbook:

Greater Weapon Focus:
Prerequisites: proficiency with weapon, Weapon Focus with weapon, fighter level 8th.
Benefits: +1 to attacks with weapon, stacking with Weapon Focus for a total bonus of +2 attack.

Greater Weapon Specialization:
Prerequisites: proficiency with Weapon, Weapon Focus with weapon, Greater Weapon Focus with weapon, Weapon Specialization with weapon, fighter level 12th.
Benefits: +2 to damage with weapon, stacking with Weapon Specialization for a total bonus of +4 damage.

Melee (or Ranged) Weapon Mastery:
Prerequisites: proficiency with weapon, Weapon Focus with weapon, Weapon Specialization with weapon, Base Attack Bonus +8.
Benefits: +2 attack and damage with focused and specialized weapon TYPE. Stacking with focused and specialized weapon bonuses yields a +3 attack and +4 damage with that specific weapon.

Surely this can’t be right! The Weapon Mastery only requires 2 feats, 4 effective fighter levels (implied by Weapon Specialization), and a +8 attack bonus--and yet this feat provides everything listed above? How can this be possible when Greater Weapon Specialization requires 3 feats, 12 fighter levels, and a +12 attack bonus (implied in the fighter levels)--and yet it only provides +2 additional damage with one specific weapon.

Do you see my dilemma? And yet it’s hard for me to convince my player that this feat is overpowered when the errata seems to confirm the above reading of it. I am the DM, and I can, of course, simply disallow it. I’ll have to, in fact, unless I want to give the feat to every high level NPC fighter in my game (since no fighter in their right mind would EVER turn down the feat as currently understood).

Please help clarify this for me. If the feat really provides the benefits listed above, please explain to me how this is not a MUCH better feat than ones with parallel prerequisites listed in the Players Handbook.

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,
GP

 

[RangerWickett]

It is a much better feat. Basically, after 6 years of playing 3rd edition, the designers realized that fighters and other warrior classes didn't get enough fun stuff, and were a bit weak at high level, so they gave them this feat (well, these two feats) to make them more viable.

Basically, people who didn't cast spells were underpowered. These feats help fix that. Ditto Weapon Mastery.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Your analysis is absolutely correct. Compared to the other weapon feats, Melee/Ranged Weapon Mastery is hands-down better. The thing is...that's precisely the point.

Those weapon feats were found over time to be really weak, and the Fighter as a whole was found to be really weak, and without some unique class features or really awesome high level feats to reward people to stay in the class, there wasn't much reason to. That is why these feats (as well as Weapon Supremecy, available only to level 20 Fighters and totally badass) were printed. In a way, they're class features in feat's clothing, sort of like Natural Spell for Druids. Because WotC preferred to tack on feat "patches" rather than re-write the core mechanics of a class. I am surprised it doesn't require Fighter level 8, though. That is the only change I would make.

But, let's look at it if it didn't stack with WF, GWF, and WS. For the weapon you specialized in, you're only gaining +2 damage (it's...weapon specialization -- widely panned as a weak feat already -- only with higher pre-reqs! yay!) and now have 3 feats that have all become obsolete from this new one. For any other piercing weapon, I guess it's a nice gain. But Fighters using a golfbag of weapons was a dream that I and many others soon awoke from. A fighter is SO much better off sticking to a certain weapon that it's not worth trying to tweak the rules to chage that. And IME, most DMs allowed Fighters to re-train their weapon feats if they found a very nice new weapon of a different kind anyway. And then Tome of Battle came out, and let a class in there do that...on any given day they wanted! (Guess one of the class features I totally added to Fighter upon first seeing it? )

You can tell the player you're nerfing or banning the feat if you want, but I think that's overreacting. It may be strong compared to those other cruddy feats, but what impact will it actually have on combat? The wizard and cleric will still be much more powerful, and even the barbarian will still trounce the fighter for damage while raging.

And allowing it to stack was the design intent.

 

[Elethiomel]

Also note that it also stacks with Greater Weapon Specialisation and Greater Weapon Focus, for a grand total of +4 to attack and +6 to damage with your chosen weapon. Fighters have enough feats to have all of the above.

 

[frankthedm]

Hello All!

I need a ruling here! I tried posting this for the WotC guys, but they won't answer any questions not related to v4.0. I'm a DM of 15 years and I just can't accept the WotC rules and official errata on the Melee Weapon Mastery and Ranged Weapon Mastery feats. In fact, I was sure it had to be a misprint. Please let me know what you guys think!

I think if it was meant to be a bump for the fighter, it should have required fighter level 8. I can understand the feeling that the fighter seems suboptimal commpared to CoDzilla or the frontloaded barbarian, butt the feat does not help the pure fighter more than it helps the Fighter 4 /Barbarian N /Ranger N /Rogue N / PRC N Mushpot.

If the fighter "Needs it" it should be a fighter only feat.

In the PHB2, you'll notice a less powerful, but much more versatile version in the quick description list.

"Gain Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization benefits with multiple weapons"

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-3rd-edition-rules/246944-melee-weapon-mastery-phb-2-a.html

 

[pawsplay]

How can this possibly be balanced?

- By requiring appropriate prerequisites.
- By being similar in power to abilities gained by other characters of the same level.
- By rewarding specialized characters with some numerical advantages to cancel out the difficulties they face because of being tied to a specific weapon.

I guess, in theory, it should really be +1/+1 to balance against a hypothetical general feat, but in that case, you would have to have another feat to stack on top of it. At that point, you would discover that the Fighter is behind the curve. Fighters are lucky in that other characters cannot compete in their niche, because comparitively, they gain power more slowly than most classes. So basically, offering one "sweet" feat is easier than either errata'ing Fighters to have more feats or inventing some kind of class features for them.

 

[Arkhandus]

Yup, the feat stacks with Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, etc. That's the rule for untyped bonuses; they stack with everything. The reason? Fighters suck. At least compared to most everything else (though I suppose a few classes are somewhat poorer off than the poor, neglected, classic Fighter). The designers didn't bother fixing Fighters or warrior-types in general for core 3.5, but eventually realized that Fighters really did deserve some love.

So Melee and Ranged Weapon Mastery feats were made. They help the Fighter not suck compared to a Barbarian or fully-buffed-Cleric/Druid in EVERY way (and arcane casters in short-term offense/defense/utility matters). All the Fighter gets is feats. He doesn't get awesome damage output, survivability, skills, magic, or anything. Ergo he should at least get GOOD feats. Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization are not good feats, they're decent feats at best, helping a core Fighter not lag behind a Barbarian quite as much in offense.

Fights, especially at upper levels, are rarely decided by the warrior-types. It's the mage's Flesh to Stone, Wail of the Banshee, Power Word: Kill, Forcecage, Baleful Polymorph, Implosion, Harm, or the like. This is my experience as a 3e DM and player since 2000, and as an AD&D player since 1996 or 1997. Warriors soak up damage and generally serve to just give casters the opportunity to end or solve everything, although warriors can certainly accomplish some awesome victories in combat, too. They're just much less likely to be the decisive factor in battle, let alone in non-combat challenges. Mind you, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I've seen it happen, it's just much less common than the spellcasters thwarting the main villain or big monster or swarm or army/warband.

In the campaigns I've DMed, victory has generally been won by the spellcasters; Baleful Polymorphing the dragon, Flesh to Stone-ing the aboleth, Acid Fogging and Force Caging the vampires, Prismatic Spraying the dragons, Phantasmal Killer-ing the monsters, Fireballing the frost giants, Suggestion-ing the frost giant veterans, Blade Barrier-ing the frost giant veterans, Flame Striking and Greater Call Lightning-ing and Disintegrating the demons, etc. That said, warriors have been important in many battles too (the party's archer nearly killed one dragon by himself while the others distracted the dragon for a moment and kept it from safely disengaging to flee or kill the pesky archer-in-the-trees, to where the dragon barely escaped alive, in single-digit HP), but they've only rarely been the decisive force on the battlefield or otherwise. It's been awesome when they were, and those battles were often more dramatic, and more fun for me as DM in some of those sessions, but more often than not, the casters ruin that by ending fights quickly with a spell or spell-combo.

 

[Runestar]

Greater weapon focus/spec are so not worth the paper they are printed on, much less the feat slots they suck up (even if a fighter does get many of them). It wouldn't be fair to say that melee weapon mastery is overpowered compared to it, since they were already extremely underpowered to begin with.

 

[Dragonnety]

I had exactly the same question, and just yesterday I had posted it to this forum. It appears that yes. The feats stuck. I was also surprised about that.