D&D (2024) New One D&D Weapons Table Shows 'Mastery' Traits

The weapons table from the upcoming Unearthed Arcana playtest for One D&D has made its way onto the internet via Indestructoboy on Twitter, and reveals some new mechanics. The mastery traits include Nick, Slow, Puncture, Flex, Cleave, Topple, Graze, and Push. These traits are accessible by the warrior classes.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Wait, are you telling me a “poisonous snake” can deal poison damage to you without you having to eat it??

Ah, words. They don't always mean what you think they mean!

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah, words. They don't always mean what you think they mean!

To be fair, I am exactly the kind of pedant who hopes they’ll change it to “venomous snake” in the new Monster Manual.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

To be fair, I am exactly the kind of pedant who hopes they’ll change it to “venomous snake” in the new Monster Manual.

Me too! I may be arguing for a loose interpretation of words, but I'm pretty pedantic myself. It's that I've given it A LOT of thought, in order to reconcile these things with myself.

 

[CleverNickName]

So, you can think of the Graze mastery as giving all attacks with the weapon a 1 damage minimum (or whatever amount of damage the property ends up dealing).

The trouble is, my brain keeps defaulting to "why bother with the attack roll at all" if the target is going to take damage no matter what. How is this different from automatically rolling damage every round and letting a roll of 1 be that "graze" result?

 

[Lanefan]

This is also true of missed attacks with graze weapons. That’s why the mechanic is called graze.

But that creates three possible degrees of success to a spell’s two. Fireball can either hit directly and deal full damage or hit indirectly and deal half damage; there’s no chance of a complete miss.

Well, yes there is - if the fireball is cast on you and I'm 45 feet away from you, it misses me. (and IMO it's ludicrous that AoE spells aren't subject to aiming rolls; I can't believe that in almost 50 years the designers haven't figured this out yet)

Graze should do the same, it’s just that the attacker rolls to determine which one happens instead of the defender.

Though I do appreciate the idea of separating out weapons in terms of what they can do (and I'd really like to see a return to the 0e-1e-2e idea of specific weapon proficiencies, as an easy means of character customization), one wonders what the underlying intent/rationale behind this specific sort of DoaM/graze mechanic might be.

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is to shorten combats down because the enemies/monsters have too many hit points, then why not just cut the enemies' hit points and have done with it? (side question: does anyone know whether this will work both ways i.e. whether some monsters and-or NPC opponents will also get abilties like this?)

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is to slightly increase the PCs' odds of winning, there has to be a better way.

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is just because some players get upset when they swish on a melee attack, well...let's just say posting my opinion of that would probably get me modded halfway to hell and back.

 

[Charlaquin]

The trouble is, my brain keeps defaulting to "why bother with the attack roll at all" if the target is going to take damage no matter what. How is this different from automatically rolling damage every round and letting a roll of 1 be that "graze" result?

Why bother with a saving throw for fireball if the target is always going to take at least half damage? Simple, because there are two possible degrees of success that the roll is being used to decide between. You may be doing damage either way, but in one case you’re doing a smaller portion of the damage you could potentially do in the other case. This is literally no different.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, yes there is - if the fireball is cast on you and I'm 45 feet away from you, it misses me. (and IMO it's ludicrous that AoE spells aren't subject to aiming rolls; I can't believe that in almost 50 years the designers haven't figured this out yet)

Though I do appreciate the idea of separating out weapons in terms of what they can do (and I'd really like to see a return to the 0e-1e-2e idea of specific weapon proficiencies, as an easy means of character customization), one wonders what the underlying intent/rationale behind this specific sort of DoaM/graze mechanic might be.

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is to shorten combats down because the enemies/monsters have too many hit points, then why not just cut the enemies' hit points and have done with it? (side question: does anyone know whether this will work both ways i.e. whether some monsters and-or NPC opponents will also get abilties like this?)

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is to slightly increase the PCs' odds of winning, there has to be a better way.

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is just because some players get upset when they swish on a melee attack, well...let's just say posting my opinion of that would probably get me modded halfway to hell and back.

The intent of the mechanic is to further differentiate weapons…

 

[Pauln6]

Similarly, when 4e first introduced the Warlord, I was surprised to find that they could wake you up from 0. I was absolutely on board with them giving ("healing") HP, but it took me awhile to come around on them stopping you from dying by yelling at you. (Doesn't bother me anymore).

I just think of Sarah Connor in Terminator, "On your feet, soldier!" I didn’t find it hard to conceptualise at all!

 

[Aldarc]

Though I do appreciate the idea of separating out weapons in terms of what they can do (and I'd really like to see a return to the 0e-1e-2e idea of specific weapon proficiencies, as an easy means of character customization), one wonders what the underlying intent/rationale behind this specific sort of DoaM/graze mechanic might be.

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is to shorten combats down because the enemies/monsters have too many hit points, then why not just cut the enemies' hit points and have done with it? (side question: does anyone know whether this will work both ways i.e. whether some monsters and-or NPC opponents will also get abilties like this?)

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is to slightly increase the PCs' odds of winning, there has to be a better way.

If the intent of this sort of mechanic is just because some players get upset when they swish on a melee attack, well...let's just say posting my opinion of that would probably get me modded halfway to hell and back.

The OSR game Worlds Beyond Number also has a "hit on a miss" property for its weapons called the "Shock" value. However, the Shock value is the minimum damage a weapon does against an opponent with a certain AC or lower. According to Kevin Crawford, some of the big points was to cut down on the whiff factor of the d20, particularly for warriors, while also keeping combat moving towards a resolution. Shock value also cuts against PCs. You may be a naysayer about the mechanic, but I can tell you from experience that it works well in practice.

 

[CleverNickName]

This is literally no different.

And that is literally the problem I'm having: I don't want to replace attack rolls with save throws (or another save throw equivalent).