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.

 

[JohnSnow]

Well, I guess the question is, what problem are they trying to solve with any of the mastery abilities? My guess is they are trying to solve:

1) Weapons could be cooler with more differentiation
2) Warriors need something unique

The 'damage on miss' is just one of many ideas they obviously came up with. I doubt that at any point they sat around saying "Wouldn't it be cool if a Fighter could kill a dragon by missing him 120 times?".

I not deadset on having 'damage on a miss' being one of them. But I'm not opposed to it either. Setting a minimum damage to 1 (or Str at most) for two weapons (for a small number of classes) is not going to overbalance anything. And considering half the 'misses' in D&D actually are armor hits, it's not a huge leap logically for me.

Whether or not this stays as one of the Mastery perks, I'm still excited about the Mastery system as a whole, and look forward to seeing more details.

I'll definitely be one of the people providing feedback regarding "damage on a miss." It may be satisfying to J. Random Player who's having "a bad night" with their dice, but narratively as a DM, it's a forking nightmare.

"Damage on a miss" has always raised all kinds of problems. Just as one example, can a character take poison damage from such a "not hit?"

I have an idea of what problem they're trying to solve with that mechanic, and how/why they might think it's fine, but if they're justifying this at all with "hit points, for the most part, only represent fatigue," then they either need to rethink some of how they work, or at the very least, rule that a character must receive at least one actual hit to drop them to 0 hit points. In theory, that would address the (admittedly unlikely!) corner case of a creature ending up making death saves without ever having been "hit" in combat.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

But why? There's nothing wrong with the logic of my brain, and I'm already quite familiar with how hammers work. Unlearning logic in order to justify a new rule just isn't worth it to me.

Maybe I should start there? If I could understand the problem they are trying to solve by adding this mechanic, I might at least be able to see the Gamist point of view (since the Simulationist side is having none of it.) Why do we need so badly for hammers to deal damage when they miss?

To reflect that getting hit with a glancing blow in armor still hurts when the right person does it. Even if not a glancing blow it's wearing an opponent down, similar to how boxers often fight. It's simulationist if nothing else.

 

[Incenjucar]

DoaM allows for "I never miss" and "Your doom is inevitable" narratives. Also great for reckless low to-hit, high damage builds.

 

[Lanefan]

Can you really not imagine the possibility of a character being skilled enough at fighting with weapons that when they swing a greatsword or shoot a heavy crossbow with intent to kill, they’ll always at least get a scratch in?

Personally, no, I can't.

I mean sure, specific situations will arise now and then where one could rule this would be the case, usually involving set-ups where the target simply doesn't have room to dodge or is somehow otherwise partially restrained. But for general use, two things get in the way for me:

1. In most cases there's room to dodge an incoming blow or shot* completely and that has to be accounted for.
2. The way I want to see it, nobody is ever perfectly competent and even the highest-level of characters will still miss (or fumble) on occasion due to sheer bad luck, in balance with the notion that even somebody who hasn't a clue what they're doing will sometimes get in a lucky shot or strike. against something way above their pay grade (one of 5e's better design qualities is that it flattened the power curve such that these very things can happen, as opposed to 3e where they cannot).

* - point-blank shots e.g. taken from within 10 feet or so IMO need their own discrete sub-system involving potential insta-kill and much higher damage possibilities, but that's a separate issue.

 

[Lanefan]

Only available to warrior classes... as we didn't have enough of level 1 fighter multiclass already...

The answer there is (and IMO always has been) to make certain mechanics and benefits exclusive to single-class characters.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

1. In most cases there's room to dodge an incoming blow or shot* completely and that has to be accounted for.

Hard disagree unless your combats all take place on large open fields without even much in the way of trees.

D&D actually has the opposite problem imo - often there's basically zero room for manuever, but you can still get missed and stuff. This is even worse for beings largely than human-sized. DoaM is only even possibly a problem if it's a whiff entirely.

2. The way I want to see it, nobody is ever perfectly competent and even the highest-level of characters will still miss (or fumble) on occasion due to sheer bad luck, in balance with the notion that even somebody who hasn't a clue what they're doing will sometimes get in a lucky shot or strike. against something way above their pay grade (one of 5e's better design qualities is that it flattened the power curve such that these very things can happen, as opposed to 3e where they cannot).

But D&D has never taken that attitude.

This is most notably demonstrated with spells, many of which simply cannot fail.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The answer there is (and IMO always has been) to make certain mechanics and benefits exclusive to single-class characters.

Agree with this completely though. 5E's multiclassing isn't interesting, cool, or particularly good for RP or unusual characters or the like. It's even worse than 3.XE's one, though the same design. So going with stuff that's only for single class characters seems reasonable.

 

[Lanefan]

nope... you keep dodgeing and weaving and blocking then pass out from exhaustion trying to keep up with the faster stronger better trained warrior... odds of you being able to dodge and block until then are slim, but so too is a fight where the miss damage brings you to 0

Given that most of the time (other than at very low level) the PCs are fighting foes of their own combat-level or lower, this wouldn't come up very often. And at very low level, doing extra damage isn't often required.

Unless monsters (which often do outrank each individual PC in terms of sheer fighting capability) are going to get this as well, in which case you may have a valid argument.

 

[Vaalingrade]

No argument here. The question I'm asking myself is, which problem(s) are the devs trying to fix by giving hammers the ability to remove hit points on a missed attack roll?

Opening up a long closed off area of game design?

Giving certain weapons a purpose in life?

Probably making up for martials still not getting anything to do outside of combat?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

"Damage on a miss" has always raised all kinds of problems. Just as one example, can a character take poison damage from such a "not hit?"

They can from a green dragon's breath weapon!