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.

 

[Eubani]

What if other people just disagree with you about what fighters should be? By general consensus, fighters are a strong class in 5e, and they are easily the most popular. I certainly find them to be an effective, top tier class. I look forward to play testing weapon mastery to see how it affects them and other warrior classes. I'm not worried about fighters or barbarians; it's monks that I hope get a significant revamp, and I don't see weapon mastery being much of a difference maker, especially considering how many of their attacks don't use weapons.

Currently we have a Fighter class that sacrifices all other areas of the game to keep up in combat. Even then in single target range or melee, trying to do both will give you reduced results and don't even bother trying to do more that basic hp damage.

 

[Minigiant]

I still would like Graandmastery

Weapons	Mastery	Grandmastery
Battleaxe	Flex	High Crit
Flail	Sap	Sweep
Longsword	Flex	Keen
Scimatar	Nick	Dance
Warkpick	Sap	High Crit
Warhammer	Flail	Rhythm

 

[Minigiant]

I completely agree. Simulationism and armor get really weird in D&D, especially since there are so many different things that fall under the "armor class" umbrella, and so many ways to define "damage." Everyone finds their own way to square this with the fiction of their game; I'm no exception. My brain parses it like this:

In my mind, a "miss" is an attack that fails to do damage (or fails to remove hit points, if you don't like using the D-word.) A sword can fail to do damage/remove hit points in a number of ways: it can fail to make contact with its target, it can glance off of armor, it can get parried aside by an opponent's blade, it can strike a shield or magical force field, whatever. The same goes for daggers, axes, spears, clubs, arrows, maces...and yes, hammers. (Tangent: why hammers?)

If the attack deals damage in any way (or removes any amount of hit points), I don't call it a "miss." Instead, I measure the amount by making a damage roll, which will inform everyone if the attack was a devastating blow (rolling max damage), just a flesh wound (rolling minimum damage), or anything in between.

I'm not saying this is the right way to parse weapon combat in D&D, and it's certainly not the only way. It's just the way that I will always use.

I think the issue is because of the abstraction of AC, the ways different weapons are used in real life and fantasy is ignored and get messed up in imagination.

Just in "fantasy"
A battleaxe hacked through shields and light armor
A flail swings around a shield
A scimatar moves fast and is hard to dodge
A longsword chops into light armor, bludgens medium armor, and pierces heavy armor gaps.
A warhammer bludgens through armor
A warpick pierces everything but has an awkward strike point.

1e have complex attack matrixes. Those were too complex for the speed of play. Same with "Ignore Shield" "Ignore Dodge" "Ignore Heavy armor".

Graze (DOAM) and Puncture (adv) are ways to display the differences of weapons without slowing down combat.

 

[Bluenose]

What if other people just disagree with you about what fighters should be? By general consensus, fighters are a strong class in 5e, and they are easily the most popular. I certainly find them to be an effective, top tier class. I look forward to play testing weapon mastery to see how it affects them and other warrior classes. I'm not worried about fighters or barbarians; it's monks that I hope get a significant revamp, and I don't see weapon mastery being much of a difference maker, especially considering how many of their attacks don't use weapons.

Where are you getting the idea of a "general consensus that Fighters are a strong class in 5e"? There seem to be an awful lot of threads all over the place saying that they're not and that there's a large disparity between them and casters. Which doesn't seem too likely to be a sign of how strong they are.

Though I don't imagine anyone disagrees about Monks needing a lot of work, still I'd be quite surprised if they got more than token changes to pretend it's not inspired by east Asian martial artists. I'd certainly expect to see anything but the most mundane Wuxia abilties, certainly nothing going into the Xuanhuan area of actually fantastic abilities.

 

[Lanefan]

Some people just want Fighters to suck. By placing MJ tat high, that is what you are saying.

I'm not just talking about Fighters but all classes. My examples were Fighters to follow on from previous similar examples.

 

[Lanefan]

Something I would have liked to of seen is something like:
Bleeding: If hit target AC by greater than say 5 (pulling a number out of my hind end) Ongoing damage at beginning of targets turn equal to attack stat mod till either target or an ally spends an action and succeeds on a DC10 (Wisdom) Medicine check. So either burn a turn (unless unlucky with check) or keep taking damage. Control or damage opponent's (or dice's) choice.

As a property for for jagged or barbed weapons, I like this!

The only changes I'd make are

a) that the ongoing damage value would be set by the weapon used rather than by anything related to its user; and
b) that the ongoing damage be the lesser of the damage done or [5, or whatever flat value is set]

The first clause is to allow weapons to be differentiated by their ongoing damage value. So, and getting my numbers from the same place you did, a flamberge might have ongoing-damage 3 while a barbed trident might have ongoing-damage 5.

The second clause is to prevent narrative oddities where a 1-point hit leaves the victim with 5 points per round ongoing damage.

Oh, and to prevent some real OP craziness it probably shouldn't stack, or have stacking be very limited.

 

[Incenjucar]

Frankly, give fighters abilities until wizard players start wanting to play fighters instead, then rachet it back so they have to have a hard think about it. Start by going way too far with weapon mastery.

 

[Eubani]

I'm not just talking about Fighters but all classes. My examples were Fighters to follow on from previous similar examples.

That example would put legendary and mythical figure further beyond 21 if you put a skilled sportsman at 21. Most of us want legendary and mythical warrior between 11 - 20.

 

[JohnSnow]

I'm not just talking about Fighters but all classes. My examples were Fighters to follow on from previous similar examples.

And the counterpoint is that while Michael Jordan may be a 20th-level "real world" basketball player, in D&D terms, he doesn't crack the mid-single digits of physical ability. A D&D fighter that's scratching at 10th-level is probably like...Batman, or Captain America (take your pick).

It's just a point that we really shouldn't be holding the ability of the Fighter to "real world" limits.

 

[Incenjucar]

No real life human being could survive a single full on entry level fireball given the damage it can do to objects.