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.
D&D (2024) New One D&D Weapons Table Shows 'Mastery' Traits
- Category Dungeons & Dragons
- Thread starter darjr
- Start date
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
My guess is that it has none, or is a Class feature for the Monk and/or a Feat gated ability.
Incenjucar
Legend
Move 5' before or after the attack could be fun.
Chaosmancer
Legend
Okay, a lot of thoughts swirling around my head. I'll try and break up this post into sections.
This first section I'll call "I guess I'm the only person who listens to Treantmonk" Anyways, I say that, because I heard about these rules before coming to this site, while watching stuff about the summit. And during those videos, something was said that REALLY changes how I feel about these rules.
When getting a Mastery? You pick a single weapon as the one you get the mastery for. Link to his video here:
This can obviously change before the packet is released, but it seems the current plan isn't that every barbarian is going to have access to a mastery for whichever weapon they happen to have, they aren't even going to have a single mastery, which they apply to the correct weapons (like picking "slow" and being able to use that with all clubs, javelins, ect). No, you get to pick a single weapon, like Rapier, and get the mastery for that weapon. And that's it.
Now, it seems the Fighter can swap them, and may eventually get the ability to use two at the same time, but this vastly changes the mechanic, because now it is a specialization. It isn't that the Warriors get these extra abilities that Priests, Mages and Experts don't get, it is that they get a special ability with a single weapon, that they (unless they are a fighter) cannot change. And, as I recently was debating with someone who claimed that a person who got Polearm master should have "known the consequences" of having less access to magical weapons, because the benefit of longswords is that they have more magical versions (their words), I think it is fair to say that there is a massive culture clash waiting with this idea, as presented.
I also suspect, this is the way they are going to try and save the Weapon Master Feat, and frankly... I'm not sure these are going to be worth a whole feat. I mean, flex certainly isn't worth a feat.
I also note with great trepidation that Hand Crossbows get Puncture, which since Hand Crossbows still have crossbow expert making them the best weapon choice in the game, also giving advantage on every subsequent hit after hitting? That sounds like a disaster.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
More generally, I like the idea of Weapon Masteries, but I don't think they are enough. If this is the big change for Warriors that WoTC has planned, they aren't going far enough. They are cool, and fun, but they are doing nothing for the two major issues facing warriors.
1) They suck outside of combat. No other grouping is bad inside of combat to the degree that warriors suck outside of combat. If this isn't addressed, we are just going to have the same issues we always have.
2) This is not enough to compensate for Casters being able to end a fight in a single action. I know this has been said ad naseum, but starting at level 1, casters can end entire fights with a single action, something martials cannot do. If you give initiative to a fighter versus 3 goblins, the fighter is likely to not finish the goblins before his turn is over. And the only possible way they can starts at level 2. Meanwhile, a level 1 wizard can end that fight with a single spell.
And no, the fact that the wizard can "only" do this twice before they are back on par with the others and the fighter "never runs out of sword" does not balance. Because the Fighter DOES run out of Hit Points, very quickly. And the higher level the caster, the more times they just end an encounter, by themselves, which means in theory you need to have an ever increasing number of daily encounters just so the warriors can reach parity.
Masteries are great, again, I think these are pretty cool and I like them for Martials to start getting something, But they likely aren't enough to balance these concerns.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Bouncing off this, I think I must official declare that I hate Western Political Hierarchies for how they have made my fantasy game so hard to play. Because the argument of "but they are the son of a god, therefore they don't count" seems to forget the context.
Essentially every great hero, who wasn't a mage, a minstrel, or a woman, was a nobleman or a king. All of them. Which makes sense, you can't have everyday peasants thinking they could go out and change things or be special, that was reserved for people who were secretly the children of important nobles, or kings. And why did nobles and kings get to be nobles and kings? Because they were descended from these heroes, who were descended from the gods, because the only way to claim "I get to rule because of my Daddy" harder than the other guy was to say "my daddy is a gawd!" or "my daddy's daddy is a gawd!"
Also, to note, Odysseus was also incredibly strong. Remember, he had a bow that no man could string, let alone draw, whose sole purpose in the narrative was to be strung, drawn, and fired through 40 axe heads to prove he was the real deal, before brutally slaughtering every noble and king who was a suitor to his wife. Him, his son, and two dudes against 108 men, many of whom were likely trained warriors as well.
Oh, and Odysseus was one-eighth god as well, since he is the Great-Grandson of Hermes. Because he was a king, and just about every king in every myth has SOME blessed lineage, because how else do you justify them being Kings? You can't find a martial hero from classical mythology who does not have some connection to the gods, they all did. And if they didn't have a direct bloodline, they were blessed by the gods/God.
This first section I'll call "I guess I'm the only person who listens to Treantmonk" Anyways, I say that, because I heard about these rules before coming to this site, while watching stuff about the summit. And during those videos, something was said that REALLY changes how I feel about these rules.
When getting a Mastery? You pick a single weapon as the one you get the mastery for. Link to his video here:
This can obviously change before the packet is released, but it seems the current plan isn't that every barbarian is going to have access to a mastery for whichever weapon they happen to have, they aren't even going to have a single mastery, which they apply to the correct weapons (like picking "slow" and being able to use that with all clubs, javelins, ect). No, you get to pick a single weapon, like Rapier, and get the mastery for that weapon. And that's it.
Now, it seems the Fighter can swap them, and may eventually get the ability to use two at the same time, but this vastly changes the mechanic, because now it is a specialization. It isn't that the Warriors get these extra abilities that Priests, Mages and Experts don't get, it is that they get a special ability with a single weapon, that they (unless they are a fighter) cannot change. And, as I recently was debating with someone who claimed that a person who got Polearm master should have "known the consequences" of having less access to magical weapons, because the benefit of longswords is that they have more magical versions (their words), I think it is fair to say that there is a massive culture clash waiting with this idea, as presented.
I also suspect, this is the way they are going to try and save the Weapon Master Feat, and frankly... I'm not sure these are going to be worth a whole feat. I mean, flex certainly isn't worth a feat.
I also note with great trepidation that Hand Crossbows get Puncture, which since Hand Crossbows still have crossbow expert making them the best weapon choice in the game, also giving advantage on every subsequent hit after hitting? That sounds like a disaster.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
More generally, I like the idea of Weapon Masteries, but I don't think they are enough. If this is the big change for Warriors that WoTC has planned, they aren't going far enough. They are cool, and fun, but they are doing nothing for the two major issues facing warriors.
1) They suck outside of combat. No other grouping is bad inside of combat to the degree that warriors suck outside of combat. If this isn't addressed, we are just going to have the same issues we always have.
2) This is not enough to compensate for Casters being able to end a fight in a single action. I know this has been said ad naseum, but starting at level 1, casters can end entire fights with a single action, something martials cannot do. If you give initiative to a fighter versus 3 goblins, the fighter is likely to not finish the goblins before his turn is over. And the only possible way they can starts at level 2. Meanwhile, a level 1 wizard can end that fight with a single spell.
And no, the fact that the wizard can "only" do this twice before they are back on par with the others and the fighter "never runs out of sword" does not balance. Because the Fighter DOES run out of Hit Points, very quickly. And the higher level the caster, the more times they just end an encounter, by themselves, which means in theory you need to have an ever increasing number of daily encounters just so the warriors can reach parity.
Masteries are great, again, I think these are pretty cool and I like them for Martials to start getting something, But they likely aren't enough to balance these concerns.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Bouncing off this, I think I must official declare that I hate Western Political Hierarchies for how they have made my fantasy game so hard to play. Because the argument of "but they are the son of a god, therefore they don't count" seems to forget the context.
Essentially every great hero, who wasn't a mage, a minstrel, or a woman, was a nobleman or a king. All of them. Which makes sense, you can't have everyday peasants thinking they could go out and change things or be special, that was reserved for people who were secretly the children of important nobles, or kings. And why did nobles and kings get to be nobles and kings? Because they were descended from these heroes, who were descended from the gods, because the only way to claim "I get to rule because of my Daddy" harder than the other guy was to say "my daddy is a gawd!" or "my daddy's daddy is a gawd!"
Also, to note, Odysseus was also incredibly strong. Remember, he had a bow that no man could string, let alone draw, whose sole purpose in the narrative was to be strung, drawn, and fired through 40 axe heads to prove he was the real deal, before brutally slaughtering every noble and king who was a suitor to his wife. Him, his son, and two dudes against 108 men, many of whom were likely trained warriors as well.
Oh, and Odysseus was one-eighth god as well, since he is the Great-Grandson of Hermes. Because he was a king, and just about every king in every myth has SOME blessed lineage, because how else do you justify them being Kings? You can't find a martial hero from classical mythology who does not have some connection to the gods, they all did. And if they didn't have a direct bloodline, they were blessed by the gods/God.
Can't we already do this with all types of attacks?
Incenjucar
Legend
+5'. Though I suppose that would encourage a weird conga line speedster scenario. Perhaps denying advantage to targets struck?
Ahh, in addition. Thanks.
Movement is already trivialized too much unless we get new rules with that, Adding this is taking it even further & all but explicitly giving a teleport speed. Every round would be a whole new game of perfection & not in a good way.
One thing learned from D&DNext that should be kept in mind when designing weapon properties, mastery properties, maneuvers or anything similar is that Fighter control tends to be soft control thus if you offer control or damage more often than not players would opt for damage. This means that you have to offer one of two things Hard control or light control + damage. Even with hard control a small amount of damage may be required.
If monsters were designed better and not just bags of hp, then Fighters (any class actually) could afford to surrender some damage for control when the situation suited. Unfortunately sacrificing damage currently achieves little more than making the battle take up more game time without the benefit of adding more excitement. Better monster design opens more doors for better character options. Unfortunately I don't believe the designers see this, having only talked about higher CR creatures being too weak. Just as they did in 4e I think there needs to be a review in the way they go about their monster design so the monsters go from largely boring bags of hp, to fountains of inspiration for what can happen in an encounter for both DM and players alike.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Well, you got any examples?
What would be worth giving up some damage to achieve... something else... that resolves an encounter in a way that 5e doesn't do? I mean you could add something like SWSE's condition track, but if you incorporate actions that target that, it's essentially just an alternative hit points track.
So what do you have in mind?
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