Level Up (A5E) Proposed Variant Rule for Natural Weapons and Cultural Weapons/Armor

[xiphumor]

If your culture grants you a weapon proficiency you already have, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls using that weapon. Likewise, if you have a natural weapon that increases the damage of your unarmed strikes and also have another feature that increases the damage of your unarmed strikes, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls with unarmed strikes.

If your culture grants you an armor proficiency you already have, you gain the following benefits while wearing that armor:

Light Armor: You gain a +1 bonus to Dexterity saving throws.

Medium Armor: the maximum Dexterity modifier you can add to your Armor Class increases to 3.

Heavy Armor: While wearing heavy armor, you reduce all bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons by 3.

 

[Corinnguard]

If your culture grants you a weapon proficiency you already have, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls using that weapon. Likewise, if you have a natural weapon that increases the damage of your unarmed strikes and also have another feature that increases the damage of your unarmed strikes, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls with unarmed strikes.

If your culture grants you an armor proficiency you already have, you gain the following benefits while wearing that armor:

Light Armor: You gain a +1 bonus to Dexterity saving throws.

Medium Armor: the maximum Dexterity modifier you can add to your Armor Class increases to 3.

Heavy Armor: While wearing heavy armor, you reduce all bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons by 3.

This makes sense to me as certain cultures are going to place more emphasis on the use of and training in of certain armor types (light, medium and heavy) and certain kinds of weapons (including natural weapons) than others. It would be a part of their cultural upbringing.

Could you see certain rare weapons being more common in one culture and rare in another? The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign setting had a table that broke down the continent of Faerun into regions. And if your character was from a particular region, they received bonuses with regards to language, equipment and feats. In some cases, an exotic weapon would be seen as a martial weapon in one region and not another.

 

[xiphumor]

I could absolutely see that, and in some sense that’s what bonus weapon proficiencies do: move a weapon from being classified as martial to simple for characters from a particular region.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Yoink.