Dog_Moon2003 said:
This doesn't seem all that great...
I think you're right; the characters who have the biggest incentive to take Weapon Focus (as it stands now) twice are those who want to use two different weapons at once, or those who want to use two very different weapons for different purposes (e.g. a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, or two very different melee weapons like the longsword and the guisarme). But even this option is, I think, a nontrivial improvement.
Still, it doesn't allow a fighter to use a large number of weapons very effectively, which may cut into the versatile "master of all weapons" theme. Perhaps something like this (which is a sketch, off the cuff), which uses UA-style weapon groups (it's essentially your suggestion, but is something fighters have to spend feats for rather than get automatically):
Expanded Repertoire [Special]
Prerequisite: Weapon Focus, fighter level 4th+
Benefit: You extend the benefit of the Weapon Focus feat (and all feats that apply to weapons with which you've taken Weapon Focus) to every weapon that shares a group with a weapon that you've taken the feat with.
Thus, if longswords share a group with, say, scimitars and bastard swords, and longbows share a group with shortbows and the composite versions thereof, a fighter with Weapon Focus (longbow), Weapon Focus (scimitar), and Expanded Repertoire gains the benefit of Weapon Focus with longswords, scimitars, bastard swords, (composite) longbows, and (composite) shortbows. If the fighter were later to take Weapon Focus with a totally different weapon, he'd also get the benefit of Focus with all weapons in that group, two.
After paying four or five feats for the privilege (Expanded Repertoire and a few instances of Weapon Focus), a fighter could potentially use a very large variety of weapons exceptionally well, which seems appropriate. (He won't be
equally good with everything, since some of his other feats are likely to be much more useful with some weapons than others; and his fewer additional feats will prevent him from being as effective as a true specialist; both of these results seem right, too.)
sfedi said:
Although now that I think of it, isn't this just too good?
What other options compete with these?
Wouldn't this make every fighter choose this Feat path?
I'm not sure what you mean here -- are you asking whether the feats themselves (Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical, and Weapon Mastery) are too good? Well, yes and no. Weapon Specialization and Improved Critical are almost certainly well-balanced; they've been around since the beginning of 3e and are as canonical and well-playtested as feats get. That said, my sense is that most fighters
do take Weapon Specialization and Improved Critical (and the Greater feats of 3.5) as soon as they can, so they
are a feat path that most fighters
do choose. But, again, this is a feature of the standard rules, not my house rules, and since the feats don't by any means exhaust the fighter's range of bonus feats, most people (including me) don't see this as all that problematic.
Is limiting (a stackable) Improved Critical to fighters in some sense too good? It depends. First, it depends on which version of Improved Critical you think is balanced: the stackable 3.0e version or the nonstackable 3.5e version. I happen to think that the 3.0e version is balanced and the 3.5e version is too weak (this particular issue has been discussed a lot on the boards, and has been given extended treatment by Sean Reynolds). Given this construal of Improved Critical, the houserule essentially represents a change from an underpowered feat available to everybody to a balanced feat available to fighters. The result is a slight increase in the power of the fighter with respect to the other classes, which is mildly good if you think (like I do) that the fighter missed out compared to the boost all the other combat classes got in 3.5e, and mildly bad otherwise, but in any case not a significant enough of a change to make a really big deal.
Is Weapon Mastery too good? Well, compared to the standard Greater Weapon Focus/Specialization combination, you're trading 1 point of damage with your favorite weapon(s) for an extra feat. Whether or not this is a good trade is complicated. It's clearly a good trade in the abstract, since Weapon Specialization and its Greater cousin suggest that a feat is woth 2 points of damage; moreover, Weapon Mastery is straightforwardly better than Greater Weapon Focus. That said, the extra damage becomes a better deal as you can apply it to more weapons, which is something my Weapon Focus rules enable. Moreover, the trade described above is an oversimplification, since in the absence of good high-level feats, fighters often face diminishing returns with bonus feats as they pick up miscellaneous feats after having already gotten all they ones they really want, so eventually the extra point of damage might be worth the feat after all. In any case, though, the fighter comes out at best about half a feat ahead, which isn't a large enough change to be a big deal, especially if you think (again) that the 3.5e fighter is slightly underpowered.
Is the new Weapon Focus too good? Probably not, since you're still giving up feats that you could use for nifty more general ones like Power Attack: you're still getting diversity at the cost of specialization; or, rather, you're sacrificing the situational bonuses or combat options that most fighter feats provide in exchange for optimally exploiting your existing advantages with a broader range of weapons. Moreover, as I discussed above, you need to pay a lot of feats to get
real diversity, and I don't think that being able to get specialization bonuses with, say, most bladed weapons and some bows is much better or worth than your typical feat tree.
Was that too exhaustive? Probably.
