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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6862399" data-attributes="member: 996">And fighter weapon-specialization went back to 1e UA. It was huge, a bonus to hit and damage equal to having an 18 STR (before percentiles, mind), on top of your actual STR bonus, and you gained extra attacks faster (3/2) at 1st level (but it multiplied RoF, so you could loose 3 arrows a round for instance), and double-specialization upped the bonus to +3 to hit & damage.  A few 1e weapons had cute tricks associated with them, and there were the little-used Weapon-vs-Armor adjustments, but Specialization eclipsed those considerations pretty thoroughly.  Specialization was a critical part of the optimal fighter in 2e and, to a lesser extent (because the bonus was lower, you waited longer to qualify for it, and it didn't add full-BAB attacks the way it did in 2e) in 3e.  4e & 5e finally dropped weapon specialization, but 4e had Weapon Talent and 5e Styles, which both applied to how you used a weapon - one-handed, two-handed, dual wielding, etc  - instead of to a specific weapon.  Still a specialty, but a broader one.  Then there's magic weapons.  In any edition of D&D, if you have a magic weapon, you use that weapon if you possibly can. In 1e UA, when you chose your specialization at 1st level or not at all, you were prettymuch screwed if you ended up finding only other sorts of magical weapons.  In classic D&D and 5e, where magic weapons are rare, DM-distributed, and make you 'just better,' getting one can be character-defining.  In 3e & 4e, you could make/buy magic weapons and have an assortment if you really wanted to, though they'd be weaker than going all in on one awesome weapon, and in 4e if your DM was using inherent bonuses you'd generally do just as well with a normal weapon.  Then there were oddball exceptions.  There was a 4e 'Weaponmaster' build in Dragon that actually was built around using a variety of weapons.  The classic Rod of Lordly Might side-stepped the magic-weapon-crowd-out phenomenon by giving you a magic weapon that could transform into several different weapons, as did the technically 'common,' but much less cool Dynamic Weapon in 4e.  In 3e you could willfully build a fighter to be good with a range of weapons and the feats/maneuvers they were best with, you just sacrificed some effectiveness to do it.  &c.  Magic weapons (or special materials) in classic D&D could be needed to damage an enemy, at all, or in 3e-5e to get past its resistance, or 4e counter resistance, regeneration or some other trait.  That factor probably peaked in 3e, with weapon types, magic weapons, and materials all in abundance - but, if you were specialized in a weapon, it didn't stop you from having a magical silvered version, an adamantine version, a cold-iron version, and undead-bane version, etc.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  As long as you don't get a magic weapon (or do, amazingly, get a selection of them).  You'll still be specialized in a 'style,' but you can afford to use a mace instead of a longsword when bludgeoning damage is called for or the like.  There's really not a lot more than damage type to choose from among weapons within a combat style, though, so there's also less incentive to generalize in 5e, while in 3e, for instance, weapons had more granularity.</blockquote>

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