Weapon Familiarity: What's the Big Deal?

[Darklone]

Animated shields are boring.

I tend to rule them out and I know many DMs who do so too. That's a huge boost for the shield twink, but I like it.

I'm more concerned about the poor TWF twinks who can't really enchant their TWD weapons with armourboosting shield enhancements.

 

[green slime]

The effective benefit of sword&board (or, in this case, axe&board) only works out to +2 AC at higher levels though. This is due to being able to get animated shields, and animating being a +2-value ability. So, you either fight with a one-handed weapon and a large shield +3, or a two-handed weapon and an animated large shield +1. Had it not been for animated shields, things would be more in the favor of the shield-user.

And you look absolutely rediculous in an antimagic field with your shield lying across your toes instead of on your shield arm...

 

[Li Shenron]

I didn't want to hijack the dwarf thread, so I figured I'd start a new one. Lots of people in htere seemed to hate weapon familiarity. My question is: why?

My answer is: boh?

From a flavor point of view, nothing wrong with it in my opinion. It's nice that a race has different traditional weapons which everyone in their army learns to use, besides worldwide-known weapons. Martial W.P. in general doesn't necessarily mean that the character has been training in each weapon, but rather has enough martial training to be able to pick up most weapons (except the exotic, which require focused specific training) and use them at no penalty. Exotic weapons are a category that includes uncommon or difficult to use weapons; a weapon which is invented and crafted by one race only makes usually sense to be there (and ex-otic by the way just means "coming from outside").

From a rules point of view, the disappointing thing is that the races who got weapon familiarity are Gnomes (1) and Dwarves (2) which were already on the higher position among the 3.0 PHB races, while the weakest races got crumbs (Half-Elves) or not even them (Half-Orcs).
It does not make Dwarves broken, but it is nominally 2 free feats for dwarven Fighters/Barbarians/Rangers/Paladins. If their are either double-weapon specialists or sword&board-ers then it is effectively 1 free feats (don't think you are going to exploit both often). For any other specialist like tripper, 2WFers, archer is worth very little (and for other classes it is exactly nothing).

I repeat myself, there is no problem IMHO, but it's really non-sense that it went into the already best races, while the poor ones got nothing. And the reason given by WotC not to "touch" Half-races was "because they are already the players favourites..."

 

[Pax]

My own solution, as a GM, is ... to have different S/M/E (Simple/Martial/Exotic) weapon lists for each cultural group. After all, for an Oriental Adventures Samurai, the Katana can hardly be considered exotic ... while the rapier should be ... whereas a Florentine fencing-master would hold the opposite view!

 

[Dthamilaye]

And you look absolutely rediculous in an antimagic field with your shield lying across your toes instead of on your shield arm...

Like nobody else would look ridiculous at 15th+ level in antimagic field. I believe the shield (giving now AC +1 or +2, no magical bonuses) on the ground is not your primary concern when everybody is without 200k-760k of magical stuff

 

[Chroma]

My own solution, as a GM, is ... to have different S/M/E (Simple/Martial/Exotic) weapon lists for each cultural group. After all, for an Oriental Adventures Samurai, the Katana can hardly be considered exotic ... while the rapier should be ... whereas a Florentine fencing-master would hold the opposite view!

I think part of the problem stems from the use of the word "exotic": for some of the weapons it appears to mean "rare" and for some of the weapons it seems to mean "difficult to use". Certainly, for the people in an Oriental Adventure the appearance of a katana would be common-place, but the use of it one-handed would be a fairly rare skill, hard to master, hence: exotic.

So, difficult to use would be the reason for the exotic nature of a lot of the two-weapon or "racial" weapons, not that every Dwarf hadn't heard of an Urgosh, so it's just free Feats.

And not giving the half-races anything to compete, when they're already low on the racial totem, was just silly.

 

[Pax]

Oh, I agree ... though I think one's S/M/E lists should be based on cultural background, not JUST on race (the question becomes: was your half-0orc raised among humans, or among orcs?).

And a human from a Maya/Aztec culture would have much different trainign and familirity than, say, a Spanish Conquistador; while the spaniard is quite likely proficient with most or all small firearms, he would be very awkward when trying to use a macahuitl ... and vice versa; the aztec or maya wrrior could be VRY good with their weapon, but wouldn't know the first thing about accurate marksmanship with a musket or black-powder pistol.

Further, while a modern human would have a clue how to fire a musket, he would be very unlikely to know how to properly reload it -- let alone clean and maintain it. And he would be extremely unlikely to know how to wield a saber or macahuitl, regardless of having either hispanic or mesoamerican ancestry -- or even both ...!

 

[Numion]

People probably think it's a big deal because one-handed weapons don't "suck" compared to two handed weapons (or especially doubly weapons). Try setting up a low or mid level battle between a well equipped sword and shield fighter and a greatsword wielder.

How mid-level board-and-sword fighter fares against a greatsword wielder is besides the point. More intresting would be to compare those fighters vs. monsters.

Balance of different PCs shouldn't be evalued by pitting then in one vs. one arena battles against each other, but rather by evaluing how they fare in a normal 4 PC group, against normal opponents.

 

[Thels]

Even then, Sword'n'Boarders are occasionally used as meatshields while the other partymembers make toast of the opposition. Someone holding a large shield simply is better at blocking than someone needing both hands to hold a sword, especially if you replace a large shield by a tower shield, though later on that doesn't matter much, since the tower shield is +9 while the large shield is +7, but if you're there to block the monsters, not to do the damage, then pick it up!

The Waraxe is not only usefull for Sword'n'Board, it's also usefull for TWF, either with 2 of them for -4 or with a handaxe or other item for -2, though I don't like the latter, since specializing in 2 weapons burns feats (5 per weapon now in 3.5).

I got one character using a Waraxe for twohanded combat, which is more or less flavordirected, but it's still usefull on occasion, since he can still fight when one of his hands becomes encumbered, though he'll probably pick up a shield someday.