D&D General Weapon Mastery - Yea or Nay?

[Lidgar]

Ok, so our group has been playing 2024 D&D for about 8 or 9 months now. Have been mostly enjoying it - a fine "evolution" of the 2014 rule set. Still finding little nuggets of changes that are easy to overlook, especially with spells (and grappling/shoving!).

But weapon mastery...oof. I get the intent, let's give those martials more tactical abilities! But boy do they slow things down at our table. Even the martials don't like them, and on the DM side its just one more thing to track (and remember for attacks too). So, last session, we decided to ditch 'em.

What are your thoughts on weapon mastery? Not theoretical, but in actual play? Yea or Nay?

 

[Gradine]

I like them, although honestly I find the implementation of them a little too restrictive; I'd prefer them to be a bit more flexible. But I can't say I've seen them slow down combat particularly meaningfully.

 

[Imaro]

I like them in my game, they add another dimension to martial characters and they are magnitudes easier to implement and track vs. spell effects.

 

[Stalker0]

I like a number of them. Graze that gives a little bonus damage....great. Nick that adds some oomph to TWF...fine.

The tripping one that you have to make a save for after each and every attack....no thank you!

 

[Odysseus]

I voted yea. But as RAW , I don't mind if we use them or don't.
I think for the next campaign I DM, I will houserule them somewhat.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I’m wondering about the balance of the one that gives disadvantage. Besides being annoying to track every creature that has it, every melee boss is screwed. It will, literally, never hit as long as one or more martials are on it. And I get the tactic behind it but a lot of big hitting bosses have lots of hp and low AC so the melee characters are going to hit it every round and so disadvantage every single attack.

But TBF, I have only run low level games so I have no idea how it works at higher levels

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I voted no because I feel 5e needs less rules bloat, not more.

Spoiler: Rant on why I dislike the change.

I think OSR variants like Shadowdark get combat right. It's fast, brutal and decisive. Weapon masteries, especially ones that add rolls, are moving away from that. We risk turning combat into 3-4 hour chess matches and not the fast-paced action of a fight.

In my experience, most players struggle with real-time decision-making, and the added micro-decisions these masteries bring often compound 5e’s pacing issues. The system isn’t crunchy enough to justify the slowdown, but it's too complex to move through quickly. It ends up in this awkward middle ground, with just enough friction to bog things down, and not enough depth to make it worthwhile.

So we end up spending 2 hours on a minor fight, debating decisions that have no bearing on the outcome, all so we can claim we did more. But if we look at it from a more holistic perspective, we did less per minute because everyone taking twice as long to do anything. Each player only actually contributing every 35 minutes, so we just turned what in other systems would be 10 minutes of intense action, into an exercise in doom scrolling social media.

And we do all of this so we can make, mostly, meaningless choices. That extra damage, or that prone condition, isnt going to change the outcome in 95% of fights. But the resulting decision tree will make everyone of those fights longer. It's the inconsequential rules bloat that 5e is famous for.

But feel free to ignore me, as I've never been a fan of 5e's combat. But I think this is an example of how the 2024 revisions moved the system in the wrong direction. They should have cut the fat, not added more.

 

[Digdude]

I voted no, because idea of it is great but the execution terrible, like most of WOTC stuff.

 

[Lidgar]

I voted no because I feel 5e needs less rules bloat, not more.

Spoiler: Rant on why I dislike the change.

I think OSR variants like Shadowdark get combat right. It's fast, brutal and decisive. Weapon masteries, especially ones that add rolls, are moving away from that. We risk turning combat into 3-4 hour chess matches and not the fast-paced action of a fight.

In my experience, most players struggle with real-time decision-making, and the added micro-decisions these masteries bring often compound 5e’s pacing issues. The system isn’t crunchy enough to justify the slowdown, but it's too complex to move through quickly. It ends up in this awkward middle ground, with just enough friction to bog things down, and not enough depth to make it worthwhile.

So we end up spending 2 hours on a minor fight, debating decisions that have no bearing on the outcome, all so we can claim we did more. But if we look at it from a more holistic perspective, we did less per minute because everyone taking twice as long to do anything. Each player only actually contributing every 35 minutes, so we just turned what in other systems would be 10 minutes of intense action, into an exercise in doom scrolling social media.

And we do all of this so we can make, mostly, meaningless choices. That extra damage, or that prone condition, isnt going to change the outcome in 95% of fights. But the resulting decision tree will make everyone of those fights longer. It's the inconsequential rules bloat that 5e is famous for.

But feel free to ignore me, as I've never been a fan of 5e's combat. But I think this is an example of how the 2024 revisions moved the system in the wrong direction. They should have cut the fat, not added more.

This is kind of where our group is at I think. We moved back to D&D from Pathfinder in 2014, partly because Pathfinder had become so fiddly to run. Now, with the 2025 version, D&D definitely feel like it took a step towards more complexity. While we like the combat options and character builds, we also prefer our combats not to drag on too long. Last session we had three combat encounters over a 7 hour period, with the first one lasting over three hours.

We've discussed giving Shadowdark a try after our current campaign wraps up. Looking forward to it.

 

[Merlecory]

I was a nay, for two reasons.

First, I still feel like I just say "I take the attach action", when I play a martial. If I had choices of a few masteries in any given action*, I probably wouldn't have this complaint.

Second, some of these masteries seem odd(?) narratively. Push and topple make me feel like it's dnd on ice. A level 1 fighter being able to shove and nock over a bear every single attack just strains my disbelief.

* I am thinking something along the line of choosing between cleave or a great weapon master attack on a 2 handed weapon.