D&D General Weapon Mastery - Yea or Nay?

[Bill Zebub]

I kinda get why being able to switch them was added into the rules.

You mean beside the general 5e principle that "Thou shalt not be forced to commit to character choices?"

 

[Willie the Duck]

You mean beside the general 5e principle that "Thou shalt not be forced to commit to character choices?"

I don't love the long rest changeout (switching as you level, or heck some newly-defined intermediate timeframe, would be better) but I understand the reasoning.

Weapon proficiencies and having to wait X levels to be able to use the really cool magic halberd you found because you thought lance was going to be a better backup (to the ubiquitous longsword/longbow/2Hsword optimal options) was a major complaint with AD&D. People hated ranger terrain choosing because it was all too common that what you thought the game was going to do at level 1 did not look like play by level 3-4.

Species is a generally an inalterable choice (polymorph and reincarnation notwithstanding). Classes are generally non-interchangeable. Feats as well. Retraining rules like I think we saw in late 3e are generally not there. It's mostly hardcoded spells (cantrips and spells-known), invocations, and things like this.

 

[billd91]

Weapon proficiencies and having to wait X levels to be able to use the really cool magic halberd you found because you thought lance was going to be a better backup (to the ubiquitous longsword/longbow/2Hsword optimal options) was a major complaint with AD&D. People hated ranger terrain choosing because it was all too common that what you thought the game was going to do at level 1 did not look like play by level 3-4.

I can definitely see the point of this line of criticism. Having to pick specific weapons to be proficient with in 1e, the addition of weapon specialization in 2e, weapon focus/specialization feats in 3e... all of these tended to push fighter-types into narrowing a character to the point where magic weapons as loot either had to be tailored or a player probably had to forego a notable class feature to get a sweet magic weapon. And that sucked then - it pretty much sucks now.
I've always liked methods of stepping away from over-specific options like 2e's weapon group proficiencies and style specializations, 3e's simple weapon/martial weapon proficiencies, feats and abilities that apply to broader classifications of weapons like the Weapon Finesse feat in 3e or Great Weapon Master in 5e.

 

[payn]

I can definitely see the point of this line of criticism. Having to pick specific weapons to be proficient with in 1e, the addition of weapon specialization in 2e, weapon focus/specialization feats in 3e... all of these tended to push fighter-types into narrowing a character to the point where magic weapons as loot either had to be tailored or a player probably had to forego a notable class feature to get a sweet magic weapon. And that sucked then - it pretty much sucks now.
I've always liked methods of stepping away from over-specific options like 2e's weapon group proficiencies and style specializations, 3e's simple weapon/martial weapon proficiencies, feats and abilities that apply to broader classifications of weapons like the Weapon Finesse feat in 3e or Great Weapon Master in 5e.

I liked the PF1 ranger. You could specialize from class to be a ranged, two weapon, or two handed combatant. Feats allowed you to dabble in other things as well so it wasnt all eggs in a single basket. Aside from that, you got features that lend themselves to the exploration pillar too. To this day a good template of class design, imo.

 

[TheSword]

You mean beside the general 5e principle that "Thou shalt not be forced to commit to character choices?"

It’s a good principle. You should play your character for as long as you enjoy playing your character. The point at which you stop enjoying it, well you get my drift.

If a not-enjoyable character can be made enjoyable by changing a relatively minor detail then I honestly don’t see a problem.

As I said, we are happy for casters to be able to change spells on a daily basis. It’s more double standards against martial characters.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't love the long rest changeout (switching as you level, or heck some newly-defined intermediate timeframe, would be better) but I understand the reasoning.

Weapon proficiencies and having to wait X levels to be able to use the really cool magic halberd you found because you thought lance was going to be a better backup (to the ubiquitous longsword/longbow/2Hsword optimal options) was a major complaint with AD&D. People hated ranger terrain choosing because it was all too common that what you thought the game was going to do at level 1 did not look like play by level 3-4.

Species is a generally an inalterable choice (polymorph and reincarnation notwithstanding). Classes are generally non-interchangeable. Feats as well. Retraining rules like I think we saw in late 3e are generally not there. It's mostly hardcoded spells (cantrips and spells-known), invocations, and things like this.

Downtime weapon training can fix the halberd problem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It’s a good principle. You should play your character for as long as you enjoy playing your character. The point at which you stop enjoying it, well you get my drift.

If a not-enjoyable character can be made enjoyable by changing a relatively minor detail then I honestly don’t see a problem.

As I said, we are happy for casters to be able to change spells on a daily basis. It’s more double standards against martial characters.

Setting logic is the issue, not double standards. If the spell thing isn't restrictive enough, I'd rather change that.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Well, let's unpack this a little. 3d6 vs point buy and 4d6 vs point buy are pretty different comparisons. Both point buy and 4d6 are methods that will tend to insulate a PC from very low stats. And with 4d6 being the long-preferred convention (since 1e days), offering up 3d6 is going to seem relatively punitive to most D&D players. So it's no surprise that people want to avoid the 3d6 if offered an alternative, even if they tend to prefer a random method.

The desire for random results, while leavened by methods to make the lower results less likely, may not simply indicate a just a desire for higher stats since it may also indicate a desire for those stats to be independently derived. That's something random stats can do that point buy cannot because with point buy, any points going into one stat value will suppress the values of the other stats. You can't buff without nerfing, and that's an optimization process a lot of people don't necessarily like. Including me. I don't like it AS A DM because I'm not too keen on my players inhabiting that mindset with such a small (but important) set of values.
Point buy has its place in character generation - in games where points buy virtually everything the character can do like Champions/Hero, GURPS, and Mutants and Masterminds. But just between the 6 stats of D&D? I think it does more harm to the play experience than good.

I think we agree on most of this. Point buy and free pick can be accused of encouraging min-maxing, and maybe they do, but what's interesting is that many players don’t want to be seen as min-maxers. There's a social cost to that label. Picking all 18s in a free pick system feels gauche, even if it’s allowed. But if you roll those same stats? Then it’s just luck. You're not a try-hard, you're blessed by the dice gods. There is a big social difference.

This is where the popularity of 4d6 drop-lowest comes in. It's skewed in the player's favor, and it provides plausible deniability. It lets people min-max without owning it. Especially when tables allow rerolls or fudge bad outcomes, the "gamble" becomes almost risk-free. It’s the best of both worlds: stronger characters, with no blame for choosing them.

That’s why, in my experience, truly random methods like 3d6 get so little traction. Players would rather take point buy, even if it smells of min-maxing, than risk a weak character with 3d6. But they love 4d6 drop-lowest, because it feels like rolling, while being, essentially, a buffed stat array wrapped in a thin veil of chance. I have a feeling that given a choice between 4d6 drop the lowest, and free pick, most pick 4d6 for these reasons.

So yeah, you can call 3d6 “punitive,” but it’s just honest randomness. What most players actually want is a system that gives them power while sparing them the social awkwardness of saying, “Yeah, I chose this optimized build.” They cite randomness in those cases, because the real reason has a social cost. This plausible deniability is probably why point buy is most commonly chosen than free pick in my games.

This leaves me with the question of, how many players would pick rolling if it guaranteed a low-stat character? The answer is probably very few, because at the end of the day, they care more about the power than the method, they just don't want to admit it due to social pressures. And as such will pick the method that gives them the most deniability while not meaningfully hurting the outcome.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So on the subject of rolling for scores as opposed to point buy (standard array), I think that one aspect of it is being missed.

Talking about the results is somewhat interesting (average of 3d6 is 10, 4d6k1 is 12.25, standard array is 12). But there is another issue inherent in the "old-timey" way of rolling for abilities that I want to address.

It is considered standard practice in 5e to design your character. In other words, you think about the type of character you want, and then build it so that it matches what you want. In order to do this, it is an absolute requirement that the player is allowed to assign their ability scores.

Back in the old days (give me a second to borrow a beard to tug on) .... that wasn't the case. In other words, it wasn't just that the abilities were determined randomly by rolling- it was the each ability was determined randomly.

In other words, 3d6 (or 4d6k1 or something similar) was rolled for each ability, in order. One major advantage of that is that it kept people from just playing a character that was already in their head- the rolls would "reveal" the character, and that would then channel your thoughts into what the character would be.

I am not asserting that this is good or bad- I love designing characters in 5e. But I also love the serendipity of sitting down and rolling abilities, and then trying to make sense of what I rolled as a character. Both methods (design and serendipity) are a lot of fun, but they are definitely different kinds of fun.