D&D General Weapon Mastery - Yea or Nay?

[Older Beholder]

If weapon mastery means combat can take longer due to the extra rolls involved, but ends earlier due to extra PC power, it sounds like it all evens out in the end.

 

[Clint_L]

Pros: they add a lot more options for martial players.

Cons: they definitely slow the game down, even with experienced players, and with beginners...whoof.

It depends: they are a much bigger damage buff to martials than expected. Too big at lower and mid levels, IMO, throwing balance out of whack. YVMV.

As a DM, I mostly ignore them - if a player remembers to use them, fine, but I ain't reminding them.

If weapon mastery means combat can take longer due to the extra rolls involved, but ends earlier due to extra PC power, it sounds like it all evens out in the end.

It does not. It just means the DM makes the combats harder. In retrospect. weapon masteries are my biggest complaint about the 2024 update.

 

[Clint_L]

[deleted]

 

[Older Beholder]

The enemy only has 1 hp left and your weapon has the Graze property, so no need to make that attack roll.
More time saved.

 

[Merlecory]

I've been thinking a bit more about masteries, and in particular Graze. The fact that you deal damage on a miss makes no sense. It also raises questions about how interactions like green flame blade are supposed to work. Does my (ex) greatsword make some contact? If some, surely green flame blade would still hit. But does it? I missed my attack roll.

 

[Amphytrion]

The enemy only has 1 hp left and your weapon has the Graze property, so no need to make that attack roll.
More time saved.

If you’re searching for ways to end combat faster, you can just assume the enemy had one fewer Hit Point to begin with, no Graze property required.

This requires no homebrew, as enemies have Hit Dice next to their HP precisely to account for variance in life expectancy.

 

[Mallus]

Yay.

I'm quite enjoying shooting foes off of ledges with a my new ranger. Sometimes it's the simple things.

 

[James Gasik]

I've been thinking a bit more about masteries, and in particular Graze. The fact that you deal damage on a miss makes no sense. It also raises questions about how interactions like green flame blade are supposed to work. Does my (ex) greatsword make some contact? If some, surely green flame blade would still hit. But does it? I missed my attack roll.

This is a consequence of the game over the decades changing how it describes combat. In a six-second combat round, you are actually doing a lot more than moving (maybe) and making a single attack. What's being glossed over is the maneuvering, parrying, feinting, and trying to find a good opportunity to get a solid hit in. There's no doubt several attacks that "miss" in the traditional sense due to the opponent's defensive maneuvers or that bounce of their armor harmlessly. The attack rolls you make are the opportunities that matter.

Similarly, a "hit" isn't whether or not you hit your opponent- it's about whether or not you penetrate their defenses. This is why Strength grants a bonus to attack rolls (which if you think about it, makes no sense at all- being buff doesn't make you more accurate, yet few people fixate on this point, lol)- it's helping you penetrate the opponent's armor. We get hung up on "hitting and missing" having their usual terms, but I assure you, when a horde of goblins attacks a lone warrior in plate armor, when their attacks fail to harm him, it's not because his plate armor allows him to Matrix dodge the attacks- quite a few did, in fact, hit him, but with no real effect other than minor damage to his armor!

The big weapons with Graze, then, are more efficient at penetrating armor (if I had a complaint about Graze, is that the mastery isn't applied to weapons that in real life were actually good at penetrating armor) due to their mass and striking power. This "armor-piercing" is reflected in the fact that, no matter how good your armor is, you can't complete negate these attacks.

But since the rulebooks have streamlined the descriptions of what's actually going on in a combat round over the decades, while still keeping combat rounds stupidly long (seriously, get out your stopwatch, grab a weapon, and figure out how many times you can swing it in six seconds!).

As for your Green Flame Blade example, the spell probably should deal some damage on a miss (compare it with Acid Arrow, which does). The reason why comes down to two things- balance (if every flaming sword you find in game can deal some damage past armor, armor becomes less useful) and largely that "damage on a miss" was a concept introduced in 4e, and a few (but very loud) people trotted it out as another reason to hate 4e, because they felt it made the game less realistic (somehow). Thus when 5e was made, the concept was removed from the game (except for spells, where apparently it's ok, lol) to placate this crowd. Now, apparently, in 2024, they apparently found that the amount of players who hate it are an acceptable loss if they bounce off the game (I presume).

 

[billd91]

The big weapons with Graze, then, are more efficient at penetrating armor (if I had a complaint about Graze, is that the mastery isn't applied to weapons that in real life were actually good at penetrating armor) due to their mass and striking power. This "armor-piercing" is reflected in the fact that, no matter how good your armor is, you can't complete negate these attacks.
<snip>

As for your Green Flame Blade example, the spell probably should deal some damage on a miss (compare it with Acid Arrow, which does). The reason why comes down to two things- balance (if every flaming sword you find in game can deal some damage past armor, armor becomes less useful) and largely that "damage on a miss" was a concept introduced in 4e, and a few (but very loud) people trotted it out as another reason to hate 4e, because they felt it made the game less realistic (somehow). Thus when 5e was made, the concept was removed from the game (except for spells, where apparently it's ok, lol) to placate this crowd. Now, apparently, in 2024, they apparently found that the amount of players who hate it are an acceptable loss if they bounce off the game (I presume).

Unfortunately, while that "armor piercing" rationale reflects the idea that no matter how good your armor is, it can't negate the attacks - it also negates any other penalty or non-armor based environmental factor that might be in play like cover. And that still kind of rankles.
You can't sweep all objections to damage on a miss with melee weapons under the "hates 4e" rug.

 

[James Gasik]

Unfortunately, while that "armor piercing" rationale reflects the idea that no matter how good your armor is, it can't negate the attacks - it also negates any other penalty or non-armor based environmental factor that might be in play like cover. And that still kind of rankles.
You can't sweep all objections to damage on a miss with melee weapons under the "hates 4e" blanket.

Nor did I, I simply pointed out that's why we didn't have damage on a miss in 2014. But again, Acid Arrow also ignores all those factors, dealing half damage on a miss, yet this is perfectly acceptable, yet give the ability to a trained warrior and people have objections.

It really comes down to the fact that many aspects of the game are abstractions, because it is a game, not intended to simulate any sort of reality. Yet while many of these are accepted to various degrees (Strength to hit with melee weapons, Armor making you harder to hit instead of reducing damage, Acid Arrow dealing damage even if you roll a 1 to hit with it, Dragons flying, a Giant's club not sending you flying 20' and breaking every bone in your body), others are proud nails that completely ruin people's expectations.

It's like the age old debate over whether every hit point lost is supposed to represent a wound as opposed to plot armor. The arguments for wounds (attacks that inflict status ailments) and against (a mid-level Fighter being able to take a Boromir's load of arrow shots and still walking around) cannot be rectified. Or how only certain (rare) attacks cause any sort of blood loss, etc. etc..