D&D 4E Weapon variety in 4E

[Glyfair]

I'm a little disappointed that longsword will be "queen of the battlefield". I'm sick to death of swords. I want polearms to actually be par with longswords. 3e went a long ways towards this, but, polearms still suffer - sure you get reach but you can't attack adjacent. You crit bigger, but less often.

The problem is that the polearm was traditionally the "king of the battlefield." The problem is that most of D&D doesn't take place on the "battlefield." In mass positions the polearm is a very powerful weapon. In small combats it has huge weaknesses (the fact that it's not effective once you get within it's reach that you complain about in 3E is the main weakness).

Yes, this is a somewhat cinematic system where polearms could be as effective as a sword, or spear, in D&D combat. The problem is that most of the fanbase wants swords to be the cool weapon. There is a reason that legendary swords abound in legends and fiction (Excalibur, Olifant, Stormbringer, Changeling) and legendary versions of other weapons are rarer.

 

[AZRogue]

This design choice of making different powers and abilities available depending upon the weapon the fighter chooses to specialize in is one of 4E's greatest strengths, IMO.

It adds variety, a LOT of flavor, and will let Fighters be different enough from each other to be interesting and helpful without eventually just becoming carbon copies of each other.

3E was a huge leap forward for weapons in DnD. This move, IMO, is at least as great a step forward, if not two complete steps forward.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Two steps forward or five steps back. It will all depend upon what powers they actually give to the different weapons. The advantage of the 3.x weapon chart is that, other than the exotic weapon master's flurry ability with the spiked chain, none of the weapons were really that different in their mechanical effectiveness. When my 10 strength, non-melee focused cleric cast holy sword on his lesser rod of extend spell and used it as a +5 holy club, I only averaged 1 point of damage less than if I had pulled out a heavy mace and cast holy sword on that. Had I been packing a morning star (the best one-handed simple weapon), it would have made a similarly small difference. Likewise, I have a fighter in Living Greyhawk who has specialized in Heavy Mace. At the moment, that's slightly suboptimal (the idea was to get Three Mountains Style, but I'm not sure he'll ever play the three more mods necessary to let him play with both Three Mountains Style and Shield Charge/Shield Slam). However, the difference between that choice and the optimal ones is only one point of crit range or multiplier. Not a big deal. Consequently, players felt (or at least I felt) more free to make weapon choices based upon style rather than mechanical advantage.

Now, when you start making the choice of weapon more mechanically significant, you have more opportunities to screw up and make one weapon that is simply mechanically better. The Exotic Flurry ability of the Exotic Weapon Master class did that for the spiked chain. If they're not careful, "fighters get cool powers depending upon the weapon they use" could turn into "weapon X gives the coolest/most powerful powers, so every fighter uses it; if you see a PC with a different weapon, they're not a fighter."

We'll see how the designers manage to pull that one off, but their rhetoric (lots of talk about "cool" and active disparaging of "balance") does not lead to optimism in this regard.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The 4th ed use of keywords might make broader group training possible.

I'm going to have to go ahead and admit that I read that as "keyswords."

4e is ripping off Kingdom Hearts!

 

[SKyOdin]

The problem is that most of the fanbase wants swords to be the cool weapon. There is a reason that legendary swords abound in legends and fiction (Excalibur, Olifant, Stormbringer, Changeling) and legendary versions of other weapons are rarer.

There is actually a thread right now on the Wizards of the Coast 4E Classes forum asking people what weapons they plan on using if they play a Fighter in 4E. There is a surprising amount of diversity. Spears (both one-handed and two-handed) are easily at least 30% of the vote, with axes bringing in another significant portion.

I wouldn't be surprised if swords, axes, and spears are all about equally popular weapons.

 

[Gloombunny]

I'm a little disappointed that longsword will be "queen of the battlefield". I'm sick to death of swords. I want polearms to actually be par with longswords. 3e went a long ways towards this, but, polearms still suffer - sure you get reach but you can't attack adjacent. You crit bigger, but less often.

I'm hoping that splat books will include different weapon focuses that will bring other types of weapons on par with swords.

I don't think they meant "swords will be better than other weapons". It sounded like swords will be the most adaptable weapon, good in all circumstances, and other weapons will be more lopsided, better than swords at one thing but not as good at other things.

Hopefully they'll get the balance right so that every weapon remains a viable choice. If they do screw it up, it may even be in making a particular non-sword weapon too good. We'll see. :/

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There is actually a thread right now on the Wizards of the Coast 4E Classes forum asking people what weapons they plan on using if they play a Fighter in 4E. There is a surprising amount of diversity. Spears (both one-handed and two-handed) are easily at least 30% of the vote, with axes bringing in another significant portion.

I wouldn't be surprised if swords, axes, and spears are all about equally popular weapons.

After watching 300, I definitely wanted to play "Spear & Board" fighter...

 

[Zaruthustran]

I imagine that the polearm fighter works great as a duelist if you have Spring Attack and your foe doesn't have a reach weapon. Trading attacks 2-for-1. It would be decently good against groups as well, since the greater reach allows for more Cleaves if you position yourself properly. And of course good against creatures with reach.

I can vouch for that. My main character is a glaive fighter with Spring Attack and Power Attack. What makes him *really* work, though, is Hide in Plain Sight. He has rogue levels, so he hides on the spring in, hits for sneak attack damage (power attacking for full, since target is denied Dex and whatnot), then he hides on the spring out (accepting the -20 penalty). The targets rarely see him, since Spot is a rare skill (and spotting a high dex elf equipped with elven cloak is, well, hard).

And he has Skirmish from scout levels, so that's another d6.

Anyway, yeah, it works good.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

So far, I like what I've heard about having a fighter "focus" with a particular weapon or weapons. However, I wonder how the weapon type (piercing, slashing, & bludgeoning) will come into play.

The only thing I'm concerned with is having too wide a diversity of weapons (as in umpteen different versions of a sword, statistically) only because I see this as a potential logistical nightmare that'll detract from simplicity/ease of play instead of add to it. I doubt that it may get to the point where a character who uses a scimitar will be worried that he actually gets a scimitar and not a tulwar, saber, cutlass, shamshir, falchion, katana, Dao, etc. instead as part of the magic loot for an adventure. It sorta-kinda got to this point in 2nd ed. AD&D, esp. since the limited number of weapon proficiencies a character had made random treasure generation a pain, and standard modules horrid for players that liked using the non-standard types of weapons.

To be honest, part of me hopes for a "near-return" to the weapon type simplicity of the BECMI D&D (though the special abilities of certain weapons mentioned above would ensure all were valid choices). I'd like a bit more diversity than shown in the core BECMI D&D books (such as accounting for rapiers, sabers, poleaxes, etc.), but still have a rather KISS approach to weapon varieties.

I'm also curious to see how weapon sizes will be dealt with in 4E.

 

[Talislan]

I'd like to see more use of the stab/pierce(spear,longsword), swing/slash(blade), swing/bludgeon(staff,flail), swing/pierce(Pick) etc kind of mechanic. This may be a way of getting around the weapon focus problem as well.
The feat/talent/ability tree may look something like this:

Weapon proficiency - Martial
Weapon Focus - Slashing Blades
Weapon specialisation - Scimitar

It would also be nice if the feats could be jumped in someway:

Fighter 1
Weapon Proficiency - Martial
(other Feat Taken)
Weapon Specialisation - Longsword

Fighter
Weapon Proficiency - Martial
Weapon Focus - piercing blades
Weapon specialization - Longsword

This would mean Fighter 1 who had trained and only ever used a Longsword would be as skilled or competent as Fighter2 with that one weapon but Fighter 2 would be able to use a greater range of "piercing blades" to better effect than fighter one.

This is a very simplistic view of the idea and would need much greater minds to figure out what weapon is what 'class' but hopefully you get the gist of what I am saying

T.