D&D 4E Weapon variety in 4E

[Pbartender]

I'll just say that that's patently ludicrous from the point of view of basic physics. Force/area, and as the bodkin head impacts on any armour it's going to apply the same force over a smaller area.

Well, there's a lot more that goes into it, especially for an arrow, than just force/area... You have to take into account the mass of the arrow, the velocity gain from the bow itself, the aerodynamics of the arrow, the shape of the arrowhead*, and so on...

It's not the fact that a bodkin has a point -- most all arrowheads have points, even if they aren't very good at armor piercing -- that makes it armor piercing, but the fact that it has a long, relatively narrow, tapering blade. Consider trying to punch a hole in a tin can with a spade and an ice pick... With enough force, both with penetrate the metal, but due to the wide blade, the spade penetrates only very shallowly, whereas the ice pick, once it's made the hole, will easily penetrate its entire length.

Either way, its a complicated thing, which ultmately leads us to the same conclusion...

Of course how much better it'd be than a leaf-head or other kinds of arrow is either debatable or something for Mythbusters or a similar show but come off it...

In other words, for a game such as D&D, it's more trouble than it's worth.

For my money, it's feats and abilities that can often (but not always) explain such variations... "My character has the eye to pick and choose out only the straightest and most accurate arrows because he's got Weapon Focus (longbow)." "My character nows uses arrows with heavily barbed arrowheads, since he picked up Improved Critical (longbow)." Or some such.

 

[vagabundo]

Equipment in general and specifically weapons should be kept straightforward, no one needs 200 polearms when 3 or 4 will do. Give the weapons some character and make an ax fighters do different stuff to a sword fighter.

From the limited amount we have seen in the previews they have given a little more mechanics for differentiating weapons. It is a tough balance, too much and it becomes unwieldy, too little and you might as well cut the list to sword, mace and bow...


Oh my pet peeve: crossbows...

 

[HP Dreadnought]

What's wrong with crossbows? . . . aside from the fact that they need to be made more competitive as a weapon choice?

 

[Zaruthustran]

Crossbows are great. Unlike a bow, you can fire (and reload) them while prone, giving you an effective +4 AC advantage in a firefight against a bow user.

Anyway, I hope whatever 4E does, it gives an option for a more general path. I like the idea of a fighter who is simply great at fighting, as opposed to a fighter who is king with longswords--and only longswords--while being merely adequate with other weapons.

I guess the mechanical implication of this would be to allow "Weapon focus: swords", or something similar. If it's got a sharp edge and you can swing it, then this guy can use it to great effect.

Yes, yes, there are particularities amongst sword varieties, but honestly--for my purposes, in terms of bonuses through feats--a sword is a sword is a sword. I want a character who can be "good with swords", to be able to pick up any blade and be badass. Ironically, I also want there to be mechanical differences amongst the weapons themselves. For the choice of weapon, as a tool, to be meaningful. I *like* that scimitar does less damage, but has a higher threat range.

Here's the big reason why: in 3e if you build a fighter with WF: scimitar and WS: scimitar, then that character will only *ever* use a scimitar in battle. The DM is terribly constrained; he can't place a cool axe in the tomb of the dwarf king because the player will just sell it and use the proceeds to get a new scimitar. You can't blame the player; if he uses the axe, his two precious feats will have been wasted.

That's so boring.

I recall Book of Nine Swords had a class that had a cool feature. At the beginning of the day, you could practice with a weapon for an hour. After that hour, you could re-assign any Weapon Focus or Specialization feats to apply to that weapon instead. I might be off on the details but that's the gist of it; the intent is to allow players to invest in "being good with weapons", but be able to use that investment on a greater variety of tools.

If 4E doesn't use such a system outright I'll probably adopt it as a houserule.

 

[Will]

This is actually something I also dislike about the magic item system.

If you have a magic battleaxe... you're going to want to use that magic battleaxe, and aren't going to waste the money on also having a magic glaive.

I'd much rather have most warriors go for variety. After all, flexibility should be useful. The fact that my fighter can use a glaive, toss it aside and use a longsword and shield, drop the shield and wield the longsword two-handed, should be a virtue.

 

[DandD]

I do hope they won't make Fighters one-trick ponies, who will cease to be usefull if they lose the weapon they invested so many feats in, like in D&D 3.X.

 

[Raduin711]

You lost us at "my." Your experience with T'ai Chi has very little to do with how fantasy warriors train.

I found his post insightful, useful to the conversation, and interesting.

 

[Rel]

You lost us at "my." Your experience with T'ai Chi has very little to do with how fantasy warriors train.

And you lost us at your rude, snarky post. Find another thread to post in.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I recall Book of Nine Swords had a class that had a cool feature. At the beginning of the day, you could practice with a weapon for an hour. After that hour, you could re-assign any Weapon Focus or Specialization feats to apply to that weapon instead. I might be off on the details but that's the gist of it; the intent is to allow players to invest in "being good with weapons", but be able to use that investment on a greater variety of tools.

Are you suggesting that the game should give you the option of being a specialist or a generalist (like Iron Heroes), or that all "specialization" should be transferable?

Maybe you could have two talent trees, with your choice of lesser transferable benefits or greater non-transferable benefits. Conan should be able to pick up basically any weapon and be really good with it (he's on the generalist tree); the same isn't true of Inigo Montoya, Duncan MacLeod, or William Tell (specialists). Some heroes are associated with a particular kind of weapon, and the archetype of the dedicated weapon master should still be viable.

 

[Gloombunny]

I recall Book of Nine Swords had a class that had a cool feature. At the beginning of the day, you could practice with a weapon for an hour. After that hour, you could re-assign any Weapon Focus or Specialization feats to apply to that weapon instead. I might be off on the details but that's the gist of it; the intent is to allow players to invest in "being good with weapons", but be able to use that investment on a greater variety of tools.

If 4E doesn't use such a system outright I'll probably adopt it as a houserule.

Weapon Aptitude. One of the often-overlooked little details that makes warblades so much cooler than fighters even apart from the maneuvers thing.

I don't think it'll show up in 4e, though. They're really pursuing the idea that fighters using different weapons fight differently. Your talents will give you totally different abilities and tactical options depending on which weapon's talents you selected. This is a big step up from 3e, where you're encouraged to pick a single weapon to use but it doesn't make much difference which one you pick, except for a few corner cases like spiked chain. That was really the worst of both worlds, so I'm glad that 4e is making the choice of weapon more meaningful. Unfortunately, it means that fighters will probably still be locked into one weapon choice. (There is retraining, but presumably you aren't meant to do that frequently enough to always have the right talents for whatever weapon you find.)

What I'm hoping is that in addition to the weapon-specialist talent trees, there will also be at least one tree focused on a particular style or strategy without regard to choice of weapon, so you can have a weapon-generalist fighter who's competitive with the specialists if that's what you want. But they may not do that - it may be that "weapon specialist" is the shtick they want the fighter class to have.