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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keenath" data-source="post: 4040821" data-attributes="member: 59792">I have my own ideas about that, which I'll get into below.I'm feeling pretty good about the weapon system.  They haven't pointed out any great weaknesses of the existing system, which suggests they aren't going to change it much -- but just add special abilities that let weapon-focusing classes like Fighters to feel different.I mean, really, the main problem with the existing weapon system (wonderful as it is compared to earlier editions) is that the weapons are a little bland.  All polearm fighters feel pretty similar; a longsword doesn't feel significantly different from a battleaxe; and so on.The one problem that they're clearly fixing is that of proficiency.  It's kind of silly that a dwarf who's all into his axe is also able to use a flail and a rapier with equal ease.  The most common fix is what they did in SWSE with weapon proficiency groups, so you have "pistol proficiency" and you can use all pistols, and so on.The problem with that system is that it also has some silliness in that a "rifle proficiency" makes you good with everything from a sniper-blaster to a shotgun, and Heavy proficiency lets you use grenade launchers and flame throwers equally.  That's fine for the SW universe (which is less equipment-centric), but wouldn't work here -- it'd be silly if the same feat let you use shortswords and greatswords (or put another way, you can't be shortsword proficient without also getting greatswords in the package).It looks like they handled that by slightly increasing the complexity of weapon proficiency. To me, it reads as a two-index system.The war-pick, given in the Crits article, says it has "category: Picks", which suggests that you need proficiency with that weapon category to use it.  It also says "Prof.: 2", which suggests proficiency comes in various levels, possibly relating to the current simple/martial/exotic division.  Proficiency 2 probably means "martial", so it's a weapon that requires "martial level proficiency with the pick category".In other words, the fighter starts with "martial proficiency", but he isn't proficient with ALL martial weapons; only the categories he chooses to learn.  If he learns a new category, he automatically has martial proficiency in that new category, too.  If he invests in opening up "exotic proficiency", he doesn't get only a single exotic weapon; he gets all the exotic weapons for all the categories he knows, and if he learns a new category, he'll get all the new exotic weapons for it, too.  (They may have also increased the number of categories, so that some exotics are Prof. 3 while others are Prof. 4.  Prof. 3 could contain some of the more outlandish "currently-martial" weapons, like scythes.)Thus, for example, a fighter automatically starts with Proficiency 2 ('martial') in, say, three weapon categories of his choice -- suppose he picks sword, axe, and polearm.  A rogue might start with only two categories and only Proficiency 1 ('simple'), so he could have Sword and Polearm but would be limited to shortswords and spears, while the fighter with those same categories could use greatswords and halberds and so on.  The Rogue could invest in increasing his proficiency to learn those weapons, too, of course.</blockquote>

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