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What are ways we could make some of the lesser-used weapons either more interesting or more viable options? Would such changes even be wanted or needed? I'm talking mainly about things we can change in the item .2da (weight, proficiency, damage, threat range). I didn't make this in IA, mainly because it's largely a passing thought and there's nothing really to suggest if it's not a real concern for most us. Anyway, here are some.

Light Hammer and Handaxe -> Simple Proficiency

It always struck me as odd that using a simple claw hammer or hatchet as a weapon should require martial training. In rustic fantasy world like FR, these seem like they would be two of the most common weapons any schmo could get their hands on. You mean to tell me carpenter's tools that even the poorest families could afford are more uncommon and harder to operate than a crossbow, mace, or morning star? They're tools/weapons that all but the most limp-wristed and cloistered of individuals(*cough*Wizards*cough) would have come in contact with at least a few times.

That, and I really don't ever see the two used. Handaxe is occasionally used as a good off-hand, but other than that, they are pretty missing from use.

Light Flail -> 19-20/x2 Crits

Basically, make them the bludgeoning counterpart to Longswords. There's really no reason to use them now, as they're just a slightly worse Morningstar that requires another feat. I don't think I've ever seen one used by a PC and there aren't that many even in stores or the lootbins that I can remember. And many of us have felt the utter malaise of having a boss drop a Sureforged/Trueforged Light Flail and knowing in no uncertain terms that it's only leaving our inventory via a trash can.

Heavy Flail -> Add Piercing

This makes it a counterpart to the Halberd, with its Slashing and Piercing. Both weapons are usually overlooked for Greatsword and Greataxe. In my opinion, the 2 damage they lose in comparison should be made up by what damage they actually do. This is already the case for Halberd.

Differentiate Club and Mace

They're essentially the same weapon, with the same required proficiency, except that Mace works with Weapon Finesse. That that end, I would suggest making it a bludgeoning version of the Dagger, 1d4 damage and 19-20/x2 crits. Alternatively, the club could be made into that. These are again two weapons that you seldom see in PC hands.

Those are mine for now, but there are definitely more I thought of but couldn't come up with a good answer for. Like, should we revisit the weight of some weapons? No way in hell a bastard sword or katana actually weighs 10 lbs, even with a scabbard and throwing axes are prohibitive with their weight. Is there anything we can do to help the poor bastard of a weapon known as the Whip? Are double-sided weapons good as they are, or is there simply no way to make missing out on the option to switch to a shield worth it?

Bravo, sir. Bravo! I'm 101% behind this idea.

If I had to chip in a weapon, I think dire mace needs some loving too. What kind of love I'd leave to balance gurus. But the idea of making hated weapons more appealing is an absolute spot on.

The handaxe is actually pretty good where it is, being finessable and x3 crit, it just happens to not be a popular weapon. I'm willing to accept that chopping wood and various inanimate objects with a hatchet is very different from fighting with a small person-chopping axe, given that all other simple weapons are thrust or bludgeons (the dagger can slash a little, but it's conceivably easier to slash with a knife blade than an axe blade).

Light hammer is probably the actual worst weapon in the game. At least daggers look cool and have 19-20 crit, and there are some neat ones in the module. It is also, incidentally, the bludgeoning version of the dagger you're looking for (except that it needs its crit improved).

I did use a mace with my rogue, though it was a greater mace of disruption (even dual-wielded them). It's still subpar vs the short sword because of the crappy crit, but it's immensely satisfying going BONK BONK BONK in combat, particularly vs undead. The only distinguishing feature of the club is that druids can use them I guess, so yeah a change would be nice there. I'd say bring it to d8 though.

Hand axe is a staple of ranger builds. It's strong as is don't need to buff non-martial classes by making it simple.

What needs to be buffed are double weapons. Either be finesse-able or give them an AC bonus.

serbiris wrote:

The handaxe is actually pretty good where it is, being finessable and x3 crit, it just happens to not be a popular weapon.

Perhaps. But if it were actually good where it were, wouldn't it be a bit more popular, then? :idea:

The problem with most "pretty good" weapons is that they're outshined when compared to what else you get in the proficiency. Given how easy it is to dip a class level and get Martial, you rarely see any of the Simple weapons used. They shouldn't all be as great as what you get when you invest feats/levels for Martial/Exotic. But it could in general use some incentives to say "Yo, even if you don't dip, there's still some decent options right here.".

There isn't a x3 one-handed weapon in Simple Proficiency and my thoughts were like the title implies, focused on diversity. If handaxe is too good becoming Simple as is, it could be changed to 1d4, instead of 1d6.

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Light hammer is probably the actual worst weapon in the game. At least daggers look cool and have 19-20 crit, and there are some neat ones in the module. It is also, incidentally, the bludgeoning version of the dagger you're looking for (except that it needs its crit improved).

Light hammer isn't the bludgeoning version of dagger, if it requires an extra feat(Martial) to get.

It's not unused because it's not any good, it's unused because people find swords to be cooler than axes. That's not going to change anytime soon.

Changing handaxe to simple and reducing its damage to correspond means that there is no longer a d6 x3 crit finesse weapon. It's needed where it is.

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Light hammer isn't the bludgeoning version of dagger, if it requires an extra feat(Martial) to get.

Oh right, I forgot that it's slightly worse than I represented it - make it simple and then it fulfills your need. Hell, make it simple and x3, that would fill the void without ruining handaxe.

I remember weapon feats not working when weapon stats get changed, so discussing this might be a bit pointless.

On the other hand, if it's doable, we'll have to talk about Kukri, Scimitar, Rapier and Scythe and how they fit in to all this. Kukri/Scythe needing exotic profiency is a fine balancer in my opinion, but many people still see Scythe especially as the overpowered two-hander.

Another point about Exotic Weapons is how little you get out of the feat if you use Katana, Bastard sword, Dwarven waraxe. d2 more dmg for a feat is utterly pointless, even more so when every weapon is Str based.

I'd like to see Scimitar/Rapier moved to Exotic Weapon prof only and Bastard Sword/Dwarven Waraxe/Katana switched to freebie weapons for like.. Bastard Sword/Katana free for fighters..? And the axe for dwarves.

Honestly when I made this thread, it was more about tweaking the lesser used weapons than doing anything involved with the more popular ones. Love them or hate them, kukri/scimitar/rapier are some of if not the most popular weapons on the server, so nothing changing proficiencies around with them is going to get done more than likely. At least not without more than half of all our weaponmasters getting free rebuilds. So yeah, never happening.

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d2 more dmg for a feat is utterly pointless, even more so when every weapon is Str based

An extra 2 damage is exactly what people take Weapon Specialization for, and it's pretty popular. That's the way I look at it. Granted, Katana and Bastardsword could use something to make them at least interesting, but I don't think that'll come in the way of anything .2da related. Not related to the suggestions here, but I've always desired a reverse monkeygrip widget that lets you two-hand bastard/katana/waraxe. That would be their unique feature. By taking Exotic and building around them, you're investing in both a one-hander and two-hander, and you have a lot more adaptability than someone going one or the other.

I'd also mused with the idea of bastard sword and katana having an extra damage type. But it never works out in my mind, because one would have to get piercing and the other bludgeoning to differentiate the two. While I can reason that a bastard sword is more suited for stabbing over a katana, I can't reason why a katana would have bludgeoning, and likewise, while I can reason that a bastard sword is heavy and flat enough to do bludgeoning, still can't reason why a katana would be suitable for stabbing. I'm not an SCA nut like some folk we used to have around, but that's still something that makes my brain flip over every so often. Katana really should have just been a special skin for bastard swords.

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Oh right, I forgot that it's slightly worse than I represented it - make it simple and then it fulfills your need. Hell, make it simple and x3, that would fill the void without ruining handaxe.

That works. Truthfully, I'd still rather see handaxe switched for common sense's sake. Hitting a live creature with an ax vs wood cannot be any more difficult than hitting a live creature with a hammer vs a nail. But I guess we can think of handaxe being some sort of tomahawk deal, and those were used by tribal warriors and whatnot, thus Martial. At least changing Light Hammer to Simple and giving it x3 crits puts it in line with its big brother, the Warhammer, having x3 as well.

But wouldn't weakening the commonly used Scimitar/Rapier and improving light hammer and other such weapons mean they'd be used twice as much as they are getting now?

And d2(0-2 Dmg) is hardly the same as straight 2 dmg from Weapon Specilization, feat which is usually used when you're getting the Epic Specilization anyway.
Longsword, Scimitar, Rapier and Battleaxe are still fair bit easier to use and level with, since you'll have hard time finding Bastard Swords or Katanas that you can use, especially if you're evil with no UMD.

One idea I've been thinking about is unlocking 5th mythal slot for Bastard Sword/Katana, like with two-handers. This would mean the "Common" Epic Bastard Sword/Katana could be +5 Ab, +4 Ench, 1d10 dmg, +3 Vamp and 1d8 Massive criticals, or something along those lines.. Which doesn't sound overpowered to me and this would be something I'd be really interested in.

I think we've been through trying to make Bastard Swords/Katanas two-handable, but I remember there being issue in coding and that might be too much of a hurdle with our resources currently. Another point in this would still be that Bastard Swords/Katanas aren't found in Warforged quality and our Monkey-grappers(Our dear custom feat that creates more issues in balance than fixes, in my opinion) would be same as them.. Expect deal a ton of more dmg, without the extra feat again.

I've been thinking that extra dmg type myself, which might be a fair fix assuming it's easy enough to code in.

All that said, I think Mythal System and our current epic loot destroyed many of the "lesser" weapon focuses, since every epic or final weapon you'll be using has the same stats, be it hammer, sword or an axe.
If there was more variety in the enchantments we could artifically boost the light hammer with +6 Enchantment or something else.

For example there could be a Dagger called Vampire Fang with enchantments:
+5
1d10 Negative
+5 Vamprici reg
OnHit: Drain con DC: 20

Or a Light Hammer of Defense with enchantments:

+6 Enchantment
+6 Deflection AC
1d10 Piercing

About weapons like Light Flail, I'd prefer if it got removed. Morningstar is a simple weapon, which has the same dmg, same crit chance and multiplier but also does piercing dmg.. Making Light Flail completely inferior.
Then Scythe vs. Halberd, both have Piercing/Slashing dmg type, but the Halberd has 1d10 dmg with x3 crits, while Scythe has 2d4 dmg and x4 crits. I'd call the dmgs quite even with the difference being 1 min dmg vs. 2 max dmg, but gaining another crit multiplier with just one feat is not balanced. If we could remove the Piercing dmg from Scythe, I think that would even the scores quite bit.

I understand that I'm mostly concerned about Exotic Weapons vs. Martial/Simple Weapons. That said, I think the previously mentioned increasement to x3 for Light Hammer seems to make sense.

On one of my favorite (now dead) servers they did two things for weapon balance:

1. Each class had a specific "epic" weapon. And the less advantageous the weapon was mechanically, the better the epic weapon's powers were. The scimitar was pretty powerful, sure, but it's powers were very barebones. On the other hand, something like the club, longsword or light hammer was impressively buffed.

2. Style Feats. These were actually something created in pen and paper to make marrying yourself to mechanically crappy weapons worthwhile, but they integrated them as custom feats in NWN. I remember one for dual-wielding maces that gave an extra attack every time you critted, one that scored a knockdown on a crit when you dual-wielded a handaxe and lt hammer and one for halberds that granted a few dodge AC points and something else.

People actually ran around using everything.

MightNMagic wrote:

On one of my favorite (now dead) servers they did two things for weapon balance:

1. Each class had a specific "epic" weapon. And the less advantageous the weapon was mechanically, the better the epic weapon's powers were. The scimitar was pretty powerful, sure, but it's powers were very barebones. On the other hand, something like the club, longsword or light hammer was impressively buffed.

2. Style Feats. These were actually something created in pen and paper to make marrying yourself to mechanically crappy weapons worthwhile, but they integrated them as custom feats in NWN. I remember one for dual-wielding maces that gave an extra attack every time you critted, one that scored a knockdown on a crit when you dual-wielded a handaxe and lt hammer and one for halberds that granted a few dodge AC points and something else.

People actually ran around using everything.

I like this idea, a lot.

Yeah, those are neat. Not sure how well the first one would work with the way we currently handle epic drops, but still something I'd like to see implemented here in some way.

Light Hammer should be made 1d4 x3 in bludgeoning form, and kept Martial.

Handaxes are too good to make Simple. Popular weapon, x3 crits, Finessable, the wepaon is very good.

If you make Light Flails into bludgeoning longswords, they're too powerful because bludgeoning damage is tiers above Slashing. Unfortunately this puts Light Fliails in a weird spot. They're specifically worse than Morningstars. They could possibly be 1d6 bludgeoning 19-20/x2.

Heavy Flail doesn't need Peircing, Bludgeoning is already the best weapon type and it has 19-20 crit range.

Light Mace could possibly be 1d4 19-20x2. This makes it a better dagger, but Dagger is Tiny and so can be used by Halflings and Gnomes and so keeps it in a niche. The difference between piercing and bludgeoning is also not as far.

I'll agree that bludgeoning is usually "better" than other types of damage. I think of Slashing like the Fire of physical damages: it's easy to do a lot of damage with it, it's the most common damage type, but the opposite of that is that it's the most commonly resisted of the damage types, too. Piercing is somewhere in between.

My main point is that we can say the same things as passed down from our gurus of old, that statistically and technically whatever weapon isn't as bad as it seems, but... at the end of the day, it's still a foot vote. If we aren't seeing certain weapons used, I don't think we can honestly always chalk it up to player preference or people wanting the "best" weapon. If we aren't seeing them used, there have to be other reasons, so this is kind of about finding out what those reasons are. What I would love is seeing some sort of consistency for weapons in the niches of their proficiencies, but it's a hodgepodge which gives us what we have now. So if that means tweaking weapons that should technically be as good as any other, just so we can actually see the damn things used, I don't think we should rule that out. We've seen that simply piling damage onto Sure/True/Wonder/Warfroged weapons doesn't usually leads to more people using different weapons. So what I'm looking at, mainly, was changing something from the base up.

It's not a .2da thing, but I do think that another reason we see so few non-slashing weapons is because they can't be Keened by anything but a Ranger's Bladethirst. So if you want a keen one, you're eating up a slot on your weapon. Maybe this is to make up for bludgeoning and piercing being better. *shrug* In the context of what resistances we have out there, yeah, the two are. But apparently not better enough to warrant dealing with the Keen dilemma by many player's standards.

I always thought it would be cool to see a finessable two hander. The Spear was what comes to mind, thinking of what's his name that got his head crushed in GoT. Though finessing a two hander would be mostly all flavor i think.. given you lose out on that str bonus.

Kind of figured the hammers should all match their axe counterparts in damage and crit range. But if bludgeoning is so much better.. i dunno, i guess.

Aye, a finessable two hander could be either spear, or even the double bladed sword. That's quite an elegant weapon.

Or quarterstaff! >_>

The fact the staff is not finessable is a heresy. :evil:

It's a flurry weapon now, and two handed at that. It would need to be looked at carefully before bring made a finess weapon. I could think of any number of dex builds that would probably get a huge boost from it, but nothing as strong as the tried and true builds out there now.

Edit: personally I'd love to give monks another cool option

Yeah. That's why i made the face, making the staff finessable would not be an issue i expect, but given it is now a monk flurry weapon would make it quite deadly for them. Though i've only ever seen one person build a str staff using monk, he was quite deadly. I suppose it would not be the end of all things if it was finessable, really. It really seems like it would fit the weapon too.

It wouldn't break balance, but it would make for some interesting new builds

I have never really tried them to be honest but have always thought they looked pretty wicked. I know there are obvious downsides the loss of shield and ac and the minuses to ab as well..

Weapon Finesse, if I recall, is fairly hard-coded, though I suspect Terra could script around it if he really wanted to.

Weapon Diversity

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