Weapon Focus
Poor Fighter. He’s living out every gamer’s worst fear. If you’ve never experienced this nightmare scenario, allow me to illustrate the horror.
First imagine that you’re a fighting man. You picked “battleaxe” as your weapon of choice, mostly because you’re a fighting man and battleaxes are awesome. With weapon in hand and a band of stalwart companions at your side, you set out for the nearest dungeon. There you face peril, hack apart said peril, and miraculously manage not to die. And so, flush with success, you head back to town with a purse full of gold and a character sheet full of XP. Ye olde magick shoppe is having a sale, so it’s a no-brainer to get that starter package battleaxe enchanted. And while ol’ Bessy is in the shop, you’ve still got those XP burning a hole in your pocket. After careful consideration, you decide to spend your precious level-up picking out battleaxe-related powers like “smite tree” and “hit better with axe.” Thus fortified you set out for another adventure, only to find that the great treasure at the heart of this new dungeon is (Son of a bitch!) a glaive-guisarme-guisarme-glaive. This stupid pointy stick has powers and abilities far in advance of poor Bessy, and suddenly your battleaxe build is a limitation rather than an asset. Take the new weapon and your battleaxe abilities are wasted. Stick with the old weapon and you’re using inferior hardware.
Even worse, suppose that you’re playing Inigo Montoya. His sword is built right into his backstory, and there’s no way he’s giving it up for the new and shiny thing. Suckier and suckier.
My own attempt at a solution to these problems comes courtesy of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Their weapons bear names like Graywand, Scalpel, Heartseeker and Cat’s Claw, but they are by no means special or magical. In fact, they aren’t even the same weapons from story to story. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are often divested of their gear, and so resort to giving the same name to whatever cutlery they happen to be carrying at the moment. That’s why my current barbarian began play with a greataxe named Undertow, traded it out for a masterwork greataxe named Undertow, and then traded that out for a +1 bastard sword named Undertow. (My GM was extremely confused.) I also elected to hold off on taking any weapon-specific abilities, opting instead for the more generally useful stuff like blind-fight, toughness, and quick draw.
We’ll see if this gamble pays off later on in the campaign (come on enchanted glaive-guisarme-guisarme-glaive!), but I’m curious how the rest of you guys deal with this problem. Do you like focusing on a specific kind of weapon/fighting style, or do you try to keep your options open?
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I play Pathfinder Societies, which makes this situation…. more interesting than you’d think.
Okay, so Wealth By Level is managed by a fairly standardized rate of gold, and instead of traditional loot you instead buy your gear between sessions. This is ideal for solving the problem of specializing in weapons because you can buy a base weapon of your choice and just upgrade it incrementally as you can afford better enchantments.
However. Any seasoned player knows that the chronicle sheets that you get for completing scenarios can have special loot. And while they mostly add up to a situational or flavorful +2 skill bonus here and there, sometimes you get unique benefits or special weapons that you otherwise cannot get through usual gold expenditures. Be it a sentient shield, an awakened flail with the goal of battling abominations and an evil snake god, or a unique Composite bow with a +5(!) strength bonus to damage that applies free trip checks and can shoot flying creatures out of the sky.
I got the later two of those items, and they were amazing…. but not so much for my dexterity based two-weapon-fighting unarmed striker.
The loot is sometimes so great that you want to build a character around it, but you can only do so by knowing ahead of time, which often means you’ve already blown your once-per-person chance at getting credit for it, or you’re Game Mastering the thing and applying credit to a character of your choice. Hell, even if the stars align and the special weapon matches your build, then odds are you’ve already GOT a similar weapon that you’ve spent tons of gold on, and now you have to sell it at half price and STILL pay full gold for the new hotness.
The craziest example of this is in the RNG of the Serpent’s Rise special, but I don’t want this post to turn into one big ramble. I can break it down (without major spoilers) if people are interested.
I’ve never done organized play, so you’ve got my curiosity. What’s the deal with RNGesus in Serpent’s Rise?
Okay. So remember that you can only play a scenario for credit once, though you can get GM credit. This one requires you to be a high ranking veteran DM to run, though~
– First, play Serpent’s Rise. You play as pre-gen bad guys and apply credit to one of your own characters. Good times so far.
– Each character has a secondary objective. Make sure to complete that.
– Do the above and your chronicle has a special character specific boon checked off that basically says “Hang onto this, it might come up” with a cryptic wink and a nudge.
– Each boon has the eventual pay-off of giving you a special item tied to that particular pregen. But each pay-off boon is in a different scenario. Said scenarios are, at the very least, tagged for being related to Serpent’s Rise.
– Play a tagged scenario, and make sure to bring your chronicle from Serpent’s Rise or it’s all down the toilet because you can’t prove you’ve got the boon coming and you can’t replay the scenario without jumping through a hoop or two.
– If a Serpent’s Rise chronicle is involved, the scenario is slightly modified to reflect the presence of that particular pre-gen, maybe even a fight against them. Complete the scenario and its chronicle sheet will have your coveted pay-off item!
….let’s hope that you just so happen to be playing on a character that can actually make use of the item. Because when I just so happened to GM for a payoff scenario, I had a player who ran with the Slayer(?) pregen at Serpent’s Rise, so he got this badass sword that made your sneak attacks better. And he was playing his fighter. I -just- so happened to have a special boon chronicle that allowed you to swap this kind of specialized loot between characters. I felt so bad about the smiting of RNGesus that I gave up my rare boon just so he could actually make use of the damn thing that he was so excited to finally see.
Hell, when I got my pay-off chronicle? It was from a special sequel to Serpent’s Rise, called Serpent’s Ire, that also used pregens. And it came out a -year- later. It would have been entire possible to level my Serpent’s Rise character well into retirement by then. And the reward, while amazing (metamagic rod with 3 different meta-feats in it) it did little for my cavalier-styled Summoner with a Fighter dip. At least I can buy it and let friendly wizards borrow it for missions, I guess?
I flashed on the “souls” video games really hard there for a second. Mysterious thing that may pay off later seems like an oddly video game themed convention. I guess it serves the same purpose from a design perspective: It keeps you coming back for more.
Destiny (the console game) have this gloomy lady that gave box of raisins last year during theire halloween event. At the time it looked like a pun on that inevitable grandma who gives shitty treats for halloween. Turns out a year later, those raisins if you kept them, gave access to items you’d normally have to painfully grind for. 😛
One of the many problems with PF/3.5
Oh I dunno. The issue certainly seems magnified in loot dependent game like 3.X, but any system that asks you to choose between a bow and sword is going to run into the conundrum. Powerbows vs. dailklaves in Exalted, fighters with the crossbow expert feat vs. the great weapon master feat in 5e, and even something as simple as choosing stats for ranged vs. melee combat in Savage Worlds.
The problem is magnified in 3.X both because it is loot dependent *and* because of the feat-tree/super-specialization problem.
Sure, you’ve got the difference between a ranged guy and a melee guy in 5e, and depending on if you use feats or not you may see a “polearm master.” But it’s not nearly baked into the rules such that it leads to the sort of absurdity the comic addresses.
Simplest way to solve this problem: Be a Brawler! Their adaptability is the #1 reason why my brother went as such. There’s nothing more awe striking than hitting 50+ damage on a single crit… At lv4, with his fist! Be it fist, chain, spear, or combat scabbard, he has options for everything.
As for me, I’ve always preferred the one weapon approach, but eventually I’ll have to grow out of that phase. As an artificer whose only weapon is a crossbow turned magic device utilizing true strike and a few other enhancements to my bolt damage, I feel a bit like a one trick pony… But you can’t scoff at an almost guaranteed 30+ damge.
Oof. Brawler. I had my fill of “you know every spell in the book” playing a mythic wizard. I couldn’t imagine doing that from level 1.
That said, I’d imagine that there are documents out there that help….
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?367839-The-Wombo-Combo-Martial-Flexibility-Combinations-Thread
…Yup. Looks like there are.
OK. You’ve sold me. I’ll give one a try. Jerk. 😛
Ah yes, the eternal issue in a game that pushes specialization as much as Pathfinder. Of course, the inverse also happens, it all depends on your weapon of choice. For example, if you have a build that specializes in an Exotic weapon, or even some of the less common normal weapons (like Scimitars surprisingly enough) hope you’re ready to always spend your cut of the loot upgrading your current one, you’re never going to find one in a dungeon. On the other hand, the guy who’s specialty is the Greatsword might have 3 or 4 new toys by the end of the megadungeon. And Gods help you if you’re a Gunslinger.
^ Truth. I don’t have a gunslinger in my current game, but the campaign is a converted 3.5 megadungeon. That means guns weren’t even a thing when the adventure was designed. I imagine that, if I did have a gunsligner, I’d have to pick and choose my spots, adjusting as necessary to insert at least a little loot for the poor guy.
The problem can be fixed by applying the Masterwork Transformation spell to any particular weapon, which (surprise) makes it Masterwork. Now you can enchant it to your heart’s (and wallet’s) content. So long as you don’t want any exotic metals, of course.
I mean Gunslingers can convert their base gun to Masterwork anyways. The issues come in two parts. First, from the Player’s side, is having the time *to* enchant, Crafting is a long process. Secondly, from the GM’s side, is trying to give the Gunslinger interesting loot that’s not just sell fodder. It’s an issue in general, but especially with a class that’s so focused on one piece of equipment as a Gunslinger.
In my experience, it can also be an issue with Casters though. What do you give, say, a Sorcerer besides Slightly-Better-Charisma-BandTM?
Yep, this is the real pain. I was building a greatsword/polearm-using Paladin in 5e and my DM handed me a magic shield as a backstory bonus thing. I talked with him about it and he said he’d let me upgrade it to an Animated Shield when it got better at level 7, but chances are we’ll never actually hit that with the rate we’re going at now. Oh well, at least the 3 +1 1d8 versatile weapons the party’s found aren’t going to waste now that I’ve got that shield.
How does your group play the polearm master feat? If you can use it one-handed and still get the extra attack, boosting your defenses with a shield seems like the best of all possible worlds.
Well, I think it falls a little bit on the DM to adapt, too. I was in a dungeon crawl where every. single. item. was a broadsword. Not a single one of us could use them. Fist, crossbow/rapier (but NOT broadsword), warhammer…not a single one of us had that weapon proficiency. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that we already knew there was no shop in this dungeon. The Very Important Magic Weapon That Must Be Used To Win…also a broadsword.
For a while I amused myself with sticking every single weapon in a bag of holding the rest of the party didn’t know I had (it’s good to be the rogue), but eventually they caught on. We stumbled on a group that was willing to barter weapons for information and provisions, but after we left there, the swords started piling up again.
“We’re expecting an accumulation of a whopping 27 inches of swords over the weekend, Johnny, with a chance of non-broadsword accumulation hovering around 0%. Now with sports, here’s a kobold.”
I feel ya there. First long-term campaign I was ever in, one of the later acts was a dungeon crawl (might even be the same one, IDEK). In said dungeon crawl, most of the loot was either Greatswords or Heavy Armor. Party was a Barbarian (who had picked up Heavy Armor prof and used a Greatsword, she got off great), a Magus (who got Heavy Armor proficiency mid-dungeon and thus got to use some of the new armor), a Rogue (me), a Bard, a Cleric, and a Gunslinger. Basically, 2/3 of the party got absolutely no new equipment through the entire crawl. At least the Sword of Plot Relevance at the end was capable of shifting to any type of sword (except Rapiers for some reason, my Rogue was disappointed) so the Magus got a new Scimitar out of it.
To make matters worse, the Act before this dungeon was a wilderness thing. The last time any of us had seen a shop was something like 5 or 6 levels earlier. So we now had the Barbarian was a walking armory, the Magus had on-level armor and a fancy new Artifact, and the rest of us were woefully under-equipped. As in, the moment we got back to the city my Rogue upgraded from a +2 Rapier and Masterwork Dagger to +5 and +6 weapons with a +2 for backup.
I’ve got it so that players can modify things on their sheet as they go, for example every time they get an ASI, they can also pull one point out of any stat and put it elsewhere (following the normal restrictions on ability scores).
I think flexibility is a good thing, but you also want decisions to matter. For that reason, I tend to favor allowing a little modification, but I keep it case-by-case rather than making a set system for it. My two cents anyway.
Yeaaaah that kind of thing is always a concern. If I ever play in pre-made campaigns I’ll always opt for builds or even character concepts where that kind of thing doesn’t matter because most of the time the GM will just give you what the book says even if nobody can use it. Or as bad, one or two people get nothing and the others get tons of stuff. If I had to pick a specialty weapon, it would be swords because for some dang reason people who make magic item lists seem to forget there are any other kinds of weapons somehow. I remember a while ago looking through the 5E DMG and discovering there were several weapons that didn’t have even a single magic item of the type. Which just struck me as “groan, typical”.
The more homebrew a setting is, the less concerned I am with this kind of thing because a GM doesn’t really have any motivation to make up magic items for the party they know the party can’t use.
As a GM, I’m pretty dang flexible about changing things, be it items or character builds. Within reason. I’d object if someone started trying to change their build every time a new UA came out or between every fight, but if it happened once every few months or in response to an appropriate character moment in the story or because of something I introduced I’d be fine. Heck just recently I found myself looking at the new UA for Bards and asking one of my players if they might want to change over to one of the new archetypes as they might like it better for their character.
Oof. Too bad about those pre-made campaigns. I love running those things myself, but I believe they’re intended to be run with GM alteration. For example, I’ve come across one or two that mention “The PCs can find XYZ specific things in the hoard, but also 1,600 gp of additional treasure suited to your players’ needs.” I always appreciate that nod towards GM authority.
This is why god made Warblades. Its first-level class feature bypasses the entire problem.
Well damn. Look at that. Now I just need to find me a 3.5 game.
Occultist VMC Magus solves this pretty nicely. You can create a fully level-appropriate enchanted weapon out of any weapon you pick up, and give it any special abilities you want on the fly, including Training which gives you a free combat feat… while allowing you to spend your gold on super useful magical items, because you’re an Occultist and UMD is basically your version of full-casting.
I will have you know that this comment finally gave me the motivation to go and read those Pathfinder psychic classes. I am now obsessed with this build.
Ahaha! Wonderful! Along with the Alchemist and Magus, the Occultist is one of my absolute favourite classes. Your entire power is being a nerd who knows everything about… stuff… and you use the stuff you’re nerdy about to make magic happen. Also the class as a whole is a get-out-of-jail-free card as regards UMD, especially if you have the Pragmatic Activator trait, and I love that. Why be a full-caster when you can just pretend to be one? Completing the idea of the item-master is that you don’t really need much in the way of Big Six items, leaving your slots open for cooler stuff, even if that stuff wouldn’t usually be applicable to your race or class.
What’s your favourite Occult class?
This one’s honestly the first I’ve read. Most of my recent Pathfindering is in this long-running megadungeon, so I’ve got limited opportunities to actually play w/ new classes. Fingers crossed that changes in the near future.
Had my first session with the Occultist / VMC magus. Necromancy (ferryman’s slug) / Abjuration (cloak) / Transmutation (weapon[bardiche]). Dude’s a traveling executioner who raises his necromantic servant from the pyschic remains of the criminals he’s killed. Loving the crap out of this combo. Greater magic weapon + mordant envoy + VMC magus + transmutation implement = +5 bane weapon at 7th level. Shit’s bananas.
Thanks again for the tip!
The Pathfinder retraining rules help out here. You can retrain class features and feats, and it only costs some time and gold.
It’s been a while since I read the downtime stuff… Don’t you have to find a dude of above your class level to do the retraining thng?
I just have the Wiznerd upgrade my stuff. While my ninja does still have her starting blade, (it’s the sword her mother gave her, can’t throw that away) her current weapons are the +5 Keen Agile Adamantine Wakazashi “Diplomacy” and its sister, the +5 Keen Agile Mithral Wakazashi “Subtlety”.
I see we share similar tastes in weapon names: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tools
As mentioned in previous comics, I don’t like all my characters to use the same weapon. I also have 2 characters that have a level in Inspired Blade Swashbuckler which means they need to use a Rapier. These characters are my Bard and my Magus. For my Bard, she died early in my gaming character so I rebuilt her. Giving her the level in Swashbuckler meant she had a better chance of surviving melee than before. And the archetype meant I’d only need to use a single feat slot to get dex to damage and could focus more on her tripping and disarming with her whip. (She’s an Archaeologist Bard.) And she has a Kunai for a backup along with a shortbow.
With my Magus, I was building a character from my novel. He’s a Prince so the archetype fit in not only with the theme but gave good mechanical benefits as well. And again I’d only need one feat slot to get dex to damage so I could give more attention to other things he needed. In this case, as he’s a member of my homebrew flying dragonborn, his flight skills and a tail attack. In his case, the tail is his backup weapon along with the claws that he gets from the Eldritch Scion archetype. But I still gave him a bow.
Mmm, yes, one of my current players favours a scythe. But I can’t rightly justify her finding another, more magical scythe just lying about, or even for sale, unless perhaps the party makes a specific detour to the Demiplane of Weaponised Agricultural Implements.
My solution, I think, will be to give opportunities to have the existing reaping stick reforged with fancy metal, or enchanted, so that she can keep her dear old grainbane or whatever and still stay competitive in combat!
You could also invent specialized antagonists. You don’t need scythes lying around in every dungeon, but if you happen to antagonize some kind of greater wraith or other suitably themed monster….
Actually, check out all the hits you get on “scythe” over in Nethys:
https://aonprd.com/Search.aspx?query=scythe
That’s a lot of monsters and followers-of-specific-deities to choose from. Not sure if you’re playing Pathfinder, but it does show that you can sprinkle weapons throughout a game world plausibly. I mean, you only have to do it ~2-3 times over the course of a campaign.
I like your solution too though, and it does fall right in line with the scaling magic item shtick:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/scaling-magic-items/
Thank you for the tips, I’ll check those out!
(By the by, I’m very impressed that you answer comments made several years after the original comic is posted! That’s some dedication!)
Cheers! I figure that, if someone is going to take the time to read my comic, I can take the time to have a conversation. 🙂
One fun way to handle this would be something along the lines of the Shardblades from The Stormlight Archive. Those are powerful magical weapons wielded by the Knights Radiant, and normally take the form of swords. However, they are actually the physical form of the angelic spirits known as spren, and as such can shift into whatever form their wielders need or prefer. So maybe all artifact weapons can morph their form to match their weilder’s favored weapon class.
Not a bad solution: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/magic-weapons/magic-weapon-special-abilities/transformative