Now that the 2024 PHB has been out for a while, where do you stand with regards to the weapon mastery mechanics? Are you enjoying them (as player or DM)? Do you think they add interesting options to the game? Do you feel they bog the game down? Make it hard for newer players to navigate their character options? Do you think some masteries are overtuned/too powerful? Do you have house rules for any of them? 

Let's discuss weapon mastery.

I like them in general, but I'm not super keen on effects that can force a saving throw on every attack, like topple. We'll see how it shakes out in our games. I'm all for making non-spellcasters more powerful, though.

Yeah I can imagine that the constant saving throws would drag things out even more. I'll have to see how that goes.

Quote from Linklite >>

Yeah I can imagine that the constant saving throws would drag things out even more. I'll have to see how that goes.

 I think that's one reason why some of the creatures we've seen so far no longer grant a saving throw to avoid a secondary effect upon a hit. If a Wolf hits you, you are Prone, no save. If a Constrictor Snake hits you, you are Grappled, no save. With the addition of weapon masteries that require saves, the designers needed to cut back on die rolls. Good for not bogging the game down too much, but makes saving throw proficiencies not as important.

Quote from Gnomarchy >>

I like them in general, but I'm not super keen on effects that can force a saving throw on every attack, like topple. We'll see how it shakes out in our games. I'm all for making non-spellcasters more powerful, though.

 
Agreeing with this. If any of my players end up taking a weapon with Topple, I’ll probably be homeruling it to a “once per turn” affair.  Prone is a strong enough condition that I think Topple will still be plenty powerful, even with that limitation.

Otherwise, I am quite pleased with the ones I have seen used thus far.  Just got to make sure my players remember to actually apply them - as with anything, going to be a bit of a learning curve on this.

Topple is situational, though. Unless someone else is making a melee attack before the target's turn, it's not particularly effective. We'll see what it's like in practice, but I'd honestly be surprised if it's many peoples' go-to mastery.

I like Weapon Mastery as it give weapon users other effects on otherwise basic attacks. 

What i'm not too fond of, is weapon juggling, where player characters try to maximize their usage by using up to 3-4 different weapons for each attack during their turn as in practice at the table it can often become a bit complex.

Weapon Masteries are okay but I think there is a little bit of power imbalance between them, Cleave is better than Graze and Vex is better than Sap. With Nick and Cleave potentially giving extra attacks as nick moves the light property attack from BA to just being an extra attack and Cleave, Cleave allows you to hit another target with an attack (no modifier) but is once per turn which makes it crazy when paired with polearm master on a Halberd. It makes fights vs, groups output significantly more damage, more so with something Barbarian Rage damage or Paladin Radiant Strikes.

Quote from Benz74M >>

 If a Constrictor Snake hits you, you are Grappled, no save.

 Constrictor Snake was an auto Grapple in 2014 too.

My group has a fighter with a topple weapon, it hasn’t really been an issue. At this point, level 7, it’s really only possible 2/round (except action surge). But in practice if the target fails the first one, there’s no second one. 
And throw in it’s not always a great choice (initiative order, ranged allies) it hasn’t really mattered much in terms of slowing things down. Obviously that’s just anecdotal for my table, and it may work differently for others. Just putting it out there as one person’s experience.

Well, while I tend to be a little put off by them, my players adore them, and are experimenting like mad in the dungeon crawl. I get to go for round three of it today (third session since release and approval).

So far, it hasn't been terrible -- just mildly irritating. But (huge but) it also has made changes to the way that I play.

My players are very tactical -- they love the masteries because it means new tactics.

To keep up with them, I became more tactical -- and I will use masteries as abilities on monsters. that will even the field, and I suspect/hope that the new MM will do the same: the wolf rendering prone is an example of this.

Quote from Plaguescarred >>

What i'm not too fond of, is weapon juggling, where player characters try to maximize their usage by using up to 3-4 different weapons for each attack during their turn as in practice at the table it can often become a bit complex.

Yeah. I'm not a fan of anything that brings back the golf bag, and weapon juggling is way worse than the old situational weapon usage

Quote from Xalthu >>

My group has a fighter with a topple weapon, it hasn’t really been an issue. At this point, level 7, it’s really only possible 2/round (except action surge). But in practice if the target fails the first one, there’s no second one. 
And throw in it’s not always a great choice (initiative order, ranged allies) it hasn’t really mattered much in terms of slowing things down. Obviously that’s just anecdotal for my table, and it may work differently for others. Just putting it out there as one person’s experience.

 This is my exact same experience. It sounds ugly that "every single attack forces a saving throw", but in practice, it's very often just the first one. And in terms of power and balance, it's perfectly fine. It's not nearly as strong and it seems on paper, where the situation is always perfect for it.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Well, while I tend to be a little put off by them, my players adore them, and are experimenting like mad in the dungeon crawl. I get to go for round three of it today (third session since release and approval).

So far, it hasn't been terrible -- just mildly irritating. But (huge but) it also has made changes to the way that I play.

My players are very tactical -- they love the masteries because it means new tactics.

To keep up with them, I became more tactical -- and I will use masteries as abilities on monsters. that will even the field, and I suspect/hope that the new MM will do the same: the wolf rendering prone is an example of this.

 Wolves could always do this. They used to force a saving throw, but wolves have always had a "weapon mastery". And you will use masteries as abilities on monsters? You mean you haven't done that so far? The 2014 MM is full of that! Tons of monsters have added effects when they hit, and often stronger than any weapon mastery. Will the new MM do the same? Of course it will, it's been doing that since 2014.

Even if the only melee fighter in the party is the one who applied Topple, it's still very good. The prone target can't make Attacks of Opportunity (actually I think they can but at Disadvantage). They have to spend half their move getting up. A savvy warrior can inflict Topple with their first hit, get Advantage on the rest of their attacks, then move back 25 feet with little AoO from the target. Then the poor soul on the ground has to get up and either make a ranged attack, cast a spell, or chase down the opponent. Rinse, repeat.

My biggest issues are that there are too few forms of this and the record-keeping for the DM will be harder. IMHO there should be more like Flails granting an inherent -1 to AC because parrying a heavy object on the end of a chain is hard. Many polearms (like Glaives and Halberds) should be able to Topple as a Quarterstaff does if the wielder had Polearm Master and can strike with the other end.

On the other hand, there are now so many types of effects that DMing will be a nightmare in any battle with more than a handful of foes. Prone targets are easy...knock the figure over. But if you have a Fighter, a Ranger, and a Rogue in the party and there are five attacks between them and four of them have Slow, you need to indicate exactly which targets are affected (assuming they survive getting hit). 

Quote from Benz74M >>

Now that the 2024 PHB has been out for a while, where do you stand with regards to the weapon mastery mechanics? Are you enjoying them (as player or DM)? Do you think they add interesting options to the game? Do you feel they bog the game down? Make it hard for newer players to navigate their character options? Do you think some masteries are overtuned/too powerful? Do you have house rules for any of them? 

Let's discuss weapon mastery.

 They are more OP nonsense, designed to make the game "fun" for the min-maxing player, and hell for the DM. Imagine how much "fun" it will be for the players when the NPC's start doing this every turn to players' PC's. I have stated before I play about 7 different game systems. Pathfinder 2e has built in feat's that players can choose that do this. It is a nightmare for DM's, and trivializes fights, making them boring for all the other players.

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

Quote from Benz74M >>

Now that the 2024 PHB has been out for a while, where do you stand with regards to the weapon mastery mechanics? Are you enjoying them (as player or DM)? Do you think they add interesting options to the game? Do you feel they bog the game down? Make it hard for newer players to navigate their character options? Do you think some masteries are overtuned/too powerful? Do you have house rules for any of them? 

Let's discuss weapon mastery.

 They are more OP nonsense, designed to make the game "fun" for the min-maxing player, and hell for the DM. Imagine how much "fun" it will be for the players when the NPC's start doing this every turn to players' PC's. I have stated before I play about 7 different game systems. Pathfinder 2e has built in feat's that players can choose that do this. It is a nightmare for DM's, and trivializes fights, making them boring for all the other players.

I have been DMing with Weapon Mastery since the playtest.  Never once cause a problem.

 Frankly, if a DM struggles to adjusts to the fairly inconsequential (especially compared even to basic rules spells) effects of Weapon Mastery, the problem is not the system, it is a DM who is either too ridged or who has never been good at game balance.  Seems rather unfair to martial classes to say “you can’t have anything more interesting than swing a sword” because an insignificant handful of timid DMs, constantly scared of their own players and insecure in their ability to balance the game, don’t want players to have options. 

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

Quote from Benz74M >>

Now that the 2024 PHB has been out for a while, where do you stand with regards to the weapon mastery mechanics? Are you enjoying them (as player or DM)? Do you think they add interesting options to the game? Do you feel they bog the game down? Make it hard for newer players to navigate their character options? Do you think some masteries are overtuned/too powerful? Do you have house rules for any of them? 

Let's discuss weapon mastery.

 They are more OP nonsense, designed to make the game "fun" for the min-maxing player, and hell for the DM. Imagine how much "fun" it will be for the players when the NPC's start doing this every turn to players' PC's. I have stated before I play about 7 different game systems. Pathfinder 2e has built in feat's that players can choose that do this. It is a nightmare for DM's, and trivializes fights, making them boring for all the other players.

 How many sessions have you played using masteries in 5e? Because I bet it’s zero. Is it zero? It’s zero, isn’t it? I can tell because if it were a number besides zero, you wouldn’t be saying this.

NPC monsters are far less effective at weapon juggling because they don't make multiple attacks using the Attack action but the Multiattack action. They thus generally rely on the free object interaction to equip or unequip a weapon since they can't do so before or after each attacks except if using Thrown weapons, which can be drawn as part of ranged attack. This greatly limit options for them and take more time to do.

Beside, Weapon Mastery property is usable only by a character who has a feature, which NPC monsters lack. So without houserule or homebrew, juggling Weapon Mastery is not something that will be used by DM unless they instead design combat encounter with DMPC.

Truth be told I have been using Weapon Masteries in my D&D games since about 1989.  All that has happened is that they finally implemented this into 5e so I don't have to write it up in a house rule document.  I don't know if people know this or not, but weapon mastery was first introduced in the 1st edition BECMI system. That system was far more involved than this version, neither I or any of my players ever had any issue understanding it and this version really mostly works the same, just a bit more streamlined and simpler to implement.  It's very obvious that they worked very closely with 1st edition to create this system, in some areas they quite literally just copy/pasted the text.

So obviously, I'm a fan.  I only have 2 sessions at this point with the current implementation but as it's quite similar to the system I was already using, you could say I have about 30+ years of experience with it.

Don't like them overall. If they wanted to make it a feature just for fighters, that might be different, but they're handing them out to too many classes/subclasses. They are going to make combat even more chaotic and time consuming than it already was (now you have to keep track of even more prone states, reduced movement rates, and WTF is up with giving FREE attacks just because you're holding a certain weapon or free damage for missing), not to mention even more cases of advantage or disadvantage which was already easy to get, now everyone under the sun is going to be rolling with either advantage or disadvantage causing even more disruptions.

If you want to see if it's a good idea or not, throw your PCs up against NPCs who get to use those as well, and watch the complaints start to mount. Enemy using a longsword? Ooops guess you get to fight at disadvantage every time they hit you, good luck hitting that 20 AC now (having fun yet?). What you want to move? Oh, if only you didn't get toppled on the enemy's turn, now you lose half your movement rate. Trying to get closer to that archer... good luck when he keeps knocking 10 ft off your movement every round, then backing up (you'll be dead long before you get there).

Monsters may lack Weapon Mastery, but NPCs follow PC rules in 5e (NPC classes were an earlier edition, 5e got rid of them). So unless you're using something with a stat-block, which most NPCs don't, you'll be facing Weapon Mastery as well. Some campaigns fight more NPCs than monsters (like the ones our extended group tends to play).

Total side question: your NPCs don't use stat blocks?

I have never, ever used a character sheet for an NPC -- always a stat block, going back to 1e.