Just curious on what others think, but why would a player choose a whip as weapon. As a player, a whip would be cool but really not practical with a 1d4 slashing damage. As a DM, I wondered how I could make this weapon much more practical for players to use. So, I was of thinking to add a bonus action after a hit. That the player can choose to disarm, restrain or make prone. The last two would have an athletic, with advantage (whip giving the player some leverage), DC to see if it succeeds. And maybe a disarm reaction, if a creature within range attacks and hits an ally.
How would other people make the whip a bit more practical? And if not a whip, what other least used weapons would you make usable?
I think the whip, being the only one-handed weapon with the reach property, it is very useful if you plan to keep distance and use a lot of reaction for opportunity attacks.
Plus also, I think it is ok that not every weapon is equal. A whip is in fact a terrible battle weapon. There is a reason the Roman Legionaries didn't form an elite force of whippers. Most anyone holding a whip is doing so for a non-battle reason. Like punishing slaves. It is a good weapon for that. If a person holding a whip found themselves in a fight then they could do some decent whipping, but to expect them to do as well as someone holding a longsword they are trained with is unreasonable.
Want someone to use a whip? Easy. Start handing out magic whips with assorted powerful bonuses. Someone will pick one up eventually. Or invent a homebrew Feat which gives people Indiana Jones skills when they hold a whip. Best not try to amend the base rules of the weapon.
Plus also, I think it is ok that not every weapon is equal. A whip is in fact a terrible battle weapon. There is a reason the Roman Legionaries didn't form an elite force of whippers. Most anyone holding a whip is doing so for a non-battle reason. Like punishing slaves. It is a good weapon for that. If a person holding a whip found themselves in a fight then they could do some decent whipping, but to expect them to do as well as someone holding a longsword they are trained with is unreasonable.
I disagree with the sentiment that weapons should be "realistic" in this game. Very little of a game about wizards throwing fireballs, rogues being able to surprise you from behind a box, and Clerics casting healing magic, etc... is about "realism". This is a game about imagination and rule of cool.
Below is when I start ranting about stuff I've ranted in other threads, so I put it in a Spoiler box.
{rant} On average (I say average because it's hard to pin down exact designs for loose terms of weapons used over hundreds or thousands of years) a "rapier" and a "longsword" both weighted around 2 pounds, the fact that one is "Finesse" is based on the image people of have in the 3 musketeers and other media. The game doesn't simulate a different AC based on your armor vs different weapon attacks, and any number of things. Polearms also only have 1 "head" when most polearms were swiss army knives of weapons with 2-3 different weapon types nor the fact that the first half of a longsword was often blunt so you can grab it by the lower part of the not a blade to stab between armor joints.
I personally think the Devs should have taken their own advice with Monk Weapons, where a nunchuck is just a cooler looking club, and concentrated on making all the weapons cool and balanced. To even have subpar weapons is a literal waste of design space.
Subpar Weapons: Mace, Light Hammer, Dart, Flail, Morningstar, Trident, Warpick, Blowgun, Net. There is almost no reason to ever use these weapons, why did they bother making rules that will not be used? Do you want a Finesse, blunt, reach weapon? It would be a blunt "whip" and call it a Kusarigama. Do you want a 1d8, blunt, finesse weapon? Take the rapier make it blunt and call it a Flail! More then likely flails were NEVER used in combat and were recreated later on in art and produced to look like the art. Don't let peanut butter reality getting into your chocolate fantasy. Why is a Warpick not have Versatile but Warhammer, Battleaxe, and Longsword are all 1d10 + Versatile? Because the Devs wanted to waste design space on a subpar weapon in a game about people fighting dragons. {/rant}
I do think a Whip is actually balanced. If you do look for a kind of "design" philosophy, and take the 1d8 + Special Property as the standard good design. Reach is worth 2 Special Property tags. Warhammer, Battleaxe, Longsword, and Rapier are all 1d8 + 1 Special Property (Versatile or Finesse) Scimitar, Shortsword are 1d6 + 2 Special Properties (light and finesse), exchanging a extra special property for a damage die. Greatsword, Maul, and Greataxe are all 2d6/1d12, with 2 negative Special Properties (Heavy and Two Handed) Pike, Halberd, etc... are all 1d10, with 1 Positive Special Property (Reach)with 2 negative Special Properties (Heavy and Two Handed), and loses a damage die. On this curve Whip is actually balanced at 1d4 with 2 Positive Special Properties Reach, and Finesse, where Reach is worth 2 "properties", and so it has to lose 2 dice. If you made it 1d6 no one would be using a scimitar or shortsword.
But there is a place for sub par weapons: other people. Not everyone is a PC, and not everyone is murdering their way through the land stealing gold to buy fancy armour so they can bust into some giant's house and steal their prized possessions. Some people are just hanging around town, whipping their slaves. And when the PCs arrive to murder their way through that part of town then there are rules for how much damage that guy's whip does. Also there are times when all the PCs stuff is taken and they grab the nearest mace and go at it. I'm not arguing for realism here, but for options both optimal and bad.
That being said, I generally agree with your rant and think the trident's existence is particularly strange. I'm also in favour of just making a big table of damage dies, weapon properties and damage types, drawing a line in the middle for the simple/martial divide, and letting everyone call an object from whatever box they pick whatever they want. By my rough calculations there could be a martial finesse/reach weapon with d6 damage, but no higher than that - damage die reduced from max d12 once each for one-handed, finesse and reach.
I'd argue that those "subpar weapons" is the entire point of the "Simple Weapons" tables vs the "Martial Weapons" table. I do agree the Trident is particularly bad, you're paying Martial Weapons proficiency for the exact stats of a simple weapon... especially since if a Trident (traditionally a fishing tool) or easy to model as a "pitchfork" would make more sense as a Simple Weapon. My all time favorite worst weapon is the Net, which is always thrown at DisAdv unless you have 1 of 2 feats.
Fluff wise Drow High Priestesses are famous for their use of whips as weapons and definitely aren't 2nd class weapons for them.
I also don't like the idea of paying a feat to make a weapon useable... that feat would have to do A LOT make a weapon worth paying that price. The Spear Mastery feat in UA makes the spear compete with longswords, it doesn't make the Spear + Feat compete with Polearm + Polearm Master or Greatsword + Great Weapon Master or Longsword and Shield + Shield Master.
Full Metal Bunny is right about the whip - it actually is balanced by other weapons. Its a Finesse weapon, so we'd be comparing it to rapiers, short swords and daggers. Rapiers get d8 because its has no other properties than finesse. Short swords are light, and can be dual wielded for d6 damage. Daggers are finesse/thrown/light for d4. Is Reach on par with the thrown / light quality combined? While arguable either way, I suppose, I don't think the increase to d6 would really help the whip that much, and I don't really think its part of the appeal (more below).
The fundamental issue at play here is actually the lack of support for whips. There's no Whip Master feat, unlike Polearm Mastery like for a spear, and shield users can get Shield Mastery, but that requires being in 5', which defeats the purpose. Rogues and Monks can't use whips by default. Fighters, if they want to make the most out of Reach, tend to grab a Polearm, which has some very nice feat combinations. Rangers, if they want range, will more likely grab a bow, which works with their spells better and has feat support. Gishy blade'locks / bladesingers tend to want to use Booming Blade (or GFB), which has a 5' requirement, which defeats the purpose of Reach.
I just think the problem here is that there's no real advantage involved here. If I was playing a whip user, I'd be wanting to push and pull and trip people up, or wrap them with the whip. Most of those can be accomplished through the use of the regular grapple/shove rules, but those use Strength (athletics) rules, but the whip is Finesse. I could use Battlemaster Manuevers, but why not use a polearm for better damage and insanely good feat support? I can see a rogue taking advantage of the whip, but why bother multi-classing or taking a feat for the proficency when tossing a dagger is just as effective.
How to improve? First, give rogues whip proficency. I bet you anything you'll see some people taking the whip then just because Rule of Cool. Next, design a whip feat that lets you do things like trip people or grapple with the whip, but using your Dexterity + proficiency (or acrobatics). Something to cause people to become Frightened or otherwise flinch from the crack, perhaps even as a bonus action, for some bonus. The whip should be a soft battlefield control weapon, that's part of its appeal, not the raw damage. Its one of the few flexible weapons in the entire game, and that really should be taken advantage of in some way.
Watching Critical Role help inspired this topic. With Jester swapping out the cool looking sickle with a handaxe. Because it did more damage.
Like Mephista mentioned "I'd be wanting to push and pull and trip people up, or wrap them with the whip" and I would also add the Indiana Jones disarm. Just being able to do that would make the weapon more attractable to use. It may not do as much damage as the other more flashier weapons but it makes that up with disrupting the enemies turn and making a cool narrative.
Maybe a feat or specific proficiency similar to "Weapon Mastery" except this would give you bonus actions or a special reactions
For instance
Whip: Bonus Action - disarm, entangle or make prone
Net: Entangles and need an acrobatics check to escape.
Here's how I would do a whip feat. The wording is a bit clunky, but I think the idea is there.
Whip Expert
Prerequisite: Proficiency with whips
When making an Attack action, you may use your bonus action to use your whip to disarm, grapple or shove your target. You may only choose to knock prone instead pushing back if you select to shove, and you may only disarm if your DM is permitting the optional disarm rules on page 271 of the DMG.
When holding a whip while grappling, knocking prone or disarming a target, you may roll Dexterity (Acrobatics) in place of Strength (Athletics).
When making a grapple check while holding a whip, you may choose to make a Charisma (Intimidation) or (Performance) check in place of Strength (Athletics). If you choose to do so, the target gains the Frightened Condition in place of the Grappled Condition. This condition lasts until the target ends their next turn.
Most weapon mastery feats have three abilities (two if one of them is the -5 hit/+10 damage ability). Usually they're not as closely related as these three, but I think its fair. In theory, you could make an attack to do damage, then bonus-action grapple/prone/disarm/scare, or do two of grapple/prone/disarm/scare, since all of these are part of the attack action now. This allows you to lock down a target while using Dexterity skills (well, the scare requires some Charisma) instead of Strength, basically giving you Finesse for those abilities.
For the last ability, I'm not entirely sold on it working that way, but I wanted it to tie into the rest without having to basically have to rewrite the entire thing. But the idea here is to not necessarily freak them out and make them back off by cracking the whip (though that idea is there too), but to swing it around like a chain or a rope dart and make them leery of approaching. I tied it to grappling because, well, I felt that Size matters here. I could have done it as part of Shoving too, but I felt that swapping out one Condition for another flowed a bit nicer.
I disagree with the sentiment that weapons should be "realistic" in this game. Very little of a game about wizards throwing fireballs, rogues being able to surprise you from behind a box, and Clerics casting healing magic, etc... is about "realism". This is a game about imagination and rule of cool.
And yet we don't have feats for doing silly things like dual wielding two-handed weapons or shields. People still expect some semblance of realism from the non-magical characters.
I agree with Regent. Whips aren't a practical weapon; they don't need to be on par with other weapons just like a cat familiar doesn't have to be equally useful as an owl familiar. Some people will want a cat even if an owl is more useful. Whips, like tridents, exist for their aesthetic and cultural value. Sea people with tridents are a popular trope, so if you want to play a triton or a cleric of poseidon or whatever, odds are you'll want a trident even though it has no advantage over a spear. If you really want to play an Indiana Jones-type, you'll want a whip even though you'd have an easier time killing monsters with a sword.
Disarming and tripping can be accomplished through the Martial Adept feat (or 3 levels in Fighter for Battle Master). That's exactly what Disarming Attack and Tripping Attack are for.
Rogues and Blade Bards can get proficiency with the Weapon Master feat while still bumping up their DEX 1 point (which is enough to go from 17 to 18 if you started with 15 DEX and a +2 DEX race.) Alternatively, 1 level in Fighter never hurts and you can pick up Dueling Fighting Style and proficiency with shields.
Kensei Monks can use whips. Paladins, Warlocks and Fighters can use their reach to smite or use maneuvers without giving up their shield.
Bladesingers are arguably better off using Extra Attack over Booming/Green-Flame Blade until 11+ but if they really want to, they can pick up Spell Sniper to make that work.
We've already talked about how the whip is actually in line with other Tier 1 weapons, and Mephista pointed out more eloquently then I the main problem is every class which wants to use it doesn't get it to start, and if they want it they have to multiclass. Giving the whip to Rogues is no more powerful then giving Rapier they are both martial weapons. I disagree with your assertion that the whip shouldn't be practical, because aside from making it Martial and not giving it to the classes which would benefit from it, coughRoguecough, it's perfectly balanced based off of the other Tier 1 Martial Weapons.
I think Weapon Master is also one of the stupidest feats ever created. It does gives +1 Str/Dex but is weirdly nit picky about picking 4 weapons instead of giving all Simple & Martial Weapons. The number of classes that can benefit from this are astonishingly small, and the difference between having "all" and "pick 4" is mostly negligible and ends up in bookkeeping. Only: Wizard, Sorcerer, and Druid don't get all Simple Weapons and of the classes which don't have all Martial Weapons almost all of them get some amount of martial weapons. It doesn't follow the normal design philosophy of most feats as expressed in the Design Workshop: Feats article. Unless you think 4 weapon proficiencies is on par with other feat abilities of it's class like Heavy Armor Master, Observant, and Resilient.
At the end of the day this is D&D's combat system, it should be balanced, because it's a game's combat system we're talking about. Your argument is that there should be weapons below the curve so that people who want to have aesthetic and cultural value to their characters have to play sub-par characters. That is your argument. That these character should be mechanically sub-par to every other character because they want to choose a Trident or Flail or Morningstar, or Warpick for the flavor of their own character. That is awful design, it's especially awful design in a game about fun.
We've already talked about how the whip is actually in line with other Tier 1 weapons, and Mephista pointed out more eloquently then I the main problem is every class which wants to use it doesn't get it to start, and if they want it they have to multiclass.
That's only true if you assume those are the only classes that want to use whips.
Giving the whip to Rogues is no more powerful then giving Rapier they are both martial weapons.
I agree. It's a weird omission.
I think Weapon Master is also one of the stupidest feats ever created. It does gives +1 Str/Dex but is weirdly nit picky about picking 4 weapons instead of giving all Simple & Martial Weapons.
If you're picking Weapon Master because you want be play X but use weapon Y, whether you get 4 proficiencies or 20 doesn't matter.
8 out of 12 is not astonishingly small.
Unless you think 4 weapon proficiencies is on par with other feat abilities of it's class like Heavy Armor Master, Observant, and Resilient.
I do. Heavy Armor Master gets progressively less useful as you level up and that 3 damage represents a smaller and smaller fraction of an enemy's attack, and the likelihood that you're fighting a monster that can do more than just attack goes up.
Your argument is that there should be weapons below the curve so that people who want to have aesthetic and cultural value to their characters have to play sub-par characters. That is your argument.
My argument is that the options don't need to be artificially balanced against each other in a co-op storytelling game. In a competitive versus game, absolutely. The storytelling aspect of D&D is just as important as the game parts and doing something like artificially making blow guns competitive against longbows hurts immersion.
That these character should be mechanically sub-par to every other character because they want to choose a Trident or Flail or Morningstar, or Warpick for the flavor of their own character. That is awful design, it's especially awful design in a game about fun.
You're assuming that anything that's mechanically sub-par is automatically not fun. Plenty of players are happy to prioritize aesthetics even if it means being slightly weaker mechanically.
That's only true if you assume those are the only classes that want to use whips.
Its still true, simply because the purpose wasn't to create an exhaustive examination of every niche case; this is casual conversation, not an in-depth analysis down to the last detail. Dex-based Death clerics could do well, or perhaps some others; however, such builds are generally niche, which was besides the point. The point is to illustrate general trends on the whole on why such an event is happening, and why the whip is so underutilized.
My argument is that the options don't need to be artificially balanced against each other in a co-op storytelling game. In a competitive versus game, absolutely. The storytelling aspect of D&D is just as important as the game parts and doing something like artificially making blow guns competitive against longbows hurts immersion.
False dichotomy there. Balancing weapons against each other has no impact on the storytelling aspects. Furthermore, there are different ways of balancing things. Your argument suggests that you can't have both at the same time with the whip, when you very much can, as such bringing story into it is nothing more than a distraction.
You're assuming that anything that's mechanically sub-par is automatically not fun. Plenty of players are happy to prioritize aesthetics even if it means being slightly weaker mechanically.
Emphasis on the word slightly. While you are correct, people don't mind a slight drop in mechanical effectiveness, the whip is generally considered to be moderate to greatly weaker rather slightly, which the majority of players generally do mind and find such to be less fun.
Your argument boils down to "The whip is a sucky weapon, and it should suck in the game, but that's okay because you can still play with a whip even though it sucks because you shouldn't care about mechanics." That logic, if we applied it to the Beastmaster? Then we wouldn't be getting all these Revised tests for new stuff about it. Clearly, if something is not fun, and people aren't playing it, then there is a problem that should be addressed. Arguing that everything is fine remains counter productive when the whole point of the thread is that, no, not everything is fine for our games. Further posts have added that there are abilities a couple of us would like to see enabled for anyone to possibly do if they use a whip, while right now they cannot, which is a failure of mechanics reflecting story.
Why are we not having this argument about the Club? That is also definitely a crappy weapon, but I don't hear anyone clamouring to have it balanced against a greatsword (or even balanced with the other simple weapons). I understand that clubs don't really have anything like the cool factor of a whip, but I suspect it is also because everyone here does think that using a club should suck, and that attempting to balance it would be counter-productive. If that is true, then we all agree that some weapons should be *worse* while other weapons should be *balanced*. Once we agree on that, then it is just personal preference as to which weapon we think falls into which category. Personally, I'm just not going to fight very hard to drag the whip into the *balanced* category. I think having a feat available to let a PC do cool stuff with a whip would be great (maybe include some rope skills or other finesse weapon specials to round out the feat), but I'm not going to argue that the combat model is fundamentally flawed just because whips suck.
False dichotomy there. Balancing weapons against each other has no impact on the storytelling aspects.
If you're gonna tell me a knife does as much damage as a great sword, that breaks my suspension of disbelief. A great sword should absolutely hurt more.
Emphasis on the word slightly. While you are correct, people don't mind a slight drop in mechanical effectiveness, the whip is generally considered to be moderate to greatly weaker rather slightly, which the majority of players generally do mind and find such to be less fun.
If you're a Kensei, you can use your martial arts die and part of your damage comes from unarmed strikes. If you're a Rogue, most of your damage comes from Sneak Attack. If you're a Paladin, a good chunk of it comes from (Improved) Divine Smite, Hunter's Mark or Divine Favor, and Dueling Fighting Style. If you're a full spellcaster (Bladesinger, Hexblade) your melee damage is peanuts compared to your spell slots.
Losing an average of 2 damage per hit compared to a d8 one-handed weapon isn't a big deal for a lot of classes, and one PC is only a fraction of a party.
The majority of players are, in fact, not number-crunching optimizers. The majority of players pick whatever they want to play as.Most players don't even use feats. The game is designed to withstand optimal and suboptimal play. Whips just aren't a popular weapon type. No matter how much you incentivize it, most players are going to pick a sword over a whip because swords are cool.
That logic, if we applied it to the Beastmaster? Then we wouldn't be getting all these Revised tests for new stuff about it.
The Beastmaster is bad because it can't act independently from the Ranger. There's no real reason why that should be the case other than Jeremy and Mike being reeeeally cautious whenever a game feature adds friendly creatures to the party and they overdid it.
If you're gonna tell me a knife does as much damage as a great sword, that breaks my suspension of disbelief. A great sword should absolutely hurt more.
This is not at all what we were discussing. We are discussing weapons of similar abilities. For example a mace and quarterstaff are both 1d6, but the mace costs 4 gold and 8 silver more and lacks the Versatile property. Aside from a possible difference in materials each are made out of, which is purely cosmetic unless effected by a spell (heat metal/warp wood), there is little reason to take a mace over a quarterstaff. A quarterstaff could also be made out of metal. We're not saying a dagger and greatsword should do equivalent.
You're arguing that losing 2 damage isn't a big deal? A 2 damage increase is highly prized, there are class features based around it: Dueling Fighting Style or the Barbarian's Rage. That's equivalent to an entire die increase, how many fighters choose to lose a die size? I've never seen anyone recommend a duel weilding fighter take two daggers instead of short swords. I've never seen a martial character player decide to use a smaller die type unless they had a compelling reason like finding a magic short sword. I disagree that Divine Smite is most of a Paladin's damage as they have very limited spell slots, same with Hunter's Mark, Hex, and Divine Favor all use up precious spell slots. I'm not going to get into the argument about edge cases with martial subclasses of spellcasters making weapon attacks vs spells, but remember weapon attacks get Ability Mod, while Cantrips do not, without rare abilities.
The other point is not just that most players will pick swords, part of that is because the best weapons in the game are always swords. Holy Avenger? Longsword. Sun Blade? Longsword. Vorpal Sword? Longsword. All the pregenned campaign settings I've ever played all the best magic weapons were either: dagger, short sword, long sword, or great sword.
Part of the problem Mephista brings up is that all the classes where a player might want to use a whip has to go out of their way to use a whip, so of course they aren't going to use a whip. How many more whip using Indiana Jones type Rouges would we see if they had natural proficiency or a kusarigama wielding ninja style rogue?
You can't argue that there should be subpar weapons then argue that it doesn't matter that there are subpar weapons because most people won't use them because they already choose the mechanically best superior option, while arguing that people don't automatically pick the mechanically superior option.
Why are we not having this argument about the Club?
There has been in the past. But, because there are close approximate options for fulfilling that playstyle, it fell to the wayside. The whip is unique. The whip also has iconic fantasy characters, such as video games like Castlevania and Etrian Odyssey, or the image of the devil with a whip. There is a entire TVtrope page devoted to this.
Let me put this simply. There is a demand and an archetype. You don't like it, you can ignore it. But let the people who want to recreate those archetypes do so without telling them they're wrong. Good day
If you're gonna tell me a knife does as much damage as a great sword, that breaks my suspension of disbelief. A great sword should absolutely hurt more.
Are you trying to be a troll here? Because that's exactly what you're doing. You're twisting words so far out of shape its patiently ridiculous. I get the feeling you're not here to actually contribute, but just want to tell others they're having BadWrongFun, and I have no patience for that kind of attitude. Good bye.
Just started a (var human) Tempest cleric who uses a Whip and shield (ex pirate now on dry land). With spell sniper i can use booming blade to hit people within 10ft and trigger thunder damage as they close to within Melee. With Warcaster it becomes even more fun.
Having 10' reach and able to use a shield seems a nice compromise for 2 damage.
It is nice of you to to pluck out a sentence each of our replies and then bid us "Good Day Sir" in a condescending manner. But in fact the thesis of my post had almost nothing to do with Clubs, and the essence of InquisitiveCoder's post was that everyone can have their own fun - and that they make that choice both actively and purposefully and that is both good and ok.
I literally already agreed that a whip is cool. I have already suggested that a feat could empower whips, or a plethora of magic whips would enable their use. Inquisitive is all in favour of people choosing their own way despite mechanical differences. I guess I just don't really know what sort of atrocity you are trying to accuse us of here. I continue to argue that making a whip more attractive is both possible and perfectly worthwhile, but that attempting to *balance* it with all the other martial weapons is not necessary. No one here is trying to troll (maybe, I don't know), we are just sharing our opinions and views. My view is vaguely anti-whip, but not militantly so.
In fairness the MM has a drow with a scourge (1d8) which might be a better whip-style damaging option. Obviously it's not finesse or anything but might be more in line for dealing damage.
It also makes me wonder what other 'uncatalogued weapons' exist in the game - like the bugbears giant morningstar (2d8)
Just curious on what others think, but why would a player choose a whip as weapon. As a player, a whip would be cool but really not practical with a 1d4 slashing damage. As a DM, I wondered how I could make this weapon much more practical for players to use. So, I was of thinking to add a bonus action after a hit. That the player can choose to disarm, restrain or make prone. The last two would have an athletic, with advantage (whip giving the player some leverage), DC to see if it succeeds. And maybe a disarm reaction, if a creature within range attacks and hits an ally.
How would other people make the whip a bit more practical? And if not a whip, what other least used weapons would you make usable?
I think the whip, being the only one-handed weapon with the reach property, it is very useful if you plan to keep distance and use a lot of reaction for opportunity attacks.
Plus also, I think it is ok that not every weapon is equal. A whip is in fact a terrible battle weapon. There is a reason the Roman Legionaries didn't form an elite force of whippers. Most anyone holding a whip is doing so for a non-battle reason. Like punishing slaves. It is a good weapon for that. If a person holding a whip found themselves in a fight then they could do some decent whipping, but to expect them to do as well as someone holding a longsword they are trained with is unreasonable.
Want someone to use a whip? Easy. Start handing out magic whips with assorted powerful bonuses. Someone will pick one up eventually. Or invent a homebrew Feat which gives people Indiana Jones skills when they hold a whip. Best not try to amend the base rules of the weapon.
Very little of a game about wizards throwing fireballs, rogues being able to surprise you from behind a box, and Clerics casting healing magic, etc... is about "realism".
This is a game about imagination and rule of cool.
Below is when I start ranting about stuff I've ranted in other threads, so I put it in a Spoiler box.
{rant}
On average (I say average because it's hard to pin down exact designs for loose terms of weapons used over hundreds or thousands of years) a "rapier" and a "longsword" both weighted around 2 pounds, the fact that one is "Finesse" is based on the image people of have in the 3 musketeers and other media. The game doesn't simulate a different AC based on your armor vs different weapon attacks, and any number of things. Polearms also only have 1 "head" when most polearms were swiss army knives of weapons with 2-3 different weapon types nor the fact that the first half of a longsword was often blunt so you can grab it by the lower part of the not a blade to stab between armor joints.
I personally think the Devs should have taken their own advice with Monk Weapons, where a nunchuck is just a cooler looking club, and concentrated on making all the weapons cool and balanced. To even have subpar weapons is a literal waste of design space.
Subpar Weapons: Mace, Light Hammer, Dart, Flail, Morningstar, Trident, Warpick, Blowgun, Net. There is almost no reason to ever use these weapons, why did they bother making rules that will not be used?
Do you want a Finesse, blunt, reach weapon? It would be a blunt "whip" and call it a Kusarigama.
Do you want a 1d8, blunt, finesse weapon? Take the rapier make it blunt and call it a Flail! More then likely flails were NEVER used in combat and were recreated later on in art and produced to look like the art. Don't let peanut butter reality getting into your chocolate fantasy.
Why is a Warpick not have Versatile but Warhammer, Battleaxe, and Longsword are all 1d10 + Versatile? Because the Devs wanted to waste design space on a subpar weapon in a game about people fighting dragons.
{/rant}
I do think a Whip is actually balanced. If you do look for a kind of "design" philosophy, and take the 1d8 + Special Property as the standard good design. Reach is worth 2 Special Property tags.
Warhammer, Battleaxe, Longsword, and Rapier are all 1d8 + 1 Special Property (Versatile or Finesse)
Scimitar, Shortsword are 1d6 + 2 Special Properties (light and finesse), exchanging a extra special property for a damage die.
Greatsword, Maul, and Greataxe are all 2d6/1d12, with 2 negative Special Properties (Heavy and Two Handed)
Pike, Halberd, etc... are all 1d10, with 1 Positive Special Property (Reach)with 2 negative Special Properties (Heavy and Two Handed), and loses a damage die.
On this curve Whip is actually balanced at 1d4 with 2 Positive Special Properties Reach, and Finesse, where Reach is worth 2 "properties", and so it has to lose 2 dice. If you made it 1d6 no one would be using a scimitar or shortsword.
But there is a place for sub par weapons: other people. Not everyone is a PC, and not everyone is murdering their way through the land stealing gold to buy fancy armour so they can bust into some giant's house and steal their prized possessions. Some people are just hanging around town, whipping their slaves. And when the PCs arrive to murder their way through that part of town then there are rules for how much damage that guy's whip does. Also there are times when all the PCs stuff is taken and they grab the nearest mace and go at it. I'm not arguing for realism here, but for options both optimal and bad.
That being said, I generally agree with your rant and think the trident's existence is particularly strange. I'm also in favour of just making a big table of damage dies, weapon properties and damage types, drawing a line in the middle for the simple/martial divide, and letting everyone call an object from whatever box they pick whatever they want. By my rough calculations there could be a martial finesse/reach weapon with d6 damage, but no higher than that - damage die reduced from max d12 once each for one-handed, finesse and reach.
I'd argue that those "subpar weapons" is the entire point of the "Simple Weapons" tables vs the "Martial Weapons" table.
I do agree the Trident is particularly bad, you're paying Martial Weapons proficiency for the exact stats of a simple weapon... especially since if a Trident (traditionally a fishing tool) or easy to model as a "pitchfork" would make more sense as a Simple Weapon.
My all time favorite worst weapon is the Net, which is always thrown at DisAdv unless you have 1 of 2 feats.
Fluff wise Drow High Priestesses are famous for their use of whips as weapons and definitely aren't 2nd class weapons for them.
I also don't like the idea of paying a feat to make a weapon useable... that feat would have to do A LOT make a weapon worth paying that price.
The Spear Mastery feat in UA makes the spear compete with longswords, it doesn't make the Spear + Feat compete with Polearm + Polearm Master or Greatsword + Great Weapon Master or Longsword and Shield + Shield Master.
Full Metal Bunny is right about the whip - it actually is balanced by other weapons. Its a Finesse weapon, so we'd be comparing it to rapiers, short swords and daggers. Rapiers get d8 because its has no other properties than finesse. Short swords are light, and can be dual wielded for d6 damage. Daggers are finesse/thrown/light for d4. Is Reach on par with the thrown / light quality combined? While arguable either way, I suppose, I don't think the increase to d6 would really help the whip that much, and I don't really think its part of the appeal (more below).
The fundamental issue at play here is actually the lack of support for whips. There's no Whip Master feat, unlike Polearm Mastery like for a spear, and shield users can get Shield Mastery, but that requires being in 5', which defeats the purpose. Rogues and Monks can't use whips by default. Fighters, if they want to make the most out of Reach, tend to grab a Polearm, which has some very nice feat combinations. Rangers, if they want range, will more likely grab a bow, which works with their spells better and has feat support. Gishy blade'locks / bladesingers tend to want to use Booming Blade (or GFB), which has a 5' requirement, which defeats the purpose of Reach.
I just think the problem here is that there's no real advantage involved here. If I was playing a whip user, I'd be wanting to push and pull and trip people up, or wrap them with the whip. Most of those can be accomplished through the use of the regular grapple/shove rules, but those use Strength (athletics) rules, but the whip is Finesse. I could use Battlemaster Manuevers, but why not use a polearm for better damage and insanely good feat support? I can see a rogue taking advantage of the whip, but why bother multi-classing or taking a feat for the proficency when tossing a dagger is just as effective.
How to improve? First, give rogues whip proficency. I bet you anything you'll see some people taking the whip then just because Rule of Cool. Next, design a whip feat that lets you do things like trip people or grapple with the whip, but using your Dexterity + proficiency (or acrobatics). Something to cause people to become Frightened or otherwise flinch from the crack, perhaps even as a bonus action, for some bonus. The whip should be a soft battlefield control weapon, that's part of its appeal, not the raw damage. Its one of the few flexible weapons in the entire game, and that really should be taken advantage of in some way.
Watching Critical Role help inspired this topic. With Jester swapping out the cool looking sickle with a handaxe. Because it did more damage.
Like Mephista mentioned "I'd be wanting to push and pull and trip people up, or wrap them with the whip" and I would also add the Indiana Jones disarm. Just being able to do that would make the weapon more attractable to use. It may not do as much damage as the other more flashier weapons but it makes that up with disrupting the enemies turn and making a cool narrative.
Maybe a feat or specific proficiency similar to "Weapon Mastery" except this would give you bonus actions or a special reactions
For instance
Whip: Bonus Action - disarm, entangle or make prone
Net: Entangles and need an acrobatics check to escape.
Trident(or pronged weapon): Bonus Action - disarm
etc.
Here's how I would do a whip feat. The wording is a bit clunky, but I think the idea is there.
Whip Expert
Prerequisite: Proficiency with whips
Most weapon mastery feats have three abilities (two if one of them is the -5 hit/+10 damage ability). Usually they're not as closely related as these three, but I think its fair. In theory, you could make an attack to do damage, then bonus-action grapple/prone/disarm/scare, or do two of grapple/prone/disarm/scare, since all of these are part of the attack action now. This allows you to lock down a target while using Dexterity skills (well, the scare requires some Charisma) instead of Strength, basically giving you Finesse for those abilities.
For the last ability, I'm not entirely sold on it working that way, but I wanted it to tie into the rest without having to basically have to rewrite the entire thing. But the idea here is to not necessarily freak them out and make them back off by cracking the whip (though that idea is there too), but to swing it around like a chain or a rope dart and make them leery of approaching. I tied it to grappling because, well, I felt that Size matters here. I could have done it as part of Shoving too, but I felt that swapping out one Condition for another flowed a bit nicer.
We've already talked about how the whip is actually in line with other Tier 1 weapons, and Mephista pointed out more eloquently then I the main problem is every class which wants to use it doesn't get it to start, and if they want it they have to multiclass. Giving the whip to Rogues is no more powerful then giving Rapier they are both martial weapons.
I disagree with your assertion that the whip shouldn't be practical, because aside from making it Martial and not giving it to the classes which would benefit from it, cough Rogue cough, it's perfectly balanced based off of the other Tier 1 Martial Weapons.
I think Weapon Master is also one of the stupidest feats ever created. It does gives +1 Str/Dex but is weirdly nit picky about picking 4 weapons instead of giving all Simple & Martial Weapons. The number of classes that can benefit from this are astonishingly small, and the difference between having "all" and "pick 4" is mostly negligible and ends up in bookkeeping. Only: Wizard, Sorcerer, and Druid don't get all Simple Weapons and of the classes which don't have all Martial Weapons almost all of them get some amount of martial weapons. It doesn't follow the normal design philosophy of most feats as expressed in the Design Workshop: Feats article. Unless you think 4 weapon proficiencies is on par with other feat abilities of it's class like Heavy Armor Master, Observant, and Resilient.
At the end of the day this is D&D's combat system, it should be balanced, because it's a game's combat system we're talking about. Your argument is that there should be weapons below the curve so that people who want to have aesthetic and cultural value to their characters have to play sub-par characters. That is your argument. That these character should be mechanically sub-par to every other character because they want to choose a Trident or Flail or Morningstar, or Warpick for the flavor of their own character. That is awful design, it's especially awful design in a game about fun.
That's only true if you assume those are the only classes that want to use whips.
I agree. It's a weird omission.
If you're picking Weapon Master because you want be play X but use weapon Y, whether you get 4 proficiencies or 20 doesn't matter.
8 out of 12 is not astonishingly small.
I do. Heavy Armor Master gets progressively less useful as you level up and that 3 damage represents a smaller and smaller fraction of an enemy's attack, and the likelihood that you're fighting a monster that can do more than just attack goes up.
My argument is that the options don't need to be artificially balanced against each other in a co-op storytelling game. In a competitive versus game, absolutely. The storytelling aspect of D&D is just as important as the game parts and doing something like artificially making blow guns competitive against longbows hurts immersion.
Its still true, simply because the purpose wasn't to create an exhaustive examination of every niche case; this is casual conversation, not an in-depth analysis down to the last detail. Dex-based Death clerics could do well, or perhaps some others; however, such builds are generally niche, which was besides the point. The point is to illustrate general trends on the whole on why such an event is happening, and why the whip is so underutilized.
False dichotomy there. Balancing weapons against each other has no impact on the storytelling aspects. Furthermore, there are different ways of balancing things. Your argument suggests that you can't have both at the same time with the whip, when you very much can, as such bringing story into it is nothing more than a distraction.
Your argument boils down to "The whip is a sucky weapon, and it should suck in the game, but that's okay because you can still play with a whip even though it sucks because you shouldn't care about mechanics." That logic, if we applied it to the Beastmaster? Then we wouldn't be getting all these Revised tests for new stuff about it. Clearly, if something is not fun, and people aren't playing it, then there is a problem that should be addressed. Arguing that everything is fine remains counter productive when the whole point of the thread is that, no, not everything is fine for our games. Further posts have added that there are abilities a couple of us would like to see enabled for anyone to possibly do if they use a whip, while right now they cannot, which is a failure of mechanics reflecting story.
Why are we not having this argument about the Club? That is also definitely a crappy weapon, but I don't hear anyone clamouring to have it balanced against a greatsword (or even balanced with the other simple weapons). I understand that clubs don't really have anything like the cool factor of a whip, but I suspect it is also because everyone here does think that using a club should suck, and that attempting to balance it would be counter-productive. If that is true, then we all agree that some weapons should be *worse* while other weapons should be *balanced*. Once we agree on that, then it is just personal preference as to which weapon we think falls into which category. Personally, I'm just not going to fight very hard to drag the whip into the *balanced* category. I think having a feat available to let a PC do cool stuff with a whip would be great (maybe include some rope skills or other finesse weapon specials to round out the feat), but I'm not going to argue that the combat model is fundamentally flawed just because whips suck.
The Beastmaster is bad because it can't act independently from the Ranger. There's no real reason why that should be the case other than Jeremy and Mike being reeeeally cautious whenever a game feature adds friendly creatures to the party and they overdid it.
For example a mace and quarterstaff are both 1d6, but the mace costs 4 gold and 8 silver more and lacks the Versatile property. Aside from a possible difference in materials each are made out of, which is purely cosmetic unless effected by a spell (heat metal/warp wood), there is little reason to take a mace over a quarterstaff. A quarterstaff could also be made out of metal.
We're not saying a dagger and greatsword should do equivalent.
I disagree that Divine Smite is most of a Paladin's damage as they have very limited spell slots, same with Hunter's Mark, Hex, and Divine Favor all use up precious spell slots.
I'm not going to get into the argument about edge cases with martial subclasses of spellcasters making weapon attacks vs spells, but remember weapon attacks get Ability Mod, while Cantrips do not, without rare abilities.
All the pregenned campaign settings I've ever played all the best magic weapons were either: dagger, short sword, long sword, or great sword.
Just started a (var human) Tempest cleric who uses a Whip and shield (ex pirate now on dry land). With spell sniper i can use booming blade to hit people within 10ft and trigger thunder damage as they close to within Melee. With Warcaster it becomes even more fun.
Having 10' reach and able to use a shield seems a nice compromise for 2 damage.
It is nice of you to to pluck out a sentence each of our replies and then bid us "Good Day Sir" in a condescending manner. But in fact the thesis of my post had almost nothing to do with Clubs, and the essence of InquisitiveCoder's post was that everyone can have their own fun - and that they make that choice both actively and purposefully and that is both good and ok.
I literally already agreed that a whip is cool. I have already suggested that a feat could empower whips, or a plethora of magic whips would enable their use. Inquisitive is all in favour of people choosing their own way despite mechanical differences. I guess I just don't really know what sort of atrocity you are trying to accuse us of here. I continue to argue that making a whip more attractive is both possible and perfectly worthwhile, but that attempting to *balance* it with all the other martial weapons is not necessary. No one here is trying to troll (maybe, I don't know), we are just sharing our opinions and views. My view is vaguely anti-whip, but not militantly so.
In fairness the MM has a drow with a scourge (1d8) which might be a better whip-style damaging option. Obviously it's not finesse or anything but might be more in line for dealing damage.
It also makes me wonder what other 'uncatalogued weapons' exist in the game - like the bugbears giant morningstar (2d8)
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