While everyone was really hyped about weapon masteries as an idea I'm a bit unsure about the current implementation. My main concern is about the abusability of some masteries like topple. One or more fighters with a topple weapon (the 1/4 staff or battleaxe being easy choices) can easily cause an enemy to go prone preventing an enemy from escaping, giving them disadvantage on attack rolls while prone, and giving any melee allies advantage to hit. As far as I can tell while doing my initial reading there doesn't appear to be a size limit either on this ability. Could a group of 4 rogues with quarterstaves and weapon mastery topple a large creature and attack with advantage for the rest of the turn?
I'm just concerned about abusability with some masteries, and this leading to some weapons becoming less played just for having a weaker mastery. Thoughts?
I think the Weapon Mastery concept is a nice way to make weapon usage more dynamic, but i'm not fond of weapon juggling to uses multiple one in a turn as i find it exploitative.
I think topple is going to be the one with the biggest potential to cause issues. A lot depends on initiative order.
As for the shenanigans im pretty much going to end that right at the start. Im effectively going to impose a one free object interaction per turn rule. (Not 100% sure that wasn't the intention to begin with)
To your specific example, quarterstaffs aren’t finesse weapons, so the hypothetical rogue will need to use str to hit, and still won’t get sneak attack on the prone opponent.
How useful topple will be generally will be party dependent. If there’s a lot of ranged characters, knocking someone prone will do more harm than good.
All the masteries have pluses and minuses. Graze sounds great, right, damage on a miss. But then realize the game math means you hit more often than you miss, and you realize how it will only kick in 40-ish percent of the time. Vex gives you advantage on your next attack against that target, but if the target drops, or moves away, it doesn’t come up. Push can knock enemies away from squishies, but more often, the characters with it are tanks and want to stay next to the enemies. I think maybe actually play with them for a while before you decide.
To your specific example, quarterstaffs aren’t finesse weapons, so the hypothetical rogue will need to use str to hit, and still won’t get sneak attack on the prone opponent.
How useful topple will be generally will be party dependent. If there’s a lot of ranged characters, knocking someone prone will do more harm than good.
All the masteries have pluses and minuses. Graze sounds great, right, damage on a miss. But then realize the game math means you hit more often than you miss, and you realize how it will only kick in 40-ish percent of the time. Vex gives you advantage on your next attack against that target, but if the target drops, or moves away, it doesn’t come up. Push can knock enemies away from squishies, but more often, the characters with it are tanks and want to stay next to the enemies. I think maybe actually play with them for a while before you decide.
The trick with push is moving the creature into an emanation.
Fair enough, I havent been able to playtest it quite yet but I am still a bit concerned. One fighter with multi attack and a topple weapon has good odds of toppling even large creatures with good con (since size isnt considered for the mastery), add a couple other martials and you have at least easy hits, add a few rogues with finesse weapons instead and you get a bunch of sneak attacks. Add in the idea other mentioned of weapon swapping mid turn and I just have a hunch theres some room for abuse... But I'll try to withhold final judgement till I play with it. It looks like it could be a fun set of mechanics if different from how previous editions handled it. If you or anyone else has played with these rules a bit I'd be interested to hear how it went.
To your specific example, quarterstaffs aren’t finesse weapons, so the hypothetical rogue will need to use str to hit, and still won’t get sneak attack on the prone opponent.
How useful topple will be generally will be party dependent. If there’s a lot of ranged characters, knocking someone prone will do more harm than good.
Why do you think there will be a lot of ranged characters? Archery has been nerfed into the ground, and casters can just use saving throw spells instead. Really only the EB-warlock will get ----ed by Topple and since Pact of the Blade is looking pretty powerful, warlocks might all go that direction.
Keep in mind that as a group tactic this type of approach to a combat already existed -- you could use the Shove mechanic, which is almost identical to Topple. So, someone could use their entire action (instead of doing damage with an attack) to create a 100% chance of forcing an enemy to make a CON save or become Prone. This could set up the rest of your party to be able to make attacks against a Prone enemy just like you are describing.
In the case of Topple, you must actually hit with an attack first. In general, suppose that a character has a 60% chance to hit. That means that he has a 60% chance to do damage with an attack and also a 60% chance of forcing the enemy to make a CON save or become Prone. And you have to be a martial type who actually has access to this feature in order to take advantage of it.
This whole system seems to significantly boost the power of all martial types -- perhaps magic types were thought to be more powerful than martial types overall and this was an attempt to bring their power levels closer together?
I do find it interesting that Topple does not have the "one size larger" limit that the Shove action has. So, either PCs are going to start using this tactic against gargantuan enemies like the Tarrasque, which is ridiculous, or perhaps a whole bunch of monster stat blocks will be updated in 2024 to have immunity to Prone.
The way I look at it, the 2014 rules went overboard with the things Warlocks could do with Eldritch Blast, and rather than take away the Warlock's toys, they gave the martial classes comparable abilities and then gave the Fighter the most amount of simultaneous options so they can actually stand out as weapon masters compared to Paladins and Rangers.
Additionally, the rules have more wiggle room for these buffs now that a large number of game-breaking options have been removed (Athletics Expertise grappling/shoving, Divine Smite spam, Stunning Strike spam, -5 attack roll/+10 damage spam, Action Surge double spellcasting, Paladin X/1 Hexblade builds, taking a General Feat at 1st level via Variant Human.) The overall power level of 2024 characters is still much lower than a min/maxed 2014 character if you ask me.
I do find it interesting that Topple does not have the "one size larger" limit that the Shove action has. So, either PCs are going to start using this tactic against gargantuan enemies like the Tarrasque, which is ridiculous, or perhaps a whole bunch of monster stat blocks will be updated in 2024 to have immunity to Prone.
If I remember correctly, Strength and Constitution correlate very well with creature size, and you also have to be able to land the hit, so I wouldn't expect this to be too much of an issue.
Fair enough, I havent been able to playtest it quite yet but I am still a bit concerned. One fighter with multi attack and a topple weapon has good odds of toppling even large creatures with good con (since size isnt considered for the mastery), add a couple other martials and you have at least easy hits, add a few rogues with finesse weapons instead and you get a bunch of sneak attacks. Add in the idea other mentioned of weapon swapping mid turn and I just have a hunch theres some room for abuse... But I'll try to withhold final judgement till I play with it. It looks like it could be a fun set of mechanics if different from how previous editions handled it. If you or anyone else has played with these rules a bit I'd be interested to hear how it went.
It isn't likely that a party is going to have multiple rogues (and sneak attack isn't really that big of a deal as other class options deal roughly the same damage output). There are also few martials that are going to use topple (For example, rangers are just going to go Two weapon fighting. Rogues are going to be poor at using a weapon with topple even if they wanted to). Initiative order matters as well.
Example, in my previous game the Rogue had the ability to knock his opponent prone via giving up some sneak attack damage. The creature however acted next in Initiative order, making knocking him prone completely pointless. Even putting a couple of PCs between them, wouldn't have changed the outcome much. In this particular instance, the rogue ended up with a crit. That meant they would have been giving up 2d6 to knock the creature prone. You have a similar tradeoff with topple. You give up Cleave and Vex. Vex is auto advantage for you. So topple may not be the biggest issue.
Though it probably should have a size limit. Toppling a flying creature seems silly as well.
To your specific example, quarterstaffs aren’t finesse weapons, so the hypothetical rogue will need to use str to hit, and still won’t get sneak attack on the prone opponent.
How useful topple will be generally will be party dependent. If there’s a lot of ranged characters, knocking someone prone will do more harm than good.
Why do you think there will be a lot of ranged characters? Archery has been nerfed into the ground, and casters can just use saving throw spells instead. Really only the EB-warlock will get ----ed by Topple and since Pact of the Blade is looking pretty powerful, warlocks might all go that direction.
As you’ll notice, I said it would be party dependent and even wrote “if” they were ranged. As to your assertions about archery being nerfed, I have a sneaking suspicion there will still be people out there shooting bows and xbows. I’m willing to bet you that EB warlocks will not be the “only” characters making ranged attacks.
Archery has not been nerfed into the ground. Being able to attack from a distance is still much safer than being right next to enemies. Even if you're not targeted directly, many monsters come with harmful emanation effects if you get too close, or punish attacking them from within 5 feet. A ranged attacker never has to worry about running out of movement and being unable to reach their next target. You can encounter flying creatures at any level.
Archery Fighting Style is still fantastic.
Sharpshooter absorbed the part of Crossbow Expert that lets you ignore disadvantage from having enemies next to you. A single feat removes every tactical wrinkle ranged fighters had to work around (something which I think makes the game more boring overall, but it's here to stay) and you don't even have to skip your ASI bump from 3 to 4 because it also gives +1 DEX now. At 600 feet, the range of a longbow is infinite in practice, and no amount of obstacles short of total cover will stop you from getting your full attack roll.
Great Weapon Master gives bonus damage to Heavy weapons of any kind, including longbows. That means Fighters and Rangers can do hybrid melee/ranged builds much easier. If someone goes the Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter route, a Heavy Crossbow is basically equivalent to Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Repelling Blast, and that combo still has the option of going the double Hand Crossbow route if you're more interested in total damage.
Arcane spellcasters can now feasibly use ranged weapons instead of cantrips if they prefer that, thanks to the new True Strike.
Thrown weapons now let you draw them as part of making a ranged attack with them, which used to require the Thrown Weapon Fighting Style, and Daggers have Nick, enabling easy ranged TWF that won't consume your bonus action. Granted, it's a relatively short range, but being 20 feet away is still safer than melee range.
Re: Toppling, I checked the Gargantuan creatures in the Monster Manual, Volo's Guide and Mordenkainen's Tome, and almost all of them either have double digit CON saves (they're more likely to have CON save proficiency than STR), Legendary Resistance, and/or immunity to Prone. The main exceptions are the Brontosaurus, Purple Worm and Neothelid. The Roc also "only" has +9 CON saves, but eh, close enough, plus it flies.
Under the old rules having Expertise in Athletics basically gave you near-guaranteed shove prones on anything that wasn't outside your size range, and with Enlarge/Reduce being only 2nd level, it wasn't exactly difficult to target Huge monsters that way.
I'd also like to point out that the humble 2nd level Levitate spell is still a ranged save-or-die for a lot of monsters. They get one save and if they fail it, they're immobilized for the rest of combat. That's way more problematic to me than a bunch of martials deciding their preferred way of dealing with a Huge creature is to grab hammers and try to break its kneecaps. At least that plan is risky.
EDIT: Oh yeah, Warlocks can still auto-prone a flying Huge creature from a distance with using Improved Pact Weapon and Eldritch Smite.
You have a point but there is a bit of a difference. As you note shove only works within a limited size range and sacrifices your attacks for the round. And spells like levitate require spell slots to attempt to immobilize and often concentration. A fighter with mastery with a battleaxe can attack every turn (as well as on reactions) and cause a saving throw against being toppled each time. And once high enough level (or maybe even earlier if dual wielding) that same fighter can attack multiple times a turn. Even with good con I just worry that anything in melee range of a topple focused fighter wont be able to stop themselves from frequently falling prone given the quantity of saves they would have to make. I have a feeling huge and gargantuan creatures as well as a few odd exceptions may need to be exempted from topple (I'm just thinking hill giants and some other lesser thought of creatures may still be very toppleable by even a low level fighter)
Maybe its a non issue though, my next game I plan to try a topple fighter and see how it affects the game. I expect to be fighting many large-huge creatures so it may be a good test if it really is well balanced.
p.s. as for warlocks maybe being op I cant comment yet as I dont yet have the new book so the warlocks stats are beyond my sight.
You have a point but there is a bit of a difference. As you note shove only works within a limited size range and sacrifices your attacks for the round.
Sure but Enlarge/Reduce would let you wrestle Huge creatures. The size limitation wasn't a super difficult thing to work around.
The loss of 2 attacks was a very small price to pay to take away a monster's movement, impose disadvantage on all of its attacks and give the rest of the party guaranteed advantage if they just move next to it. It pays off very quickly. Shield Master builds could also shove prone as a bonus action.
And spells like levitate require spell slots to attempt to immobilize and often concentration.
For the record I pick on Levitate because it's extremely unusual that it can take someone out of a fight with only 1 save. Almost every other spell you can think of that has similar effects will allow a save each turn and as a result has an average duration between 1 and 2 turns. And any enemy without ranged attacks isn't going to be able to break concentration if it fails the save.
A fighter with mastery with a battleaxe can attack every turn (as well as on reactions) and cause a saving throw against being toppled each time. And once high enough level (or maybe even earlier if dual wielding) that same fighter can attack multiple times a turn. Even with good con I just worry that anything in melee range of a topple focused fighter wont be able to stop themselves from frequently falling prone given the quantity of saves they would have to make.
It's definitely a strong ability, especially if you abuse Polearm Master. I'm just pointing out that the 2014 status quo was way worse imo.
Knocking prone can be a bit of a mixed bag if your party has ranged attackers (which usually they do, since wizards/warlocks/sorcerers like their attack cantrips) unless you can keep the monster down with a grapple to also disable it. But it's harder to rig grapples to be nearly-guaranteed under the 2024 rules, and even if you do get the hit + topple + grapple successfully, the escape DC will actually be reasonable now; before they'd be repeating a rigged skill contest again. If you're just doing it for some temporary advantage there's plenty of other ways to do that like Vex weapons, Faerie Fire, Reckless Attack or the Grappler feat.
The 2024 status quo is also much better in that you can't convert that attack roll advantage into pure damage with -5 to attack roll, +10 to damage rolls any more.
p.s. as for warlocks maybe being op I cant comment yet as I dont yet have the new book so the warlocks stats are beyond my sight.
The Eldritch Smite thing isn't new, it's from Tasha's.
I hate weapon mastery. The effects applied to weapons by these rules are so random. Also overly complicated. Too rulezy and time-consuming. It adds a little in flavor I guess, but not too much and adds way more drag/complexity. (Maybe cool for a video game but not otherwise.) This whole concept is akin to inflation; it's like every tavern is sloppily written DnD books is charging 10gp a night for lodging or 1gp for a beer, just because everyone likes gold, and the writers aren't paying attention to the economy--bloat, bloat, and more bloat. I digress--kind of. You might not think I like details or complexity, but I do. It's giving some players what they want until they realize they don't want it. It unbalances and complicates the game in the wrong way. It's like what happens to MMOs. They make everyone so damn powerful until it doesn't mean anything anymore; now the monsters need to be more powerful to balance it, in an endless cycle. Less and less experienced play testing occurs to ensure the balance, actually causing more unbalance and confusion. Again, the inflation cycle continues--something was "fixed" that didn't need fixing. DnD seems to be heading down this road. I love adding concepts and new things that are well tested; this is not it. Don't even get me started about rewording every damn spell and a bunch of other rules just for the sake of doing it, in the sanctimonious name of "clarification"; only a few rules/spells needed to be reworded/fixed. Overall: barf. My lazy attempt to fix this problem of weapon mastery at WOTC would be to just say it's an optional play style and emphasize "optional". (I'd probably say the same thing about backgrounds, too, but that's less important.) I don't know. I throw my hands in the air.
I like weapon masteries. I think they add variety to what could otherwise be a straightforward and linear search for the highest die result when it comes to making attacks.
Yes weapon masteries have a potential for abuse - BUT - keep in mind that that abuse is still balanced - I can do the same abuse to you and your party as the DM.
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Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
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While everyone was really hyped about weapon masteries as an idea I'm a bit unsure about the current implementation. My main concern is about the abusability of some masteries like topple. One or more fighters with a topple weapon (the 1/4 staff or battleaxe being easy choices) can easily cause an enemy to go prone preventing an enemy from escaping, giving them disadvantage on attack rolls while prone, and giving any melee allies advantage to hit. As far as I can tell while doing my initial reading there doesn't appear to be a size limit either on this ability. Could a group of 4 rogues with quarterstaves and weapon mastery topple a large creature and attack with advantage for the rest of the turn?
I'm just concerned about abusability with some masteries, and this leading to some weapons becoming less played just for having a weaker mastery. Thoughts?
I think the Weapon Mastery concept is a nice way to make weapon usage more dynamic, but i'm not fond of weapon juggling to uses multiple one in a turn as i find it exploitative.
I think topple is going to be the one with the biggest potential to cause issues. A lot depends on initiative order.
As for the shenanigans im pretty much going to end that right at the start. Im effectively going to impose a one free object interaction per turn rule. (Not 100% sure that wasn't the intention to begin with)
To your specific example, quarterstaffs aren’t finesse weapons, so the hypothetical rogue will need to use str to hit, and still won’t get sneak attack on the prone opponent.
How useful topple will be generally will be party dependent. If there’s a lot of ranged characters, knocking someone prone will do more harm than good.
All the masteries have pluses and minuses. Graze sounds great, right, damage on a miss. But then realize the game math means you hit more often than you miss, and you realize how it will only kick in 40-ish percent of the time.
Vex gives you advantage on your next attack against that target, but if the target drops, or moves away, it doesn’t come up. Push can knock enemies away from squishies, but more often, the characters with it are tanks and want to stay next to the enemies.
I think maybe actually play with them for a while before you decide.
The trick with push is moving the creature into an emanation.
Fair enough, I havent been able to playtest it quite yet but I am still a bit concerned. One fighter with multi attack and a topple weapon has good odds of toppling even large creatures with good con (since size isnt considered for the mastery), add a couple other martials and you have at least easy hits, add a few rogues with finesse weapons instead and you get a bunch of sneak attacks. Add in the idea other mentioned of weapon swapping mid turn and I just have a hunch theres some room for abuse...
But I'll try to withhold final judgement till I play with it. It looks like it could be a fun set of mechanics if different from how previous editions handled it.
If you or anyone else has played with these rules a bit I'd be interested to hear how it went.
Why do you think there will be a lot of ranged characters? Archery has been nerfed into the ground, and casters can just use saving throw spells instead. Really only the EB-warlock will get ----ed by Topple and since Pact of the Blade is looking pretty powerful, warlocks might all go that direction.
Keep in mind that as a group tactic this type of approach to a combat already existed -- you could use the Shove mechanic, which is almost identical to Topple. So, someone could use their entire action (instead of doing damage with an attack) to create a 100% chance of forcing an enemy to make a CON save or become Prone. This could set up the rest of your party to be able to make attacks against a Prone enemy just like you are describing.
In the case of Topple, you must actually hit with an attack first. In general, suppose that a character has a 60% chance to hit. That means that he has a 60% chance to do damage with an attack and also a 60% chance of forcing the enemy to make a CON save or become Prone. And you have to be a martial type who actually has access to this feature in order to take advantage of it.
This whole system seems to significantly boost the power of all martial types -- perhaps magic types were thought to be more powerful than martial types overall and this was an attempt to bring their power levels closer together?
I do find it interesting that Topple does not have the "one size larger" limit that the Shove action has. So, either PCs are going to start using this tactic against gargantuan enemies like the Tarrasque, which is ridiculous, or perhaps a whole bunch of monster stat blocks will be updated in 2024 to have immunity to Prone.
The way I look at it, the 2014 rules went overboard with the things Warlocks could do with Eldritch Blast, and rather than take away the Warlock's toys, they gave the martial classes comparable abilities and then gave the Fighter the most amount of simultaneous options so they can actually stand out as weapon masters compared to Paladins and Rangers.
Additionally, the rules have more wiggle room for these buffs now that a large number of game-breaking options have been removed (Athletics Expertise grappling/shoving, Divine Smite spam, Stunning Strike spam, -5 attack roll/+10 damage spam, Action Surge double spellcasting, Paladin X/1 Hexblade builds, taking a General Feat at 1st level via Variant Human.) The overall power level of 2024 characters is still much lower than a min/maxed 2014 character if you ask me.
If I remember correctly, Strength and Constitution correlate very well with creature size, and you also have to be able to land the hit, so I wouldn't expect this to be too much of an issue.
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It isn't likely that a party is going to have multiple rogues (and sneak attack isn't really that big of a deal as other class options deal roughly the same damage output). There are also few martials that are going to use topple (For example, rangers are just going to go Two weapon fighting. Rogues are going to be poor at using a weapon with topple even if they wanted to). Initiative order matters as well.
Example, in my previous game the Rogue had the ability to knock his opponent prone via giving up some sneak attack damage. The creature however acted next in Initiative order, making knocking him prone completely pointless. Even putting a couple of PCs between them, wouldn't have changed the outcome much. In this particular instance, the rogue ended up with a crit. That meant they would have been giving up 2d6 to knock the creature prone. You have a similar tradeoff with topple. You give up Cleave and Vex. Vex is auto advantage for you. So topple may not be the biggest issue.
Though it probably should have a size limit. Toppling a flying creature seems silly as well.
As you’ll notice, I said it would be party dependent and even wrote “if” they were ranged. As to your assertions about archery being nerfed, I have a sneaking suspicion there will still be people out there shooting bows and xbows. I’m willing to bet you that EB warlocks will not be the “only” characters making ranged attacks.
Archery has not been nerfed into the ground. Being able to attack from a distance is still much safer than being right next to enemies. Even if you're not targeted directly, many monsters come with harmful emanation effects if you get too close, or punish attacking them from within 5 feet. A ranged attacker never has to worry about running out of movement and being unable to reach their next target. You can encounter flying creatures at any level.
Archery Fighting Style is still fantastic.
Sharpshooter absorbed the part of Crossbow Expert that lets you ignore disadvantage from having enemies next to you. A single feat removes every tactical wrinkle ranged fighters had to work around (something which I think makes the game more boring overall, but it's here to stay) and you don't even have to skip your ASI bump from 3 to 4 because it also gives +1 DEX now. At 600 feet, the range of a longbow is infinite in practice, and no amount of obstacles short of total cover will stop you from getting your full attack roll.
Great Weapon Master gives bonus damage to Heavy weapons of any kind, including longbows. That means Fighters and Rangers can do hybrid melee/ranged builds much easier. If someone goes the Crossbow Expert + Sharpshooter route, a Heavy Crossbow is basically equivalent to Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast + Repelling Blast, and that combo still has the option of going the double Hand Crossbow route if you're more interested in total damage.
Arcane spellcasters can now feasibly use ranged weapons instead of cantrips if they prefer that, thanks to the new True Strike.
Thrown weapons now let you draw them as part of making a ranged attack with them, which used to require the Thrown Weapon Fighting Style, and Daggers have Nick, enabling easy ranged TWF that won't consume your bonus action. Granted, it's a relatively short range, but being 20 feet away is still safer than melee range.
Re: Toppling, I checked the Gargantuan creatures in the Monster Manual, Volo's Guide and Mordenkainen's Tome, and almost all of them either have double digit CON saves (they're more likely to have CON save proficiency than STR), Legendary Resistance, and/or immunity to Prone. The main exceptions are the Brontosaurus, Purple Worm and Neothelid. The Roc also "only" has +9 CON saves, but eh, close enough, plus it flies.
Under the old rules having Expertise in Athletics basically gave you near-guaranteed shove prones on anything that wasn't outside your size range, and with Enlarge/Reduce being only 2nd level, it wasn't exactly difficult to target Huge monsters that way.
I'd also like to point out that the humble 2nd level Levitate spell is still a ranged save-or-die for a lot of monsters. They get one save and if they fail it, they're immobilized for the rest of combat. That's way more problematic to me than a bunch of martials deciding their preferred way of dealing with a Huge creature is to grab hammers and try to break its kneecaps. At least that plan is risky.
EDIT: Oh yeah, Warlocks can still auto-prone a flying Huge creature from a distance with using Improved Pact Weapon and Eldritch Smite.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
You have a point but there is a bit of a difference. As you note shove only works within a limited size range and sacrifices your attacks for the round. And spells like levitate require spell slots to attempt to immobilize and often concentration. A fighter with mastery with a battleaxe can attack every turn (as well as on reactions) and cause a saving throw against being toppled each time. And once high enough level (or maybe even earlier if dual wielding) that same fighter can attack multiple times a turn. Even with good con I just worry that anything in melee range of a topple focused fighter wont be able to stop themselves from frequently falling prone given the quantity of saves they would have to make. I have a feeling huge and gargantuan creatures as well as a few odd exceptions may need to be exempted from topple (I'm just thinking hill giants and some other lesser thought of creatures may still be very toppleable by even a low level fighter)
Maybe its a non issue though, my next game I plan to try a topple fighter and see how it affects the game. I expect to be fighting many large-huge creatures so it may be a good test if it really is well balanced.
p.s. as for warlocks maybe being op I cant comment yet as I dont yet have the new book so the warlocks stats are beyond my sight.
Sure but Enlarge/Reduce would let you wrestle Huge creatures. The size limitation wasn't a super difficult thing to work around.
The loss of 2 attacks was a very small price to pay to take away a monster's movement, impose disadvantage on all of its attacks and give the rest of the party guaranteed advantage if they just move next to it. It pays off very quickly. Shield Master builds could also shove prone as a bonus action.
For the record I pick on Levitate because it's extremely unusual that it can take someone out of a fight with only 1 save. Almost every other spell you can think of that has similar effects will allow a save each turn and as a result has an average duration between 1 and 2 turns. And any enemy without ranged attacks isn't going to be able to break concentration if it fails the save.
It's definitely a strong ability, especially if you abuse Polearm Master. I'm just pointing out that the 2014 status quo was way worse imo.
Knocking prone can be a bit of a mixed bag if your party has ranged attackers (which usually they do, since wizards/warlocks/sorcerers like their attack cantrips) unless you can keep the monster down with a grapple to also disable it. But it's harder to rig grapples to be nearly-guaranteed under the 2024 rules, and even if you do get the hit + topple + grapple successfully, the escape DC will actually be reasonable now; before they'd be repeating a rigged skill contest again. If you're just doing it for some temporary advantage there's plenty of other ways to do that like Vex weapons, Faerie Fire, Reckless Attack or the Grappler feat.
The 2024 status quo is also much better in that you can't convert that attack roll advantage into pure damage with -5 to attack roll, +10 to damage rolls any more.
The Eldritch Smite thing isn't new, it's from Tasha's.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
I hate weapon mastery. The effects applied to weapons by these rules are so random. Also overly complicated. Too rulezy and time-consuming. It adds a little in flavor I guess, but not too much and adds way more drag/complexity. (Maybe cool for a video game but not otherwise.) This whole concept is akin to inflation; it's like every tavern is sloppily written DnD books is charging 10gp a night for lodging or 1gp for a beer, just because everyone likes gold, and the writers aren't paying attention to the economy--bloat, bloat, and more bloat. I digress--kind of. You might not think I like details or complexity, but I do. It's giving some players what they want until they realize they don't want it. It unbalances and complicates the game in the wrong way. It's like what happens to MMOs. They make everyone so damn powerful until it doesn't mean anything anymore; now the monsters need to be more powerful to balance it, in an endless cycle. Less and less experienced play testing occurs to ensure the balance, actually causing more unbalance and confusion. Again, the inflation cycle continues--something was "fixed" that didn't need fixing. DnD seems to be heading down this road. I love adding concepts and new things that are well tested; this is not it. Don't even get me started about rewording every damn spell and a bunch of other rules just for the sake of doing it, in the sanctimonious name of "clarification"; only a few rules/spells needed to be reworded/fixed. Overall: barf. My lazy attempt to fix this problem of weapon mastery at WOTC would be to just say it's an optional play style and emphasize "optional". (I'd probably say the same thing about backgrounds, too, but that's less important.) I don't know. I throw my hands in the air.
I like weapon masteries. I think they add variety to what could otherwise be a straightforward and linear search for the highest die result when it comes to making attacks.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Yes weapon masteries have a potential for abuse - BUT - keep in mind that that abuse is still balanced - I can do the same abuse to you and your party as the DM.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.