I agree it would be really nice to have fighting styles built in as masteries so that characters aren't locked into one type of weapon / fighting by choosing that fighting style - let martials explore different styles of fighting!!!
Rather than 2 masteries for each weapon I'd have "Expert" and "Master" abilities with all half-casters and non-casters getting Expert abilities at level 1 or 2, and only Non-casters unlocking Master abilities at level 11. I'd also make the Expert abilities all be passive "on a hit" abilities, while all the Master abilities would require a Bonus Action or Reaction to activate and also give extra damage.
Block: Bonus action for +1 AC until next turn, if on a weapon, weapon can't be used to attack. Intended for shields and mastery swapping onto an off hand weapon.
That was 3.x’s big problem. The illusion of choice.
That's why I hate 5e warlock design. In order to make the bladelock functional on a basic level, you had to spend half of your invocations. At least that's mostly (but not completely) fixed now.
Cleave- great for when enemies are grouped together, otherwise doesn’t do anything. Could have two enimies writhin your reach but not 5ft of each other and can’t use it.
Flex- okay for sword and board, if dueling is still a fighting style you can have 1d10+ Str +2 and still have a shield. Also helps with two weapon fighting.
Graze- consistent damage. Don’t know why some people think this is a trap considering it has no stipulations and works in any situation you miss.
Nick- is great for classes with bonus action options and might be overpowered on the Monk which might be why it was left out of this UA. Dagger monk doing 5 attacks at level 5 might be too much.
Push- great if you need to push a large or smaller creature. It’s situational.
Sap- is one of the best. Imposing disadvantage is good. Sadly it can only be on two weapons.
Slow- good if multiple Warriors have it to gang up on one enemy, otherwise very situational.
Topple- strong but Con save hinders this. Thankfully no size restrictions. I’ll call it the second best after sap.
Vex- You can pretty much always have advantage if you keep hitting.
My issue with graze is the damage won’t scale well. 3 points ant 1st level is good, 5 points at 12, not really worth much. And if you hit, which you should be doing most of the time, it’s useless. Still though, I’d probably put it on a weapon when I can have two masteries on the same weapon. On a hit I do one, on a miss, I do graze.
Really, they’re all pretty situational. (topple is great, except for the other party members who attack at range who now have disadvantage, for example. Or knocking the enemy down on your last attack, so they can stand up before you can do anything.) Even with sap, if your target is a caster who forces saves instead of making attack rolls it won’t do anything. I think that’s probably one of the better things about them design-wise, there’s not one that’s clearly superior, except maybe vex. Even there, you have advantage against that enemy, but what happens if they drop, or for some reason you need to attack a different enemy.
Also, I just thought of this. A rapier, which has vex, take piercer go champion for crit fishing and stack on the extra damage die.
That was 3.x’s big problem. The illusion of choice.
That's why I hate 5e warlock design. In order to make the bladelock functional on a basic level, you had to spend half of your invocations. At least that's mostly (but not completely) fixed now.
delete, i can't figure out how to delete but this is off topic enough i don't want to pull away from the topic more.
I don't really like Flex much. What's the point of having different damage die if you now always use the two-handed version? It also means using both hands on your spear completely removes the benefit you get from Mastery.
Also as an aside, making the spear a two-handed Finesse weapon would be really cool and give it a unique niche among weapons.
I’m on the fence about how useful these masteries actually are. I think they could be better and definitely cooler, allowing them to stack up better with casters.
1. Nick: this one is a big one for me especially since they changed the way two weapon fighting works and made it bad again. It was a good thing that they had the light property able to attack on the same action. That was a big step in the right direction. Reverting it and making it a mastery is no fun for rouges and rangers, and dumb for martials who should already have it and now have to use up one of their master spots for this, not to mention making dual wielder bad again. Suggestion: make this into an always active defensive duelist that works with certain types of weapons or revert the light property back to an extra attack and allow this as a bonus action attack.
2. Cleave: How often are you going to have to enemies next to each other? Might as well make this really interesting and allow cleave to allow an attack against anyone adjacent to you. This is thematic as it gives that I swipe through a dozen enemies with one swing kind of like how the old ranger had hoard breaker.
3. Vex: This is a great one as it allows you to pretty much always have advantage. Not really over powered since elven accuracy does it as well as a rouge’s steady aim, and monk’s aim.
4. Topple: I love this and don’t see too much wrong with it. But I think the whip should have it.
5. Flex: This one is super weak and not really any fun. Personally, I think this one should let you change the damage type between slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning to deal with different kinds of enemies.
6/7. Push and Slow: Okay, cool. I see where they are going but why can one stack and the other can’t. They are also basically the same type of thing. You push someone back and they have to use extra movement to come back. I’d rather see push than slow or have slow be able to stack. Personally, I’d like these two to be combined and call it something like modified push, where you can stop movement all together or push them in different directions. Thematically, this could be seen as forcing or tricking opponents to move where you want them.
8. Sap: Nice and simple.
Suggestions:
9. Coated: Weapon is coated with some sort of magic or potion that allows elemental damage to overcome resistances. This may require use of tools or something to create but will stack martials up with casters. This could be a feat as well for martials only.
10. Command: Available with any weapon. Use attack to allow another player to move or attack.
11. Protection: Make the defensive duelist feat into a mastery that allows you to use a reaction to protect yourself and others by adding your proficiency bonus to your ac or someone adjacent to you. (Kind of the same thing as Sap but I thought I’d throw that out there) useable with all weapons including shields.
Other suggestions: I’d really like to see shields treated as weapons with different types and traits, and masteries because they are so underused. I’d also like to see Reaction Masteries instead of only attacking ones. It wouldn’t be super hard to do and it would give martials something to do with their reactions.
Final thoughts: I’m liking the theory behind this concept of masteries, but I think it could be way better to stack martials up with other classes and allow them cool things inside and outside combat such as battlefield control and doing different things besides just attacking include reaction masteries. They had a good thing going with the battle master abilities and the variety. I think this should go more in that direction for all martials.
I’m on the fence about how useful these masteries actually are. I think they could be better and definitely cooler, allowing them to stack up better with casters.
1. Nick: this one is a big one for me especially since they changed the way two weapon fighting works and made it bad again. It was a good thing that they had the light property able to attack on the same action. That was a big step in the right direction. Reverting it and making it a mastery is no fun for rouges and rangers, and dumb for martials who should already have it and now have to use up one of their master spots for this, not to mention making dual wielder bad again. Suggestion: make this into an always active defensive duelist that works with certain types of weapons or revert the light property back to an extra attack and allow this as a bonus action attack.
2. Cleave: How often are you going to have to enemies next to each other? Might as well make this really interesting and allow cleave to allow an attack against anyone adjacent to you. This is thematic as it gives that I swipe through a dozen enemies with one swing kind of like how the old ranger had hoard breaker.
3. Vex: This is a great one as it allows you to pretty much always have advantage. Not really over powered since elven accuracy does it as well as a rouge’s steady aim, and monk’s aim.
4. Topple: I love this and don’t see too much wrong with it. But I think the whip should have it.
5. Flex: This one is super weak and not really any fun. Personally, I think this one should let you change the damage type between slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning to deal with different kinds of enemies.
6/7. Push and Slow: Okay, cool. I see where they are going but why can one stack and the other can’t. They are also basically the same type of thing. You push someone back and they have to use extra movement to come back. I’d rather see push than slow or have slow be able to stack. Personally, I’d like these two to be combined and call it something like modified push, where you can stop movement all together or push them in different directions. Thematically, this could be seen as forcing or tricking opponents to move where you want them.
8. Sap: Nice and simple.
Suggestions:
9. Coated: Weapon is coated with some sort of magic or potion that allows elemental damage to overcome resistances. This may require use of tools or something to create but will stack martials up with casters. This could be a feat as well for martials only.
10. Command: Available with any weapon. Use attack to allow another player to move or attack.
11. Protection: Make the defensive duelist feat into a mastery that allows you to use a reaction to protect yourself and others by adding your proficiency bonus to your ac or someone adjacent to you. (Kind of the same thing as Sap but I thought I’d throw that out there) useable with all weapons including shields.
Other suggestions: I’d really like to see shields treated as weapons with different types and traits, and masteries because they are so underused. I’d also like to see Reaction Masteries instead of only attacking ones. It wouldn’t be super hard to do and it would give martials something to do with their reactions.
Final thoughts: I’m liking the theory behind this concept of masteries, but I think it could be way better to stack martials up with other classes and allow them cool things inside and outside combat such as battlefield control and doing different things besides just attacking include reaction masteries. They had a good thing going with the battle master abilities and the variety. I think this should go more in that direction for all martials.
I forgot Graze: it’s not bad but I think it should be a Mastery for flexible or curved type weapons like morning stars, sickles, sabers, or picks as well.
I thought of something for my suggestion for push/slow. When hit move target 5 feet in any direction and slow them instead of stopping them. Much simpler and more balanced.
Shield Mastery 1: Light shield +1 AC. Allows shield to be used as a light weapon for the extra attack on Nick.
Shield Mastery 2: Medium Shield +2 AC. Allows shield to be used to push after a hit.
Trying to think of a way to make shields better without making shield master useless. I think this is a good start.
I'm not sure cergonian123 is advocating to boost the AC on shields, I think they're proposing separate masteries for a light (+1) and a medium (+2) shield with different mastery bonuses? I quite like the idea of a light shield that counts as a light weapon for the Nick mastery.
In terms of how that would affect Shield Master, I wonder if shields did get a mastery if that feat would become an alternative way of getting it (i.e- instead of full weapon mastery, shield master would grant mastery only for shields, then build on top of that)?
I could definitely see the interception and/or protection fighting styles going away and becoming a mastery feature on shields. Weapon mastery in general should replace fighting styles IMO as they've always been weirdly unbalanced (Archery is hands down the best, as it's effectively +10% chance to hit, on weapons that are already safer due less risk of getting hit back etc.). This would require some rebalancing, but I think it could work well with starting out with an "expert" feature and a later "master" feature to flesh out the system more.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I'm not sure cergonian123 is advocating to boost the AC on shields, I think they're proposing separate masteries for a light (+1) and a medium (+2) shield with different mastery bonuses? I quite like the idea of a light shield that counts as a light weapon for the Nick mastery.
In terms of how that would affect Shield Master, I wonder if shields did get a mastery if that feat would become an alternative way of getting it (i.e- instead of full weapon mastery, shield master would grant mastery only for shields, then build on top of that)?
I could definitely see the interception and/or protection fighting styles going away and becoming a mastery feature on shields. Weapon mastery in general should replace fighting styles IMO as they've always been weirdly unbalanced (Archery is hands down the best, as it's effectively +10% chance to hit, on weapons that are already safer due less risk of getting hit back etc.). This would require some rebalancing, but I think it could work well with starting out with an "expert" feature and a later "master" feature to flesh out the system more.
Exactly. With the shields anyway. I want them to be considered weapons, there’s no real reason they can’t be. Give them stats to do damage and masteries instead of them just being a +2 bonus to AC. This could open another door to weapons all together like a protection trait and then different masteries for them. Other weapons could include sais, which are also defense based, sword catchers, and alot of things. I think a protection trait could go along way.
This leads me to another thing. When I saw Flex in mastery, I thought we were going to get a new trait for flexible weapons like whips, morning stars, kasurigama, chains, and stuff of that nature. But, alas, it was only for versatile weapons, which is a boo from me.
I can think of a dozen ideas for weapons off the top of my head to make them better. I do like this idea of expert and master, though, and getting rid of fighting styles. It’s definitely something to play with but I feel like the fighting styles already kind of are the expert classes in a way. Yeah, they’re off balanced, which is why I was kind of surprised they weren’t brought up in this UA, but I hope we get the chance to work with them. Were they in a previous UA? I don’t remember.
The reason not to make shields weapons is game balance. Why would you ever dual wield if you can both have a shield and an off hand weapon at the same time. A shield would be strictly better as it would allow you to toggle between both uses easily and quickly. You need to make choices like an offensive boost from a second weapon or a defensive boost from a shield.
And more weapons does not necessarily make the game better. In 1e there were literally pages of polearms to choose from. But they all did basically the same thing. A broadsword, longsword and bastard sword were all slightly different, but it really didn’t make the game more fun or change your tactics — no matter which you used, you ran up and hit the other guy with it. Outside of allowing middle schoolers to have an outsized knowledge of medieval and renaissance weaponry, the differences served no purpose.
I much prefer this version of weapons basically being a stat line and you can hang whatever flavor you like on it. And now, with the mastery properties, we will get some of the differentiation people are looking for, which I’m really liking. I don’t think they’re perfect, but they’re definitely a solid start.
That was 3.x’s big problem. The illusion of choice.
That's why I hate 5e warlock design. In order to make the bladelock functional on a basic level, you had to spend half of your invocations. At least that's mostly (but not completely) fixed now.
You also needed one specific subclass, concept be damned. This version is much better.
The reason not to make shields weapons is game balance. Why would you ever dual wield if you can both have a shield and an off hand weapon at the same time. A shield would be strictly better as it would allow you to toggle between both uses easily and quickly. You need to make choices like an offensive boost from a second weapon or a defensive boost from a shield.
And more weapons does not necessarily make the game better. In 1e there were literally pages of polearms to choose from. But they all did basically the same thing. A broadsword, longsword and bastard sword were all slightly different, but it really didn’t make the game more fun or change your tactics — no matter which you used, you ran up and hit the other guy with it. Outside of allowing middle schoolers to have an outsized knowledge of medieval and renaissance weaponry, the differences served no purpose.
I much prefer this version of weapons basically being a stat line and you can hang whatever flavor you like on it. And now, with the mastery properties, we will get some of the differentiation people are looking for, which I’m really liking. I don’t think they’re perfect, but they’re definitely a solid start.
Agreed. And Shields don't need Nick, UA Shield Mastery already doesn't use your bonus action (hopefully that stays.)
I think I'd just switch "Protection" from a fighting style to a weapon mastery for shield.
That might actually work. It would still be mostly useless, but if it comes free with a shield, that would take the sting out of it being mostly useless.
I think I'd just switch "Protection" from a fighting style to a weapon mastery for shield.
That might actually work. It would still be mostly useless, but if it comes free with a shield, that would take the sting out of it being mostly useless.
I generally like the Weapon Mastery properties. I think some of the properties could use some tweaks, but I think the overall direction is good.
The Fighter class features that give access to the system, Weapon Mastery, Weapon Expert, and Weapon Adept, strike me as a little strange. If these features represent years of training and expertise with certain weapons, you shouldn't be able to swap out mastery properties overnight. The properties should feel intrinsic to the weapon, and a permanent part of the fighter's background and training (like a feat). Maybe a player could be allowed replace certain masteries during level-up, but certainly not daily.
For the Weapon Expert feature at Fighter level 7, I think when a fighter learns a new Mastery property for a certain weapon, they should still be able to use the default Mastery property. The feature should represent an increase in the fighter's ability to use the weapon, not just a change. While fighter is starting to use the weapon in new and unexpected ways, she should still be a master of the weapon's tradition uses and style.
At level 13, the fighter should be able to either apply a third Mastery property to the Expert weapon selected at level 7, or apply a second mastery property to a second weapon type.
Considering how low the damage sealing is now that Great Weapon Master is gone (reduced to atoms), I would like the the weapon masteries features (Mastery, Expert and Adept) to increase the damage done by a weapon that uses that mastery. How much? For starters, just multiplying the modifier used for the attack so Mastery would be X2, Expert X3 and Adept X4. Before anyone says that this is beyond broken, remember that Wizards no longer make concentration checks if they so damn desire, but I'd like to think that there may be more ways to improve the masteries beyond just damage.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I agree it would be really nice to have fighting styles built in as masteries so that characters aren't locked into one type of weapon / fighting by choosing that fighting style - let martials explore different styles of fighting!!!
Rather than 2 masteries for each weapon I'd have "Expert" and "Master" abilities with all half-casters and non-casters getting Expert abilities at level 1 or 2, and only Non-casters unlocking Master abilities at level 11. I'd also make the Expert abilities all be passive "on a hit" abilities, while all the Master abilities would require a Bonus Action or Reaction to activate and also give extra damage.
+1 AC, +2 in lvl 11? (or half proficiency)
+1 your suggest
That's why I hate 5e warlock design. In order to make the bladelock functional on a basic level, you had to spend half of your invocations. At least that's mostly (but not completely) fixed now.
Cleave- great for when enemies are grouped together, otherwise doesn’t do anything. Could have two enimies writhin your reach but not 5ft of each other and can’t use it.
Flex- okay for sword and board, if dueling is still a fighting style you can have 1d10+ Str +2 and still have a shield. Also helps with two weapon fighting.
Graze- consistent damage. Don’t know why some people think this is a trap considering it has no stipulations and works in any situation you miss.
Nick- is great for classes with bonus action options and might be overpowered on the Monk which might be why it was left out of this UA. Dagger monk doing 5 attacks at level 5 might be too much.
Push- great if you need to push a large or smaller creature. It’s situational.
Sap- is one of the best. Imposing disadvantage is good. Sadly it can only be on two weapons.
Slow- good if multiple Warriors have it to gang up on one enemy, otherwise very situational.
Topple- strong but Con save hinders this. Thankfully no size restrictions. I’ll call it the second best after sap.
Vex- You can pretty much always have advantage if you keep hitting.
My issue with graze is the damage won’t scale well. 3 points ant 1st level is good, 5 points at 12, not really worth much. And if you hit, which you should be doing most of the time, it’s useless. Still though, I’d probably put it on a weapon when I can have two masteries on the same weapon. On a hit I do one, on a miss, I do graze.
Really, they’re all pretty situational. (topple is great, except for the other party members who attack at range who now have disadvantage, for example. Or knocking the enemy down on your last attack, so they can stand up before you can do anything.) Even with sap, if your target is a caster who forces saves instead of making attack rolls it won’t do anything. I think that’s probably one of the better things about them design-wise, there’s not one that’s clearly superior, except maybe vex. Even there, you have advantage against that enemy, but what happens if they drop, or for some reason you need to attack a different enemy.
Also, I just thought of this. A rapier, which has vex, take piercer go champion for crit fishing and stack on the extra damage die.
delete, i can't figure out how to delete but this is off topic enough i don't want to pull away from the topic more.
I don't really like Flex much. What's the point of having different damage die if you now always use the two-handed version? It also means using both hands on your spear completely removes the benefit you get from Mastery.
Also as an aside, making the spear a two-handed Finesse weapon would be really cool and give it a unique niche among weapons.
I’m on the fence about how useful these masteries actually are. I think they could be better and definitely cooler, allowing them to stack up better with casters.
1. Nick: this one is a big one for me especially since they changed the way two weapon fighting works and made it bad again. It was a good thing that they had the light property able to attack on the same action. That was a big step in the right direction. Reverting it and making it a mastery is no fun for rouges and rangers, and dumb for martials who should already have it and now have to use up one of their master spots for this, not to mention making dual wielder bad again. Suggestion: make this into an always active defensive duelist that works with certain types of weapons or revert the light property back to an extra attack and allow this as a bonus action attack.
2. Cleave: How often are you going to have to enemies next to each other? Might as well make this really interesting and allow cleave to allow an attack against anyone adjacent to you. This is thematic as it gives that I swipe through a dozen enemies with one swing kind of like how the old ranger had hoard breaker.
3. Vex: This is a great one as it allows you to pretty much always have advantage. Not really over powered since elven accuracy does it as well as a rouge’s steady aim, and monk’s aim.
4. Topple: I love this and don’t see too much wrong with it. But I think the whip should have it.
5. Flex: This one is super weak and not really any fun. Personally, I think this one should let you change the damage type between slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning to deal with different kinds of enemies.
6/7. Push and Slow: Okay, cool. I see where they are going but why can one stack and the other can’t. They are also basically the same type of thing. You push someone back and they have to use extra movement to come back. I’d rather see push than slow or have slow be able to stack. Personally, I’d like these two to be combined and call it something like modified push, where you can stop movement all together or push them in different directions. Thematically, this could be seen as forcing or tricking opponents to move where you want them.
8. Sap: Nice and simple.
Suggestions:
9. Coated: Weapon is coated with some sort of magic or potion that allows elemental damage to overcome resistances. This may require use of tools or something to create but will stack martials up with casters. This could be a feat as well for martials only.
10. Command: Available with any weapon. Use attack to allow another player to move or attack.
11. Protection: Make the defensive duelist feat into a mastery that allows you to use a reaction to protect yourself and others by adding your proficiency bonus to your ac or someone adjacent to you. (Kind of the same thing as Sap but I thought I’d throw that out there) useable with all weapons including shields.
Other suggestions: I’d really like to see shields treated as weapons with different types and traits, and masteries because they are so underused. I’d also like to see Reaction Masteries instead of only attacking ones. It wouldn’t be super hard to do and it would give martials something to do with their reactions.
Final thoughts: I’m liking the theory behind this concept of masteries, but I think it could be way better to stack martials up with other classes and allow them cool things inside and outside combat such as battlefield control and doing different things besides just attacking include reaction masteries. They had a good thing going with the battle master abilities and the variety. I think this should go more in that direction for all martials.
I forgot Graze: it’s not bad but I think it should be a Mastery for flexible or curved type weapons like morning stars, sickles, sabers, or picks as well.
I thought of something for my suggestion for push/slow. When hit move target 5 feet in any direction and slow them instead of stopping them. Much simpler and more balanced.
Shield Mastery 1: Light shield +1 AC. Allows shield to be used as a light weapon for the extra attack on Nick.
Shield Mastery 2: Medium Shield +2 AC. Allows shield to be used to push after a hit.
Trying to think of a way to make shields better without making shield master useless. I think this is a good start.
Shields are already good though?
I'm not sure cergonian123 is advocating to boost the AC on shields, I think they're proposing separate masteries for a light (+1) and a medium (+2) shield with different mastery bonuses? I quite like the idea of a light shield that counts as a light weapon for the Nick mastery.
In terms of how that would affect Shield Master, I wonder if shields did get a mastery if that feat would become an alternative way of getting it (i.e- instead of full weapon mastery, shield master would grant mastery only for shields, then build on top of that)?
I could definitely see the interception and/or protection fighting styles going away and becoming a mastery feature on shields. Weapon mastery in general should replace fighting styles IMO as they've always been weirdly unbalanced (Archery is hands down the best, as it's effectively +10% chance to hit, on weapons that are already safer due less risk of getting hit back etc.). This would require some rebalancing, but I think it could work well with starting out with an "expert" feature and a later "master" feature to flesh out the system more.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Exactly. With the shields anyway. I want them to be considered weapons, there’s no real reason they can’t be. Give them stats to do damage and masteries instead of them just being a +2 bonus to AC. This could open another door to weapons all together like a protection trait and then different masteries for them. Other weapons could include sais, which are also defense based, sword catchers, and alot of things. I think a protection trait could go along way.
This leads me to another thing. When I saw Flex in mastery, I thought we were going to get a new trait for flexible weapons like whips, morning stars, kasurigama, chains, and stuff of that nature. But, alas, it was only for versatile weapons, which is a boo from me.
I can think of a dozen ideas for weapons off the top of my head to make them better. I do like this idea of expert and master, though, and getting rid of fighting styles. It’s definitely something to play with but I feel like the fighting styles already kind of are the expert classes in a way. Yeah, they’re off balanced, which is why I was kind of surprised they weren’t brought up in this UA, but I hope we get the chance to work with them. Were they in a previous UA? I don’t remember.
The reason not to make shields weapons is game balance. Why would you ever dual wield if you can both have a shield and an off hand weapon at the same time. A shield would be strictly better as it would allow you to toggle between both uses easily and quickly. You need to make choices like an offensive boost from a second weapon or a defensive boost from a shield.
And more weapons does not necessarily make the game better. In 1e there were literally pages of polearms to choose from. But they all did basically the same thing. A broadsword, longsword and bastard sword were all slightly different, but it really didn’t make the game more fun or change your tactics — no matter which you used, you ran up and hit the other guy with it. Outside of allowing middle schoolers to have an outsized knowledge of medieval and renaissance weaponry, the differences served no purpose.
I much prefer this version of weapons basically being a stat line and you can hang whatever flavor you like on it. And now, with the mastery properties, we will get some of the differentiation people are looking for, which I’m really liking. I don’t think they’re perfect, but they’re definitely a solid start.
You also needed one specific subclass, concept be damned. This version is much better.
Agreed. And Shields don't need Nick, UA Shield Mastery already doesn't use your bonus action (hopefully that stays.)
If I were to add a shield weapon trick it would be something defense oriented. Like on a hit it reduces damage taken by shields AC bonus.
I think I'd just switch "Protection" from a fighting style to a weapon mastery for shield.
That might actually work. It would still be mostly useless, but if it comes free with a shield, that would take the sting out of it being mostly useless.
My thoughts exactly.
I generally like the Weapon Mastery properties. I think some of the properties could use some tweaks, but I think the overall direction is good.
The Fighter class features that give access to the system, Weapon Mastery, Weapon Expert, and Weapon Adept, strike me as a little strange. If these features represent years of training and expertise with certain weapons, you shouldn't be able to swap out mastery properties overnight. The properties should feel intrinsic to the weapon, and a permanent part of the fighter's background and training (like a feat). Maybe a player could be allowed replace certain masteries during level-up, but certainly not daily.
For the Weapon Expert feature at Fighter level 7, I think when a fighter learns a new Mastery property for a certain weapon, they should still be able to use the default Mastery property. The feature should represent an increase in the fighter's ability to use the weapon, not just a change. While fighter is starting to use the weapon in new and unexpected ways, she should still be a master of the weapon's tradition uses and style.
At level 13, the fighter should be able to either apply a third Mastery property to the Expert weapon selected at level 7, or apply a second mastery property to a second weapon type.
Considering how low the damage sealing is now that Great Weapon Master is gone (reduced to atoms), I would like the the weapon masteries features (Mastery, Expert and Adept) to increase the damage done by a weapon that uses that mastery. How much? For starters, just multiplying the modifier used for the attack so Mastery would be X2, Expert X3 and Adept X4. Before anyone says that this is beyond broken, remember that Wizards no longer make concentration checks if they so damn desire, but I'd like to think that there may be more ways to improve the masteries beyond just damage.