Well, I mean, if you really want to mess with things, then you should recognize that it isn't the weapon but the wielder that gives a weapon its qualities and so a lot of those things suddenly become combat feats that someone can take, opening up a lot of the options to those beyond the martials.
While low level spell casters may be pretty poor at combat, they are still tougher (d6 vs d4) than their previous generations, and they have some extremely powerful attacks coming after 5th level that as I am oft reminded tend to overshadow the martials in terms of dps and area of effect.
This is, imo, made worse by the current structure around subclasses, but that's another story.
But from experience, that means revisiting a lot of different things -- action economy, spell casting times, damage ratios, damage dice, CRs, encounter design, and more. It can significantly impact the amount of thinking that goes into a lot of different areas, and unless you touch them you will find that anything you do sorta changes the balance in some way and renders the elements either overpowered or underpowered.
Going in just to touch on these alone and ignoring the rest is going to create a ripple effect that at least the designers put some thought into when they set them up (and is obvious in the initial release when you do start factoring in those other elements). Not that I am saying "don't" -- I am just saying be aware that this is the *start* of a lot of changes you'll have to make.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I really hope they revise this. It does the literal opposite thing that its intended to do, and Im pretty sure its gotten to the point where the developers just like certain classes objectively over other classes. The whole point was to make Martial Classes better and more diverse but you just end up buffing everything BUT the Martial Classes. Light weapons now outpace hand-to-hand combat by a longshot, which cheapens the monk even further. Polearms can be good but its like, hey guys Im a Monk that makes people prone. Thats what Monks do now. If you go with a dual wield combo, now its a quagmire because advantage is practically automatic. This results in a buff to rogues, which they objectively dont need. Paladins do not need a buff either lol. Then on the other hand, the thing that made fighters more unique which was their mastery diversity is specifically limited and cheapened. This system is so bad, I dont even want the description to show up on the items that I custom make because its going to make players think that its OK to use them LOL. Like even the fact that my custom items have these descriptions on them is a huge tragedy.
Adding a mastery system to weapons is fine, the problem is that this mastery system is objectively bad. Ya, Fighters are still the best with masteries, but thats like giving every class the ability to use Sneak Attack, but its just not that good of a sneak attack lol. "Rogues still do it the best." It pretty much makes advantage/disadvantage useless and cheap. This makes any spell or effect that gives advantage even cheaper because you can just hold a weapon that gives it. Dual wielding daggers might literally be better for a Monk than using Fury of Blows because daggers can attack 3 times now lol... You cant apply poison to your fists bro.
Im surprised you havent seen how impactful the difference between Blunt, Slashing, and Piercing is when it comes to properties that need to be paid attention to. There are a ton of enemies who are vulnerable to these three types of damage. Even higher level monsters can be vulnerable to these types of damage. Damage type is arguably the most important factor in the game when it comes to dealing damage, literally doubling or halving your damage depending on the monster. If an enemy is vulnerable to fire, you should exclusively be using fire.
This also makes the Fighter Subclasses even worse because theres a much bigger reason to take Battlemaster, which was already the meta.
Well, I mean, if you really want to mess with things, then you should recognize that it isn't the weapon but the wielder that gives a weapon its qualities and so a lot of those things suddenly become combat feats that someone can take, opening up a lot of the options to those beyond the martials.
While low level spell casters may be pretty poor at combat, they are still tougher (d6 vs d4) than their previous generations, and they have some extremely powerful attacks coming after 5th level that as I am oft reminded tend to overshadow the martials in terms of dps and area of effect.
This is, imo, made worse by the current structure around subclasses, but that's another story.
But from experience, that means revisiting a lot of different things -- action economy, spell casting times, damage ratios, damage dice, CRs, encounter design, and more. It can significantly impact the amount of thinking that goes into a lot of different areas, and unless you touch them you will find that anything you do sorta changes the balance in some way and renders the elements either overpowered or underpowered.
Going in just to touch on these alone and ignoring the rest is going to create a ripple effect that at least the designers put some thought into when they set them up (and is obvious in the initial release when you do start factoring in those other elements). Not that I am saying "don't" -- I am just saying be aware that this is the *start* of a lot of changes you'll have to make.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I really hope they revise this. It does the literal opposite thing that its intended to do, and Im pretty sure its gotten to the point where the developers just like certain classes objectively over other classes. The whole point was to make Martial Classes better and more diverse but you just end up buffing everything BUT the Martial Classes. Light weapons now outpace hand-to-hand combat by a longshot, which cheapens the monk even further. Polearms can be good but its like, hey guys Im a Monk that makes people prone. Thats what Monks do now. If you go with a dual wield combo, now its a quagmire because advantage is practically automatic. This results in a buff to rogues, which they objectively dont need. Paladins do not need a buff either lol. Then on the other hand, the thing that made fighters more unique which was their mastery diversity is specifically limited and cheapened. This system is so bad, I dont even want the description to show up on the items that I custom make because its going to make players think that its OK to use them LOL. Like even the fact that my custom items have these descriptions on them is a huge tragedy.
Adding a mastery system to weapons is fine, the problem is that this mastery system is objectively bad. Ya, Fighters are still the best with masteries, but thats like giving every class the ability to use Sneak Attack, but its just not that good of a sneak attack lol. "Rogues still do it the best." It pretty much makes advantage/disadvantage useless and cheap. This makes any spell or effect that gives advantage even cheaper because you can just hold a weapon that gives it. Dual wielding daggers might literally be better for a Monk than using Fury of Blows because daggers can attack 3 times now lol... You cant apply poison to your fists bro.
Im surprised you havent seen how impactful the difference between Blunt, Slashing, and Piercing is when it comes to properties that need to be paid attention to. There are a ton of enemies who are vulnerable to these three types of damage. Even higher level monsters can be vulnerable to these types of damage. Damage type is arguably the most important factor in the game when it comes to dealing damage, literally doubling or halving your damage depending on the monster. If an enemy is vulnerable to fire, you should exclusively be using fire.
This also makes the Fighter Subclasses even worse because theres a much bigger reason to take Battlemaster, which was already the meta.