Weapon Skills

[Perseus]

Weapon Name
Base Weapon Skill


Battleaxe
Wide Arc


Flail
Sickening Strike


Glaive
Wide Arc


Greataxe
Sickening Strike


Great Sword
Wide Arc


Halberd
Sickening Strike


Lance
Pin


Longsword
Wide Arc


Maul
Sickening Strike


Morningstar
Sickening Strike


Pike
Pin


Rapier
Double Strike


Scimitar
Double Strike


Shortsword
Double Strike


Trident
Pin


War Pick
Sickening Strike


Warhammer
Wide Arc


Whip
Pull


Light Crossbow



Heavy Crossbow
Sickening Strike


Short Bow
Double Strike


Long Bow
Pin


Blowgun
Double Strike


Net
Wide Arc



Weapon Skills: Once per turn when you attack a target with a weapon and you have advantage against them or you have an ally within 5' of the target you may use a weapon skill which is determined by the weapon you are using. You can not sneak attack and perform a weapon skill in the same turn.

Sickening Strike: You like, really really mess up the target's body with your weapon attack. If the target didn't know specifically where their internal organs were before... Well they do now (they can also taste the color gray). If you hit a target with a Sickening Strike then they can't regain hit points until the start of your next turn.

Pin: Once you use this weapon skill you use part of the weapon to hold the target in place and pin a part of the target or their wardrobe. Their speed is reduced by 10' if they attempt to move from their current position.

Double Strike: When you use this weapon skill you attack quickly a second time with the same weapon in a weird fantastical way (with a blowgun you might have ricocheted your second dart), the strike although doesn't hurt all that much (or administer poison or anything like that) but does distract them and cause them to not be able to take reactions until the start of its next turn.

Pull: When you use this weapon skill you may Pull a creature or unattended item hit by your weapon attack 10' closer to you.

Wide Arc: Due to your advantage (or because your ally is able to harass the target) you are able to swing in a wide arc without penalty. The target of this weapon skill gains no benefit of cover.

Passive Skills: Some skills usable by weapons are passive and can always be used. These however are quite specific and usually will never be offensive.

Skill (Name): Skill (Name) weapons give the weilder an additional d4 when performing a specific skill. The Glaive has the Skill (Jump) property. This allows the proficient wielder of the glaive to gain an additional d4 when they try to over extend their jumps.


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More to come, any suggestions on Weapon Skills will be appreciated.

[GorinichSerpant]

I think they shouldn't be called "Skills", because in D&D lingo the word "skills" has a specific meaning and these ability don't fit under that. Maybe you could call these "Weapon tricks"?

[Sindeloke]

I agree, "tricks" or similar would be better.

Also, it seems a little powerful to just give three free benefits to anyone who can pick up a sword. Monks have to give up other class features for an (inferior) free pin on an attack (grapple's not really a pin), and can't do it at range. Casters have to drop from d10 cantrip damage to d8 to impose a no-heal effect (with ray of frost) and that's the only attack they get that round, compared to the fighter or barbarian, who's still got more attacks at potentially d12+str damage.

I hate to feat-gate nice things for martials, but that's the most obvious fair solution that jumps out at me.

[Perseus]

I agree, "tricks" or similar would be better.

Also, it seems a little powerful to just give three free benefits to anyone who can pick up a sword. Monks have to give up other class features for an (inferior) free pin on an attack (grapple's not really a pin), and can't do it at range. Casters have to drop from d10 cantrip damage to d8 to impose a no-heal effect (with ray of frost) and that's the only attack they get that round, compared to the fighter or barbarian, who's still got more attacks at potentially d12+str damage.

I hate to feat-gate nice things for martials, but that's the most obvious fair solution that jumps out at me.

Solution: Make the classes better.


A friend of mine and I have noticed that starting with 4e there has been a trend where instead of making everything more awesome and cool they like to scale back and bring everything down to a more "simpler" yet weaker version.

In 4e it was brining casters down to non-caster level when they should have brought non casters up to caster level. In 5e they took 3.5 and just scaled everything down (though 5e does have some great rule consolidations).

The monk right now is quite pitiful outside of stun locking when it comes to the things it can do with Ki... Their abilities are so tightly estricted that it is quite sad. And how much Ki they get. A lot of the other non-caster classes are pitiful and really don't belong to a fantasy game since there really isn't anything all that fantasy about them. Fun classes and opyions can be found but the potential has been knee capped by the current d&d designers.

I don't want to base homebrew on the pitiful excuses of classes and their resource management abilities. I would rather make awesome stuff than an inferior product just because the classes aren't up to par.

If I was making a new candy bar would I use the best ingredients I could or use the same ingredients that they make off brand candy with? I would get the best ingredients I could find and make a great product and push everything to better than my candy bar instead of lowering and hamstringing myself from the get go.

The point of homebrew is not just to make something new but to make something better. If I conformed to how pitiful the classes are then I'm not making anything better but helping to pile more crap on the trash heap.

5e has a lot of potential and the core rules (bounded accuracy, advantage, character generation rules) aren't all that bad... But a lot of the classes have turned to suck while others get the goodies.


I'll get around to making the simple weapon table, then a monk with advantage or an ally within 5' of the target can use these weapon skills against a target while using their own abilities.

Casters get higher level spells and can use their cantrips at any time. These have the restrictions of sneak attack, are 1/turn, and generally will be used in melee.

Last night I figured three may be too much and figured I would just give each an attack skill and then make a group of passive skills that certain weapons can have made with.

Example: When you are climbing and you have a Battleaxe with the passive Skill (Climbing Axe) you may move X more feet with your move while climbing. Proficient only.

Spring Shaft: When you have a polearm (not including s lance) with the spring shaft you treat all jumps as a running start. Only creatures proficient with the weapon can use the spring shaft correctly.

[Regulas]

If you're making weapon specific rules, I think it should be noted in particular that bludgeoning weapons were especially popular as anti-armour weapons (or more precisely for their armour ignoring characteristics). For "role" purposes a classic warhammer would be less effective then a sword on an unarmored target but much much more effective against someone in full chainmail.

Also warhammer shouldn't have versatile, weighted weapons are usually short shafted.

[Sindeloke]

If you're making weapon specific rules, I think it should be noted in particular that bludgeoning weapons were especially popular as anti-armour weapons (or more precisely for their armour ignoring characteristics). For "role" purposes a classic warhammer would be less effective then a sword on an unarmored target but much much more effective against someone in full chainmail.

Also warhammer shouldn't have versatile, weighted weapons are usually short shafted.

Yeah, this is something I tried to keep in mind when I made my feats for non-polearms. Vastly simplified, but: Flails are designed to bypass shields, while axes and picks are meant to pierce armor. Quarterstaves and maces are meant to batter someone to death inside their armor; greatswords got used for this too and many had a pretty minimal cutting edge from all the metal-on-metal. Longswords/bastard swords/arming swords aren't as good against armor but are easier to be accurate with due to better balance. Curved swords like scimitars are particularly effective when used from horseback, since the curved cutting surface compliments the horse's momentum.

Actually you can see they tried to capture some of this in earlier editions. Longswords have the higher crit range in 3 (a reasonable interpretation of more accuracy) and a straight-up bonus to hit in 4. Axes and hammers have higher crit multipliers but crit only on a 20, representing that it's harder to get a good hit with such a swingy weapon, but if you manage to, it does more damage. It's a shame they gave up so much of that flavor in 5.

[Perseus]

If you're making weapon specific rules, I think it should be noted in particular that bludgeoning weapons were especially popular as anti-armour weapons (or more precisely for their armour ignoring characteristics). For "role" purposes a classic warhammer would be less effective then a sword on an unarmored target but much much more effective against someone in full chainmail.

Also warhammer shouldn't have versatile, weighted weapons are usually short shafted.

Nah, don't care about real life.


Yeah, this is something I tried to keep in mind when I made my feats for non-polearms. Vastly simplified, but: Flails are designed to bypass shields, while axes and picks are meant to pierce armor. Quarterstaves and maces are meant to batter someone to death inside their armor; greatswords got used for this too and many had a pretty minimal cutting edge from all the metal-on-metal. Longswords/bastard swords/arming swords aren't as good against armor but are easier to be accurate with due to better balance. Curved swords like scimitars are particularly effective when used from horseback, since the curved cutting surface compliments the horse's momentum.

Actually you can see they tried to capture some of this in earlier editions. Longswords have the higher crit range in 3 (a reasonable interpretation of more accuracy) and a straight-up bonus to hit in 4. Axes and hammers have higher crit multipliers but crit only on a 20, representing that it's harder to get a good hit with such a swingy weapon, but if you manage to, it does more damage. It's a shame they gave up so much of that flavor in 5.

I'm not getting that deep with this, I really just want to present options for non-casters that can spice things up.

Also, critical hits has nothing to do with accuracy in D&D. You can have a +2975687974 to hit and yet you still only roll a critical hit on a natural 20 (assuming you didn't take Champion Fighter). Critical hits are just lucky strikes that hit a bit harder. Historically and currently D&D has done a really high level crap-job on weapons.

Thanks for the input you two :)

[Thrudd]

Actually, check out BECMI/Rulescyclopedia weapon mastery rules. They have similar secondary effects for weapons. D&D was better once...:smallbiggrin:

[Perseus]

Actually, check out BECMI/Rulescyclopedia weapon mastery rules. They have similar secondary effects for weapons. D&D was better once...:smallbiggrin:

Where can I find these? I googled but got a bunch of forums asking specific questions and wasn't able to find a good list.

[Thrudd]

hmm...the retro-clone Dark Dungeons is a free pdf download http://www.gratisgames.webspace.virginmedia.com/darkdungeons.html, that has a version of them. It isn't identical to the Rulescyclopedia version, a little more complex I think, but still in the vein of what you're doing. The difference is, in older D&D characters did not have proficiency with an entire category of weapons, they had to choose a small number from their list of allowed weapons, and the number of proficiencies increased with level. Fighters got four proficiencies at level 1, and another every other level. By dedicating more than one proficiency slot to the same weapon, you increased your level of mastery and unlocked additional effects and increased bonuses.