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Markoff Chainey
2015-11-09, 03:17 PM
This came out from Easy_Lees Thread... from 5e/Next, but I think I should post it in homebrew...
I worked the list over and over and would love some critique. - Thanks for the comments already!

Update: brought the overall damage more in line with the current list


The desire to create a new weapon table stems from a few requirements that I personally have for a weapons table that I did not see perfectly matched:
- Every weapon needs at least a niche where it is useful and that means the "tool" of choice
- A weapon that is just straight "worse" than any other is not worth being listed - because over time it would not be produced anymore
- weapons shall be balanced, there shall be no weapon that it is so good that there is no use for any other
- damage type is not enough of differentiation for a row in the table... such weapon are just bundled under the same characteristics


Weight and cost will be added soon...

Feedback highly appreciated.. :) Would you prefer it over the standard table - is an entry that is too good or too bad?

Weapon-Properties explained...
Heavy - as in the book, but also subtracts 2 from Initiative
Polearm - can be used with the Feat Polearm mastery
M - valid as Monk weapon
flimsy - breaks on a 1 OR 20 when used to make a melee weapon attack with that weapon.


Name
Damge
light
heavy
versatile*
2handed
finesse*
reach
thrown*
Monk?
Polearm?

cost (gp)

weight (lbs)



Simple Weapons














Mace

d8







x

5

4



Club

d6

x









0,1

2



Spear

d6 (d8)


x




x
x
3

3



Greatclub
2d4



x





0,5

6



Javelin
d8






x
x

5

2



QStaff
d8 (2d4)


x

x


x
x
0,5

4



Sickle
d6
x






x

0,5

1



Footman's Flail
2d4

x

x

x


x
4

6



Handaxe, Light Hammer
d6
x





x
x

3

2



Dagger
d4
x



x

x
x

2

1


















Martial Weapons














Flail, War pick, Morning Star

2d4









15

4



Battleaxe, Bastardsword, Warhammer
2d4 (d12)

x
x






10

6



Rapier, Elven Longsword
d8




x




25

2



Lance (flimsy)
d12





x



3

6



Whip
d6




x
x



2

3



Trident
d8 (2d4)


x



x


5

4



Scimitar
d8
x








10

3



Shortsword
d6
x



x


x

10

2



Greataxe, Greatsword, Maul

2d6

x

x





30

7



Glaive
d12

x

x

x


x

20

6



Halberd
2d6

x

x

x


x
20

6



Longsword
d8 (d10)


x






15

3



Gnome Hammer
d10



x





15

5



Dwarven Axe
d10

x







25

6



Orcish Greataxe
d12

x

x





15

7





If you want to create your own according to those "general rules" or change them or whatsoever, here are a few sheets that explain the process of this list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VAnGT2ETnb9mlRwNeUo3zr77rptt50HBLa7EZz5HdlA/edit?usp=sharing

Mith
2015-11-09, 05:35 PM
I like this table. I am not an expert on balance though, but things feel right to me.

How do you feel of the idea that a Long sword could be used as a mace (gripping the blade and using the cross-guard, called a murder-stroke) or half-swording for piercing damage using the idea behind this table? Would that put too much power to the long sword in your opinion? I would think the murder-stroke would be 1d6 and 1d4+1 for the half-swording would work.

Markoff Chainey
2015-11-10, 04:54 AM
I like this table. I am not an expert on balance though, but things feel right to me.

How do you feel of the idea that a Long sword could be used as a mace (gripping the blade and using the cross-guard, called a murder-stroke) or half-swording for piercing damage using the idea behind this table? Would that put too much power to the long sword in your opinion? I would think the murder-stroke would be 1d6 and 1d4+1 for the half-swording would work.

I am not certain if I get your suggestion right... mechanically, you want to use a longsword to do 1d6+1d4+1 dmg? (average of 7) instead of 1d10 (average of 5.5) - so yes, that definately would be OP.

The question is, if you want to allow such a maneuver, what are its requirements? The way you describe it, it would require 2 empty hands, but nothing else and that would suddenly put a longsword far ahead any other weapon in terms of damage and versatility.

I would not go such a route with maneuvers at all, because I would expect every "professional" fighter to know lots of tricks like that and I think the rules are just not detailed enough to reflect all of them. - So this is whats already included and reflected by the to-hit and damage values anyways. - And the main reason why I would not do it is that you could add 100s of things like that and they would become a nightmare to play and handle and do not really add anything to the table, but add damage, so the DM would have to increase HP or AC.

If you want to do some homebrew, though, my advice would be to limit a maneuver in some way.. either by making it available through a feat, or a certain condition (eg. only works on prone targets, only works against heavy armor, only works when flanking, only works on the first attack per turn ...) OR by adding some non-beneficial circumstance... like (this maneuver provokes attacks of opportunity from bystanders, you have -2 AC for the rest of the turn after using it until start of next turn, ...) adding it would make the weapon in question plain better and that is troublesome because under the assumption that there is no "best" weapon (this is still a WIP and I am sure by no means perfect) this would make one weapon better than the others.

Seruvius
2015-11-10, 05:41 AM
Nice, I do like some of the changes you've made. I do definitely agree that in official 5e some weapons are clearly superior to others while fulfilling the same role, so one would never use said weapon other than for flavour.

I like the heavy having an extra downside to it in lowering initative.

The Flimsy Quality. I feel the 10% break chance could be a real annoyance at low levels with a quarterstaff wielder , as one may not have a reserve weapon. Or i guess just make sure someone has the Mending cantrip to fix the staff between fights.




- damage type is not enough of differentiation for a row in the table... such weapon are just bundled under the same characteristics


With that do you mean that say there are equivalents of the greatsword for piercing and Bludgeoning with same price/damage/weight? I noticed you changed the Maul to d12, was this specifically to differentiate between the weapons, giving everything its own niche? If I am understanding it correctly then i definitely approve. Give baseline values that people can play around with and make their own versions. One could make a Lucerne Hammer by changing a Glaive's damage type to Bludgeoning, or a Warpick by changing a Battleaxe's damage type to piercing.

Markoff Chainey
2015-11-10, 05:52 AM
Nice, I do like some of the changes you've made. I do definitely agree that in official 5e some weapons are clearly superior to others while fulfilling the same role, so one would never use said weapon other than for flavour.

I like the heavy having an extra downside to it in lowering initative.

The Flimsy Quality. I feel the 10% break chance could be a real annoyance at low levels with a quarterstaff wielder , as one may not have a reserve weapon. Or i guess just make sure someone has the Mending cantrip to fix the staff between fights.



With that do you mean that say there are equivalents of the greatsword for piercing and Bludgeoning with same price/damage/weight? I noticed you changed the Maul to d12, was this specifically to differentiate between the weapons, giving everything its own niche? If I am understanding it correctly then i definitely approve. Give baseline values that people can play around with and make their own versions. One could make a Lucerne Hammer by changing a Glaive's damage type to Bludgeoning, or a Warpick by changing a Battleaxe's damage type to piercing.


Thanks for your comments!

flimsy... yes, it feels a little much on the levels 1 or 2, making the weapon barely not useable and becomes a "no-penalty" when magic weapons are available.. I am short of a better solution, though. I especially like it for lances as I think its quite thematical (lances were supposed to break to avoid that the attacker would fall from the horse).

I think piercing / bludgeoning / slashing is covered very poorly in the game. It could be covered better easily, but would inevitably complicate things. As they have no real benefit over each other, one should be able to change this property for each weapon freely by making modifications to a weapon by a blacksmith / modifications of his own fighting style. - I hope I expressed myself clearly enough.. I am on one page with you there :)

Mith
2015-11-10, 10:28 AM
I am not certain if I get your suggestion right... mechanically, you want to use a longsword to do 1d6+1d4+1 dmg? (average of 7) instead of 1d10 (average of 5.5) - so yes, that definately would be OP.


It would be OR instead of AND. So you could choose to do slashing damage with an attack (1d10), bludgeoning damage with a murder stroke (1d6), or piercing damage with half-swording (1d4+1). You could alternate between them for a variety of attacks if you so chose, but you only do one per attack.

My reasoning for asking this is because this feel like you are going for a more realistic weapons feel, and this would reflect on how long swords were actually used.

SodaDarwin
2015-11-10, 10:59 AM
If half-swording is introduced, remember that it's not just for piercing damage, it's to get around armour and generally hit a specific area. That should be shown in some way, whether by increased crit rate or just a better chance to hit.

Mith
2015-11-10, 11:31 AM
True. It might end up being considered too much book-keeping, but I really like the idea of one weapon being useful in a variety of ways, even if it is not as effective as some other weapons at the same damage type.

Markoff Chainey
2015-11-10, 12:06 PM
True. It might end up being considered too much book-keeping, but I really like the idea of one weapon being useful in a variety of ways, even if it is not as effective as some other weapons at the same damage type.

It's always a dilemma - realism vs. game mechanics. If a weapon offers to do either slashing 1d10 and piercing 1d6... what would you choose? A weapon that is useful in a variety of ways is not more interesting in terms of game mechanics. I would say it isn't, because it makes other weapons obsolete if it is good or it is bad and will not be used. When it is "balanced" it would have be worse than others to make up for its variety...

But if you add different damage types to weapon with a much lower damage output, then it does not matter, because as the damage types do not play any significant role, it does not really make the weapon more useful anyways. - The question then remains why would you do so and make your game more complicated. If it makes you happy, I would say: go for it :)

This is why I imagine that in this "1d10", the whole range of abilities a fighter might know, is already reflected. - Also things like half-swording or detecting combat patterns. And the reason that the fighter gains more attacks and deals more damage are some neat maneuvers he learned and maybe some dirty tricks he picked up.

A more realistic approach would have to address the differences in wounds and wound levels depending on the damage type and armor types vs. damage types, etc. this can all be done and some games do it, but it makes the gamerules inevitably more complex.

Mith
2015-11-10, 12:33 PM
Fair enough. The only reason to do a switch is to change damage type to get through DR. I guess it's more that if you have switching weapons consume an action, then having a quick way to switch damage types works wonders. But as soon as you get magic weapons, that becomes more or less obsolete.

Magikeeper
2015-11-10, 01:10 PM
Why is the quarterstaff... flimsy? It's not just some random stick, nor is it some impractical weapon that never saw real-world use. IIRC it saw a lot of RL use! 10% break chance? Really? No one would have used it if it was that... flimsy. It not being a monk weapon, when it is used in some RL martial art styles, is also odd. I think lowering the damage would be better than having it not work in a sensible way.

So 1d8 -> 1d6, replace flimsy with M.

(granted, there are a lot of non-D&D-monk weapons that are used in some martial arts styles..)

Markoff Chainey
2015-11-10, 02:32 PM
Why is the quarterstaff... flimsy? It's not just some random stick, nor is it some impractical weapon that never saw real-world use. IIRC it saw a lot of RL use! 10% break chance? Really? No one would have used it if it was that... flimsy. It not being a monk weapon, when it is used in some RL martial art styles, is also odd. I think lowering the damage would be better than having it not work in a sensible way.

So 1d8 -> 1d6, replace flimsy with M.

(granted, there are a lot of non-D&D-monk weapons that are used in some martial arts styles..)

the QStaff is now a two-handed weapon and the spear is instead versatile. - I changed that because I think a spear + shield makes more sense than a qstaff + shield. This is why the qstaff is no longer a monk weapon (2h), but the spear (versatile) now is.

I will think about flimsy.. agreed, it is far from ideal.

M Placeholder
2015-11-10, 02:48 PM
The weapon table needs a weight category too in my view. I'm a bit of a stickler for that.

Could you do a weapon table for Dark Sun (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4jZ_-uYQxf8XzFpX2x6VVlicEk/view?pli=1) and also have a table for weapons from Oriental Adventures 5th edition converted please? I was wondering where the katana was:smallsmile:

Zman
2015-11-10, 08:29 PM
Remove flimsy on the Quarterstaff. It should be a Monk Weapon. IMO it works as a d6 single handed, d6/d6 wielded as two weapon fighting, and d8 for two handed. Flimsy only fits on a Lance.

Warhammer as d10 and versatile d12 is a bit much. I'd go with 2d4 single handed and heavy. Averages slightly better than a mace, but is heavy.

A flail/foot man's flail would be fun, 3d2, versatile(3d3), heavy.

My 2 cents.

Markoff Chainey
2015-11-17, 10:39 AM
thanks for the comments so far!
Major update, costs and weight added... please leave a note if you would prefer this over the official one and why if not :)

Cheers!