| Sethala |
Personally, I'm fine with advanced weapons having some kind of investment to them, but I think there should be more ways to get that investment, open to more characters, without them feeling like they're taking a "lesser" weapon. Two ideas I'd like to see implemented:
First, a new level 3 general feat, Advanced Weapon Expertise:
Prerequisite: Trained proficiency in at least one Advanced Weapon
Choose an Advanced Weapon you are proficient with. When you gain Expert or Master proficiency with at least one weapon, you gain matching proficiency with the chosen Advanced weapon.
This does give Fighters a little extra versatility between levels 5 and 13 (where they could get Master proficiency with a weapon outside of their chosen group), but overall it shouldn't allow any wacky shenanigans. You still have to get training (and access, for uncommon/rare weapons) some other way, likely through the Weapon Proficiency feat, but if you have some other way to get trained in such a weapon then this gives you a relatively easy way to get scaling proficiency. Keeping it lower level is intentional, as I wanted to make sure characters didn't have to "go without" having the higher proficiency if they get it at a level when they don't get a general feat.
The second change would just be to open up some class's critical specialization effects to allow them to work with unusual weapons. Rogues, for instance, have a pretty limiting number of weapons to pick from if they want the critical bonus; personally, I'd like to see it opened up so they can get less conventional weapons and still get the effect (as long as they go through the effort to get the weapon in the first place, at least). This could be another general feat, but I think just changing the class features would be better; it avoids more feat taxing, and also keeps characters that don't naturally get critical specializations from getting them too easily.