I have been thinking about proficiency levels lately, and what they will mean for weapons. With skills we know that different proficiency levels will enable new things you are able to do with those skills, but what will weapons get other than a bonus to attack?
That’s when I thought yo proficiency unlocks for each weapon group, giving you a benefit to your attacks and boosting what the weapons do well.
I assume that I am probably very wrong about this idea and it is far from what Paizo is doing, or if they are then I will be off. They are probably just going to have feats that require certain proficiency levels with certain weapons, but it was fun to brainstorm a couple different weapon groups proficiency unlocks.
First up I have axes, a pretty self-explanitory group name. The whole point of an axe with it’s curved short blade is to focus as much force into as small of a contact point as possible to cause maximum splitting of wood, bones or whatever you are chopping. So in my mind, someone who picks up an axe wants to see lots of blood, and being better at axing means being able to do more with fewer swings, so having explosive rolls that cascade through your opponents flesh felt super appropriate.
Axes:
Expert: When successfully making a strike with an axe, the target begins bleeding 1d6 for each max die rolled for damage (8 on a d8, 10 on a d10 etc.) at the beginning of their turn.
Master: Each enemy that you threaten and is adjacent to the target of your strike with an axe takes the minimum damage from your attack as splash damage.
Legendary: When rolling for damage, each time you roll max on a damage die (8 on a d8, 10 on a d10 etc.) roll another of those dice and add it to the total damage. Rolling max on these extra dice will add another as
Then, I did Heavy bladed, Longsword, Katama, Greatswords, Falchion etc. these weapons are chosen by warriors who want something tried and true. So the skill unlocks I opted for were about taking ones skill with the blade and using it to be more reliable and consistent. So you don’t have to worry about enemy reactions that are triggered by critical fails, and their minimum damage with swords will be more consistently higher.
Blades, Heavy:
Expert: All Critical Failures made when striking with a heavy bladed weapon are treated as regular failures instead.
Master: When striking with a heavy bladed weapon, any time you roll a 1 on your damage dice, you may reroll that die and use the new results.
Legendary: Whenever you reroll a damage die from a heavy bladed weapon, you may instead roll two of that die and add both results.
Thoughts? I know I formatted these poorly?’c but if anybody else wants to take a stab at some other weapon groups or something more balanced than what I put here I would love to see what other people would do.
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At the very least, I would like to see increasing proficiency in a weapon give you better damage with the weapon. I would like to see even a simple nonmagical dagger picked up out of a gutter do massively more damage in the hands of someone with Legendary proficiency in daggers than it does in the hands of a schlub off the street.
At the very least, I would like to see increasing proficiency in a weapon give you better damage with the weapon. I would like to see even a simple nonmagical dagger picked up out of a gutter do massively more damage in the hands of someone with Legendary proficiency in daggers than it does in the hands of a schlub off the street.
Heck yeah, me too. I just also want them to do it in different ways for each weapon group, kinda lend more unique styles to each type of weapon for players to build around.