Martial Weapon Styles

[Artificial 20]

There are several martial weapon styles offered in P1E. Here is a list of those I have identified:

• Two-handed melee weapon
  
• One-handed melee weapon
  
• One-handed melee weapon and shield / "Sword and Board"
  
• Two melee weapons
  
• Reach melee weapon (e.g. polearms)
  
• "Classic" ranged weapon (e.g. bows)
  
• "Modern" ranged weapon (e.g. guns)
  
• Thrown weapon (including splash weapons)
  
• No weapon (e.g. unarmed strikes, natural weapons)
  
• Honourable Mention: Grappling
  

I use "weapon" to mean something that can defeat/kill opponents in its own right, without outside help. Grappling is mentioned because dealing damage is an option in the grapple tree, but tripping/bull rushing/disarming etc. cannot generally do this (some feats side), despite having tactical merit.

If a style is still missing, feel free to point it out.

It's reasonable for people to want styles they like to not just be present but also offer worthwhile strengths / have mechanical appeal as well as thematic. Some feel that P1E did this with varying success for different styles. Here is my own personal view, broken down into 3 broad categories:

Generally Effective Styles:

• Two-handed melee weapon
  
• Reach melee weapon (e.g. polearms)
  
• "Classic" ranged weapon (e.g. bows)
  

Niche Effective Styles:

• One-handed melee weapon
  
• One-handed melee weapon and shield / "Sword and Board"
  
• Two melee weapons
  
• "Modern" ranged weapon (e.g. guns)
  
• No weapon (e.g. unarmed strikes, natural weapons)
  
• Honourable Mention: Grappling
  

Rarely Effective Styles:

• Thrown weapon (including splash weapons)
  

Generally effective styles might require feat investment, but would work out mechanically effectively without overly restricting your build, e.g. needing a class / archetype written specifically to support the concept.

Niche effective styles would be mechanically effective provided you were willing to base large portions of your build on them, such as choosing a sneak attack class for two-weapon fighting, or gunslinger / an archetype with gunslinging features if you intended to play a gun-using character.

Rarely effective styles can be challenging to make effective and require knowledge of the right options and combinations, even if you are willing to devote your entire build toward trying to make the concept effective.

---

People probably disagree about specific categorisations, but looking at the overall principle, what should be changed in P2E?

From what's been shared so far, Sword and Board sounds like it's getting a boost from changes to shields. Guns are also being held off on, until more focus can be given to their implementation. The new action economy will hopefully somewhat close the gap between melee and ranged, as well.

Personally, I'm currently most concerned about two-weapon fighting and thrown weapons. The former could struggle to keep up with two-handed fighting in damage even when used by more or less its poster-boy, the sneak-attacking rogue, and didn't have much to distinguish itself other than damage, unlike e.g. the reach offered by reach weapons.

I don't have any thrown weapon characters myself, but unless you would count alchemist bombs, I think it's the most under-represented style in my personal experience of P1E. I think feats like Startoss Style might have brought it up to somewhere around on par with two-weapon fighting.

[Fuzzypaws]

I'd argue bows were also super feat intensive with multiple feat taxes, but I guess they at least didn't have an additional feat tax to get started like guns / crossbows.

TWF... We'll have to see the Ranger blog to know, no doubt. But judging from PF1 revised action economy, it seems like where they will shine is abusing the three action system. A feat or feat chain to first make two attacks with one action once per turn, then later twice per turn and finally all three times you can act in a turn. With the >10< system we'll have to playtest whatever penalties they give it and see how well it works, but I'm hopeful.

I'd definitely like "duelist style" (1H weapon with empty offhand) to be viable, I'd definitely like throwing weapons and everything else you mentioned to be viable too. Since we're starting out the gate with a lot more feats this time, I'm hopeful. It's good to keep in mind though, so if one area gets neglected by the devs in the playtest CRB we can hopefully get that fixed. It'd be lovely for every type (other than firearms which are apparently coming later) to be good right in the CRB.

A note on thrown: one thing that would really help here is if magic thrown weapons automatically came with the Returning ability built in. Because that is an "ability tax" to make thrown work.

[Catharsis]

I could imagine TWF to just lessen the iterative penalties one more step when using two Agile weapons. I doubt they will actually increase the number of rolls, that would seem to go against the whole streamlining of full rounds that they’re apparently aiming for.

I could also imagine something like a two-action attack that gives you one roll with each of your weapons at a –2 penalty.

[Fuzzypaws]

Catharsis wrote:

I could imagine TWF to just lessen the iterative penalties one more step when using two Agile weapons. I doubt they will actually increase the number of rolls, that would seem to go against the whole streamlining of full rounds that they’re apparently aiming for.

I could also imagine something like a two-action attack that gives you one roll with each of your weapons at a –2 penalty.

Well, you can already attack with both weapons over two actions with no additional penalties, other than the iterative penalty. From what we've seen of the playtest, they got rid of the offhand penalty; so for someone not explicitly trained in TWF, it's just a matter of choosing which of your two weapons you want to attack with each action.

TWF as a style though is all about getting extra attacks. It's the martial counterpart to bow fighting in that regard. Hopefully it retains a distinct flavor and mechanical space in PF2 and doesn't just become a reskinned version of duelist style.

[Catharsis]

Ooh, Duelist style could include keeping your offhand behind you, making for a low profile against your target and maybe even helping you recover from a lunge. Maybe something like this:

When you Step after a Strike, you gain a Shield bonus to your AC against the target of your Strike until the beginning of your next round. The bonus is equal to your proficiency bonus with your weapon.

[Artificial 20]

Fuzzypaws: I agree bows are feat-intensive. I think they do well by having good "book ends" of performance.

If you use a bow with minimal investment, it won't perform as well as your main option, but there are clear cases where you're glad you have it, e.g. a melee martial unable to close, a spellcaster out of spell uses. For less than 100 gold and a few pounds of weight you can carry a crossbow and some bolts/bow and some arrows, depending on your weapon proficiencies, and run into situations where it really comes in handy. If you're a strength-based martial you can even buy STR-to-damage with a composite bow, which becomes easier to spare the gold for as your level and character wealth increases.

Bows go through a rough adolescence, with selecting feat after feat to get rid of penalties and such, but when you do get everything in place there's a great pay-off, to the extent some call it the strongest martial style in P1E in the long run. There are classes and archetypes that help in getting to that point, but they're not actually needed. For example, you can build an NPC Warrior character with feats such as the below and be a good acher:

Level 1: Point-Blank Shot
Level 3: Precise Shot
Level 5: Rapid Shot
Level 7: Clustered Shots
Level 9: Deadly Aim
Level 11: Many Shot
Level 13: Improved Precise Shot
Level 15: Weapon Focus
Level 17: Snap Shot
Level 19: Improved Snap Shot

Catharsis: I think my biggest concern with TWF is something being done with good intention, but ending up producing a mechanical incentive to spend less actions moving compared to one-weapon users, THF included.

P1E has that issue, where TWF suffer even more from just standard-action attacking than THF, and other oddities like having worse AOO damange (at least Combat Reflexes rewards the high DEX that is often seen with TWF).

[John Lynch 106]

Remove stuff like double slice and restrict sneak attack to once per round and TWF could be well balanced against two handed weapons with only a single feat that allows a free attack with your offhand when you attack with your main hand. 2H shines against DR while TWF is good against multiple foes with low HP. You could also open up feats that allow interesting choices.

[Catharsis]

You could also allow things like Whirlwind Attack for TWF only to represent the large volume of attacks.

Having a two-action attack with, say, –1/–1 instead of 0/–5 could also be worth it. You could still move before that.

[vorArchivist]

I frankly never understood having both great cleave and whirlwind attack. I know they're different but they are in a similar enough niche that I don't understand why we need both.

I'm kind of hoping that they make it so that some feats evolve when you get higher proficiencies. like whirlwind attack becomes available the proficiency after great cleave automatically if you have the general cleave feat.

[Doktor Weasel]

Another way of handling two weapon fighting could be to have feats that let you make one attack roll with a penalty, but use the damage dice for both weapons. So representing both attacks with a single roll, and therefore not increasing the number of D20 rolls you need to do.

[John Lynch 106]

If your going to do that you might as well just use a greatsword.

[Artificial 20]

Personally, I'd like TWF fighting to have a clear mechanical advantage and clear mechanical disadvantage compared to THF. They're both melee styles where you hit targets generally adjacent to you. For example, THF builds have higher offensive damage, but TWF builds get higher AC thanks to being DEX-based, without DEX-to-damage being severely gated.

To give a napkin example, the STR 18 martial gets to do 2D6 damage with their greatsword and add double their STR mod to the attack for 2D6 + 8 or 15 average damage. The DEX 18 martial gets to do 1D6 with each short sword at -2 to hit, and add half their DEX mod to each attack, for (1D6 + 2) x 2 or 11 average damage and -2 accuracy but 3-4 more AC thanks to their DEX. The numbers depend on the overall system, but as someone who wants to play DEX martials, I'd personally like that kind of trade-off.

[Doktor Weasel]

John Lynch 106 wrote:

If your going to do that you might as well just use a greatsword.

Fair point.