Gloomblade with a weapon group

[Sigil Baram]

Looking at the gloomblade it seems really cool but I'm curious what giving it a weapon group would do.

Currently the leading line of thought seems to be that they can use the AWT feat with options that aren't associated with a select weapon group. While there are some nice options there I'm wondering what might break if there was an alternate option for gloomblade to select a weapon group at level one to be the weapons the gloomblade can summon, and later when they receive shadow weapon training it is with that weapon group.

This would limit their versatility somewhat while opening up the group specific AWT options, and some weapon groups are still pretty versatile. This could make something like Archer from Unlimited Blade Works, where they summon an array of weapons of a given type and are more skills with weapons of that type rather than summon any weapon at all.

Thoughts?

EDIT:
Also considering many feats still apply to a given weapon I feel like many gloomblades would devolve to using a signature weapon anyway? So their current versatility seems somewhat limited when going beyond face value or even worse than a standard fighter who can use AWT to apply these feats to whole weapon groups?

[PossibleCabbage]

My biggest concern with making "gloomblades" a weapon group is Fighter's Finesse. Since that would allow you to finesse any melee weapon whatsoever: greataxes, bardiches, whatever.

Also "Combat Competence" would allow the Gloomblade to be proficient with every melee weapon in the game once your weapon training bonus is +4.

So my concern would be with gloomblades who are finessing fauchards and butchering axes with trained grace obviating the need for a dex-to-damage option.

[Sigil Baram]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

My biggest concern with making "gloomblades" a weapon group is Fighter's Finesse. Since that would allow you to finesse any melee weapon whatsoever: greataxes, bardiches, whatever.

Also "Combat Competence" would allow the Gloomblade to be proficient with every melee weapon in the game once your weapon training bonus is +4.

So my concern would be with gloomblades who are finessing fauchards and butchering axes with trained grace obviating the need for a dex-to-damage option.

Oh no no no.

That's why I was saying they would pick a group of weapons to summon at level 1 and then use that same group as the subject of shadow weapon training.

Using the normal version of shadow weapons as a group would clearly be broken. XD

[Arachnofiend]

This version of the Gloomblade would qualify for Warrior Spirit, which is a pretty big freaking deal and will get your character up to a +5 weapon shockingly quickly. I dunno if it's enough to call it overpowered but that alone ensures the benefits outweigh the costs of the trade.

[Sigil Baram]

Arachnofiend wrote:

This version of the Gloomblade would qualify for Warrior Spirit, which is a pretty big freaking deal and will get your character up to a +5 weapon shockingly quickly. I dunno if it's enough to call it overpowered but that alone ensures the benefits outweigh the costs of the trade.

Technically but warrior spirit attunes to one specific weapon each day, so anyone who wanted to do this would have to summon a weapon at the start of the day and keep that weapon out all day (or at least until warrior spirit ran out of points or they REALLY needed a different weapon). Anyone who did this doesn't really want the spirit of gloomblade (summoning different magic weapons on the fly) and is just trying to cheese the system by stacking things that shouldn't stack. Easy fix would be to just say this alternate gloomblade can't take warrior spirit since they have a similar ability baked in and that's just silly munchkin. XD

EDIT:
Alternatively they could take it and use it with a "real" weapon while you could say the shadow weapons don't have a spirit to awakened since they have their own enchantments and come from the plane of shadow and all that nonsense.