Weapon Inventor - Advanced Weapons via Ancestry Feats?

[Red Griffyn]

Can a human with unconventional weaponry or other ancestry pick up an advanced weapons to use with the weapon inventor innovation class feature. I think the answer is no, but that would be a pretty lame/unfortunate answer.

Weapon Innovation

Your innovation is an impossible-looking weapon augmented by numerous unusual mechanisms. It begins with the same statistics as a level 0 common simple or martial weapon of your choice, or another level 0 simple or martial weapon to which you have access. You can instead use the statistics of a 1st-level common simple or martial weapon of your choice, or another 1st-level simple or martial weapon to which you have access, but you must pay the monetary Price for the weapon. An innovation weapon can have fundamental and property runes added to it in the same way as an ordinary weapon. Because of the unique features of your innovation, everyone except you is untrained in it, even if they would normally be trained (or better) in simple or martial weapons. If you use the Overdrive action, you can choose to change the additional damage from Overdrive to fire damage.

Unconventional Weaponry Or similar Ancestry Feats:

You've familiarized yourself with a particular weapon, potentially from another ancestry or culture. Choose an uncommon simple or martial weapon with a trait corresponding to an ancestry (such as dwarf, goblin, or orc) or that is common in another culture. You gain access to that weapon, and for the purpose of determining your proficiency, that weapon is a simple weapon.

If you are trained in all martial weapons, you can choose an uncommon advanced weapon with such a trait. You gain access to that weapon, and for the purpose of determining your proficiency, that weapon is a martial weapon.

[Cordell Kintner]

Treating your proficiency with a weapon as a different category does not change the weapon's category. The feats affect YOU not the weapon. You must pick a Simple or Martial weapon, there is no way to make an Advanced weapon your innovation.

[breithauptclan]

Yeah, for some reason Advanced Weapons are not eligible for the base weapon to choose for Weapon Innovation. Simple or Martial weapons only.

Which is kinda silly. Not sure if that is for a balance reason. I wouldn't think so since the Inventor class doesn't give Advanced weapon proficiency. I would think that is sufficient disincentive to use an Advanced Weapon. Even getting trained proficiency in Advanced Weapons is only good at low to medium levels. It is maybe good enough at higher levels, but there will be an accuracy penalty in comparison to weapons that get additional proficiency rating.

Maybe that is the reason - to avoid having inexperienced players feeling bad that their advanced weapon choice was a bad one at higher levels.

[Lazarus Dark]

Personally I think they could have allowed you to choose an advanced weapon for the innovation and treat your innovation as a martial weapon (not the weapon, I mean treat the Innovation as martial for proficiency, so you couldn't switch your innovation and then use that advanced weapon on its own as though it were martial, or somehow buy a second copy of that advanced weapon and be trained in it).

That said, I also think flavor-wise, I wouldn't use an ancestry weapon as an innovation, you'll be strapping various mods to it and making it explode and I think that might be a huge insult to other members of your ancestry to use thier ancestral weapon in such a way. And if I were a GM, I might allow you to take an advanced weapon as an innovation and treat it as martial for proficiency if it fits rule of cool, but still not allow it to be an ancestral advanced weapon because that may clash with the setting.

[PossibleCabbage]

Despite the fact that the Inventor is the person for whom "make complicated weapons work" makes the most sense, it's kind of a bummer they can't base a weapons innovation on a repeating crossbow that's not the heavy one.

[graystone]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Despite the fact that the Inventor is the person for whom "make complicated weapons work" makes the most sense, it's kind of a bummer they can't base a weapons innovation on a repeating crossbow that's not the heavy one.

Oddly, the heavy one IS the more complicated one [it needs hands to reload between shots] and is the only martial repeating crossbow. But I agree, it's a shame that weapon innovations and advanced weapons don't mix: I too would have loved to tinker with a repeating hand crossbow.

[Asethe]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Despite the fact that the Inventor is the person for whom "make complicated weapons work" makes the most sense, it's kind of a bummer they can't base a weapons innovation on a repeating crossbow that's not the heavy one.

I think you just identified why the restriction is in place.

[aobst128]

It would have been neat if there was a 6th level advanced weapon training for the inventor that you could adapt your innovation into. But it wasn't meant to be I guess.

[aobst128]

But I do like the idea of starting with a ranseur and getting reach, disarm, grapple, trip, shove, and sweep on one weapon by 8th level. So many item bonuses so many choices.

[PossibleCabbage]

Asethe wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Despite the fact that the Inventor is the person for whom "make complicated weapons work" makes the most sense, it's kind of a bummer they can't base a weapons innovation on a repeating crossbow that's not the heavy one.

I think you just identified why the restriction is in place.

Well, if the repeating crossbow were a martial weapon, what problem would it cause if the weapon inventor used that for their innovation? An inventor can already use a free reload weapon for their platform, and the Inventor would still need like 3 actions to reload it every 5 shots (so that's the tradeoff between "not needing Str").

The other issue I have with how the ancestry weapon feats is that if you're building a gun monk with that archetypes, it seems like a dwarven gun monk should be allowed to use a clan pistol but I don't think that works.

[BloodandDust]

I think the underlying point is more that Advanced weapons *are* innovations on martial weapons, which are mostly innovations on simple weapons.

As a weapon innovator, you too can now create a new advanced weapon (“look out, he has a board… with a nail in it!”).

…but the top of the heap is Advanced. You can make a new, cool, advanced weapon (essentially), but not an uber weapon.

[BloodandDust]

Innovator: “Check out my sweet, sweet weapon innovation lads”
Crew: “Ok, whattaya got?”
Innovator: <flourish> “A club of sharpness!!1!1”
Crew: “I … ah … a what?”
Innovator: <flourish> “A club of sharpness!!1!1”
Crew: “…”
Innovator: “=)”
Crew: “Never catch on mate.”

[Marcus Steelfeather]

Lazarus Dark wrote:

That said, I also think flavor-wise, I wouldn't use an ancestry weapon as an innovation, you'll be strapping various mods to it and making it explode and I think that might be a huge insult to other members of your ancestry to use thier ancestral weapon in such a way.

I don't think gnomes would mind. Most of them seems to be good inventors.

[Seisho]

Marcus Steelfeather wrote:

Lazarus Dark wrote:

That said, I also think flavor-wise, I wouldn't use an ancestry weapon as an innovation, you'll be strapping various mods to it and making it explode and I think that might be a huge insult to other members of your ancestry to use thier ancestral weapon in such a way.

I don't think gnomes would mind. Most of them seems to be good inventors.

Yeah, the flickmace is pretty much a Mace that went through the leveling up process of an inventor :P

[Dubious Scholar]

BloodandDust wrote:

I think the underlying point is more that Advanced weapons *are* innovations on martial weapons, which are mostly innovations on simple weapons.

As a weapon innovator, you too can now create a new advanced weapon (“look out, he has a board… with a nail in it!”).

…but the top of the heap is Advanced. You can make a new, cool, advanced weapon (essentially), but not an uber weapon.

Well, not immediately. The inventor's weapons get some really slick upgrades on the last tier, but as a whole I feel like the innovations are somewhat lackluster on many options (they lack oomph, even if adding versatile B to anything or getting physical resists and such are actually good).