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So advanced weapons are supposed to be a step up from their martial counterparts, hence their higher and more difficult to obtain proficiency. It's why fighters get a -2 with them and need to spend a 6th level feat to catch up.
Some advanced weapons are really cool and unique, but a few of them seem oddly balanced considering and I just want to document a few that stand out to me as seemingly odd.
Spiral Rapier This new weapon from Grand Bazaar is nearly identical to the base rapier: It only trades the deadly d8 trait for the parry trait and doesn't actually gain anything over the rapier. I'm not sure what makes this weapon qualify for the Advanced tier, because that appears to be a mostly comparable trait for trait trade.
Repeating Hand Crossbow Compared to the air repeater, it loses 1 magazine size and the agile trait but gains 30 feet of range and a die size. Comparing other weapons, trading agile for a die size seem about even. It has a lot more range, but having to reload more often is a pain. The thing that makes this one questionable to me is that the air repeater is a simple weapon, a full two categories below the repeating crossbow, yet it only seems really similar or only a tiny bit inferior.
The RHC technically predates the air repeater, but its most recent printing is in the same book as the air repeater.
Rhoka Sword This weapon looks okay at first glance. It's an extra die size over the katana, a deadly longsword, and while it loses Versatile P, that's not exactly an amazing trait (although Paizo seems to value it as a fairly standard trait looking at weapons like the longsword, fwiw).
What gets this weapon on my list though is its other trait. When wielded in two hands, it becomes strictly worse than the Katana, only weighing more and lacking that versatile trait. Is it supposed to be two-hand d12? Most (barring this weapon, the also-advanced bladed hoop and the reinforced stock) two-hand weapons have two die sizes between modes, which seems more consistent. It just feels weird that the two-handed mode is a downgrade from its martial counterpart.
There are a handful of other advanced weapons that appear a little odd, but some of them have unique effects or don't map very well to existing martial or simple weapons. Also avoiding mentioning a certain bow because that one has been talked about a lot.
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Wow yeah I forgot about the Sword Cane.
The spiral rapier has Disarm, which the sword cane doesn't, but in exchange the cane has agile, twin and concealable over it. It's a lot more expensive, but that seems like an awkward balance point if that's the intention.
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Yeah, the spiral rapier is especially weird since the exquisite sword cane exists, and is arguably a much better weapon even though it's martial.
The Exquisite sword cane was one of the few weapons with finesse and parry, AND a decent damage die. It's also no longer PFS-legal, although neither is the Spiral Rapier.
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It's worth noting that the exquisite sword cane was an early error in weapon design where what should likely have been a specific magic weapon of some kind was accidentally created as a weapon that's just more powerful than all other weapons in its class, so I wouldn't recommend using it as a comparison point.
Designer
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Yeah, the spiral rapier is especially weird since the exquisite sword cane exists, and is arguably a much better weapon even though it's martial.
The exquisite sword cane is a mistake from the back of an AP that didn't get caught by design in time and which doesn't really have an easy way to address for a fix because of where it was printed. It really shouldn't be used as a point of reference for any other weapon. In general, there just shouldn't be one-handed weapons with the parry trait that have a die size higher than d4 unless they're advanced or have some other notable drawback.
Weapon traits aren't all created equal; some are more powerful than others while others are comparatively low impact or devalued because they don't work at the same time as other traits on the weapon. So just counting the numbers of traits and weapon die sizes is only going to get you one small piece of the story. For example, depending on the profile of the weapon, the deadly trait might be worth as much as trip, two-hand, and versatile combined, but even that's only true if the deadly die is large enough (particularly compared to the base weapon die). Parry's value is contextual; the main gauche is the iconic parry weapon and both it and the shield bash deal a d4; attachments like shield bosses that raise that damage to a d6 are more expensive than other weapons because they have to be attached to another expensive item, can be taken out of commision when that item is used for its intended purpose, and generally just require you to invest in two scaling magic items instead of 1. You just shouldn't have a one-handed parry weapon that deals more than a d4 without it being advanced regardless of the other traits in the load-out since that's a direct vector for power creep that invalidates Core Rulebook options, something the design team tries really hard not to have happen.
Traits aren't just directly fungible with each other since they sit in different tiers of effectiveness and balancing them always requires looking directly at the context of the weapon, the traits that are needed to tell its story, and how powerful those traits are, not just in relation to the base weapon damage die, but also in their interactions with each other.
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Now that I've looked at the Rhoka sword, it's actually not terrible as an Advanced Weapon. It has slightly less two-hand base damage than a bastard Sword, but gains Deadly d8. Having a lower attack bonus will make that Deadly happen less often.
If anything, the Katana might be too good for it's stats. It is Uncommon, so you need a way to gain access, but 2H d10 plus deadly d8 is a pretty good combo.
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The designer insights here have been really cool and informative!
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Is disarm one of those traits that's valued highly? Since I legitimately don't see very many disarm attempts. Players seem to look at "it only actually disarms if I critically succeed" and just not bother with it as a tactic.
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Is disarm one of those traits that's valued highly? Since I legitimately don't see very many disarm attempts. Players seem to look at "it only actually disarms if I critically succeed" and just not bother with it as a tactic.
Disarm would've been so much more smoother if the wielding penalty lasted until the end of the creature's turn as default. It would be quite the decent action against weapon-wielding enemies or even bosses, as a "reliable" accuracy debuff while also being kept in line with the other maneuvers' action economy costs (Grabbed creatures spend actions to escape, tripped creatures stand up, shoved creatures more likely than not need to close the gap, spending one action to get rid of the -2 debuff would be more than reasonable).
Now that I've looked at the Rhoka sword, it's actually not terrible as an Advanced Weapon. It has slightly less two-hand base damage than a bastard Sword, but gains Deadly d8. Having a lower attack bonus will make that Deadly happen less often.
If anything, the Katana might be too good for it's stats. It is Uncommon, so you need a way to gain access, but 2H d10 plus deadly d8 is a pretty good combo.
The katana is just fine.
As a one handed weapon, d6 with deadly d8, it's not really better than just having a d8 weapon.
As a two handed weapon, d10 with deadly d8 is notably worse than scythes and the greatpick, and not really better than a d12 weapon.
As a hybrid weapon, it's competing with the bastard sword on both sides.
The flexibility is nice, but the katana doesn't really excel in any niche as a weapon.
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Designer
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Is disarm one of those traits that's valued highly? Since I legitimately don't see very many disarm attempts. Players seem to look at "it only actually disarms if I critically succeed" and just not bother with it as a tactic.
TLDR Disarm is essentially weighted the same as other maneuver traits because the maneuver itself is structured to be balanced with other maneuvers.
***Disarm is kind of interesting. As a trait, it's weighted about the same as any other maneuver trait, because the maneuver itself is structured to be fair to the players. Tactically, it's essentially a two person activity on the player side, where one player sets up the maneuver and the other person executes the actual disarm. The math that creates that staging process is important, because once a creature or player is disarmed there's a high probability of them just being out of the fight for most intents and purposes.
While monsters may or may not have weapons, a party full of PCs almost certainly has at least one character who's heavily reliant on their chosen gear. So if the fighter is faced with an ettin boss monster and the ettin uses its first action to disarm and gets the effects of what is currently a critical success the majority of the time, the fighter's ability to deal damage or use weapon-oriented feats has been mega-nerfed, and they're going to provoke AoOs each time they try to pick up the weapon (and a crit from one of those AoOs will disrupt the action they tried to use, forcing them to try again). Even under the current rule, the fighter has taken a rough hit to his AoO class feature and has a fair chance of getting the critical effect anyways; if disarm were to say, last until the end of the fighter's next turn, his entire primary damage-dealing class feature, legendary proficiency, would be effectively shut off.
For a character reliant on their weapon, there's no worse debuff than being disarmed. Players who use tag-team disarm tactics will generally find that the fight curve ends on about the same round as with standard DPR tactics, but with lower resource drain since the enemy is taking big nerfs to their damage output and/or absorbing more reactions as they try to get back online. For example, the aforementioned ettin: its independent brains ability means each head only has control of one arm and its Reflex is a low defense (so disarming is more likely to succeed than a maneuver like grappling by a large amount). Does it attempt to pick up the dropped weapon and see what kinds of reactions the party has? Does it spend an action on each of its turns regripping the remaining weapon between each heads' hand? For two player actions you've burned at least one, possibly more, enemy actions and set up however many party reactions are available. If the party has two characters with AoO or similar reactions, than every two actions spent on successfully disarming the opponent is being paid back as one lost enemy action and two triggered reactions with no MAP, and if those reactions are AoOs each one has a chance to prevent the enemy from recovering their weapon and forcing them to either make heavily nerfed attacks or keep spending actions trying to recover their weapon. The enemy's attack(s) are nerfed even harder than with trip while prone since they're directly losing their best damage dice and any runes the weapons has, and it's harder to recover from being disarmed than being prone because Interacting to pick up a weapon can be disrupted by Attack of Opportunity (the most common offensive reaction) while Standing can't. When a team pulls it off, it's also a strictly better deal than you get from the slow spell and the only resources the party spent are action economy and MAP, which will generally mean the exchange favors them in this kind of fight.
Shifting the disarm functionality to be more aggressive would make the game in general much more difficult for the PCs and reintroduce some shut down / rocket tag paradigms that many find to not be fun in the fights where the enemy is vulnerable to the tactic, with the prime choice for each side being to try and get the other side on the back foot with the first disarm (and since fights against enemies with big, impactful weapons are often boss fights, that will usually favor the monster and not be terribly fun for the fighter who drops unconscious in the second round after having dealt zero damage to the enemy.)
You just shouldn't have a one-handed parry weapon that deals more than a d4 without it being advanced regardless of the other traits in the load-out since that's a direct vector for power creep that invalidates Core Rulebook options, something the design team tries really hard not to have happen.
Did you change your mind regarding this or is the Scizore a mistake?
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Design Manager
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Did you change your mind regarding this or is the Scizore a mistake?You just shouldn't have a one-handed parry weapon that deals more than a d4 without it being advanced regardless of the other traits in the load-out since that's a direct vector for power creep that invalidates Core Rulebook options, something the design team tries really hard not to have happen.
Intentional deviation from the prior standard to create a better baseline of main-line options. Main gauche establishes a more technical baseline while scizore fills a "blunt instrument" role using the same budget in a way that creates parry options that better serve the current array of class and character options. Bo staff and whipstaff complete the 4-point spread of "base" parry options to establish the go-forward baseline of the trait.