Uncommon Weapons - Balance or Lore?

[Twiggies]

Hi,

I know uncommon ancestries are less uncommon because of balance, and more because of lore stuff.

Is it the same with weapons? Would I break anything in a server (friends are trying out a living world server to see how it goes with the 2e system) if we just, let everyone take uncommon weapons without having to fitz around with being from certain areas (not set in golarion) or taking specific ancestry feats? Crossed my mind when I found the fighting fan which is literally a worse War Razor while still being Uncommon.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Yes, it's not so much balance as it is lore. If your campaign is set in Osirion, a Fighting Fan isn't something you can just buy from a local weaponsmith, but if it's in Minkai or Quain, you can find them easily. By contrast, in Tian Xia you likely wouldn't find a khopesh. About the only place this doesn't apply is in Absalom, the single most cosmopolitan settlement on the planet.

It's to make these things feel distinct to the cultures they come from, so if you're homebrewing your own setting you get to decide what's common and what's not.

[breithauptclan]

Ideally Uncommon and even Rare options are intended to be at the same power level as their Common counterparts.

The ideal is not always met.

Several Uncommon spells are uncommon because of their ability to trivialize certain types of plot challenges - such as Teleport.

But in general, you shouldn't have any major problems by including Uncommon options in your games.

[Castilliano]

I think the "plot challenges" aspect applies to some of the Uncommon Ancestries too, like when getting access to consistent flight earlier (though not so early as to tactically dominate). Or getting size Large which the GM might not want for certain campaigns (perhaps for the sake of the player). Though yeah, it's not so much balance as either lore or how some abilities might be troublesome in some campaigns, most often mysteries or those with intentional environmental hurdles. I know at least two GMs that disallowed Darkvision for specific spooky scenarios.

[Temperans]

Uncommon and even more rare is supposed to be just lore. But in actual practice the more rare the option is the more powerful it tends to be.

It doesn't seem that way because they also tend to attach very clear lore to the rare and unique options. This obfuscate the whole thing by going "its not rare because its more powerful, its more powerful because its from a specific lore".

[YuriP]

Yes they are like warning tags to help players and GMs to pay attention if that thing can trivialize something that the GM may not want to be trivialized. Yet it's not perfect.

My problem with uncommon and rare tags is that it's many time lacks a good explanation why they are there because there and there are 3 mains uses of theses tags: To point problematic resources that can trivialize the adventure lore and progression like alignment detection (usually this is the case of the spells, except the focus spells), to point the rarity in Golarion world set (usually ancestries and classes but some itens may fall in this concept) and to restrict some access limited thing (like focus spells and some things with access line).

[Captain Morgan]

I think it is less that uncommon options are stronger and more that AP content is stronger, and also is usually uncommon. The AP stuff doesn't get vetted as hard, so things like the exsquite sword cane sneak through.

[breithauptclan]

Captain Morgan wrote:

The AP stuff doesn't get vetted as hard, so things like the exsquite sword cane sneak through.

Jalmeri Heavenseeker

[Twiggies]

Thanks for all the answers everyone--That helps a lot. It's a bit of a shame to hear that some Uncommon stuff does end up being stronger/more unvetted, means I have to keep my eye out for those more given it's a server rather than a table of folks I trust. And yeah I agree that is a problem I have with it too YuriP. Reminds me of the chaos of a 3pp system I used in 1e where they marked certain items as 'Legendary' which can mean anywhere between "this is kinda weird lore wise" to "yeah this just does a million damage with no counterplay lol" but obviously on a much lower scale. Anyway thanks again :)

[Squiggit]

For the most part, uncommon just means uncommon. Rare/Unique tend to have more leeway to them. Some uncommon spells are uncommon because they provide unique effects not every GM wants. Mostly though you'll only find AP material breaking balance budgets.

But weapons in particular don't really suffer from this. Most uncommon weapons are comparable or often just worse than their 'normal' counterparts.