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Why even restrict weapons by class at all? The weapons proficiency buckets have never made sense, have often been kind of racist (exotic weapons) and don't bring anything interesting to the table. I'd rather Paizo do the work the assign weapons to regions and use the rarity system for something interesting instead of as a shorthand to warn GMs that something might disrupt their game.Because it's easier to hit someone over the head with a club than it is to use a whip-sword? And people should not be able to do the latter without actual training, presumably.
What makes a Dwarven War Axe any harder to use than any other axe?
What about these weapons? Rhoka Sword, Repeating Crossbow, Aldori Dueling Sword, Broadspear, Gada, Kalis, Butterfly Sword, Falcata, Hook Sword, Karambit, Nodachi...
It frankly doesn't make sense that it's any harder to use these than their martial or simple counterparts. In reality, it's harder to fight an opponent with a sword with a dagger than it is to fight back with another sword yet a dagger is a simple weapon and swords are martial.
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Because sometimes the logic of real life differs from the internal logic of a game. (And I'm not talking about the setting, but the logic of the system.)
Also, repeating crossbows are NOT simple to use and have a very high propensity to jam if you don't know what you're doing.
What exactly is causing a non-proficient character who does know how to use a normal crossbow to be less accurate with a repeating crossbow? Shouldn't they have a chance to jam the weapon upon reloading instead?
Hook swords require specialized training to catch someone else's blade, as opposed to a traditional sword where you just have to stab the other guy with the pointy end.
You can still slash with it and many kinds of hooksword have a point at the end to stab with. Non-proficiency should mean less effective tripping and disarming, not a penalty to hitting people with it.
But in general, you'll find clubs, knives, and pointed sticks (spears) on the "simple" end of things
My list suggests otherwise.
Most people in real life don't know how to shoot a longbow. Why should your wizard?
The issue with shooting a longbow is strength more than technique. Yet in PF2 some willowy elf with a strength penalty and 18 dex is effective with a Longbow. Please, explain that logic to me.
The issue with shooting a longbow is strength more than technique. Yet in PF2 some willowy elf with a strength penalty and 18 dex is effective with a Longbow. Please, explain that logic to me.
Because it's a fantasy game and the fantasy of elves are lithe, dexterous beings really good with bows - and bows have been a dexterity weapon for a long time in fantasy, it's just one of the genre tropes.
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Kaspyr2077, you know posts with actual, applicable information on the real world are not allowed on these forums. Please delete your post before the moderators see it and lock the thread. And in the future please stick to half-baked guesses and wild assumptions like the rest of us!
;-)
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I feel like the whole case for "martial weapons and simple weapons being different" is that "a spear" is the classic peasant weapon in every civilization that went to war. They're easy to make and anybody with half a day of training can use it effectively. This is very different from a sword or a longbow. Most of the simple weapons are "whack them" or "stick them with the pointy end" or "point and shoot" whereas martial weapons are not something anybody can just pick up and use effectively.
PF2 is much better about "Martial and Advanced indicate level of training" than exoticism, since like the kusarigama and katana are martial weapons.
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Why even restrict weapons by class at all? The weapons proficiency buckets have never made sense, have often been kind of racist (exotic weapons) and don't bring anything interesting to the table. I'd rather Paizo do the work the assign weapons to regions and use the rarity system for something interesting instead of as a shorthand to warn GMs that something might disrupt their game.
I been saying exactly this for a while; an hyphothetic PF3e should do away with armor / weapon categories (simple, martial, advanced) and have characters just being proficient with armor and weapons, period. Armor is pretty much already balanced with its own pros and cons, and if you made an intense balance pass to weapons you could make them out more comparable against each other (likely raising the weapon damage die from simple weapons by one step and adding a trait were needed, taking aways traits from some advanced weapons, etc).
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Removed a post for harassment. You can criticize the game or the company, not individuals or groups.
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The whole "x is harder to use than y" thing as a justification for simple/martial/advanced/whatever has always been almost completely arbitrary. PF2 tries to go a little more into the civilian weapon (simple) vs dedicated warrior weapon (martial + advanced) direction, but even that is a blurry distinction at best. Judging the merits of the system from either of those angles is pointless, as that is not its real job.
Why even restrict weapons by class at all? The weapons proficiency buckets have never made sense, have often been kind of racist (exotic weapons) and don't bring anything interesting to the table. I'd rather Paizo do the work the assign weapons to regions and use the rarity system for something interesting instead of as a shorthand to warn GMs that something might disrupt their game.I been saying exactly this for a while; an hyphothetic PF3e should do away with armor / weapon categories (simple, martial, advanced) and have characters just being proficient with armor and weapons, period. Armor is pretty much already balanced with its own pros and cons, and if you made an intense balance pass to weapons you could make them out more comparable against each other (likely raising the weapon damage die from simple weapons by one step and adding a trait were needed, taking aways traits from some advanced weapons, etc).
That would be a complete disaster. In PF2, the actual point of weapon categories is being a balance tool. Everything else is a sideshow at most. A frying pan and a portable puckle gun (barricade buster) simply don't have the same power budget and I highly doubt people would like it if they did. Just as an example, how many people don't find it weird that a fist does the same damage as a dagger or a gun? By normalizing equipment, the main thing you would achieve is less variety and more nonesense like that.
And if a player can just pick, they would heavily tend towards the weapons that are simply better than the others. That's also why the system won't go away without a complete reimagining of the whole caster/martial distinction.
You're advocating for specific penalties to disarm and trip for not being proficient with one specific weapon? Absolutely NOT, yuck.
Other systems do it just fine. Why can't Pathfinder handle it?
As for longbows...no, it is not just a "matter of strength". A world weightlifting champion would be just as ineffective as anyone else with one of those things, as would a world rowing champion (if we wanted to discuss back strength in particular). The gold standard in the late medieval period for longbow archers was a 10-arrow-per-minute rate of fire at a range of several hundred yards, which took years of training to perfect.
Are you really saying that a strong enough athlete couldn't be trained to reasonable proficiency with a bow in a reasonable length of time? If you're going to argue that they can't be so trained then why is a Longbow a Martial weapon instead of an advanced weapon?
It's like claiming that anyone can write a chemistry doctoral dissertation and it's just "a matter of intelligence". Yeah, it is, but you also need around a decade of highly specific instruction and training as well. "How much time you've spent in a chemistry lab" is a lot more important than generic and nebulous concepts like your IQ score. That's what proficiency means, after all.
So are we saying that we should divide skills into categories as we've done with weapons? Athletics could be an example of a simple skill, Lore could be martial level skills, and Arcana could be Advanced. If not, why do we consider weapons as being worth categorizing in this way and not all aspects of the game?
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There are tropes in heroic fantasy narratives and Paizo has chosen to embrace them. As Karmagator said, it's a fruitless endeavor to analyze and judge the system based on these things - they aren't rooted in real-world logic, it's arbitrary by design.
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It's a hand-and-a-half weapon, which means that it's not really optimally designed for use in either one hand or two. This design philosophy results in weapons that each need special training to get used to their peculiarities.
What makes a Dwarven War Axe any harder to use than any other axe?
I've seen HEMA practitioners who specialize pick up new weapons that are very similar to other weapons they know and do well with them. The change between a heavy one-handed sword and a hand-and-a-half sword isn't something many of them can't adjust to with a little time to practice. I don't see how a fantasy axe would be any different.
<snip specific advanced weapon counter points>
So a slightly funky sword is harder to use than the following Martial weapons:
Asp Coil
Battle Saddle
Bladed Scarf
Fighting Fan
Flail
Gun Sword
Injection Spear
Khopesh (Basically a hook sword)
Mace Multipistol
Pantograph Gauntlet
Rope Dart
I could do the same breakdown you did for all of these. The line between Advanced and Martial is arbitrary at best.
A person with a dagger is at a disadvantage against a swordsman, sure, but a dagger is a far, far simpler weapon to use than a sword. It takes serious training to turn someone into a proficient swordsman. You can know more or less all you need to know about how to use a dagger in an afternoon.
You give a complete newbie an afternoon course on how to use a dagger and put them up against an equally new person with a sword and see which one wins more often. The sword is going to be easier to use because knowing how to use a weapon involves more than basic mechanics and comes down to knowing how to block or parry with that weapon and how to find open lines of attack with it. The dagger will be much harder to get skilled with than a sword is in those respects.
... Nope. It is extremely hard to even know how to strike someone properly with a hook sword.
Harder than doing the same with an extended Asp Coil? I doubt that very much.
This is an issue of the abstraction necessary to create a ruleset. Strength and Dexterity aren't actually separate things in the real world. To increase your agility and hand-eye coordination, you use strengthening exercises. If you're strong but not agile, you have weak links and are not able to move powerfully. You're going to have to make some allowances that the game isn't super realistic at all times.
Fantasy gaming has roots in the kind of fiction that believes that small, dainty people are better suited to archery than swordplay. In the real world, swordplay doesn't require much muscle, but a good archer will have a huge back. For the last several decades, gaming has prioritized the fantasy over the simulation.
I'm calling for a reversal of that trend.
Because it's a fantasy game and the fantasy of elves are lithe, dexterous beings really good with bows - and bows have been a dexterity weapon for a long time in fantasy, it's just one of the genre tropes.
The issue with shooting a longbow is strength more than technique. Yet in PF2 some willowy elf with a strength penalty and 18 dex is effective with a Longbow. Please, explain that logic to me.
Why is it important that PF2 specifically maintain this status quo?
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Because it's a fantasy game and the fantasy of elves are lithe, dexterous beings really good with bows - and bows have been a dexterity weapon for a long time in fantasy, it's just one of the genre tropes.
The issue with shooting a longbow is strength more than technique. Yet in PF2 some willowy elf with a strength penalty and 18 dex is effective with a Longbow. Please, explain that logic to me.Why is it important that PF2 specifically maintain this status quo?
Because the creators decided it would. That's all the justification that's needed.
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I been saying exactly this for a while; an hyphothetic PF3e should do away with armor / weapon categories (simple, martial, advanced) and have characters just being proficient with armor and weapons, period. Armor is pretty much already balanced with its own pros and cons, and if you made an intense balance pass to weapons you could make them out more comparable against each other (likely raising the weapon damage die from simple weapons by one step and adding a trait were needed, taking aways traits from some advanced weapons, etc).That would be a complete disaster. In PF2, the actual point of weapon categories is being a balance tool. Everything else is a sideshow at most. A frying pan and a portable puckle gun (barricade buster) simply don't have the same power budget and I highly doubt people would like it if they did. Just as an example, how many people don't find it weird that a fist does the same damage as a dagger or a gun? By normalizing equipment, the main thing you would achieve is less variety and more nonesense like that.
And if a player can just pick, they would heavily tend towards the weapons that are simply better than the others. That's also why the system won't go away without a complete reimagining of the whole caster/martial distinction.
You are literally saying it yourself, people don't care that a fist is technically as strong as a dagger or gun, but there's people who feel that certain weapons are literally made to not be used by anyone (in this very post btw, see all ruffian convos).
The whole point of simple weapons back in 3.5 was that they were the weapons that were used by non-martial and casters in the early levels, because having martial weapon proficiency was actually a feature (a feature that WoTC thought was way better than it was in reality, but I digress) and because cantrips weren't at-will, though now pretty much everybody that isn't a caster has martial weapon proficiency and casters have at-will cantrips so the only class that would ever consider using a simple weapon is the ruffian, and probably not even anymore.
Martial weapons are the baseline, to some extent, and it obvious Paizo balances around weapons taking martial weapons into consideration because simple weapons are often martial weapons with less traits and advanced weapons are martial weapons with more traits pretty much. And since we are speaking about advance weapons here, I'll say think their current implementation in the system is antithetical to how the system is designed. The whole point of Paizo was to stray away as much as possible from 3.5's trap options and feat taxes mentality and make everything be more or less in the same line, with all the options being comparable against each other. Advanced weapons don't have any of that though, they are pretty much innacesible to everyone that isn't a fighter from default and even they still have them at a lower proficiency. If you want to use a particular advanced weapon you need to take feats for that, and unless you are taking some very specific ancestry feats (which obviously forces you to be a member of that ancestry) you'll still have your advanced weapon lagging behind in proficiency with your other weapons. But are advanced weapons actually better to compensate for this hassle? Honestly no, they have at most one or two traits that their martial equivalent doesn't have, and most of the time those traits aren't even good traits to begin with. As per AoN, there's 49 advanced weapons in the whole game, and probably less than 5 of them actually compensate the sheer hassle you have to go through to use them not more efficienctly, but on par with your other wepaons.
Also, in a system like the one I'm proposing here, we wouldn't have multiple variations of the same weapon to accomodate for the players that have X or Y weapon proficiency. For example, the longspear is like the de facto spear-like weapon for those that only have simple weapon proficiency, while someone with martial weapon proficiency can opt to take a war lance or broadspear if they have advanced weapon proficiency with that weapon. If all weapons would have been initially designed be comparable against each other we would probably just have the longspear here with some of the traits of the other weapons and that's it. Its a simpler design.
Armor literally works like this already, so I don't know why the different kinds of armor proficiency exist honestly. A dex fighter despite having heavy armor proficiency would never think of using a heavy armor because it would not only make them slower but also cost more gp to buy, and the same happens if you take a str fighter with light armor because if they do use light armor they'll be choosing to play with less AC when the could easily afford a breastplate. Heavy armor is the only type of armor that actually makes you harder to hit, but it makes you slow as well, so it's compensates itself for being "better" (which is also why I don't understand why Paizo wants to tax warpriests with Warpriest's Armor if they want to use heavy armor, but again I digress).
A similar design could exist for weapons as well, though I'm not saying it would be easy to implement in the current system because the system clearly wasn't made with that in mind, unless someone wants to rebuild every single weapon in the game to work equally. Something that a lot of the internet theory-crafters forget is that people not always play with the intention of picking up the best possible options every time they can, sometimes they choose something because it fits with their character's flavor, so having lesser options even when PF2e largely did away with those is IMO something that was unconsciously carried over from D&D.
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It's worth noting that one of the design principles of PF2 from the very beginning is "complexity is the currency through which we buy depth" with the understanding is depth is inherently good while complexity is not.
You could absolutely have a system where a character would be really good with axes and guns, passable with blunt weapons and polearms, but terrible with bows and swords. But that's complexity that doesn't really buy you anything; after all if you want your character to not know how to shoot a bow, you can just have them eschew picking up a bow.
Yeah, just like I'm saying a smart enough person couldn't be trained to cast 5th rank spells in "a reasonable length of time". You want those proficiencies you pay the feats for them.
Or should everyone be able to cast spells with no resource expenditure? After all, any reasonably intelligent person can learn to cast, just like any reasonably strong person can eventually learn to shoot a bow. The argument you're making assumes that learning to shoot a bow is fundamentally easier than spellcasting. Which I kinda doubt it is, given wizards and fighters advance at the same XP milestones.
Wut?
I'm arguing that the current weapon categories and one-size-fits-all penalty for non-proficiency make zero sense. Not that any character should be able to do anything and that the game shouldn't have rules at all.
But if you want me to make that argument, let me go the other way, maybe we should divide spells within traditions by how hard they are to learn. Maybe a Witch only gets access to Simple and Martial spells but a Wizard can cast Advanced spells easily!
I can't think of a single system that has weapon proficiency work like thisYou're advocating for specific penalties to disarm and trip for not being proficient with one specific weapon? Absolutely NOT, yuck.Other systems do it just fine. Why can't Pathfinder handle it?
It wouldn't be hard to implement.
Everybody can use any weapon to attack with a baseline bonus to hit that advances with level. Then you add tiers of weapon maneuvers that unlock with skill with that weapon/weapon group. Trip might be fairly easy to unlock while Disarm takes a very skilled wielder and you can make the skill order vary by weapon/weapon group.
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I can't think of a single system that has weapon proficiency work like thisYou're advocating for specific penalties to disarm and trip for not being proficient with one specific weapon? Absolutely NOT, yuck.Other systems do it just fine. Why can't Pathfinder handle it?It wouldn't be hard to implement.
Everybody can use any weapon to attack with a baseline bonus to hit that advances with level. Then you add tiers of weapon maneuvers that unlock with skill with that weapon/weapon group. Trip might be fairly easy to unlock while Disarm takes a very skilled wielder and you can make the skill order vary by weapon/weapon group.
Yeah, this just sounds like extra complexity and something else to track that isn't really needed - the current implementation works fine and is better for what the system is doing.
You were arguing that everyone should have proficiency with everything.
I'm arguing that the line between weapon categories is hazy and arbitrary and that you wouldn't break anything by removing it entirely, especially if you're going to replace it with something that makes more sense.
I'm also arguing the absurdity of the system when nothing else in the game - baring armor if you squint at it - really works the same way. Would anybody feel like dividing skills and spells by "difficulty" would improve the game?
My point was that it's pretty unrealistic for wizards who have never held a sword in their lives to be as good with it as a fighter. My argument is that this is the same as a fighter who has never cast a spell in her life having the ability to cast high level spells.
The Wizard isn't as good at the Fighter with a sword though and literally can't be. Even if the Wizard pumped strength they'd be at least -1 to hit against a Fighter at level one and that gap would very quickly grow.
But if you're instead saying that we should have individual penalties specifically for non-proficiency with each weapon...
Yikes. That is just a complete headache.
I'm saying that, unlike the current weapon groups, that would at least make sense and not break verisimilitude. It isn't a serious suggestion but a highlight of the absurdity of the current system.
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You were arguing that everyone should have proficiency with everything.I'm arguing that the line between weapon categories is hazy and arbitrary and that you wouldn't break anything by removing it entirely, especially if you're going to replace it with something that makes more sense.
I'm also arguing the absurdity of the system when nothing else in the game - baring armor if you squint at it - really works the same way. Would anybody feel like dividing skills and spells by "difficulty" would improve the game?
My point was that it's pretty unrealistic for wizards who have never held a sword in their lives to be as good with it as a fighter. My argument is that this is the same as a fighter who has never cast a spell in her life having the ability to cast high level spells.The Wizard isn't as good at the Fighter with a sword though and literally can't be. Even if the Wizard pumped strength they'd be at least -1 to hit against a Fighter at level one and that gap would very quickly grow.
I'm saying that, unlike the current weapon groups, that would at least make sense and not break verisimilitude. It isn't a serious suggestion but a highlight of the absurdity of the current system.But if you're instead saying that we should have individual penalties specifically for non-proficiency with each weapon...
Yikes. That is just a complete headache.
The current system is reasonable. There is a clear step in power between simple and martial weapons.
If to want to do something else, it will not break the game. It is just like handing out a couple of feats.What I don't get is your opposition to the way game is after the remaster. It is in a pretty good place.
The current system is reasonable. There is a clear step in power between simple and martial weapons.
If to want to do something else, it will not break the game. It is just like handing out a couple of feats.
What I don't get is your opposition to the way game is after the remaster. It is in a pretty good place.
None of the things I wanted adjusted were adjusted. Spell balance within the same rank is still all over the place. There are still tax feats and trap feats in every class. The Wizard ate a nerf. The best Rogue sub-class got buffs while the worst got nothing. Witch has clear top-tier and trash-tier patrons.
The game is playable but internal balance within classes is still vastly behind in priority compared to where it could be while time was instead spent on giving rogues a bunch of weapons that they can't use properly and making spell schools worse. It just makes me think that Paizo will never have the resources or desire to make the game as good as it could be within the framework they've created.
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It just makes me think that Paizo will never have theresources or desire to make the game as good as it could be within the framework they've created.interest in making the game I wanted PF2 to be.
I fixed your quote for you. Paizo is doing a fantastic job of making a fun, playable game for a large number of players, and many of your suggestions would make it less fun and playable for a lot of us. Maybe try developing your own "unchained" rules as a homebrew experiment and seeing if you can find players interested in your changes?
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You are literally saying it yourself, people don't care that a fist is technically as strong as a dagger or gun, but there's people who feel that certain weapons are literally made to not be used by anyone (in this very post btw, see all ruffian convos).[...]
That would be a complete disaster. In PF2, the actual point of weapon categories is being a balance tool. Everything else is a sideshow at most. A frying pan and a portable puckle gun (barricade buster) simply don't have the same power budget and I highly doubt people would like it if they did. Just as an example, how many people don't find it weird that a fist does the same damage as a dagger or a gun? By normalizing equipment, the main thing you would achieve is less variety and more nonesense like that.And if a player can just pick, they would heavily tend towards the weapons that are simply better than the others. That's also why the system won't go away without a complete reimagining of the whole caster/martial distinction.
In fact, I am saying the complete opposite. There were tons of complaints about this during the early days of PF2 and, more anecdotally, not a single person I've directly spoken to about PF2 hasn't found that part weird.
[The rest]
Are advanced weapons implemented poorly? Yes. Does that mean the concept of weapon categories is itself flawed? No.
A system like it currently exists allows you much creative freedom than a simpler system. Simpler doesn't automatically mean better. In this case it just means worse.
For one, if you just make every weapon equal, all you have done is create a smaller pool of weapons people actually take. In a normalized system, there is no space for people wanting to invest in a much different or better weapon. Traits are very much not created equal. Neither is there space for designers wanting to restrict the "good" weapons to the classes that are actually supposed to be trained with those weapons. It goes from a choice between four options to a completely binary one.
Same with armor, though there it is even easier. There the class fantasy actually comes into play. A "normal" Ranger isn't supposed to run around in plate armor. In contrast, the Champion is usually envisioned with heavy armor. Many casters, for imo silly legacy reasons, are commonly seen as not wearing armor.
If you were to abandon armor categories, you would either have to make leather as good as plate armor or everyone who doesn't care too much about movement - ranged characters and casters mostly - would do the logical thing and grab plate every time. Neither of those are good outcomes.
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If you were to abandon armor categories, you would either have to make leather as good as plate armor or everyone who doesn't care too much about movement - ranged characters and casters mostly - would do the logical thing and grab plate every time. Neither of those are good outcomes.
I explained how armor is balanced against each other and how. A leather armor is effectively as good as plate armor already. Each have their cons and pros. A str character would never want to use light armor, and in vice versa a dex character would never want to use medium armor, and assuming both have heavy armor proficiency they would never want to use heavy armor unless they want to compensate that extra +1 with -5 speed.
A similar design could exist for weapons as well, though I'm not saying it would be easy to implement in the current system because the system clearly wasn't made with that in mind, unless someone wants to rebuild every single weapon in the game to work equally. Something that a lot of the internet theory-crafters forget is that people not always play with the intention of picking up the best possible options every time they can, sometimes they choose something because it fits with their character's flavor, so having lesser options even when PF2e largely did away with those is IMO something that was unconsciously carried over from D&D.
I personally agree with nearly all of this comment and not just the bit I kept. While there are complexities to the question of equalizing weapons, I do think that simple weapons at the very least would be easy to equalize with martial weapons: just bump their damage die up by a step. That's what Deadly Simplicity and Deific Weapon do for clerics and champions whose deity favors a simple weapon, and it's a simple and effective way of bringing those up to par. The two complications I'd say would be the following:
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I love how a class who doesn't need a buff gets a buff and people complain about the buff being too small...Saying it's a "buff" doesn't really track when Longspear Ruffian is still the top tier build for the subclass by nature of having the best trait and the best damage dice there is. There is no reason to take a D6 Martial weapon other than for flavor purposes (or for Flickmace, which is already nerfed to oblivion and flimsy for its cost). At best it is a sidegrade for non-optimizers and at worst it's just a quality of life change.
The complaint is that the "buff" is needlessly arbitrary and overly restrictive when the point of said "buff" was to remove the overly restrictiveness it originally possessed; the expectation that it would simply be replaced with another even worse restriction wasn't really on the table here.
Of course, I imagine this restriction was put in place because the few martial weapons that Rogue originally had access to were all D6 weapons, and Paizo was too afraid to allow D8 martial weapons when Rogues didn't have access to them to begin with, even though ironically, Ruffian Rogues are already running around with D8 weapons anyway.
Hmm... I've been thinking about it, and it actually makes perfect sense to limit Ruffians to simple d8/martial d6... if the intent was to increase versatility but not power; it's a sidegrade, not an upgrade. If we assume that the Longspear Ruffian was their balancing point, then that puts the Ruffian's optimal offensive weapon at a d8 weapon with [Reach] and no other traits. Allowing d6 martial weapons gives them access to a wider selection of traited weapons, which in turn allows them to be built in different ways, all of which are balanced out by doing slightly less damage than the vanilla longspear (some of these other ways may, yes, be traps, but may be preferable nonetheless depending on the character's intended personality and background).
The first thing of note is that it gives you a much wider pool of weapons to choose from, which in turn also gives you a much wider pool of weapon traits to choose from. Some of these are traps for a Rogue, yes, but that's okay; PF2's math is tight enough that choosing, say, a [Sweep] weapon over a [Reach] one isn't enough to break your character. (And of course, you can always carry both, and choose which one you want for any given situation! Sometimes spreading the damage a bit can be useful, after all, if you've got a couple nearly-dead enemies clustered together.) Some of them give you access to maneuver traits, which can be pretty nifty for an Athletics specialist Ruffian. And probably most significantly, some of them have have both [Reach] and other traits, allowing you to sacrifice a little bit of damage to enable other tactics without juggling weapons if that's your jam.
And this pool-widening, in turn, lines up with how weapons are balanced: You can choose between a higher damage die with minimal features, or drop the die down a bit to buy more features for your weapon. You get your longspear if you want to build for damage, you can knock the damage die down to a d6 if you want more versatility, and you can knock it down to a d4 if your game's as horny as Calistria if you want to add [Nonlethal] too. Everything's a tradeoff; nothing outright surpasses or overshadows the longspear, preserving the versatility-vs.-power balancing that the game applies to weapons as a whole. In effect, the rule is the game's way of acknowledging that [Reach] really is worth a whole damage die size increase in & of itself for the Ruffian. (Conversely, if d8 martial weapons are allowed, then the Ruffian gains access to both the lance and the injection spear, both of which are direct upgrades to the longspear. Not to mention all the other d8 weapons which have both [Reach] and other traits.)
Is it the best way to do this? No, not at all; it's heavy-handed and rather clumsy, from a purely mechanical design perspective, and most of the best non-longspear options were already available thanks to being [Finesse] and/or [Agile]. But it is both effective and, perhaps more importantly, quick. Locking out d8+ martial weapons provides an ironclad guarantee that the Ruffian's raw power maxes out at a d8 [Reach] weapon with no other traits, unless a stronger simple weapon is released (which is unlikely to happen), without having to think about whether any specific martial d8s are or aren't viable; it makes eyeballing weapon balance a little bit quicker, and a little bit easier.
This has literally nothing to do with what I said. I said I can't think of a single system that has weapon prof work like this, in response to you saying other systems did that. Also like what exactly gets you the maneuvers skill because that feels like a important step you just kind of skipped over.I can't think of a single system that has weapon proficiency work like thisYou're advocating for specific penalties to disarm and trip for not being proficient with one specific weapon? Absolutely NOT, yuck.Other systems do it just fine. Why can't Pathfinder handle it?It wouldn't be hard to implement.
Everybody can use any weapon to attack with a baseline bonus to hit that advances with level. Then you add tiers of weapon maneuvers that unlock with skill with that weapon/weapon group. Trip might be fairly easy to unlock while Disarm takes a very skilled wielder and you can make the skill order vary by weapon/weapon group.
The Riddle of Steel has an extremely detailed combat system but doesn't, as I had recalled, use weapons the way I stated. Sometime within the week I'll look over my books and see if other systems are merely detailed in how they handle combat or if they do what I described.
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Locking out d8+ martial weapons provides an ironclad guarantee that the Ruffian's raw power maxes out at a d8 [Reach] weapon with no other traits
One question I think that goes unaddressed here is... is that a good thing?
Rogues are a martial weapon class. Even before the remaster that was true (albeit with a limited selection).
How much sense then does it make to try to hard lock balance for one subclass around a specific simple weapon? Doesn't that in effect put a bit of a penalty on the Ruffian?
That feels like an odd stance to celebrate, given how a vocal subsection of this forum thinks Strength is already an inferior stat.
I do agree it's quick, though. Quick solutions are the name of the game for the Remaster, so it's not that surprising.
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Do you think they should have just invalidated the longspear as a choice for Ruffians? Because that's what would have happened if they got martial d8 weapons.
I genuinely do not see what the obsession is with giving Ruffians access to outright stronger weapons than all the other Rogue rackets.
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Do you think they should have just invalidated the longspear as a choice for Ruffians? Because that's what would have happened if they got martial d8 weapons.
Mainly because it should mirror what happens with every other rogue: the class now has the ability to use 1d8 martial weapons at base but the ruffian should be limited to a longspear? Why should it be limited to d6 martial when the base class isn't? When you can use a Dueling spear without looking at subclasses, why should you be excited you get a feature to use a longspear?
Why should the subclass where their passive is that they can sneak attack with more types of weapons be able to use better weapons to sneak attack with
Because they can already use 1d8 martial weapons from their class: it's just odd you have to downgrade to a simple weapon to do the same damage you can do with a weapon you can pick without any subtype.
What about D8 one handed or D8 except reach? Would those be better restrictions?
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Locking out d8+ martial weapons provides an ironclad guarantee that the Ruffian's raw power maxes out at a d8 [Reach] weapon with no other traitsOne question I think that goes unaddressed here is... is that a good thing?
Rogues are a martial weapon class. Even before the remaster that was true (albeit with a limited selection).
How much sense then does it make to try to hard lock balance for one subclass around a specific simple weapon? Doesn't that in effect put a bit of a penalty on the Ruffian?
That feels like an odd stance to celebrate, given how a vocal subsection of this forum thinks Strength is already an inferior stat.
I do agree it's quick, though. Quick solutions are the name of the game for the Remaster, so it's not that surprising.
I don't know, honestly. It might be good, it might be bad, there are valid points either way. It was probably meant to try to maintain their premaster power level rather than blatantly increase it, and perhaps to try to preserve some semblance of balance between Rogues and other martials. (And, admittedly, may have been meant to keep all the Legion of Longspear Ruffians from having to upgrade all at once, the polearm supply chain would dry up long before they were all kitted out!) It may have been meant to fit with the standard "ruffian" image of being underequipped compared to a true military, more than for actual balance, who knows. Or it may even have been that they just wanted to adjust the racket as quickly as possible, and simply chose to tread water instead of taking the time to evaluate whether its current position was actually good or not.
The "why" of the decision is something we probably won't know unless we're told, though we can make a few guesses. And whether maintaining that specific balance point is good for the game is a very good question, one that I don't have the stats to even try to answer. But whatever the reason they had for keeping it, widening the pool like that is a simple, quick way to do it, clumsy as it may be.