So what is the honest point of them? Are they only there for early game casters so they aren't spamming cantrips?
No, they're also there for Ruffian Rogues who go Longspear into Fighter Dedication to get Slam Down.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
At this stage they're effectively legacy design, which some very specific builds support, but not to a greater extent than martial weapons (e.g. Ruffian Rogue). They're somewhat useful early game for some casters, but then quickly fall off. Given how many there are, I feel it'd be better in future editions if simple, martial, and advanced weapons were all condensed and equalized, so that martial classes would have an even greater selection.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Simple weapons are "anybody/everybody can use them." Similar to how all classes in PF2 have proficiency in unarmed attacks.
If you want a character to use "better" weapons, then you need to have a class/class option that grants access or use feats. That's it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My opinion is that simple weapons are now mostly a legacy category. Every class needs a way to deal the same damage as martial weapons, so they either use martial weapons, cast cantrips, use impulses (kineticsts), or hit hard with their fists (monks). The divine spell list is short on damaging cantrips, so clerics still have their deity's favored weapon as an alternative. In other words, the classes that are not trained in martial weapons have other options better than simple weapons.
But simple weapons are useful for determining which weapons will be in the hands of non-adventuring humanoid NPCs who had to pick up a weapon to defend their village.
I agree that Simple vs Martial is an outdated legacy concept. The concept that Simple weapons are supposed to be weapons that anyone would pick up and swing in a war or fight without training in reality applies to any weapon except for whips, flails and anything that has a chain or pivot. I definitely think in a future edition or remaster/unchained I think that martial classes abilities and proficiencies should be what seperates weapon users from incidental users. At this point as it is since the remaster only the pure casters don't have martial proficiency anymore since both Rogues and Bards got boosted to martial and Warpriest got their Martial boosted to scale the same as their Simple. So at thus point the it seems like the only reason for Simple to exists is to bar non-martials from getting access to d8+ 1 action damage options.
I don't know that it is a good idea as I am not a game designer but I think in the future weapons should look something like this.
Simple Trained proficiency
One handed d4 damage
Two handed d6 damage
Martial Trained proficiency
One hand d6
Two handed d8
Simple expert proficiency
One handed d6
Two handed d8
Martial Expert proficiency
Onehanded d8
Two handed d10
Then make the difference between weapons mostly traits and also more traits unlock with higher proficiency
Basically, Simple weapons exist so you have to actually invest in martial training to use Martial weapons, more than anything else. They're not a category in and of themselves, as much as a way to separate Martial weapons out as a higher category. More than anything else, the existence of a simple weapons category that anyone can use creates more design space for more potent martial weapons, since the non-martials won't be left with nothing if the martial weapons are powered up and locked behind some form of martial training.
(Which does mean that they aren't well-designed in and of themselves, yes. If a category only exists to justify locking a different category behind access requirements, then it's usually just filler at best or wasted design space at worst.)
I think simple weapons is a good enough designation for weapons any person can pick up and put to use. Clubs, spears, maces, daggers. Easy to wield weapons requiring little skill to put to use.
Martial weapons require more training and skill to use with more traits for other uses in combat.
I think simple weapons is one of those concepts that isn't going to survive in a future PF3e. The only reason why those ever existed in the first place was because there was "lesser martials" that didn't have access to all martial weapons and because casters didn't have spammable cantrips they could use all day so a backup weapon was needed. In PF2e, even classes that aren't expected to frontline get martial weapon proficiency (bards) and a caster isn't going to chose a crossbow over any cantrip because they will not only have lower accuracy but also become outdated in just a couple of levels.
I fully expect to have a "weapon" proficiency that encompasses all weapons in the system in PF3e. Casters will not really benefit from that because I expect cantrips to become even better in such a system, and if the caster does want to actually use a weapon, instead of having to jump through I don't know how many loops to be a mediocre martial they could at least be mediocre with it but without having to spend resources on it. I also expect the same thing to happen to armors btw, and you could even do that in PF2e as is. Each type of armor is kinda balanced against each other (light armor requires a high dex which makes it unlikely for someone with a high str to want to use it, medium armor requires at least some str to meet the strength requirement but otherwise kinda allows you to ignore dex, and heavy armor allows you to totally ignore dex and gives you the greatest AC bonus, though at the cost of being slowed down).
Armor is also very inconsistent between classes in PF2e. A bard is limited to light armor even when they could theoritically go into melee since they now have martial weapons, a cleric that used to be the de facto armored caster now doesn't even have armor proficiencies unless its a warpriest, and even then its only up to medium armor, but then you have druids that post-Remaster have free access up to medium armor without any kind of restriction and the only druid that would ever want to go into melee isn't using its own modifiers for AC (untamed order). Not to mention oracles who despite falling in the "caster in robes" trope they do have access to light armor, or heavy armor if they are battle oracles. I really not expect to see either weapon or armor categories in future editions.
The value of simple weapons for now is keeping short bows out of the hands of most casters by default. Cantrips are not a replacement for a good weapon attack. They take 2 actions. Simple ranged weapons take 2 actions to fire. Casters are rarely more than 2 or 3 points of accuracy behind a typical martial. That is better than most Martial’s 2nd attack and certainly better than a third. The 1 action ranged weapon attack is a significant jump in weapon value.
Even with melee weapons casters don’t really need to take more of martials’ lunch away.
So what is the honest point of them? Are they only there for early game casters so they aren't spamming cantrips?
To provide a graduation of weapons so they aren't all in the one bucket.
It is a mechanically useful category for characters who aren't supposed to be weapon focused.I think it works fine. Simple/martial/advanced/specific class or ancestral group. It means that every character is not using the one true optimal weapon, nor do we have the generic blandness of weapons in other d20 games.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The value of simple weapons for now is keeping short bows out of the hands of most casters by default. Cantrips are not a replacement for a good weapon attack. They take 2 actions. Simple ranged weapons take 2 actions to fire. Casters are rarely more than 2 or 3 points of accuracy behind a typical martial. That is better than most Martial’s 2nd attack and certainly better than a third. The 1 action ranged weapon attack is a significant jump in weapon value.
Even with melee weapons casters don’t really need to take more of martials’ lunch away.
I don't see a caster ever using a shortbow over a cantrip, even if somehow casters had normal access to them. The most common complain about casters is that their accuracy lags behind that of martials, so why would a caster not only want to use a weapon for which they don't even use their KAS but that also wouldn't scale with them? Even if we talk about 1-4 levels in which both martials and casters will have the same proficiency with a shortbow, a caster would at least need a +3 in Dex to be "decent" and wouldn't be able to add a modifier to it until 5th level when they could increase their Strength to +2 for a whooping +1 to damage if they use a composite shortbow. They would also need to spend gp in that bow to keep it relevant, so even in the best case scenario in which somehow a caster manages to make two succesful shortbow attacks in a round, those would deal 2d6+1 each (average 8, 16 for both attacks) while even the most average cantrip such as ignition would deal 5d4 (12,5 average) or 5d6 (17,5 average) in melee, not to mention these would be more accurate thus more likely to be succesful.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It’s not either/or. It is cast a spell that targets a saving throw, then fire a shortbow. Casters now have to work for it, but it is very good damage output. It also tends to turn casters into turrets and (in my opinion) is a kinda boring attack routine. I like that casters don’t default to it, and can instead invest in other things to do with that thurd action that don’t feel like a waste.
It’s not either/or. It is cast a spell that targets a saving throw, then fire a shortbow. Casters now have to work for it, but it is very good damage output. It also tends to turn casters into turrets and (in my opinion) is a kinda boring attack routine. I like that casters don’t default to it, and can instead invest in other things to do with that thurd action that don’t feel like a waste.
Fair enough, though even then a caster still has access to an air repeater (which is, at best, an average difference of damage of 1 or 2 points of damage because I don't see a caster upgrading a weapon beyond +1 striking).
I think simple weapons is a good enough designation for weapons any person can pick up and put to use. Clubs, spears, maces, daggers. Easy to wield weapons requiring little skill to put to use.
Martial weapons require more training and skill to use with more traits for other uses in combat.
So if I ask you to pick up a knife and go against a person of equal skill and physical ability who is armed with a sword who do you expect to do better in the ensuing fight?
Why are you asking such an open-ended question? Real life and fantasy games are very different. There would be a lot of dependent factors in real life.
Simple and martial weapons is an easy way to demarcate different weapons in a fantasy game looking for easy rules to provide some moderately meaningful difference between weapons.
In real life, there is a lot more that goes into a fight between two people using highly different weapons. Absent any specifics, I would expect the sword wielder to win due to superior range as physical range is huge in fights for those that know how to use it which is why length and size are big in fighting sports. A skilled sword fighter should be able to strike and rip apart a knife wielder using the blade's superior attack range.
Why are you asking such an open-ended question? Real life and fantasy games are very different. There would be a lot of dependent factors in real life.
Simple and martial weapons is an easy way to demarcate different weapons in a fantasy game looking for easy rules to provide some moderately meaningful difference between weapons.
In real life, there is a lot more that goes into a fight between two people using highly different weapons. Absent any specifics, I would expect the sword wielder to win due to superior range as physical range is huge in fights for those that know how to use it which is why length and size are big in fighting sports. A skilled sword fighter should be able to strike and rip apart a knife wielder using the blade's superior attack range.
I was pointing out the absurdity of the current system. We all know that a sword is just a bigger knife and that a sword beats a knife 9 times out of 10 yet we turn that part of our brain off when looking at PF2's weapon categories.
In a more developed system, something that wasn't cribbed from guys in the 70's who didn't know a Katzbalger from a Morning Star, all weapons could be similar with weapon proficiency serving to unlock advanced techniques for that weapon. This would still get across the idea that a Wizard shouldn't be swinging a sword that often without the logic pretzels involved in the current way of categorizing weapons.
The guys in the 70s did it differently than the current system. You might have actually like it a little more than the current one as they gave weapons initiative modifiers if they were large and unwieldy. For a long time, two-handed weapons were not great to use because they were slow to bring to bear during initiative having a later segment modifier for initiative.
A lot of spells were this way too requiring a certain number of segments to cast. Initiative was divided up into 10 segments or something like that. I can't remember exactly. But lighter, faster weapons were easier to bring to bear and faster than their larger counterparts. That's why for a long time using a single one handed weapon was the best way to fight in the early days of D&D. Two-weapon fighting if you happen to roll ambidexterity was king.
Two-handed weapons reached their current power in 3rd edition that removed any sense of how hard it was to wield a weapon in combat.
I think this simple and martial weapon designation started in 3E, but maybe 2nd edition. Not absolutely sure.
Weapon use was more involved in the early days of D&D even without feats.
|
It’s not either/or. It is cast a spell that targets a saving throw, then fire a shortbow. Casters now have to work for it, but it is very good damage output. It also tends to turn casters into turrets and (in my opinion) is a kinda boring attack routine. I like that casters don’t default to it, and can instead invest in other things to do with that thurd action that don’t feel like a waste.Fair enough, though even then a caster still has access to an air repeater (which is, at best, an average difference of damage of 1 or 2 points of damage because I don't see a caster upgrading a weapon beyond +1 striking).
First of all, if you are a caster with a staff, it's always worth putting runes on it, just in case.
I've got a high level Psychic who uses a maxed out Returning Spear because we found it as loot, it has some interesting weapon enchantments (APs can give you unique stuff), and she doesn't have any attack cantrips that target AC. It's come in way handier than you might think.
The automatic disruption on hit was brutal. I remember a wizard trying cast stoneskin in melee and he was wrecked, lost his spell, and was killed. It was not wise to cast anywhere near combat in those early days.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The word of... spells, with casting time of 1, were some of the only spells that were frequently cast near combat.
There were other ways to make casting easier in dangerous situations, but the reason for the "wizard hiding in the back/center of the party" stereotype was that if you left the magic user uncovered they would often get hit while attempting to cast spells.