What simple weapons are there, that are not deific favored weapons?
I want a rarely picked simple weapon so my exemplar can make it more advanced. ;)
Atlatal? Exemplar has some reload cheats, and upping it to 1d8 via Humble Strikes would make it not terrible. A lot of flavor there, as the Ikon is technically the hunk of curved ___ that's the throwing lever, and the arrows/darts are just ammo.
The Alchemical Crossbow is simple just for the sake of Alchemist, and would then up to 1d10 + 1d6 in the hands of an Exemplar. If you want to be a shooter and max your damage, that is a very tempting pick.
Hand Cannon if you want the flavor of it, but is just kinda worse than many crossbow options.
Longspear would be a 1d10 reach weapon.
Most out there pick is Fire Lance. 1d6 --> 1d8 via Humble, and it's Fatal d10.
It's both a normal spear and a gun. If you stick a Returning rune on this, you can cheese the 1A Interact normally needed to mode swap via just throwing the thing (you decide your grip when if flies back to you). In this case, the GM might/should rule that it doesn't get the damage of a spear if thrown in gun grip, but even RaW that would still count as an improvised 1d4 --> 1d6 weapon I think.
Now that I read this again, yeah, this weapon is 100% a dev error. If you leave it loaded and never shoot, it's just a much better spear due to having the Fatal d10 trait. The firearm range is 10 flipping ft, so it's got more range if you throw it. But stab or throw, getting a Fatal d10 spear thanks to the [uncommon] power boost makes it very appealing.
No idea what the designer was attempting with that one. There very little reason to ever shoot it. Best I can come up with is that the Fatal trait is intended to not apply to the spear grip? But it would need Jezail's "Fatal Aim __", or other instructive text for that Fatal to only work in the 2-H gun mode...
The fighting oar (Sweep, Versatile S) can be an interesting weapon for an exemplar to use with Humble Strikes (damage increases to 1d10 B). For a ranged exemplar, the crossbow will increase to 1d10 damage (take 'The Deft' as their root epithet for the free reload when sparking transcendence).
Some more niche ideas:
- A dwarf exemplar using their clan dagger (damage increases to 1d6), possibly with Twin Stars (adding Twin to Agile and Parry).
- An exemplar from Alkenstar using a hand cannon (damage increases to 1d8; which isn't bad for a one-handed ranged weapon); will almost definitely need to take 'The Deft' as their root epithet for the free reload when sparking transcendence.
The wheelchair attachments could be fun. The Air Repeater and Long Air Repeater are both options. If you're okay with weapons that are only favored by obscure deities, Shears are very good with a die size increase (and are available in PFS if you play a particular adventure related to fate) being effectively a rapier that trades disarm for versatile S. The Battle Lute is also potentially hilarious.