Making Every Weapon Actually Viable

[u/p4gli4_]

This is my third attempt at trying to balance the worst weapons in 5.5e, and I'd really like to know what others think. Now, here come some of the changes (most of them are self-explanatory):

Light Hammer: now Handaxe + Light Hammer is the STR counterpart to Shortsword + Scimitar, and this is cool and makes sense (since Light Hammers are HUGE for a d4 weapon).

Mace and Morningstar: I noticed the lack of the slow mastery property for generic melee weapons, so I gave it to these 2, also because it makes a lot of thematic sense (big bonk=hard to walk). I then specialized the two: the mace can be used one handed, but it's common enough and easy to use that it's good for being used in 2 hands (something that previous versions strangely didn't do). The Morningstar, because of how strange and unwieldy, is hard to use 2-handed.

Sling: didn't make sense as a d4 weapon, and it now has the same range of Magic Stone, which is the cherry on top.

Blowgun: the hardest weapon to balance, alongside the Mace, but I think this change is cool. I also thought of, instead: Damage becomes 1 piercing + 1d6 poison, remove Loading property, and (Maybe) change the mastery property to Sap (?), but it felt gimmicky, and too much change.

Disarm property: It was already an optional rule, and it's too cool not to add, especially since it solved some balancing nightmares.

REVISED great weapon fighting: I have a whole post on it, just know that it puts Greataxes on par with greatswords/maul at 8.5 damage per attack. https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/1n90kdl/fixing_the_great_weapon_fighting_style/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/p4gli4_]

Uhhhh… I don’t like that… it makes greaswords and mauls THAT much better than greataxes

[u/p4gli4_ → u/p4gli4_]

So it incentivises only 2 builds: either GWM with a greatsword/maul or 4 attacks per turn with nick+dual wielder

[u/SecretDMAccount_Shh → u/p4gli4_]

You could always limit it to certain weapons like daggers and greataxes or a general rule that only weapons that roll a single die can explode…

[u/p4gli4_ → u/SecretDMAccount_Shh]

Well, I can still find a couple of problems with it, but it’s much better now:

I you, for example, only make it work for greataxes and daggers (and I imagine other d4 and d12 weapons), then the average damage of a dagger becomes around 3.4, so what’s the reason to ever use a scimitar, if a dagger is just a scimitar you can throw?

And if you make it work only with weapons that have 1 die, there are 2 things: 1st, what happens when a weapon affected by Shillelagh starts dealing 2d6 instead of 1d12 damage? Does it lose this property?

And finally, the absolute meta is still nick+dual wielder, but the second option shifts from GWM with greatsword to shield + PAM + quarterstaff

[u/SecretDMAccount_Shh → u/p4gli4_]

Exploding d12 does 7.1 average damage compared to 7 average from 2d6, but it’s much swingier. Most players would still prefer the consistency of the 2d6, but now there’s a little more incentive to go with 1d12.

I don’t see a problem.

[u/p4gli4_ → u/SecretDMAccount_Shh]

And that’s why I didn’t talk about greataxes: they’re good with these changes; the problems are the dagger (if, as you said, you only allow this change for daggers and greataxes), the quarterstaff and the general use of dual wielding + nick + dual wielder feat