Post/Author/DateTime

Post

RaspK FOG 12-23-05, 04:51 PM

Two factors that I always found annoying in 3e and 3.5 are the categorisation of weapons in simple, martial, and exotic which assumes that all weapons are as widespread as butter (or margarine, for that matter :D)over bread, and the fact that you can be proficient, say, with the bastard sword, but neither the longsword nor the greatsword... Weapon groups, also found under 2e, help somewhat, but let me try something slightly different. First of all, each culture has its own simple, martial, and exotic weapons: the spear is a common weapon of most cultures but (especially true of the Masque of the Red Death conversion I am building up, which gnaws at me) you can expect your average "civilised" citizen to use something entirely different... Secondly, if, by chance, you are not proficient with all weapons in a group, you reduce the penalty of improficiency to 2 for being proficient in any weapon of that group; it also is very important to enforce that weapon specific feats apply to the whole weapon group as noted in Unearthed Arcana. Thus, suppose you have a Japanese soldier in MotRD; he would be proficient with the daikyo, jo (club), katana, tanto (dagger), tetsubo (greatclub), wakizashi, and yari (spear); he would also suffer only a -2 penalty for using most draw-cutting swords, bows, spears, and more... On the other hand, a Dutch tradesman would only know how to use a sap, a knife, a club, and a batton. Supposing we add issues of military or social class, he might be proficient with the swordcane if he is a gentleman or most pistols (which he may already be proficient with).