Weapon Feats

[kirksmithicus]

Is it just me, or do these just look like a total waste of 4 feats? Exactly like the old multi-classing power swap feats were.

Maybe if the the feat requirement wasn't so steep, I might take one. Or if you gained the weapon power in addition to your normal attack power of the same level (or simply had to choose one or the other). The fact that use lose three of your regular powers, and on top of that you can't use those weapon specific attack powers with anything else. That's is a severe price to pay. I'm sure that they assume that you will always be using your new weapon, but if you lose or break a weapon, then you are totally in trouble.

I wonder if WotC has any plans to change this like they did with the multi-classing - hybrid?

Has anyone run a character using one of the weapons that have their own specific attack powers? If so, how did it go?

[Q-man]

I'm not entirely sure which feats you're referring to. Whats the name of the feats you're talking about?

Wizards has already rewritten some parts of the game with recent rulebooks, so there's nothing to say they won't do that here. As far as their feats go they've also added a ton of them that are only useful in very specific scenarios and situations. Its possible thats what they were doing here, giving you something powerful that only works in specific areas. I think its supposed to be some sort of game balancing thing.

Not long ago they mentioned that they've already replaced a stack of feats with newer more powerful versions. See their response to the second question here. Perhaps its just am matter of time until they go around fixing all the feats by replacing them with fully useful versions.

[kirksmithicus]

To be more specific, I was talking about Feat Powers. You take a weapon prof. first, then if you choose you can then spend up to three additional feats to take the various attack powers granted by that weapon.

These weapons include things like; Blowgun, Bola, Net, Quarterstaff, Gythka, Cahulaks, to name a few.

They can be found in the Multi-class section during feat selection.

[Q-man]

Those are really limiting feats. Its an interesting flavor to your character I suppose, but damn there's so very little utility to them. I guess its the sort of thing where you have to know your DM isn't going to screw you by taking away your weapons ever.

[kirksmithicus]

Taking the basic feat selection for one of these weapons might not be to bad, as it usually grants you a little extra something, and can be used with any regular attack power. I would expect that the the attack powers don't get selected a lot. It would be a better approach to let a character with one of these weapon proficiencies to simply have the option to choose the power in place of one of his regular attacks, kinda like they have done for the Skill Powers whenever you select a Utility power. Otherwise these are never going to get used.

I'll probably introduce a house rule allowing my players to do so.

[Q-man]

So it'll work like the Mounted Combat feat? Once you have it all the abilities of your steed are available to you. So with this 1 feat you're proposing they'll get all the fancy moves that the weapon can offer?

That doesn't seem too bad. I haven't scanned over the powers, but I doubt they would become game breaking. Particularly since you need to replace your encounter powers with them.

[kirksmithicus]

Exactly

None of the attack powers that I've looked at are game breaking. Most just add a condition or penalty to the enemy, which isn't that unusual for an attack power. I can't imagine why they decided these weapons and the associated attacks rated so good that they needed a feat selection. They might be slightly more powerful than a regular attack power (though damage with most of these weapons is low to start with), but you spent the feat selection to get something extra, not to get tracked into a feat tree that hobbles your character.

[Q-man]

I wonder if it has something to do with it being in the magazine? I'm under the impression that the material that gets into the books undergoes more play testing and review before going out, than the stuff in the magazines. But even so, a casual inspection should have caught this thing as being overly expensive.

This might be my obsessive side coming out here, but I actually spent the time finding the articles these things were released in. It looks like the concept behind it was to make mastery of that weapon like a secondary class that the character has. Like the Shadar-Kai race has a real affinity for the spiked chain, so you could train with that weapon to learn the special uses of it. Or an Assassin so adept with the blowgun that they've devised special attacks for it. Spending the feats was the way of showing the characters ongoing dedication to that weapon and its associated style.

From a flavor perspective this is really nice. You can demonstrate on paper how your character has foregone more worldly knowledge to perfect their style of combat. And thats awesome, I've always loved having powers or feats the demonstrate a role play choice.

The problem here is that the crunch portion doesn't match the role play portion. You've given up an amount of time that someone else could use to learn 3 entirely new languages, and all you get is 1 slightly above average move with a specific weapon. I'm thinking the dedication you're giving this weapon should be demonstrated a bit more. I'm thinking that each feat you take toward it grants an additional +1 bonus to hit (or to damage) when using that specific weapon. So in total you can get a +4 bonus, along with whatever other bonuses and options apply. That seems significant enough to be worth the cost in feats, without letting it get out of hand.

[RoadGlide]

I wondered why elf's no longer got longsword proficiency

[Sascha]

I wondered why elf's no longer got longsword proficiency

Still there, only under the other elf type. Eladrin got the longsword proficiency, when the 'traditional' elf archetype split into two races.