Weapon Proficiencies That Work: A New Look at Character Life Experience
The class based weapon proficiencies as we know them are great. I have yet to see an improvement on them within the entire D20 network. However, the entire system has a serious flaw: expanding the list. As it stands now, the weapon proficiency system forces those who wish to expand their horizons to waste one the seven to eight feats they gain on mastering a weapon. This is pathisad.
To fix the problem is simple and involves a few basic steps:
- Remove the feats SRD:Simple Weapon Proficiency, SRD:Martial Weapon Proficiency, and SRD:Exotic Weapon Proficiency. Just kill them like the evil, opportunity wasting, scabby parasites they are.
- For every two points of Base Attack Bonus a character has, they gain one free weapon proficiency. This proficiency may be spent on any weapon the character has seen being used or has available to practice with. Once selected, this choice is permanent, even if you later take a level in a class that would have given you proficiency with one of your bonus weapons for free.
Note: this setup will allow characters to gain access to martial and exotic weapons with less cost than they used to require. Classes with full base attack bonuses will be able to select any available simple, martial, or exotic weapon at level 2, moderate base attack classes will be able to select one at level 3, and poor base attack classes will be able to select one at level 4. This is intentional.
As D&D expanded the number of weapons went from the little over 100 in the Players Handbook to almost 300 in the books alone. Rather than under power characters by stuffing them all in Weapon Groups or assign some ad hoc point system, use this system, and let character choices and past experiences once more mean something.
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