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AuraTwilight said:
Uh...why would we assume it takes 5 years' training to grow proficient in something, though?
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The assumption was a product of some of my own biases about Karate Dojos, and how if you need 5 years to get one you know it isn't a black belt mill and such. Things I've heard like once you have a Black Belt you know enough to start learning on your own, innovating, modifying. I was applying that logic to learning sword techniques.
 
Conjured Blade said:
So I was thinking about weapon proficiency in 3.5/Pathfinder, and how a class can be proficient with all simple weapons, or all simple and martial weapons.

Assuming proficient is defined as spending at least 5 years training with this weapon/about as much technique as a Black Belt from a decent dojo or better, the amount of sense this makes is... kind of dubious.
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As opposed to conjuring fire from thin air or healing with a touch?

D&D characters are omni-competent superheroes. They have unrealistic levels of expertise.
 
I'm fairly certain that proficiency (at least in 3.5) is not the equivalent of a Black Belt or five years in something like HEMA, but very literally "Can be expected to show competence when using this equipment". Can you reasonably be expected to load, ready, and fire a crossbow - without taking one of your fingers off or shooting yourself in the foot - in a reasonable period of time with a non-negligible degree of accuracy? You're proficient. Stuff like that.

Does this mean you can't wing it to be like the above for your own setting? No. But for the canon source material I am continually amazed when some people (not you, but a few others I see in-thread) insist that it's Wizards / TSR that has it wrong with their Level 16, 20, or so-on characters in the novels instead of the fan interpretations. Like, Drizzt was a super-elven (literally: He had stats higher than a normal elf could get without magical assistance) ranger with something like 13 levels when he had just left the Underdark and a slew of +3 to +5 equipment by the time he settled down in Icewind Dale, and he's… not that impressive? He isn't even remarked as being noteworthy in the novels beyond his above-average proficiency with swords and pendulum-esque luck. It's not because RA Salvatore and his stat-writers and everybody got the lore entirely wrong for 3+ editions, but because that's how a lot of its settings actually are.
 
A lot of D&D settings/lore are also horribly inconsistent.

I remember reading an article arguing that Low level D&D 3.5 actually does simulate some basic mechanics decently for IRL - if you assume that the average person never gets beyond level 2, and that level 4 folk are World-class exemplars.

Drizzit is massively superhuman, but well, that's not rare in Faerun, because a teenage, untrained Giant or Centuar is also basically massively superhuman.
 
One of the reason I liked fifth edition is how they collapsed that power gap a lot more. Short of direct magical intervention your stats are never going above 'superhuman' and the gap between a man and an ogre is not obscene. This plus the fact that Skills and Feats are no longer necessarily tied to levels alone; you can learn skills and feats (and, as a consequence, cantrips and ritual magic in various incarnations) without having to go beyond level one.

So its entirely possible for someone like Drizzt to have some insane powergamer stat block like 18s in everything but Charisma and a half dozen skills and feats and still only be level 4ish.
 
Conjured Blade said:
The assumption was a product of some of my own biases about Karate Dojos, and how if you need 5 years to get one you know it isn't a black belt mill and such. Things I've heard like once you have a Black Belt you know enough to start learning on your own, innovating, modifying. I was applying that logic to learning sword techniques.
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The thing is that fundamentally, you don't need five more years.

To master a new weapon you have to focus on it specifically, of course, but that's not what proficiency covers.

For just basic proficiency, a single martial style will cover a wide swathe of weapons because on a pretty fundamental level you're doing the same thing whatever weapon you happen to have in hand. Within the single style, a sword blow is delivered in the exact same way as an axe and hewing with the spear. I mean this quite literally - the Liberi manuscript literally does not cover how to throw or counter the most basic strikes with poleaxe and spear because it has already covered that in the sword section. The poleaxe/spear sections don't need to teach you the entire art again, they just need to teach you the part that's specific to poleaxe - or more precisely the part that's best-shown by poleaxe.

I've seen a guy run a lengthy fight with a weapon combination (sword and dagger) he'd never used before, without getting hit at all, because... he's doing the same thing he always was. He was still maneuvering his body in the same way as ever, he knew how to cover himself and how to strike, his skill in measuring distance and making combat decisions was already developed from years with a two-handed sword and transferred easily enough to his new setup...

The only thing that ever changed was the length and sharpness of the long rigid object in his hands.

A basic, out-of-the-box knight is expected to be fully capable in grappling, knife, sword, spear, and axe, on foot or on horse. Once you reach the Middle East his equivalent is also expected to add archery to that list.

To reach that level with a rough 'black belt' equivalency in HEMA, with all those weapons, you're talking... 5-7 years. This is in no way mastered, nor is it instructor-level - black belt isn't a capstone, it's simply 'I've learned the basics enough that I can start learning the real stuff'. But yeah, ten years training is easily enough to be solidly proficient with that entire list of weapons. And I don't mean just black belt level, I mean actual 'I can comfortably go into a life and death situation with this level of skill' proficiency.

For all that I sometimes complain about D&D, this was one thing they got absolutely right.
 
Pale Wolf said:
The thing is that fundamentally, you don't need five more years.

To master a new weapon you have to focus on it specifically, of course, but that's not what proficiency covers.

For just basic proficiency, a single martial style will cover a wide swathe of weapons because on a pretty fundamental level you're doing the same thing whatever weapon you happen to have in hand. Within the single style, a sword blow is delivered in the exact same way as an axe and hewing with the spear. I mean this quite literally - the Liberi manuscript literally does not cover how to throw or counter the most basic strikes with poleaxe and spear because it has already covered that in the sword section. The poleaxe/spear sections don't need to teach you the entire art again, they just need to teach you the part that's specific to poleaxe - or more precisely the part that's best-shown by poleaxe.

I've seen a guy run a lengthy fight with a weapon combination (sword and dagger) he'd never used before, without getting hit at all, because... he's doing the same thing he always was. He was still maneuvering his body in the same way as ever, he knew how to cover himself and how to strike, his skill in measuring distance and making combat decisions was already developed from years with a two-handed sword and transferred easily enough to his new setup...

The only thing that ever changed was the length and sharpness of the long rigid object in his hands.

A basic, out-of-the-box knight is expected to be fully capable in grappling, knife, sword, spear, and axe, on foot or on horse. Once you reach the Middle East his equivalent is also expected to add archery to that list.

To reach that level with a rough 'black belt' equivalency in HEMA, with all those weapons, you're talking... 5-7 years. This is in no way mastered, nor is it instructor-level - black belt isn't a capstone, it's simply 'I've learned the basics enough that I can start learning the real stuff'. But yeah, ten years training is easily enough to be solidly proficient with that entire list of weapons. And I don't mean just black belt level, I mean actual 'I can comfortably go into a life and death situation with this level of skill' proficiency.

For all that I sometimes complain about D&D, this was one thing they got absolutely right.
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Thanks for clarifying that. This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
 
Conjured Blade said:
The assumption was a product of some of my own biases about Karate Dojos, and how if you need 5 years to get one you know it isn't a black belt mill and such. Things I've heard like once you have a Black Belt you know enough to start learning on your own, innovating, modifying. I was applying that logic to learning sword techniques.
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5 years of doing karate every day? I'd say it definitely shouldn't take that long, that a dedicated and talented student could hit black in a year, assuming a teacher willing to do it.
 
Some some people managed to get their hands on the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide already (check here and here for details).

Nearly everyone gets something new (Bard and Druids get refluffs of their existing options and Rangers get basically nothing).
Some new stuff is race restricted (battleborn to dwarves, blade singer to elves/half elves).

Loads of Forgotten Realms info and the Swashbuckler and Storm Sorcerer make it into print from Unearthed Arcana.
 
The cantrips don't seem to be very power creepy. Storm sorcerer lost the extra spells but mostly stayed the same, Swashbuckler had something change, not sure what.
Svirfneblin sorta is, but that's also feat. Duergar are balanced around sunlight sensitivity (not sure how it'll pan out), Tiger path barbarian gets bonus action attack at 14, so it sort of trumps berserker.
The undying looks like it'll be the hardest warlock patron to kill, Bladesinger as an adept martial class, though it does give int as a bonus to AC if you're in light armour, not replacing the armour calulation. So a theoretical character with 18's in int, dex and con at start can go Barb+Wiz for the best AC (Or Monk+Wiz).
SUn Soul monk is described as a good firebender (Quote: You can also attack, and then use burning hands as a bonus action afterwards, pumping it up with ki points. In my headcanon that is now a hadoken. Later on they can shoot a kind of fireball for ki points that actually requires a CON save. Its max damage is 8d6, the first 2d6 is free, with each additional 2d6 requiring a ki point.)
Flying Tieflings are pretty bullshit (swap out your spells for it) but I don't think that it's any less balanced than Aarakocra.
They can also get their racial bonus to int and dex now, instead of int and cha. This tempts me to make a half elven tiefling bladesinger...

There's a variant half-elf that can drop the skills for other elven traits, including the wizard cantrip high elves get.
 
I'm just wary, in general, of adding new spells when it's not strictly necessary because WOTC has demonstrated that they cannot keep that shit under control and it exponentially expands spellcaster options faster than martials can usually keep up.
 
So when is it strictly necessary? Greenflame Blade and Booming Blade are well needed by the Bladesinger, Eldritch Knight and other spellcasting melee guys, but Lightning Lure (like Thorn Whip) and Sword Burst (like Thundering Burst) I'm not as certain about
 
The problem, however, is that these Cantrips would also be accessible to Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks, who already have access to the best cantrips in the game.
 
I'm aware, but not every character can afford the feat tax and not all GMs allow feats (as Silly as I think that is.)
 
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