Weapon Group

Weapons are divided into three categories: simple, martial, and exotic.

While this system works very well for establishing the complexity of each weapon and balancing the classes’ abilities against one another, grouping weapons by similar type offers an exciting variant to determine what weapons a character knows how to use.

At its simplest, the weapon group feat variant establishes a small list of feats called Weapon Group proficiency feats. Each feat allows a character to use a small number of similar weapons without penalty. Although most characters using this system are proficient with fewer weapons than the normal character classes, the weapons they know how to use will be grouped along a similar theme, providing a little more flavor to each character’s weapon choice at the expense of a small amount of versatility.

USING WEAPON GROUPS IN PLACE OF CLASS WEAPON PROFICIENCIES

While the Weapon Group proficiency feats work well in conjunction with the classes’ starting armor and weapon proficiencies, you might want to substitute a number of these feats for each class’s starting weapon proficiencies. Doing this can lend more flavor to specific characters or organizations.

WEAPON-SPECIFIC FEATS

Any feat that requires a character to choose a specific weapon to apply the feat’s benefit to (such as Improved Critical, Weapon Focus, or Weapon Specialization) can instead be applied to a weapon group. The character must still meet the prerequisites for the feat.

Though this seems to grant a large benefit to the character, it really doesn't significantly improve the character’s power level. Since a typical character only wields one weapon at a time or two, with a different weapon in each hand, the character doesn't really become any more powerful in a typical fight. It does mean that a character is more likely to benefit when new magic weapons are found, since he’s more likely to be skilled in their use. That can actually be beneficial to a campaign, in that it allows the use of a wider range of interesting treasures that the characters actually use rather than simply sell or trade.