Weapon Master Gradient

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by finn

In my game, I split Weapon Master into the following 1/4 levels costing 5 points each, to encourage PCs to take Weapon Master for a particular weapon gradually. Since my players were not experienced in 4e, I did not allow them to take Weapon Master at character creation.

1/4 Halve multiple parry penalty
2/4 Add +1 damage per die
3/4 Halve rapid strike penalty
4/4 Add another +1 damage per die, and get access to a small number of cinematic skills.

WM grants access to a fairly large number of Cinematic Skills and canonically, Mundane Background which forbids possessing any Cinematic Skills is worth 10pts.

[Colarmel]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

WM grants access to a fairly large number of Cinematic Skills and canonically, Mundane Background which forbids possessing any Cinematic Skills is worth 10pts.

P.K. in the link above points out that cinematic skills are a 0 point feature for Weapon Master, as the cost doesn't change if there are no cinematic skills allowed.

[finn]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

WM grants access to a fairly large number of Cinematic Skills and canonically, Mundane Background which forbids possessing any Cinematic Skills is worth 10pts.

Note that this is WM for a particular weapon only, so the skills available are somewhat limited canonically. (I further limit the cinematic skills to ones that match the theme of the weapon)

It's not really worth it to split Cinematic Skill access as its own level, so I made it part of the last 1/4 of the WM. It should encourage fighter PCs to eventually pay the full 20 points for the WM. I think it also make sense flavor wise that you need to fully "master" your weapon before expand into cinematic skills.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by finn

Note that this is WM for a particular weapon only, so the skills available are somewhat limited canonically. (I further limit the cinematic skills to ones that match the theme of the weapon)

.

If you check MA p.48 you will see that while TBAM potentially grants access to 19 Cinematic Skills WM can give 10 and the only one that couldn't be used with a Melee Weapon is Zen Archery.

With both Ads the greater limit is in which Skills are associated with what style.

"Somewhat limited" isn't as potentially misleading as "only a few" but I wouldn't want the idea to spread that WM could only give you 2 or 3 Cinematic Skills. Weapon Masters can be very powerful and flexible in such Skills.

[finn]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If you check MA p.48 you will see that while TBAM potentially grants access to 19 Cinematic Skills WM can give 10 and the only one that couldn't be used with a Melee Weapon is Zen Archery.

With both Ads the greater limit is in which Skills are associated with what style.

"Somewhat limited" isn't as potentially misleading as "only a few" but I wouldn't want the idea to spread that WM could only give you 2 or 3 Cinematic Skills. Weapon Masters can be very powerful and flexible in such Skills.

Thanks for the clarification. I did not mean that a single weapon MA should only grant access to a few cinematic skills. That's just how I am doing it in my current game, which affected how I split the WM in to 4 levels.