I was called out by Kenji on 5.0 today with respect to some comments I made on the state of small races and Finessable weapons specifically with respect to it being nerfed whilst Medium races were simultaneously buffed and that this was not a good Balance design in my opinion. Unfortunately I left the conversation more confused than when I entered it but the one salient thing that stuck with me was:
Which is fair enough, I prefer Discord discussions over forum ranting, mostly because I find the forums both to slow and also not overly representative of server population (although this could definitely be my bias/preference speaking here).Kenji: If that were a concern, there would’ve been a feedback thread with angry rant about it for pages
Yet there is none and I’m hearing it for the first time here from you
So, lets get to the pages of angry rants to see if this is a concern or not This is all as I understand it, I could be wrong I am not part of the team and very little outside of the broad change (nothing?) has been published by the team around this.
A while back a change was made to normalize a bunch of exception based systems around finessable weapons and class interactions. There were a number at the time including but perhaps not limited to: Rogue, Shadowdancer, Assassin, Harper (Ro), Zhent (Ro), Swashbuckler, Invisible Blade.
There was a system for Rogue Proficiency weapons, one for Swashbucklers and one for Invisible blades and one for Assassins. I suspect from a class balance and change perspective it was a PiTa and (from memory) the team made an effort to consolidate this into fewer systems (1 + hidden weapon check I think). Which, IMO, was an excellent decision.
This new system was, as I understand it:
Vanilla Finessable weapons rules now apply to almost all of the above classes stuff (both as a prereq for abilities and as a weapon limitation) with Hidden weapon rules (one size smaller than the user) being applied to some of the Assassin stuff and all of the Invisible blade stuff.
Around the same time, a couple of custom finessable large weapons were added/customized: Nodachi, Two-Bladed Sword and perhaps Naginata (this was unpublished). These weapons are excluded from the rule around any weapon being two handed is not finessable.
I believe this had some unintended consequences, I believe this because nothing was published about it.
A quick piece of useful background info:
Vanilla Finesse System: Only weapons flagged as finesse weapons can be finessed and no weapon used in two hands can be finessed. We will come back to the impact here and the Arelith customisation around it.
So, prior to this change:
1. Rogues (and Rogue multi-classed with many of the above classes) received Rogue Proficiency Bonuses on Finessable weapons even if such weapons were used Two handed.
2. Swashbucklers received Swashbuckler abilities on all Finessable weapons even if such weapons were used Two Handed.
Rogue and Swashbuckler Strength builds were built around this using small races and all was well, people started asking for this coolness on medium races.
We migrated systems and Medium races got to join the fun with medium race custom large two handed finessable weapons .... Yay ... everyone gets to have fun!
But wait ... after this change, a number of people (myself included) noticed that Finessable weapon outside of the Nodachi and Two-Bladed Sword and perhaps the Naginata (if it is finessable) could not be used two handed and gain benefit from all the class specific abilities ...
The Consequences:
There are now no weapons for Small Races that can be Two Handed and benefit from any of the Rogue / roguelike bonuses associated with finessable weapons. In tandem, there are now 2 or perhaps 3 weapon that medium races recently gained which can be Two Handed by medium races and benefit from all these systems.
I feel this is a bad balance decision but without it being published and the resulting discussion it is difficult to understand why this was done, if it was a mistake or deliberate and/or what benefits arose from it if it was deliberate or even if it has to stay this way for some reason.
TDLR Small races can no longer compete as Str TwoHander builds across the various roguish aligned classes whilst Medium races now have full availability to such mechanics with new weapons excluded from the new system rules. TDLR
Discuss ...