Inferior Weapon Material Proficiency [GENERAL]
Choose a type of inferior weapon material, such as bone, wood or obsidian. You have learned how to avoid the disadvanteges of that material.
Prerequisite: Base Attack Bonus +1
Benefit: You can reduce the penalty for attack rolls by 1, when you wield a weapon that is made of the chosen material. This feat only reduces penalties for inferior weapon material, therefore, if a weapon is design to be made of the chosen material (for example a carrikal), this feat doesn't provide any benefits for wielding such a weapon.
Normal: You suffer a -1 penalty on attack and damage rolls, when you wield a weapon of inferior material (for example a bone longsword).
Special: You can gain Inferior Weapon Material Proficiency multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of weapon material.
A fighter may select Martial Weapon Proficiency as one of his fighter bonus feats.
Well...what do you think?
but I don't think it's...logical.
Bone and stone are poor wepaons because their innate substance doesn't take an edge well, or breaks very readily, isn't very dense etc. You simply are not going to get around that problem. You may be skilled in using it, but it's still gonna have a high chance of breakage, still won't be sharp etc.
In Athas, Sunder would be a SUPERB feat, thus a feat to reduce the chance of sunder etc would be good, i.e. protect your poor quality weapons.
As posted before, obsidian is ~incredibly hard and sharp~, effectively , an obsidian dagger is a scalpel or open razor, but a nice hard hit from the side...*shatter*!
IMHO, obsidian should be +1 damage, but would need re-sharpened every fight because it's edges would chip and break (requiring weaponsmith or stonecrafting skill check vs DC 5)
Thus a feat like
MAINTAIN PRIMITIVE ARMS & ARMOUR
Prerequisite: 1 Rank in Weapon or armoursmithing, tool kit.
Benefit: You automatically repair your weapons and armour after every fight, provided you have time (8 hours of rest or more). Any damage from Sunder or accident is assumed to be fixed by yourself after each rest period. Weapons are kept sharp and do not lose their edge (flint and obsidian are extremely sharp but require maintenance to avoid penalties)
Requires a simple toolkit of small stones (for flint or obsidian knapping), string, resin and the like.
Special: This cannot repair Magical or Masterwork items, those require specific and more rigorous work.
This feat is usually only to be found in pre-Bronze age, or metal poor cultures.
1) Change the feat so all it does is negate the -1 to-hit penalty; it's a lot more logical to say that, with practice, someone could learn the intricacies of *wielding* (i.e. swinging, recovering from a swing) a weapon made out of a particular material than it is to say that they could somehow compensate for it's ability to actually inflict damage. Along the lines of what Silverblade said, for instance, obsidian is extremely sharp, is light (since it's basically glass), but tends to chip - so knowing how to compensate for the weight difference and understanding that if you hit someone with a certain part of the blade you're going to want to hit them with a different part of the blade next time (where the obsidian hasn't chipped, let's say) makes sense to me. Same goes for a stone weapon - it's extremely heavy, so if you're not used to the added weight it'll be difficult to swing it correctly. None of these really affect damage, however - that IMO is more an aspect of the inability to keep a consistently sharp blade/point or stable bashing surface.
2) Create a new feat that relates to crafting weapons using a specific inferior material. Have this feat allow the craftsman to create the weapon as masterwork quality, but rather than giving it a +1 bonus to hit instead have it negate the damage penalty (+1 bonus to damage, basically). The drawback to this comes in the form of increased construction time and cost, but gives you what you want. My reasoning here is that although there's really no way to wield a pre-built inferior weapon "more lethally," if you knew the right techniques I think you could *build* one that works better.
Usually a weapon that is made of an inferior material comes with penalties on attack and damage rolls:
Due to the extremely high cost of metal weaponry, most weapons from the Player’s Handbook are constructed from inferior, but functional, materials instead on Athas. Most common are bone and stone such as flint or obsidian, but treated wood is sometimes used as well. Weapons constructed from inferior materials, such as bone longsword or an axe with a head made from stone, suffer a -1 penalty to attack and damage rolls. This penalty cannot reduce damage dealt below 1. These weapons cost 0.5% of the listed price in the Player’s Handbook. Convert the listed Player’s Handbook price to Cp, then divide the cost by 2. For example a bone shortsword costs 5 Cp.
Although, I agree that obsidian doesn't neccesserily should come with that penalty, that rules are, that it does. Therefore I based the feat on this rule. That there are some weapons that don't suffer any penalties (especially athasian weapons) is, I guess, accepted unquestioningly. IMHO, these weapon don't suffer those penalties, because their design is made in a way, that the weapon is wielded, the penalties doesn't apply. A "standard" weapon is usually "normaly". Without this feat you would suffer the described penalties, when you wield a "standard" weapon of inferior material "normaly". When you have this feat, you learn how the matireal is used at best, and you change the way you wield these weapons, thus reduce the penalties. It's like wielding a "standard" weapon as an athasian weapon. I don't know, if this makes any sense, if I could make myself understandable.
Actually, I can't quite follow, what you're trying to say with breaking stuff of the material, because the feat has nothing to do with that. It just reduces the penalties for attack and damage rolls. Nothing changes the hardness or the hp of a material. It's not about improving the material, but they way it is used.
My point is that it weapons made from inferior materials don't necessarily (or normally, for that matter) "cause" the damage penalty for the same reason as the to-hit penalty, and so a catch-all solution (i.e. only 1 feat) to cope for both doesn't really make sense.
Stone only weighs 1/2 to 1/3rd that of steel, heavy stone is granite, or even sapphire (a crystal that's about as dense as steel, fyi)
Heh okay, whatever...my points still hold, though. :P
Instead of the -1 rule, inferior weapons break much easier on a critical miss than iron weapons (1-5 on d10 vs 1 on d6 respectively)
Beyond that, in my games I found that the inferior weapons rules really didn't matter as the PCs tended to use Athas-specific weapons during their early levels (which was great as it added to the feel of the game) and then once they started acquiring magical weapons and such it didn't matter since they were all made from metal or crystal (psionic weapons).
The reason for the inferior weapon penalty only being applied to certain weapons is that some weapons, due to design, can be made out of any ol' material and function just as well as if they were made out of steel - stabbing weapons being the most prevalent, although bludgeoning ones often apply as well. On the other hand, once you start getting more complicated this becomes an issue; a sword for instance is composed of a relatively thin, long blade, so it needs to be constructed in such a way that it not only can hold an edge for an extended period of time but also in a way that won't break it when swung normally. A macahuitl is the "proper" way to do this - use light-weight yet relatively durable wood to hold sharp-yet-fragile obsidian chips as a cutting edge, which is why it doesn't suffer penalties for inferior materials. A greatsword blade made entirely out of wood, or bone, or somehow rock, is a totally different matter - those materials just aren't suited for a 4-foot long blade, and no amount of skill is going to make said greatsword sharper, just like no amount of fine craftsmanship is going to reduce a stone greatsword's weight enough that it can be swung around as well as a steel greatsword. That's why I propose that you break your idea up into two separate feats: one that allows someone to wield (neg. hit penalty) the weapon better (if you train with a stone greatsword eventually you'll figure out the most effective way to swing the thing), and one that allows a craftsman to use the material in the most effective way possible (neg. damage penalty), say by making aforementioned greatsword out of a certain type of stone that allows it to hold a sharper edge while also making it more able to withstand use.
Convinced and changed.
Actually my first idea was to make two feats, but I thought that the benefits would to weak, if they were devided in two feats.
Couldn't you make a class ability of it? For example for a 1st or 2nd level Barbarian/Brute or maybe a Gladiator?
Shim - Partially true, although not completely; the feat is, in many ways, similar to Weapon Focus, so it has long-standing uses. Additionally, just because most magical items that are "found" will likely be made of metal, that doesn't mean you can't enchant a weapon made from inferior materials or that you won't find "newer" magic items made from them. A lot of that is up to the DM and of course whether or not any of the PCs decide to take Craft feats.
I like the idea of allowing Gladiators to take it. Perhaps this could be taken in place of the Armor Optimization class feature? (I think that's the name). It'd be appropriate, I think.
I have only one problem with the feat and that is that it is only usable for low level characters. At higher level, characters have better weapons and then this feat would be useless for them. So, if I was planning to make a character of which I expect it will eventually be high level, I would not take this feat.
Couldn't you make a class ability of it? For example for a 1st or 2nd level Barbarian/Brute or maybe a Gladiator?
It really does depend on how you operate your Dark Sun games. See, for my games, metal weapons are always rare, regardless of level. And metal weapons are almost never used as weapons, but rather as prized treasures that are far too valuable to potentially damage with combat. So weapons are made from the inferior materials -- and Athasian weapons are designed to take advantage of inferior materials, so they would be far more prevaliant than not. Magic items are very rare -- divine-crafted ones being more common than arcane-crafted ones, however unless the items are among the explicitly approved list for a particular city-state (which the templar at the gate can take even items that are on the approved list), they will be taken away. Psionic items get in, but are only permitted if they are of level 4 powers or lower. Outside those city-states, each village has different rules regarding magic & psionic items.
My high-level Dark Sun campaigns are usually noted by the level 16+ characters having maybe one or two magic items among the group, a handful of psionic items, and everything else is still quite mundane. So a feat like this would prove to be useful, even for my epic Dark Sun campaigns.