Grouped Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialisation

[Ten Pidgeons in a Trenchoat]

This is a request that may or may not be balanced more toward melee and ranged sorts. Sorry casters!

In a few games of modern times, such as Pillars of Eternity, Weapon Focus feats are more compounded to 'groups' of weapons of similar make rather than focusing on a single weapon. A few other NWN servers have implemented this as well, and I have always enjoyed being able to use more loot as opposed to limiting one's self to a singular type of weapon.

I would like to propose that weapon focus and weapon specialization be broadened in a similar way, but leave Weapon Master's "Weapon of Choice" as is (as they are so singularly focused).

The main things this might impact are

 - Pre-reqs for PRC that require Weapon Focus. (Divine Champion mainly, I think, and Invisible Blade)
 - The overall power (through versatility) of ranged and melee builds offensively

This server always has me loving finding random stuff, but also mourning when I find a weapon I can't use *as* effectively because it's slightly different

So I figure the weapon groups might be something along the lines of

 - One-handed Heavy (for longswords/maces/non-finesse weapons, as well as applicable CEP such as Merc Longsword)
 - One-handed Light (for daggers, kukris, rapiers and other finesse weapons)
 - Two handed Heavy (For Greatsword, Two-Bladed Sword, Bastard Sword(?))
 - Polearms (For Quarterstaff, Halberds, Spears and Dire Maces (Maybe Magic Staff too?))
 - Bows and Crossbows (Self explanatory, lets you use Bows and Crossbows with equal measure)
 - Thrown and Sling (Darts, Throwing Axes, Slings and other yeetus maximus items)

I am not sure if this sort of thing *has* been suggested before, but if not might be food for thought. Feel free to comment on why it would be silly, broken, stupid or just impossible to implement on the server.

Side note/Afterthought: For classes that require a specific weapon, maybe give them "Favored Weapon" feat to choose instead that's +2 with the selected weapon, but only that weapon? It still wouldn't qualify for Epic Weapon Focus, nor stack (if possible), while retaining that Singular Focus feel.

[Edge]

As this is something that would affect the combat engine, we probably can't do it without extensive NWNX scripting. NWNs combat engine is blackboxed, hence why there are so few non caster custom options - adding spells and spellcasting classes is possible, messing with the combat engine is not.

[Edge]

Yep. Please don't take my post as a rejection of the idea in general, Just a "not possible at this time" notification.

The hope is that future Beamdog updates will open the blackbox up a bit for us to tinker with.

[Garage Trashcan]

I think Vince said this was technically possible, as he's able to tie weapon types to specific feats like he did with the CEP weapons. I think, theoretically, you can tie Scim/LS/Rapier all together under WF Longsword or something. Unsure if renaming the associated feat is feasible/possible though. It would give martial types a lot more versatility in loot over just being good with only one weapon.

This was suggested (or something similar) in Discord before and iirc it was due to the sheer number of relevels/rebuilds/LETOs needed to implement the changes. That said, I'd still like to see this but also don't want to drive all of us to insanity with implementation.

[Edge]

Yeah it can be technically done with a lot of scripting but like you said it's a royal pain. If we're going to do something of that magnitude, it needs to be something we can do stably, and preferably thru the core engine rather than a kludged workaround like the CEP weapons currently are.

[Ten Pidgeons in a Trenchoat]

Having thought about it further, another thought came to mind to make things slightly (I hope) easier while still enabling the current implementations

Rather than having singular feats to weapons in groups, maybe groups of feats could be automatically applied to a character if they have a Weapon Focus of a similar weapon?

So Character X takes Longsword Focus, then it also updates to automatically give Bastard Sword Focus, Katana Focus, War Axe Focus (etc) for free in a way similar to how the Arcane Warrior gives you Auto-still for free? (Not sure of the coding or magic behind that, just a thought that came to me later)

This also means that it avoids messing with pre-req feats.

You would probably need a check to make sure it only selects weapons the characters are actually proficient with, unless that's not relevant, but it was a workaround I thought about.

EDIT: Realised I said Proficiency instead of Focus, replaced

[Vincent07]

It's doable, since we can now define these feats based on a 2da entry.  

That said, given how many characters have the existing feats, as well as the number that would need swapping by some means, it would be an extreme amount of work, and thus unlikely to be something we seek to do at this time.