The DnD Weapon Mastery rules unlock additional weapon features for characters who have mastered them. This new rule emphasizes the martial prowess of classes like the Fighter and Rogue, giving them more tools and tricks. It differentiates weapons beyond their raw damage and range, without making them more complex for characters focused on spellcasting rather than combat.
Wizards of the Coast kindly provided Wargamer with a review sample of the DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook, and we’ve been poring over it for weeks to find everything that’s new and different. While the overhaul of DnD races into species and the increased importance of DnD backgrounds are perhaps the most important, DnD 2024 Weapon Mastery will be crucial for martial characters.
Here’s how the DnD 2024 Weapon Mastery 2024 rules work:
What is DnD Weapon Mastery?
Weapon Mastery is a class feature for five DnD classes in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, which lets them activate additional ‘mastery properties’ of a small number of weapons they have specialized with. Characters with the Weapon Mastery class feature pick a specified number of weapons to master.
Each DnD weapon has one mastery property. These are all useful effects, such as dealing damage on a miss, slowing a target that is wounded, or granting extra attacks.
Mastery Properties
All simple and martial weapons have mastery properties, additional properties which can only be used by a character who has Weapon Mastery with that weapon. There are eight mastery properties in the DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook:
Cleave
Once per turn, when a character hits with a Cleave weapon, they can make another melee attack with the same weapon against another target. The new target must be within the weapon’s range, and within 5 feet of the first target. This extra attack only adds the character’s ability modifier to damage if the modifier is negative.
Graze
When a character misses with a Graze weapon, they still deal damage equal to the ability modifier they used to attack. This can’t be modified (for example, you can’t add Sneak Attack damage).
Nick
All weapons with the Nick mastery property also have the Light property, which means they can be used to make extra attacks as Bonus Actions. Characters who have mastered the weapon can instead make the extra attack as part of their Attack action, not a Bonus Action. This is capped to once per turn: a Fighter can’t use Action Surge to get this benefit twice.
Push
When a character hits a Large or smaller creature with a Push weapon, they can push it up to 10 feet straight away.
Sap
When a character hits a creature with a Sap weapon, the creature hit has Disadvantage on its next attack roll that it makes before the character’s next turn.
Slow
When a character hits and deals damage using a Slow weapon, they can reduce the target’s Speed by 10’ until their next turn. This doesn’t stack – a creature pincushioned by multiple longbow shots is still only slowed by 10 feet.
Topple
A creature hit by a Topple weapon must pass a Constitution save or fall Prone. The save DC is 8 + the attacker’s Proficiency Bonus + the ability modifier they used to make the attack roll.
Vex
When a character hits a target with a Vex weapon, they have Advantage on their next attack roll against that creature until the end of their next turn.
Which classes get Weapon Mastery?
The Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, and Rogue get the Weapon Mastery class feature at level one. This grants them Weapon Mastery with two specific types of weapons, such as ‘dagger’ and ‘longbow’. They can swap out the weapons they’ve mastered each time they take a DnD Long Rest. The Fighter is different: at level one they have Weapon Mastery with three weapons, instead of two.
Both the Barbarian and the Fighter gain Weapon Mastery with additional weapons as they level up. The Barbarian masters three weapons at level four, and four weapons at level 10. The Fighter masters four weapons at level four, five weapons at level 10, and six weapons at level 16.
Is Weapon Mastery a feat?
Weapon Mastery is not a feat, it’s a class feature of certain classes. However, there is one DnD 2024 feat with a similar name, Great Weapon Master.
Great Weapon Master is a General Feat for characters of at least level 13, with a strength of 13+. It increases their Strength by one, and gives them the benefit ‘Heavy Weapon Mastery’. Despite the name, this does not let them use the Mastery property of weapons with the Heavy property. Instead, when they hit a creature with a Heavy weapon, they deal their Proficiency Bonus as extra damage.
Great Weapon Master also has the benefit ‘Hew’, which lets the character make an extra attack as a Bonus Action after they score a Critical Hit, or reduce a creature to 0HP, with a Melee weapon. The bonus attack must be made with the same weapon.
Wargamer’s playtest campaign for DnD 2024 has already found Weapon Mastery to make martial characters a lot more interesting – the ‘Nick’ property on daggers has made the DnD 2024 Tiefling Assassin Butler being played by site editor Alex Evans a lot nimbler and more deadly, as it frees up his Bonus Actions for Cunning Actions without reducing his attacks.
For our full low-down on the new version of DnD, check out our DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook review. We can also tell you about another major change in the new rulebook, DnD 2024 backgrounds.
Source: Wargamer
