Question about Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization

NeveroddoreveN

A quick question about the practical use of the Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats - are these practical feats in the long run? What happens if you select either feat for your character, and it works like a dream for a while, but later in the game you find a different weapon type that works better than the selected Weapon Focus or Weapon Specialization weapon? Wouldn't it be a wasted feat at that point? I mean, if I specialize in the long sword, but later in the game I find a morning star that will do more damage, is my feat wasted at that point?

Pokota

Morning Stars and Longswords have the same 1d8 base damage, so the bonuses from Focus and Specialization would make the Longsword better in the absence of enchantment bonuses.

Focus provides +1 to the Attack Bonus, and Specialization provides +2 to the damage, so if you have both you need enchantment +2 or better on the Morning Star compared to the Longsword for it to be objectively better.

As you can carry both the Longsword and the Morning Star, the feat is never wasted as a result (and you can still take focus/specialization for the Morning Star down the line as well, though that costs feats you may want for something else)

WarChiefZeke

Weapon focus/specialization aren't bad feats. Few weapon types are strictly better in all cases, really, because different weapons will be effective at different things. A sword is good in many cases but less effective against, say, golems or skeletal undead who are resistant to slashing damage.

So if you have a longsword + 1 and a morning star + 2 it still might be the better choice to pull out the longsword once in a while.

NeveroddoreveN

When I said long swords vs. morning stars, I didnt mean them literally, I was trying to make a point that, what does the player do if they use either Weapon Focus and/or Weapon Specialization on a given weapon, but a different weapon becomes a better choice, the player loses the usefulness of the feats if that different weapon is a better choice in the long run. If so, now you are using a weapon that is different than the one you applied the feats for.

Pokota

It's rare that a different weapon than the one you want to use becomes a better choice in the long run. You have enough room in your inventory and enough quick slots that you can equip one or the other as the need arises (so it's not necessarily a waste of feats to use a different weapon from time to time).

sarevok57

if you have weapon focus in a weapon, then any container that has the "weapon" tag will always be a weapon that you have your focus in

in theory it is possible to get a weapon that is better than the weapon you have, but it is usually extremely rare and no doubt because it is a set weapon ( aka not randomly placed there, but always there on every play through )

also, in chapter 1 and 3 you can get a special ingredient and an enchanted weapon to make a special weapon, and you can do that for almost any weapon

in my opinion, for weapon choices these ones are probably the best if you are a warrior type;

single handed; warhammer

reason being; once you hit level 17 then you have a chance of finding the hammer of thunderbolts which is an AMAZING single handed weapon, ( probably the best single handed weapon in the game, thanks to its +5 enchantment bonus ) not only does it bypass stone skins, but has a pretty good chance to stun enemies, and not many enemies are immune to stun, even bosses can get stunned ( if they fail the save that is ) but in the meantime a lot of the magical warhammers are kind of meh, but hammer of thunderbolts surely makes up for, especially if you where to dual wield them....

two handed; scythe

taking that extra weapon proficiency feats hurts, but do you know what hurts more? your critical hits, scythes are absolute monsters and there is no other weapon in the game that can even compete, especially the higher you STR gets the wider the damage gap between your scythe and other x3 critical weapons, plus in HotU there is an AMAZING scythe that you can upgrade and you will do ridiculous damage on critical hits ( not uncommon to deal 250+ ) in the meantime though, kind of like warhammer, there is a bunch of meh scythes to find, although if i recall once you start hitting some upper levels ( 14+ ? or so ) there are a couple decent ones out there

another thing to note as well, especially if you are a fighter is that once you hit epic levels you can take epic weapon focus and epic weapon specialization as well, so if you already have weapon specialization in a good weapon it would probably be a good idea to take the epic version as well