I had an idea of how to model the fact that beginners are less apt at using certain weapons over other ones (i.e. swinging a baseball bat is easier than punching someone with your bare hands) and that some weapons are more dangerous than others (wooden training swords vs actual sharpened swords). I present two weapon properties: difficult and dangerous.
Difficult: The weapon is difficult to master and misplaced in the hands of beginners. You gain disadvantage 1 on all attack rolls including this weapon, unless you have the feat Attack Specialization or Martial Focus for this weapon.
Dangerous: If you roll an exceptional success on an attack with this weapon, you may deal 10 of the resulting damage as lethal damage, instead of inflicting a bane or interrupting concentration.
For WL adjustment I thought of -1 for Difficult, and +1 for Dangerous. What do you think?
I would be fine with the Difficult propriety, but I don’t necessarily see why it would reduce the WL of a weapon. I’d say that that’s even contro-intuitive, as specialised weapons would be more difficult to come by making them more expensive.
I’m no fan of the dangerous propriety. As a player I would probably never want to get a weapon with that propriety, because the value of applying a bane or breaking concentration is much higher than applying lethal damage, because it will rarely matter for NPCs and monsters. And as a GM I have no use for that propriety, as I could let my NPCs deal lethal damage anyway if I wanted.
Also, for a weapon you feel a character wouldn’t be as trained in, the GM can give Disadvantage 1 (or more) to using it, regardless of the weapon itself.
Some people can more naturally pick up a weapon than others, and it has more to do with the person than the actual weapon I feel, so not sure it would make sense for a lot of them. Naturally there are some weapons which it could make more sense for.
“Dangerous” is meant to give you a choice. You either deal lethal damage or you inflict a bane (or interrupt concentration). So it’s an additional option. I think it may be a benefit if the enemy has access to good healing.
Way I see difficult, it might actually be better for weapons that are fundamentally below average compared to other instances, I.E. the existance of a Difficult X autoimplies that there is non-Difficult X’s, and this one is cheaper because it’s just shoddy workmanship. Attack Spec/Martial Focus exception could be that with the right training, said shoddiness doesn’t matter, and the user can wield a bargain bin rusted to heck X as well as a custom made fresh out of production X without any real issues.