THE SURGE 2 BEST HAMMER FULL

(This should not be confused with a warhammer, which is very much a soldier's weapon-it's labeled in the PHB as a 'war pick', a martial weapon, 1d8 piercing damage. Note that the only NPCs who have 'light hammer' on their statblocks are the Pirate Bosun (Saltmarsh) and the Scorchbringer Guard (Ravnica)-folks who do mechanical repairs. It deals improvised weapon damage and has the improvised weapon throwing range. An improvised thrown weapon has a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet.įrom this I deduce that the light hammer is a construction tool, not a real weapon.

If a character uses a ranged weapon to make a melee attack, or throws a melee weapon that does not have the thrown property, it also deals 1d4 damage. This is suspiciously similar to the properties of an improvised weapon:Īn object that bears no resemblance to a weapon deals 1d4 damage (the DM assigns a damage type appropriate to the object). And adding finesse to a hammer seems very non-thematic. On the other hand, as stated above, I don't think there is a problem to be fixed. It is true that this probably won't come up that often and you said you don't find this important but it is a fact. While adding finesse to the light hammer won't have many mechanical consequences, it means that Dex based characters now have a finesse bludgeoning weapon against skeletons. Finesse seems very non-thematic on a hammer Then again, I don't see why it is absolutely necessary to only have weapons that have a use for the optimizer. When you start to consider that every weapon should have their advantages, you have even more work. It is the same as a spear but needs martial weapons proficiency. Similarly, there is really no reason to specifically use a trident. The sickle is equally bad as the light hammer. The light hammer is not the only weapon that you would never use from a perspective of power. Not all weapons are equally powerful and they don't need to be Is there anything specific to bludgeoning damage that would make this a bad idea? Dwarven rogues would thank you if it were done. My thought: could we instead assign it an additional weapon property to compensate for the lesser damage (perhaps as a race feature, if not for everyone)?įor characters of dwarven (and perhaps forest gnome?) ancestry, for example, it seems more race-appropriate to use light hammers in place of daggers, and if they were a finesse weapon, dexterity-based characters might do so.

THE SURGE 2 BEST HAMMER FULL

The historically-appropriate change might be some kind of attack/damage bonus when hammers are used against solid armor types (breastplate, half plate, or full plate), but for this change to be meaningful you'd have to do the same for mace, war hammer, and maul - and none of those weapons need it. hand axe - most of the time, damage type just doesn't matter. I am willing to concede this argument, though to me, the RAW light hammer still feels imbalanced vs. The typical objection I've seen is its potential for use against monsters vulnerable to bludgeoning attacks (e.g. People elsewhere have discussed increasing light hammer damage to 1d6 as a possible homebrew fix. As written, I can't see why anyone would choose it. This makes the light hammer - 1d4, light, thrown - inferior to these other thrown weapons in damage, and short of the dagger in its lack of finesse. Most other thrown weapons of this type (hand axe, javelin, and spear) all do 1d6 damage with a secondary property thrown in - hand axe is light, javelin has extended range, and spear is versatile. When playing RAW, the only simple melee weapon with the finesse property is the dagger (PHB page 149).

The surge 2 best hammer