Weapon changes - thoughts on balance

[sagil]

Base Weapon Stats
• Light Crossbow: no longer requires both hands to use.
• Dart: Updated critical range to 19-20.
• Shuriken: Count as a monk weapon (can't be used with flurry of blows)
• Throwing Axe: Updated critical multiplier to x3
• Quarterstaff: is now a double-sided weapon, finessable, count as a monk weapon (can't be used with flurry of blows)
• Katana is now Small size and finessable
• Trident is now a medium sized, finessable, 20/x4 weapon (only equipable in main hand)
• Spear is now a medium sized, finessable, 20/x3 weapon (only equipable in main hand)
• Heavy Crossbow is now a 20/x4 weapon

the follwing weapons are now Monk Weapons and will benefit from the improved attacks per round monks get:
Club, Handaxe, Dagger, Sling, Crossbow and Heavy Crossbow
(Flurry of blows will still not work for these weapons)

My take on these changes is that while some are good in making previously useless weapons useful, most of them wreck havoc with balance. The general design for weapons in NWN in terms of power is that

• simple < martial < exotic (due to proficiency requirements)
• tiny < small < medium < large (due to dual-wield and creature size differences)
• bow < crossbow (due to rapid reload requirement)
• monk < non-monk (due to bonus attacks)
• bludgeoning & multiple types < piercing/slashing (due to common creature resists/immunities)

These balance criteria work reasonably well - some issues I see is with simple < martial (martial proficiency is mostly automatic, so any difference should be small) and the differentiation by damage type (not consistent - e.g. warhammer - and there seem to be few creatures with resists/immunities by physical type).

So my thoughts/suggestions on the changes here are:

• Monk weapons: quarterstaff, club and shuriken are fine, the rest shouldn't be
• Crossbows (light & heavy): revert to original
• Throwing Axe: revert to original
• Katana: Overpowered for a small weapon - reduce base damage to 1d8.
• Trident: Overpowered - reduce base damage to 1d6 (more balanced & different from spear).

Additional changes for underpowered weapons:

• Heavy Flail: Increase base damage to 1d12 (slightly less than greatsword, same crit)
• Light Flail: Increase base damage to 2d4 (slightly more than longsword, but low crit)
• Light Hammer: Increase base damage to 2d3 (slightly more than shortsword, but low crit)
• Dire Mace: Increase base damage to 2d4 (slightly more than double axe/sword, but low crit)
• Halberd: Increase base damage to 1d12 (same as greataxe)
• Sling: Increase base damage to 1d6 (to make it competitive with infinite throwing weapons)
• Whip: Increase base damage to 1d6 & enable offhand wielding

While greataxe would still slightly weaker than greatsword, we could give half-orcs weapon focus (greataxe) as bonus feat to make both more attractive (may require hak pack). Also, should this become possible at some point, make crossbows work with arcane archers.

[sagil]

As an alternative to increasing damage, some weapons could be balanced via special abilities. Unfortunately weapon reach can't be set as far as I'm aware, but e.g. for whip attacks granting automatic disarm attempt on hit (+enabling off-hand usage) would make them viable without competing (unreasonably) as a DPS weapon. Or they could get +2 attack for being hard to parry.