Blackadder23 wrote:

Are you using house rules? As written, fighters only get a total of 5 weapons mastered (4 if one is grand mastered).

Anyway, the bastard sword is a good choice for grand mastery IMO.
 

*Fixes Original Post*

Oof. I totally thought I was going to get two more weapons at 4th, 8th, and 12th level.

Personally, I started with Bastard Sword and Longbow (My GM ruled Longbow and Composite Longbow to be the same mastery. Luckily the first magic sword we found was an openly rolled +2 Bastard Sword but after seeing the magic item table, it seems like broad/longsword is the best weapon to master because of probability.

That said I'm more interested in versatile weapon combos.

Feels like, bastard sword, comp. longbow, a polearm of some sort, and something blunt. Maybe it's my inexperienced playing the game but I like the -2 penalty to all of your attacks negates the benefits of two weapon fighting.

gizmomathboy wrote:

I think "best", "most versatile" is min-max thinking which is a way to play.

It's a bit more fun to build around an idea or something.

Sure, in my current campaign the NPC Amazonian Fighter has grand mastery in longsword and mastery in longbow. That's partly because she's the NPC from Brazen Bull. At 5th level with that grand mastery she's a wrecking machine in melee. The only better fighter in the group is maybe the 4th level berserker with a two-hand scimitar, but they typically use their +0 broadsword.

However, in a campaign I was a player I had an Amazonian Paladin that had mastery in two-handed sword. Partly for the higher average damage but because I thought it would interesting. Righteous fighter needs a righteous sized weapon :-)

I think system mastery is fine if that's your thing, its not mine though. However, when I get into a game, I think about it sometimes when I'm not playing. That's when I like to munchkin.

For my actual character. I'm considering mastering the lance with my character because I recently read the Hedge Knight by GRRM and the Black Colossus REH and both of those stories feature mounted combat with lances. I rolled soldier/mercenary for my character's secondary skills so it seems fitting that maybe I learned it there. That said, my character is pretty lowborn so I'm also considering asking my Referee about unarmed combat for him.