Exotic weapons

Exotic weapons are just plain weird weapons that you need a special feat in order to wield. This category was introduced in Dungeons and Dragons third edition, where it mostly referred to weapons of asiatic origin, or a few truly strange inventions like the Orc double axe. See the gallery for some examples.

D&D 3.x

In D&D 3rd ed and D&D 3.5, feats were required for an exotic weapon to be used without penalties. Certain classes, such as the Monk or the Ninja, got automatic proficiency with some of them (such as kamas or nunchucks) but not all of them, where as certain prestige classes (Exotic Weapon Master, duh) got proficiency with a LOT of them. Some weapons were good (between reach and a variety of trip and disarm bonuses, the spiked chain was one of the best weapons in the game), some were bad (whips just straight up SUCKED, except the Scorpion-tail whip, found in the supplement Its Hot Outside due to what MUST be a typo that managed to dodge errata) and most were just okay (kamas were kind of a different-looking shortsword). On the whole, it wasn't considered a good idea to use a feat to get one of these unless it was a prereq for something better or a special part of a build (such as the chain-tripper), since many were literally no better than martial weapons.

Pathfinder

Like a lot of things from 3.x, exotic weapons got smoothed out a little. Aside from some minor examples ( the spiked chain getting nerfed back to the stone age for its ubiquity in 3.5 is a common target for attack), most exotic weapons are superior versions of ordinary ones, with either higher damage or better crit ranges, compensated by the extra resources necessary to use them. Those that didn't (like whips) were just moved over to the martial column.

D&D 4

Generally, like Pathfinder, 4e gave exotic weapons better combinations of traits than ordinary ones. However, the changes to the combat system also made them much less helpful, particularly the removal of crit ranges/multipliers.

D&D 5

5th edition no longer has exotic weapons- instead it mentions them as different versions of normal or martial weapons, which makes sense because that's what they were half the time in other editions anyway. In particular, nunchucks are mentioned as clubs, kamas are mentioned as sickles, and the spike chain is probably the whip (but since they got rid of tripping in 5e it doesn't really matter anymore). This is most likely for the better, as now the average weeaboo can't claim that "Only I can use my weapons" since they're just slightly adjusted versions of normal ones, and people who want to throw in something different from usual Western flavored weapons in a less-offensive way can without gimping themselves.

Gallery

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