Weapon Mastery

Weapon Mastery (replaced with Weapon Forte in some games) is a gameplay feature in the Disgaea series. It refers to a character's proficiency and experience in the use of each weapon.

How it works
The main rules are established by Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, with each following game making its own changes to them.

Disgaea
Humanoid units get assigned a proficiency ranking from E (lowest) to S (highest) for each weapon, indicating how much Weapon Mastery experience they gain each time they attack with that weapon. This amount doesn't change with the power of the attack or number of targets, only increasing by having an Armsmaster specialist inside your weapon.

When mastery for a weapon reaches certain levels (1, 3, 6, 10, 15 and 20) you learn a corresponding weapon skill. The exception to this is the Staff, which instead of learning weapon skills get various bonuses:


 * Increased spell ranges (at levels 2, 6, 10 and 15)
 * Increased area of effect for spells (at levels 3, 7, 11 and 16)
 * Increase the power of magical skills by 3% per level (capped at 100% bonus).

Weapon Mastery has a maximum level of 255, and the stats you gain from equipping a weapon increase by 5% per mastery level (for a maximum of 1275% bonus).

Disgaea 2
The sixth weapon skill is learned at level 21 (instead of 20), and the Dark Hero Days rerelease added a seventh skill that's learned at level 30. The power increase from Staff Mastery now only applies to spells instead of any magical skill.

While regular weapons still get a 5% boost per mastery level, Magichange weapons only gain 1% instead.

This game has a type of accessory called Weapon Scroll. While a character has one equipped, their proficiency rank for that weapon will become A and their Aptitudes for that weapon's attacking stats will become 120%.

Disgaea D2
When creating a character, it's possible to increase the proficiency rank for any weapon (does not apply to magic-based classes). The bonus damage cap for spells has been increased to 300%, and Weapon Skills also get bonus damage with a cap of 400%. The Cheat Shop adds another way to increase mastery experience gained, being able to apply up to a 1000% multiplier.

The stat gain per level however, has been reduced to 3% (for a max bonus of 765%).

Disgaea 5
Masteries have been added for both kinds of monster weapon, as well as for armor (experience for it is gained by being attacked). The maximum level is now 100, and the stat increase from each new level goes up at certain points rather than staying the same all throughout:


 * 1% for levels 1 to 40
 * 2% for levels 41 to 70
 * 3% for levels 71 to 90
 * 4% for levels 91 to 100

Adding up for a total of 200% stat gain increase at level 100. This stacks additively with Equipment Aptitude if applicable (i.e. 120% ATK aptitude and 20 sword mastery becomes a 140% ATK multiplier on a sword).

Weapon Skills are learned at Mastery levels 1, 3, 7, 15, 25 and 50. Spells don't gain any bonus from Staff Mastery.

Disgaea 6
The system is similar to Disgaea 5, except monster weapons are removed and thus are not affected by Weapon mastery.

Weapon Forte
Disgaea 3 and 4 use a different system called Weapon Forte. In this system, each character class gets assigned a Forte from 1 to 6 for some weapons, indicating up to which tier of that weapon's skills they can learn. Weapon skills within your Forte can be learned at any time simply by purchasing them with Mana.

The only notable change added by Disgaea 4 is that now Unique characters needs to reach a certain level before being able to buy a skill. Even if a character doesn't have the necessary Forte, they can still learn any weapon skill via inheritance through the Class/Chara World.