Just a couple ideas I'm tossing around... Thoughts?

[JuliusCreed]

First, a new idea for Weapon Proficiencies.
Any WP taken as an OCC or OCC Related Skill receives an extra +1 bonus to any one of the WP's applicable bonus categories, ie Strike, Parry, Throw, Rate of Fire, Entangle and Damage. This is a one-time bonus based on the idea that a character who takes a skill as an OCC Related skill is essentially better at performing it than someone who takes the same skill as a Secondary, hence the applicable 'education bonus' characters get with OCC and OCC Related skills. However, this bonus DOES NOT apply to WP Lance or WP Longbow. (OCC Specific WP's with their own separate bonuses) Obviously does not apply to WP Paired Weapons. May be applied to WP Archery (and thus technically to WP Longbow, but NOT the OCC Longbowman specific WP Longbow)

Second, the above idea inspired this...
Weapons Expert (a special ability for the Mercenary Fighter OCC)
Mercenary Fighters in the PFRPG are what many call a solid, baseline OCC. Nothing too fancy, just a guy with a sword, a handful of skills and a lot of guts. But, when compared to the steady paycheck of the Soldier, Guild privileges for the Thief and especially the Spirit Strike of the Paladin, how can a lowly Mercenary measure up? Here's how.
At levels 1, 5, 10 and 15 the Mercenary selects one of his Weapon Proficiencies and adds a +1 to ALL of it's applicable bonuses. He may choose the same WP or a different one with each new bonus. This bonus can only be added to a WP selected as an OCC or OCC Related Skill.

Questions? Comments? Other input? Discuss as you see fit.
Good luck and great gaming!

[Library Ogre]

I'd be inclined to say that the bonus from WP is for Men at Arms only... priests and wizards don't get it.

For Weapons expert, why only mercenary fighter?

[Franko Tyrador]

not a bad idea... helps balance out the PC. but, i think some ppl will get to many WP skills and wont have any other worth-while skills.

[Veknironth]

Well, I quite like the OCC related bonus and wonder if it shouldn't be even more. Everyone knows that you put the WP's and Physical skills as secondary so as not to lose out on those percentage bonuses. I also agree with Mark that it should be limited to Men at Arms classes. The idea is that learning magic and scholarly arts takes time and attention so they shouldn't be as good at the martial skills as people who spend their time mastering those.

For the Weapons expertise, I do like it. It gives the old Merc something additional to help balance it out against the other OCCs that are "mercenary + some other bonuses".

-Vek
"Wasn't there a Rifter Article about weapons expertise?"

[kiralon]

It does sound like a good idea, mercs ran the gamut of skill level so id also let them choose to get bonuses in the rogue skills they can take instead if they preferred to go that way.

In second ed I put a lvl 5 limit on secondary skills and you had to take the skill a second time to continue past 5.

[ShadowLogan]

For management purposes I think I would go with the +1 to all of the applicable bonus categories at level 1 for WP instead of select one applicable category.

I do agree it gives a difference between taking the skill as a OCC/Related/Secondary. Though I wonder if OCC should add something above the Related in terms of bonuses. (if this was Rifts maybe using WP: Sharpshooting or a fork of it for OCC, but PF...)

The main counter point I could see is that OCC and Related do not always receive a skill bonus (and not just WP or applicable physical skills), example the Knight OCC (pg85-7) as the Horsemanship: Knight skill doesn't receive a bonus, and Medical and Physical, and Wilderness Related Skills don't get any skill bonus.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Merc Option.

[JuliusCreed]

Thanks for the input so far. Great stuff from everyone as always. Thus, with the input received, the first edit!

Weapon Proficiencies received/chosen as OCC skills (ALL OCC's) or OCC Related Skills (Men of Arms ONLY) receive an additional +1 bonus to any 1 applicable bonus category of the WP.
Input on this ranged a bit.
Library Ogre, you had a pretty valid point about only Men of Arms getting the bonus. At the same time, it seemed pretty cheap to think that some wizards out there aren't smart enough to learn to swing a sword well enough to defend himself just in case. Or at least learn how to use that staff of his as more than a walking stick. Thus, the Non-Men of Arms apply the bonus only to the OCC Skill WP's. And before anyone asks, yeah PCC's are Non-Men of Arms.
Vek, you hit it right on the head... "...you put the WP's and the Physical skills as secondary so as not to lose out on those percentage bonuses." Well, not anymore.
Logan, sorry but I gotta go with any bonus category of the WP. Too many WP's start with a simple +1 in a single category. Now there's nothing stopping Generic Fighter from increasing his first level skill in WP Sword from a +1 to Parry to a +2 to Parry, but what if he'd rather have a +1 to Parry AND Strike? I think I would, but I can't speak for all so that stays as is.
And Franko, that's just a chance you gotta take. At the same time, if they do so, they only limit themselves by not having those 'other skills' they should have taken instead of a WP.

And since the Weapons Expert idea hasn't really received much beyond praise or uncertainty, I'll leave it as is for the time being. However, Library Ogre to answer your question, I refer you to Vekinroth... "It gives the old Merc something additional to help balance it out against the other OCCs that are 'mercenary + some other bonuses". That is precisely it.
And Logan, if you're not sure about it, try it out and see how it feels. What have you got to lose?

[Veknironth]

Well, I'm with Mark on the non-men-at-arms not receiving additional combat bonuses. I think it's a lot more involved than simply picking up a sword and waving it around. There aren't enough built in differences between MaA and nMaA in 2nd Edition. So, anything that enhances H2H combat should be limited to MaA.

-Vek
"Really, 1E hand to hand is vastly superior to the megaversal 2E style."

[kiralon]

In my games only men at arms get automatic parry, they are the ones that spent the time getting the training and muscle memory while the wizards were messing around with their books, so if a class has spell casting they do not have automatic parry (There are some exceptions of course)

[ShadowLogan]

Logan, sorry but I gotta go with any bonus category of the WP. Too many WP's start with a simple +1 in a single category. Now there's nothing stopping Generic Fighter from increasing his first level skill in WP Sword from a +1 to Parry to a +2 to Parry, but what if he'd rather have a +1 to Parry AND Strike? I think I would, but I can't speak for all so that stays as is.

I'm not sure I agree with the notion of too many WPs starting with a simple single category Megaversally (which might be coloring my view I know). I know they exist, but I think those are the minority (even just for PF2E).

Thinking about the basic concept a bit more...

Modern WP rules from Rifts (RMB-era, HU, N&SS) might provide some other ideas to include/modify for melee/ancient WPs:
-maintenance of the weapon (even ancient weapons need maintenance), an aspect that I don't think gets mentioned (OCC/Related might just be faster or have better results)

-Recognize Weapon Quality used to be a feature of the Modern WPs (Rifts-RMB era, it looks like it was dropped in the RUE-era setup in favor of it being a generic standalone skill), I could see this included for OCC/Related. Or having the WP provides a situational skill bonus to the stand alone skill (not part of the rules) if you take the RWQ skill

-maybe instead of bonus(es) to X(YZ), adapt the old Aimed/Burst/Wild rules for Modern WPs into use by Ancient/Melee, but require the skill to be selected at OCC/Related level, no secondary for it to apply. Something like that could be more beneficial in speeding up combat since you'd be increase damage output if you could "burst" or make an "Aimed shot" that reduces the targets AR rather than just a slight increase to bonuses to strike/parry/ROF/range/entangle/throw

-while not part of Modern WPs, what about other sub-skills like Lore/History for that particular weapon (might be good for RP aspects)

-perhaps adapting WP: Sharpshooting (New West, IINM Trick-shooting gets broken off in some books) to Melee and allowing M&A to spend skill slots (or open WPs) for a bonus attack, initiative bonus (based on PP), Aimed/Called Shot enhancement (no idea off hand), and Trick-shot (some might work as is, some might require creation of new ones). I'm less in favor of this aspect as Rifts requires spending 3 skill slots on top of the WP, so it can be "expensive" for little gain (even in that setting), but it might provide other ideas to include in WP if one is looking to delineate differences between OCC/Related/Secondary selection of the same skill

[Library Ogre]

-Vek
"Really, 1E hand to hand is vastly superior to the megaversal 2E style."

People like to say this, but, even looking over them, I am not convinced. There were more, so a Knight and a Paladin weren't the same, but they weren't terribly unique, partially because there wasn't a lot of levers to make them unique. In a lot of ways, they physical skills added the nominal differences that used to come from H2H skills.