Why is bigger always better?

Kzach · Jul 14, 2011

One of the things that has always bothered me about D&D and many other systems I've delved into, is the pervading assumption that bigger weapons do more damage. Reality seems to contradict this assumption.

Take daggers as a for instance. Daggers and knives are exceptionally lethal weapons used throughout history and across vastly disparate cultures because they are just so damned effective. And yet, they are always at the bottom of the lists in terms of damage output.

This has, in turn, lead to 'superior' weapons being ridiculously large and unwieldy to the point of ineffectiveness. I give you the fullblade as a primary culprit. There is simply no way that this weapon would be used by any sane person either on a battlefield or in single-combat. A knife wielder would kill them before they'd have even drawn the thing. And yet here we are, with it being one of THE premier weapons of the system.

So where do we go from here? Is this a sacred cow now? Is there a way to step back from this Abyss? Do you even care?

Ulrick · Jul 14, 2011

Size really doesn't matter, its what you do with it.

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It game terms, I think its an argument of realism vs. abstraction. Daggers and Greatswords are deadly weapons. Greatswords can cut through armor easier, daggers can slip into chinks in the armor better. Either way, the person is wounded or killed.

Of course, in Holmes OD&D, every weapon did only 1d6 damage. And that didn't seem realistic so weapons got varying damage values.

So how realistic do you want your daggers to be?

RangerWickett · Jul 14, 2011

A friend of mine had an interesting story, about a murder case his dad investigated.

There had been a break-in, and the home owner was killed. The victim was a huge guy, 6-foot-6, played basketball. He'd been stabbed multiple times in the chest, groin, face, and arms, plus some in the back, and the angle suggested the attacker was a foot shorter. There was a knife holder in the kitchen with a empty slot for a short knife that could have caused the wounds. But the weird thing was that there were these truly gigantic gashes in the walls and ceiling, all over the place, from the bedroom to the kitchen to the living room where the body was found.

After looking around, my friend's dad noticed an empty display mount in the homeowner's bedroom. He asked the neighbors, and they said the guy was kind of a nerd, and the display had been for a sword, something like 4 feet long.

Apparently the owner had heard the break-in, grabbed his sword, and then chased the burglar to his kitchen, swinging wildly, tearing slices out of his walls, and completely failing to hit the guy. The burglar reached for a weapon, pulled out a 4-inch steak knife, and stabbed the owner. The owner fell back, continuing to swing and smashing up his house, but apparently never hitting the burglar, who kept stabbing the man until he died. Then the burglar ran away, stealing nothing except the steak knife, and the longsword.

Gardukk · Jul 14, 2011

RangerWickett said:
A friend of mine had an interesting story, about a murder case his dad investigated.

There had been a break-in, and the home owner was killed. The victim was a huge guy, 6-foot-6, played basketball. He'd been stabbed multiple times in the chest, groin, face, and arms, plus some in the back, and the angle suggested the attacker was a foot shorter. There was a knife holder in the kitchen with a empty slot for a short knife that could have caused the wounds. But the weird thing was that there were these truly gigantic gashes in the walls and ceiling, all over the place, from the bedroom to the kitchen to the living room where the body was found.

After looking around, my friend's dad noticed an empty display mount in the homeowner's bedroom. He asked the neighbors, and they said the guy was kind of a nerd, and the display had been for a sword, something like 4 feet long.

Apparently the owner had heard the break-in, grabbed his sword, and then chased the burglar to his kitchen, swinging wildly, tearing slices out of his walls, and completely failing to hit the guy. The burglar reached for a weapon, pulled out a 4-inch steak knife, and stabbed the owner. The owner fell back, continuing to swing and smashing up his house, but apparently never hitting the burglar, who kept stabbing the man until he died. Then the burglar ran away, stealing nothing except the steak knife, and the longsword.

To be fair, a sword is a great deal harder to learn to use than a knife. Couple that with pure luck and the fact that most swords today are just for display and not actually meant to be used for swinging at people and you've got quite a different situation.

Still, that's pretty messed up.

I think a lot of it boils down to how abstracted combat is in RPGs.

JRRNeiklot · Jul 14, 2011

Yes, historically knights on horseback charged into battle wreaking havoc with their trusty daggers. Sadly, the invention of the much easier to wield thumbtack quickly relegated the dagger to the dustbin of history. The thumbtack wielders, mounted upon their vicious wiener dogs went on to conquer most of the known world.

Kzach · Jul 14, 2011

JRRNeiklot said:
Yes, historically knights on horseback charged into battle wreaking havoc with their trusty daggers. Sadly, the invention of the much easier to wield thumbtack quickly relegated the dagger to the dustbin of history. The thumbtack wielders, mounted upon their vicious wiener dogs went on to conquer most of the known world.

You might want to look into the history of mounted weaponry. Almost universally, the weapons chosen were SMALLER than what a person would wield on foot. One of the most popular mounted weapons for a knight was a mace which was little bigger than a common household hammer and yet was devastating when wielded from horseback.

Kaodi · Jul 14, 2011

I think the moral of the story is that if you are going to collect weapons, you should understand them well enough to know which ones are meant for indoors fighting, hehehe...

Banshee16 · Jul 14, 2011

A sword takes a lot of training by comparison to a knife. In the close confines of a house, it might be a little difficult to swing effectively.

But check out the trailer for Ironclad. How many knives can do what they've got swords doing in there?

When it comes down to it, some people die after being stabbed once by a knife. Other people survive getting stabbed 10 times. How effective a particular weapon is may be partly due to chance.

Scarred Lands had an interesting variant rule that helped represent the fact that smaller weapons like daggers have a speed advantage. Small weapons resulted in the iteration for multiple attacks being 4 instead of 5...Thus a fighter with a dagger would have +20/+16/+12/+8/+3 instead of +20/+15/+10/+5. A larger weapon would have iterations of 6, I think. So +20/+14/+8/+2.

I've always thought that makes sense. In fact, it's one of the things that was hinted at in the lead up to 3E, but doesn't appear to have made it into the rules.

Banshee

Lancelot · Jul 14, 2011

#1: Heroic fantasy, guys. Conan looks much better posing with the obligatory Nubile Maiden (TM) while holding a 5-foot greatsword or battleaxe... rather than a 4-inch knife.

#2: As JRRNeiklot noted above, not many daggers on the field of battle in real history.

#3: Daggers may be dangerous, but there are plenty of stories of guys getting stabbed dozens of times and living. There aren't many stories of guys surviving 12+ direct hits from a katana. Daggers don't have a lot of immediate stopping power, and they have poor reach. Especially when fighting non-human opponents. In a hypothetical situation where I'm fighting an enraged rhino (or an ogre), I'd rather have a sword or a spear. A dagger is only going to tickle it. Going historical again, you didn't go boar-hunting with a knife (generally speaking).

...which, I guess, boils down to the fact that if you're playing D20 Modern or some system where most of your opponents are human or smaller... sure, make daggers deadlier. But if you're playing classic D&D, you've got to account for the fact that many of your opponents are Really Big, or have a lot of reach, or have atypical physiology (e.g. you'd want an axe or a sword against a skeleton/zombie, rather than a dagger).

AeroDm · Jul 14, 2011

In addition to the abstraction of combat is the abstraction of hit points. Not every blow from a dagger is 1d4 damage piercing the rib cage and into the vital organs. A lot of the attack's "damage" comes from the effort to dodge, wheel, deflect the momentum into a bruise, or whatever. A greatsword takes much more effort to dodge and deflect than a dagger. Once that effort is exhausted (i.e. reducing you to 0 HP), it seems they are both equally effective at starting you on the path to death.