mrpopstar
Sparkly Dude
Interesting! Hand-and-half is useful to know.Weapon size
• agile (finesse)
• one-hand (medium)
• hand-and-half (versatile)
• two-hand (heavy, reach)
Technically, modern archeological nomenclature for the type of grip. But works better for the size of blade (or other cold weapon), since the same hand-and-half sword blade can be made with either or a one-hand grip or a two-hand grip, depending on the preferred fighting style of the user.
Initially, I labeled the simple small weapon "finesse weapon."
Super simple! I like it.For my stripped down D&D I play with the kids I have simplified weapons even further.
Thrown weapons 1d6 damage, light, finesse, thrown
Light melee weapons 1d8 damage, finesse
Heavy melee weapons 1d10 damage, heavy, versatile
Two handed weapons 1d12 damage, two-handed
When using a two-handed or versatile weapons with two hands then you get a +1 added to damage (so yes, two handed weapons always get this).
One-handed ranged 1d6 damage
Light two-handed ranged 1d8
Heavy two-handed ranged 1d10
I'd love for there to be features associated with weapon choice (e.g. axes are brutal so reroll 1s, swords are precise so critical on 19-20, etc.). Right now, a lot of that is tied up in features elsewhere, but I think it would make weapon choice far more meaningful.I googled across this website describing different kinds of fighting knives.
The analysis is too granular for the goal of elegant simplicity here, but interesting.
It distinguishes between ‘thrust’ (piercing), ‘slash’, and ‘hack’. It suggests the thrust of a knife with a dagger blade deals more damage but with a disadvantage on attack. Thus the dagger is better for an unsuspecting target.
Meanwhile, a knife designed for slash, such as a point-clip or scimitar blade, is better for a fight.
Agreed!For my money, 5e is great, but still has a lot of unnecessary complication. What we need is a tactically rich game without meaningless nuts and bolts. I'd say players agonising over weapons tables is a relatively pointless aspect of character creation, especially as most characters really have only a couple of viable weapon choices.
I'm all for 6th edition having Class-based damage - so, basically the Hit Die idea discussed so far. The player can just pick what goes thematically with their character. As it stands, there are only some sensible weapon choices for any given character, so you're kind of forced into that. Perhaps we would need to give a bonus to two-handed weapons so that there's a meaningful choice between two hand/dual wield and sword/shield.
It would also fix the problem I've seen of newbie players picking terrible weapon choices because they didn't understand the game (and cut down on the advice they need to get from more seasoned players - there's enough for them to learn at the start), and it would reward (or at least, avoid penalising) players who go with specific weapons for RP reasons. Want to have a Rogue that uses daggers? No problem - you're not nudged towards dual-wielding swords to do better damage.
In short, I don't think having lots of different weapon damages adds much meaningful choice to the game, so it should go.
Boiling everything down really does help you see how everything works.Even if switching to class hitdice for weapon damage, I would still want to see things like downsize the hitdice for finesse, reach, and similar. Upsize for two-handed.
So the simplification/systemization in the original post is still useful.
I want some kind of verisimilitude − even if I want an elegant minimalism.
I'd also like to see a downsize in weapon damage dice when two-weapon fighting, and an upsize when two-handed fighting. If you use the fighter's hit dice: two-weapon 1d8/1d8, one-handed 1d10, two-handed 1d12. And if you use the rogue's hit dice: two-weapon 1d6/1d6, one-handed 1d8, two-handed 1d10. There would actually be an increase in damage output for fighters when two-weapon fighting, and an increase in damage output for rogues when fighting two-handed. (If you decreased the barbarian's hit dice to 1d10 and instead offered some other HP booster as a class feature it would all work out.)