2nd Edition Weapon Speeds - Anyone Else Miss Them?

[dead_radish]

I miss being able to play a knife fighter... in 3rd ed its pointless... I tried it once and the other players thought I was out of my mind and useless.

Well, that really makes sense - have you ever seen someone with a knife go up against someone with a medium sized weapon? All things being equal, the medium weapon is gonna win out. Even if the sword fighter is slighly less agile, and a bit slower, they tend to win out.

I'd also argue you could still easily play a knife fighter - ftr 4/rog X. Weapon focus/Spec. Dagger. Weapon Finesse dagger. Flanking, bluffing, tumbling, feinting. Sneak attacks.

Just not as a pure fighter.

 

[Corinth]

How messed up is it that you can find a game mechanic offensive?

Weapon speeds rarely take into account how a weapon is actually used, thus providing a false result that adversely impacts the way that the game plays. This makes the game suck, which means that it isn't fun, and I find that to be offensive. Games shouldn't suck.

 

[jgbrowning]

Re: Re: nope

Your experience seems atypical. I've seen many polearms used, both by PCs and NPCs. The advantages of reach are quite significant, and useful enough to make polearms very attractive as weapons, especially for individuals who gear their characters towards taking advantage of those benefits.

i've always seen polearms used as a first attack then drop and pull out a real weapon just because they cant be used at 5' and there's no way to prevent an opponant from closing to 5' with a polearm as there are in RL.

my experiences are always atypical

joe b.

 

[Storm Raven]

Re: Re: Re: nope

i've always seen polearms used as a first attack then drop and pull out a real weapon just because they cant be used at 5' and there's no way to prevent an opponant from closing to 5' with a polearm as there are in RL.

So, you can't take a 5' step to put yourself in position to use your polearm again? You can dictate the flow of the battle by positioning yourself in such a way as to not only be able to deal with your current opponent, but control the movement of other potential opponents.

Besides, among the most interesting uses I've seen for polearms are to trip (with a guisarme) or disarm (with a ranseur) your opponent or sunder his weapon (with a glaive usually) with your AoO when he closes. Kind of makes the fact that they have closed on you not that useful when they don't have their weapon. Those seem like good ways to stop your opponent from effectively closing to within 5'.

 

[barsoomcore]

Re: Re: Re: nope

i've always seen polearms used as a first attack then drop and pull out a real weapon just because they cant be used at 5' and there's no way to prevent an opponant from closing to 5' with a polearm as there are in RL.

Yeah, I think there should be a feat to allow you to use a 10' reach weapon at 5' as well -- maybe a move-equivalent action to switch ranges. The idea that you can't, for example, use a naginata against someone right next to you is a little silly.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

Re: Re: Re: Re: nope

Yeah, I think there should be a feat to allow you to use a 10' reach weapon at 5' as well -- maybe a move-equivalent action to switch ranges. The idea that you can't, for example, use a naginata against someone right next to you is a little silly.

Quintessential Monk has one, specifically to address the fact that most "eastern" style polearm forms (fe; Kwan-dao, Monk's Spade) are designed to teach the wielder to fight at both short and long range.

I've also seen a few PrCs floating around that also give reach and close in fighting ability with polearm weapons.

As to the original question: I'm SO glad that speed factors are gone. They were cludgy and just plain nonsensical.

Making a dagger unilaterally "faster" than a longsword is silly, as it emphasizes only one factor of what makes a weapon speedy, the weight, while disregarding all the other factors; meaning length of blade, technique, etc.

A dagger fighter is still perfectly viable as a concept without the benefit of artificial speed increases.

Patrick Y.

 

[John Douglas]

I still play 3.5 (kind of 3.6 with all the adjustments I've made) and I use weapon, armour and size mods to an initiative. it's quite easy once you figure it out. It makes the game so much more interesting. The combat gains depth and it's not just the guy with highest dex who goes first every round although he still tends to have the lowest mod. d20 initiative die is way better than d10 was as well.

 

[Blue]

I enjoyed those rules and if I was doing a crunchy combat-minigame RPG I'd have weapon recovery time as well as minimum reach be really important.

But for 5e I like how fast it runs, and I'm willing to sacrifice to keep it that way.

 

[Salamandyr]

No, I don't miss them. Sean K Reynolds has put the reasons why speed facotrs are silly for 3E rather well:

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/weaponspeeds.html

blocked at work, so I can't verify, but if I recall this correctly, Sean K Reynolds buried speed factors first by misrepresenting how initiative worked in 2nd edition.

Up until 3rd edition, intentions for a round were called before initiative was rolled each round. In that context, speed factors, reach, and other factors that you declare in your intentions, completely make sense in affecting priority of action.

3rd Edition turns that on its head--not necessarily in a bad way; plenty of tables already let people declare their action at their turn in the initiative order. But that was never RAW, and that house rule made a lot of things other than just speed factors not work correctly.

Myself, I like speed factors, though the more I learn about fighting with weapons, the more I learn that a lot of them weren't sensible.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Don't miss them in the slightest. D&D is already an abstraction so why add something as arbitrary as perceived 'speed'? This is fantasy combat, not EMMA.