D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] Weapon size and use

[DWARF]

What I'm wondering is why they couldn't have left things as the are and then offered this new sytem as the variant? It may not make a difference to most people, but as I often play in RPGA events like Living Greyhawk, it will matter if the while Association goes "3.5".

 

[Li Shenron]

What I'm wondering is why they couldn't have left things as the are and then offered this new sytem as the variant? It may not make a difference to most people, but as I often play in RPGA events like Living Greyhawk, it will matter if the while Association goes "3.5".

I think they most wanted to uniform the monsters with the characters. Which is a very good aim, and 3.0 had already done most of the job about it.

But I think the game is still more than 90% of the times played with PC races, after which comes the subraces, then humanoid monsters, and only later creatures with size other than small or medium. And non-player creatures were already working with their "ad-hoc" weapons. The overall motive for the change is very good, it's just that there are fastidious side effects which will happen more often than the benefits.

Many people say the reason was also to help small PC races, but I don't think so. They were working fine, having some difficults with bigger weapons was a fair disadvantage together with reduced strength and speed, compared to the advantages (bonus to attacks and AC and specific racial bonuses).
Besides, with the new rules there are new disadvantages using projectile weapons, which are all scaled down one damage dice step.

The sponsorizing sentence seemed to be that "now your PC can try the big monster's weapon he just looted". I don't think so. If the monster is Large, you can't use its two-handed weapons, and its one-handed weapons (which are two-handed for you) probably have the same damage die as the most similar two-handed weapons of your size, but -2 to attacks.

 

[Lazybones]

You're right in that the new system takes some getting used to (and "unlearning" old terms), but it makes sense to me once you think about it. I mean, I have a gnome rogue and when you consider the relative mass of that character in comparison to a human the idea of using a full-sized light crossbow at a normal ROF didn't make sense. Now it's smaller and does 1d6 instead of 1d8, a fair tradeoff. Plus she'll use a longsword sized and balanced for her (1d6 damage), with a thinner, shorter hilt (smaller hands), instead of a human-forged shortsword... thus the -2 if the human fighter picks it up and wields it makes sense to me as well.

I'll hold off commenting on the disarm/reach thing until I've actually read the books.