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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 1328929" data-attributes="member: 697">See, the thing is that you're working from the problem in the wrong direction. You can describe all weapons in that manner. It all comes down to efficiency.The issue as Merric states it is a valid one: how do you talk about weapons defined in terms of size M and S for larger and smaller creatures?3.5 answers that question by giving every weapon a definition at every size, and then providing rules to handle the interactions between creatures of size X and weapons of size Y.I think this is terribly inefficient, and it adds just enough "realism" to the system to make it strange and weird. For example, does a halfling with Weapon Focus receive his bonus for a Large version of his weapon, even though he has to use it two-handed? Isn't that a bit weird? A halfling fighter wields a Small longsword. It deals the same exact damage as a shortsword, and it even weighs the same, but somehow, magically, it isn't the same as a shortsword. It's "balanced" differently. All the weapons now have two damage ratings listed. Assigning treasure is a pain in the butt. In fact, it's so much of a pain that the 3.5 adventures in Dungeon don't do it.So really, the basic problem is this: we've designed a body of game artifacts in reference to creatures of size M and S. We need to now define them in terms of other creature sizes. Do we:A) Complicate the entire system, making things harder for all creatures.B) Keep things as simple as they are for size M and S creatures (including the vast majority of PCs) and create a similar system for different sized creatures?Option B makes the system broader and solves a lot of problems without adding any additional complications for all the human, gnome, and elf characters out there. In fact, its pretty simple to implement.In the DMG, you list a bunch of tables that look like this. I'm stealing Merric's example because I'm lazy:Longsword-Equivalent Weapons:Microblade - Diminuitive - 1d3 - 19-20/x2Midgetblade - Tiny - 1d4 - 19-20/x2Greatsword - Large - 2d6 - 19-20/x2Fullblade - Huge - 2d8 - 19-20/x2Bigblade - Gargantuan - 4d6 - 19-20/x2Whoppingblade - Colossal - 4d8 - 19-20/x2And then you list the specific weapons each class gets by size. Voila. Problem solved, and you no longer have to do any math or anything yourself to figure out what a Huge creature should be toting. The interactions between sizes are all defined by the original rules, and there's no confusion in Dungeon modules about what size a weapon really is. It's pretty easy to create general rules to cover this, too. A creature gets the equivalent weapon equal to its size for each specific weapon given in a character class's list.The key is that if you run a Large character or a Tiny one, things are a bit more complicated. But, since most people aren't doing that, most people don't have to learn a bunch of new rules to handle something that should be relatively simple. This system provides the same end result by treating Large and Huge characters as what they are - exceptions, rather than making things more complicated for *everyone* in an effort to cover all possible situations.</blockquote>

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