Nail said:
Hmmmm. That may be true, but the result isn't simulation. It's squashing the concept completely.
If that's your goal, why not just come out and say it?
You mean like when I said, "I have [banned it], but mostly because it fails a versimultude test, not because I think its particularly unbalancing."
What part of 'banned from my game' is not saying that I'm squashing the concept completely? I believe I implied in the post that you referred to that the list represented what I'd do if I was doing something less than actually squashing the concept completely.
And to be perfectly frank, that list doesn't squash the concept completely. It does make the concept unappealing, especially compared to reliable weapons like a a staff, a bill hook, or just plain old sword and board, but it doesn't squash it. I could still if I wanted run an NPC under those rules provided that I didn't really care about optimizing the NPC, but rather cared about the cinematic effect of a spiked chain wielder and I set the stage in a way that favored the chain as a weapon. That is to say, if the NPC doesn't have allies in melee, and he's operating in a fairly open space with a level floor, and for whatever reason he's probably going to be ready for the PC's, then most of the problems I listed with the weapon become managable.
So more to the point, I'm squashing the weapon as an adventurer's weapon because its not suited to be one. And just to be understood on this, I would do my best to squash any other weapon which seemed ill-suited to adventuring, even if it did exist as a weapon in my game. A good example would be the pike, which exists in my game as an exotic reach weapon with a reach that is beyond that of ordinary pole arms (15'). But its pretty darn squashed as an adventuring weapon because the darn thing is 18' long, and I wouldn't even allow a feat that let you threaten adjacent squares with it and I'd strongly discourage any player that wanted to be a 'cool pike wielder' from following that concept. However, just because it isn't suited to adventuring with and its got lots of problems as an adventuring weapon doesn't mean that it couldn't be wielded in the right circumstances. (Fortunately, the pike is an actual effective battle weapon and not a stagecraft weapon designed mostly to look cool when wielded, so this has never been a problem.)
I think this ties back to another thread I'm participating in about now, which basically asks the question, "How would you implement firearms in your [sword & sorcery] game?" In that thread, I suggested that if I did want to implement musketry, I'd have a reload time of between 4-20 full round actions depending on the period of musketry I wanted to immulate. Several commentators in that thread responded, "Well, what would be the point of that?", since that would they suggest (quite correctly) render musketry a rather unappealing option after the first few levels of play compared to specializing in some other weapon.
The answer is basically, "I'm not interested in options for the same reasons you are." My goal in introducing firearms would not be to render them balanced against other options available as weapons. My goal would be to give the player some feeling for what a musket is like and what role it had in the society of the time in the context of a game which was also classic adventure fantasy. I would note in that context, that heroic figures from the age of musketry - say Zorro, the 'Three Musketeers', or even Kirosawa's 'Seven Samurai' -generally weren't know primarily for thier ability to wield muskets even as and despite the fact that firearms were increasingly dominating warfare of the age. It just may be that a weapon which is suited to a hero is not one suited to some other role in the story, which maybe in part why ancient heroes (real and fictional) again and again return to swords. If I had muskets in the game, I think I'd rather have the characters and players experience the sort of angst reguarding the existance of firearms that a movie like 'Seven Samurai' is steeped in. Musketry is about the diminishment of the heroic, not just another peice of it.
An extreme case of this 'versimilitude issue' in my games is the disappearance of the monk from the class list. Not because I think the monk broken - in fact its probably somewhat underpowered - but because the idea of a guy fighting barehanded against weapons and towering monsterousities of hide and horn on purpose (and not as a last resort) seems just stupid to me. Why? Because in the real world, if you are Bruce Lee with bare hands and I'm wimpy old +1 BAB unatheletic me, but I have a sword, you are going to run away because - being Bruce Lee - you know just how much the fight is in my favor. And my point is that while my game isn't even close to totally grounded in the real world (in the game, the guy playing Bruce Lee easily disarms me and stabs me with my own sword), its somewhat more closer to the real world Bruce Lee than it is the in the movie Bruce Lee compared to say most games you might see run.
