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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J_D" data-source="post: 1643702" data-attributes="member: 20956">Well, that depends on what kind of character you're playing, or should at least.  If I'm playing a dwarven fighter (and I do and did) he gets an axe, period, regardless of whether the longsword is statistically better or not.  It's a matter of good roleplaying.  Dwarves don't use logswords.  And I don't let equipment stats influence what race I play either; if I decide I want to play d a dwarf fighter, I'm not going to be dissuaded from that simply because a longsword is better than an axe and dwarves don't use longswords.  Character concept comes first, before equipment.  People who let game mechanic statistics influence their character conceps are poor roleplayers, in my opinion.Right.  It doesn't matter to me.  Besides the idea that good roleplayers don't let mechanics influence their character concepts, attempts to balance the game mechanics in this manner often strike me as arbitrary and contrived.  Just for one example, suppose we sit down and examine the comparative physics and history of use of the logsword and battleaxe, and reach a conclusion that one is dramatically better than the other in most objective measures.  In my opinion, as a matter of verisimilitude (which is very important to me) that disparity should be reflected in the game mechanics rather than trying to come up with some false and artificial sense of balance just to make all weapons more or less equally attractive.  To good roleplayers, this won't become an issue.It's an oft-stated principle that "if everyone takes a particular option, it's unbalanced and broken", and I reject that principle as nonsense.  There is a sufficiently wide variety of character concepts and archetypes that there is no such thing as an option that literally everyone will take.  If you restrict everyone to mean, e.g., "everyone playing dwarven fighters", then the options that "everyone" takes (using a battleaxe) are part of the concept and not balance issues.You can have plenty of variety in tactics and aesthetics without trying to contrive an artificial sense of balance.  3rd Ed D&D proves this, as the system provides a great deal of variety in options yet many people complain about this imbalance or that.I'll say again, the only kind of game balance that matters is that the DM can provide challenges appropriate to the group, and other kinds of balance enforced in a game system just annoy me because they're pandering to poor roleplayers.  I know others will disagree, but I'm firm in that conclusion.How the players interact is a matter of player psychology than of game system mechanics.  The DM should give each player the opportunity to participate and contribute and have fun, but that has nothing to do with the game system and it's plainly and simply not possible for any game system mechanic to enforce that.</blockquote>

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