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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 3332168" data-attributes="member: 926">That's already been largely taken care of since 3.5, since it's also a big pet peeve of mine I've paid close attention to it.  Greatswords in 3.5 are 8 pounds, which, while still a bit on the heavy side, are perfectly fine.  Longsowrds are 4 pounds, again a bit heavy for the average, but still well within the realm of reason.My current problem is with shields and shield weights.  There is no way in heck a man could wear a 15 pound solid steel shield in a fight!  No such thing ever existed!  All shields larger than bucklers were wood and leather, with perhaps a bit of metal surfacing or a metal boss in the center.  And 15 pounds is completely ludicrous!  Your arm would fall off if you tried to use that for any length of time.     While I;m at it, bucklers are so far from reality it;s funny.  Of all the shields in the PHB, the only one you can't bash with is the buckler.  Meanwhile, in reality, the shield that was used primarily to punch at an opponents face was... you guessed it... the buckler!And the falchion!  What in the heck is this weapon supposed to represant?   Real world falchions were one handed, heavy chopping blades like over-sized machetes.  They were not two handed scimitars.  If they wanted a two handed scimitar in the PHB, they should have had a two handed scimitar and called it that, and either subsumed the falchion into the longsword, or given it stats comparable to the battle axe.  And last but not least, Max Dexterity Bonus.  It should be higher flat across the board by at least 1 or 2 points.  Full Plate wasn't the turtle shell "if you fall on your back you're helpless" deathtrap that it's portrayed in the popular media.  The weight of plate armor was comparable to modern military packs, and the weight was more equally distributed instead of just bing strapped to the back.  I'm still amazed they didn't include rules for knights needing to be winched unto their horses by cranes, (which I have seen in so many books and encyclopedia it isn't even funny.)  A fully trained knight in full kit was expected to be able to kip up from a prone position on his back, and vault onto his horse.  A Maximum Dexterity Bonus of +1, THAT IS NOT.  Sorry, rant over.  I just get really ticked off when game designers who are writing about medieval styled games don't seem to make even the slightest effort at researching the tome period they are supposed to be modeling.  Only slightly related, I get sick of the ridiculously romantic view of the katana, and Japanese swordsmanship vs European swordsmanship in general.  Europe had just as well developed schools of sword fighting, and just as (if not better!) made swords than Japanese nihonto, and developed them earlier.  What Europe didn't have was a cultural fetish about swords.  Just do a small amount of looking and you'll find German and Italian sword-fighting manuscripts detailing longsword through side-sword and even dagger and wrestling techniques every bit as detailed as kenjutsu and aikido. Even better yet, the stances and techniques of Japanese vs European swordsmanship are so similar it is downright eerie, and if you looked at side-by-side comparisons of the stances you'd think they were translations of the same book.So I guess what my pointless rant is about is that I'd like just a passing nod toward realism in fighting.  Not detailed hit charts or anything like that, I like hit points and abstractness just fine, thank you!  But real weapon and armor and shield weights, accurate portrayal of weapons, and some small kind of recognition of different martial styles (which, actually, I think 3E does with feats just great, and one of my favorite aspects of the game!)Again, sorry for the long rant, I'm just in a sour mood this morning, and as this isn't attacking anyone or anything, I just decided to use this too vent, and maybe illuminate or entertain people a bit with my inane knowledge and opinions <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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