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<blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 6065964" data-attributes="member: 50304">This is conflating &quot;different&quot; and &quot;better.&quot; As long as they are equal in objective worth you can treat two different things as if they are fungible from a balance perspective.&nbsp;No. I'm directly opposing your wishes of having weapons matter to everyone. If you want one particular weapon to be head-and-shoulders better than others with regards to absolute metrics including opportunity costs and all that then, yes, we have a situation where you can't please both of us. I think we can probably meet in the middle with a system where weapons matter to a character if the player wants it that way.By definition what one person finds &quot;cool&quot; and &quot;fun&quot; is up to him. If someone can only have their fun by imposing restrictions on others at the table, however, there may be a problem on one side or the other.The logical fallacy of confusing &quot;equal&quot; with &quot;same&quot; is getting in the way. Balance says things should be pretty close to equal equal, all things considered (like weapon complexity, accuracy, damage, two-hand vs. one-hand, light, ranged, rate of fire, etc.). That doesn't make them the same.If your position is authentically that there need to be objectively wrong weapon choices out there (too much cost for too little benefit), well we'll just have to agree to disagree.&nbsp;See, while I try to accommodate that line of reasoning the citation of &quot;weapons matter&quot; in historical context always ruins it for me. Arming swords don't cut plate mail. Long bows (let alone short bows or slings!) don't penetrate high-quality riveted (not show quality or butted mail) chain mail. It can't be able realistic simulation, so it has to be about something else: like tropes, fun, and verisimilitude.I look at game balance consequences from a gamist perspective because realistic simulation is completely out the window in D&amp;D combat - always has been. While it makes sense to consider weapons and armor from a combat perspective (that is their primary function, right) I'm actually probably disproportionately concerned with making sure that the Narrativist interest in style isn't getting lumped with unnecessary penalties on the Game Balance side of things.- Marty Lund</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mlund, post: 6065964, member: 50304"] This is conflating "different" and "better." As long as they are equal in objective worth you can treat two different things as if they are fungible from a balance perspective. No. I'm directly opposing your wishes of having weapons matter [B]to everyone[/B]. If you want one particular weapon to be head-and-shoulders better than others with regards to absolute metrics including opportunity costs and all that then, yes, we have a situation where you can't please both of us. I think we can probably meet in the middle with a system where weapons matter to a character [B]if the player wants it that way[/B]. By definition what one person finds "cool" and "fun" is up to him. If someone can only have their fun by imposing restrictions on others at the table, however, there may be a problem on one side or the other. The logical fallacy of confusing "equal" with "same" is getting in the way. Balance says things should be pretty close to equal equal, all things considered (like weapon complexity, accuracy, damage, two-hand vs. one-hand, light, ranged, rate of fire, etc.). That doesn't make them the same. If your position is authentically that there need to be objectively [B]wrong[/B] weapon choices out there (too much cost for too little benefit), well we'll just have to agree to disagree. See, while I try to accommodate that line of reasoning the citation of "weapons matter" in historical context always ruins it for me. Arming swords don't cut plate mail. Long bows (let alone short bows or slings!) don't penetrate high-quality riveted (not show quality or butted mail) chain mail. It can't be able realistic simulation, so it has to be about something else: like tropes, fun, and verisimilitude. I look at [B]game balance[/B] consequences from a gamist perspective because realistic simulation is completely out the window in D&D combat - always has been. While it makes sense to consider weapons and armor from a combat perspective (that [B]is[/B] their primary function, right) I'm actually probably disproportionately concerned with making sure that the Narrativist interest in style isn't getting lumped with unnecessary penalties on the Game Balance side of things. - Marty Lund [/QUOTE]

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