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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 6066006" data-attributes="member: 50304">The issue is the same. Two character builds. One can use Weapon A optimally. The other can use Weapon B optimally. A good game makes it so that they can obtain and use their proper equipment with some manner of parity. It doesn't matter that it makes more logical sense for there to be many more magical melee weapons available than wands and staffs. Saying, "tough luck being an hammer guy," isn't any more acceptable than saying, "tough luck being a wizard."The part you seem to be overlooking is that there is no pressing mechanical need to restrict the loot players end up with if they are balanced. Player wants an ax instead of a sword? The system should support that without being overly punitive like some editions were.No, that's where you're inferring things that I'm not implying.Equivalent weapons should be fungible. If they are balanced it shouldn't matter to the other players or the DM whether Knuckles the 7th ends up with a +1 Longbow or a +1 Crossbow.Not with slashing damage, you couldn't.The arming sword was primarily a peasant-killing implement. In a pinch you could use it as a bludgeon or lever to knock an armored foe over and then as an improved piercing weapon to stab him in the neck if you knocked him senseless. If he had bad armor you might be able to get him under the arm or something.Or you could just use a flanged mace and the appropriate dagger and do a proper job of it. I agree, depending on the definition of "matter." I think the Core game should actively support PCs getting the weapons and armor that fit their character - even when it is just a matter of aesthetics. Whether those solutions are quantum loot (like 4E), broad support for enchanting (3E / 4E), RP-based solutions, mercantile solutions, or something else they should be in the Core game. Then if you want to just roll dice for it and eat what you catch, as it were, that's purely optional for your own enjoyment.I happen to like differentiated weapons and weapon specialties. I don't want obscurity on a percentile dice roll to make some weapons worse than their established mechanics as a matter of rarity, that's all. Hence my desire for different weapons to be balanced to the point of being fungible and the mechanics to support it.As to "vision" weapons, let's just open up Oriental Adventurers and look at the Samurai, especially d20 Rokugan. There's a whole beautiful cultural apparatus in place about inheritance and honor as it relates to weapons. The solution to the looted weapons metric in classic D&D was to acknowledge that a looted +1 Great Ax was completely fungible (balanced) with a +1 enhancement bonus to your grandfather's katana by awakening and empowering the spirit of the blade.Likewise the Book of Nine Swords and even the Boons system in 4E are all examples of great narrative tie-ins for tropes that required alternatives to random loot weapons.- Marty Lund</blockquote>

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