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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9892026" data-attributes="member: 7052563">My friends and I liked to pore over the books and quibble about the fine points of the rules (shocking, I know...), and we quickly noticed that most swords and some polearms were just about the only weapons that actually did more damage against Large sized foes than they did against Small and Medium opponents, and the bigger the sword, the bigger the bonus.  During play we would try to use every fiddly rule advantage we had in order to succeed, because even in early editions of D&D it turns out the answer WAS on my character sheet all along! <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😁" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f601.png" title="Beaming face with smiling eyes    :grin:" data-shortname=":grin:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> But often it was hard to remember stuff like this at the table.  I remember a combat against ogres or giants or something like that, and afterwards we realized that no one, player or DM, had remembered the L size damage rule. We liked the idea of a versatile “hand and a half” bastard sword, and the fact that the name of the sword was what a dictionary would call a “mild oath” did not hurt either, but in practice it seemed to fall between two stools.  Against size S-M foes it was no better than a long sword, and the two hander did more damage against size L.  We also noticed that multiple rules actively punished players who chose obscure weapons.  Between the weapon proficiency system, the elvish racial weapon bonus, the random magic treasure tables, and the loot to be found in TSR modules, we found that short or long swords were always the correct weapon choice if your character class allowed them.</blockquote>

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