Errors from previous editions which got repeated.

It's small and unimportant, but I'm still frustrated that they've continued the "Falchion is a great-scimitar" thing. A falchion is a french weapon that is SPECIFICALLY one-handed, and sits somewhere between an axe and a sword in terms of use -- it's effectively a war-machete.

Where they got the idea that this would be a good name for a massive curve-bladed sword, I will never know.

I hate rpgs getting weapons wrong. I'm no expert - but I'm not paid to be.

A scimitar is almost exactly the same as a sabre, cutlass and broadsword(not curved - or much along with the backsword).

A falchion type weapon from the same area as a scimitar is called a shamshir.

Oh, and the one that really bugs me:

Claymore means greatsword and the D&D greatsword is a claymore. The sword on the front of Claymore whiskey is a basket hilted broadsword. (Stuff wiki. A near quote from a sword collection book says "when buying antique swords don't confuse a basket hilted broadsword and a claymore as it displays ignorance." etc, etc and I'm more inclined to believe them.)

A broadsword looks nothing like a fat longsword.

A shortsword is the same thing as a gladius, a short fat tapered stabbing weapon.

A smallsword, closer to what people think a shortsword is, is a shortened broadsword.

D&D is improving, but it isn't quite there yet.
 
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Back to the OP's question (I think)--

A repeated mistake in editions of D&D: Allowing magic items to add to your numerical stats; i.e. +1 Longswords (or +2, +3, etc) or <shudder> a Belt of Strength +4. Magic items simply shouldn't add anything to a numerical statistic, as it always makes equipment too critical to character power. Instead, magic items should have magical powers that expand a PCs options; a sword that can kill rakshasas, for example. Or an axe that causes wounds that don't easily heal. Etc.

I agree. I could live with up to +3 (+1 per tier), but I have no problem with damage increase such as a magic dagger that does 1d6. Problem with that is where do you go when you have a d12 weapon.
 


Second thing would be big sweeping skill bonuses. Sure we don't have the +30 jump rings anymore, but a +6 diplomacy item is still ripping the gap open between the haves and have nots when it comes to skills.
Does it really, though? It seems to me like the 'haves' are so far ahead already that the extra +5 or so hardly makes any difference. Somebody who trains and focuses is going to almost never fail anyway.

I always thought powerful skill bonus items (like, say, an elven cloak) are more to help make the untrained guy decent, rather than to make the awesome even more awesome.
 

Does it really, though? It seems to me like the 'haves' are so far ahead already that the extra +5 or so hardly makes any difference. Somebody who trains and focuses is going to almost never fail anyway.

Key word here being almost. So might as well go all the way and make it auto-success. ;)

I always thought powerful skill bonus items (like, say, an elven cloak) are more to help make the untrained guy decent, rather than to make the awesome even more awesome.

Maybe it should well work that way. But in reality, it is more common for people to be stacking bonuses from all different sources together. That was the case in 3e, and it is still possible in 4e (albeit to a smaller extent).
 

A scimitar is almost exactly the same as a sabre, cutlass and broadsword(not curved - or much along with the backsword).

A falchion type weapon from the same area as a scimitar is called a shamshir.
A shamshir is a scimitar; it's just a different language (persian versus persian-filtered-through-italian). Saber (or sabre), shamshir, scimitar, talwar, saif... they're all the same thing. They're all essentially saber-shaped weapons: a blade with a radical curve. It would not be inaccurate to put the katana in the same general weapon family, but it is generally seen separately due to having developed completely independently.

A falchion could be seen as going in that group, I suppose. My understanding is that a falchion is used more like an axe than a sword, where scimitars are used more along the lines of a draw-cut, as a slashing rather than hacking weapon. Certainly you COULD hack with a scimitar ("use of a particular weapon" is an area of great argument), but it's really made for cutting rather than chopping.

A cutlass is not necessarily a curved blade, though some were; some were straight-blade short swords. I would tend to just call that a short sword for game terms, since none of them were really long enough to carry the radical curve that defines a full saber. (Definitions get a little loose, obviously, since the smiths weren't exactly trying to make sure they stayed inside certain limits. These are general statements.) A slight curve to the cutting edge doesn't make it a saber.

I... don't even know what you were saying about broadswords. The only actual broadsword I know of is the scottish basket-hilt, which is a straight blade and couldn't even remotely be considered a saber/scimitar. Unless you're referring to an arming sword (or "side sword") which is what D&D calls a longsword, and isn't significantly curved either. (This is another spot of confusion -- a longsword in the real world is a big two-hander, like a bastard sword or claymore...)

Claymore means greatsword and the D&D greatsword is a claymore. The sword on the front of Claymore whiskey is a basket hilted broadsword. (Stuff wiki. A near quote from a sword collection book says "when buying antique swords don't confuse a basket hilted broadsword and a claymore as it displays ignorance." etc, etc and I'm more inclined to believe them.)
Claimh mor just means "long sword", or "great sword" if you're so inclined. But yeah, historically a claymore is a massive two-hander.

Claymore Whiskey is using the later, confused definition of claymore, which comes from British confusion over what the word meant. They started using the term for any scottish sword, which is how it wound up as a term for a basket-hilt broadsword, which is the other quintessentially scottish blade.

A broadsword looks nothing like a fat longsword.
Quite honestly there's no such thing as a broadsword in real life. Everything that would be called a "broadsword" just falls under "longsword" in D&D terms.

A shortsword is the same thing as a gladius, a short fat tapered stabbing weapon.

A smallsword, closer to what people think a shortsword is, is a shortened broadsword.
I dunno. A gladius or xiphos is more what I think of as a short sword, with a fairly broad blade. A smallsword is more along the lines of a rapier, I would think.

It's kind of confusing because some people say "shortsword" when they mean "arming sword", which is a longsword in D&D terms. Confused yet?
 

Characters in D&D tend towards specialization. The guy with the awesome Stealth is going to want the elven cloak because he wants to be as awesome as he could possibly be. And the party wants him to have it because he's their scout (they don't send the paladin in plate armor to scout) and because it gives him a slightly higher chance to Sneak Attack. Only when he gets a better elven cloak will he give the old one as a hand-me-down to the paladin. But the paladin receiving it might not want it, because they've got a cloak of resistance or something that improves their toughness...

-- 77IM
 

Maybe it should well work that way. But in reality, it is more common for people to be stacking bonuses from all different sources together.
I'm just saying I think there's a diminishing returns thing there. A guy who succeeds on a 15 or better gets great benefit from a +5 item. A guy who succeeds on a 6 really doesn't get nearly as much of a bump from the same item.

And of course, if that guy succeeds on a 3, he's just wasting his time with a +5 item.
 

I remembr when getting a +3 sword was so awsome you braged for weeks...and only 1 or two characters I ever played ( out of dozzens, maybe even 100) ever had such a mighty weapon as +5 sword...

... which was entirely up to your DM. The game system didn't mandate magic items one way or another: the closest it came was the random chart, which wasn't anywhere close to being mandatory.

For every player like you, there were players who wallowed in piles of discarded holy avengers.
 

GMforPowergamersI remembr when getting a +3 sword was so awsome you braged for weeks...and only 1 or two characters I ever played ( out of dozzens, maybe even 100) ever had such a mighty weapon as +5 sword...

Then came 3e...and they decided that +X was only half of the enchantment and put all those otehr things in...and noone had +3 swords...they had +1 shocking icy swords...

I've been playing D&D for 30+ years, and I don't remember that. In fact, going back to 1Ed, plusses and other enchantments were the norm.

Were there weapons that were naked +1s, +2s and +3s? Sure.

But even the "lowly" Flame Tongue was +1, +2 vs regenerating creatures, +3 vs undead and +4 vs avians (or some such- I'm working from memory).

The creators of 3Ed didn't invent that design, they just codified it.
 

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