Excerpt: Weapons (MERGE)

[Lizard]

So... why aren't you playing GURPS, which I believe you were doing for 20 years before D&D put in a few sops for the s*mul*tionists?

Actually, mostly Hero. About 75 Hero/25 GURPS. With a few forays into Star Wars D6.

Because half my current players are scared of Hero, and half are scared of GURPS, but they all like D&D.

 

[hong]

Because half my current players are scared of Hero, and half are scared of GURPS, but they all like D&D.

Oh well.

 

[Voss]

To you it's silly. To me it's silly. To the designers and a certain segment of the local populace, it's "thinking too hard about fantasy".

3.5 weapon sizing made perfect sense. Halflings do not wield human longswords two-handed, they wield halfling-sized longswords. The 3.0 system was broken and was fixed; why re-break it for 4e? It does not make sense.

Because people whined about it. Endlessly and at length. It was too hard it was too unrealistic, etc. It looks like they ended up caving to the whiners.

That said... I don't care too much either way. I am a bit disappointed in the article itself, though I like the TWF 'nerf'. There isn't a lot of meat here. The categories are nice to know, I guess, as are the properties, but we knew most of those already. I'm still a bit puzzled as to why you wouldn't take high crit weapons all the time. (Unless you're a sucker, er, rogue, and have to use light blades to use your class abilities and powers...)

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Personally, I'm extremely displeased that they're still using Wayne England for this sort of thing.

I don't particularly care about the artist, I just know I prefer this picture to this one.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The 3.5 rules acknowledged that many campaigns went well beyond core and didn't assume the only small race was halflings, or that there would be no huge or tiny PCs. It made it easy to give frost giants maces and pixies crossbows. 4e seems to be much less flexible.

Yes. 4e concentrates on the core D&D experience. It IS less flexible in order to make the experience for 90% of the players better.

Let's take a look at it from the other point of view. Assume your group never plays races other than the ones in the PHB and all monsters in the game do damage based on being monsters rather that due to weapon type. Now, what purpose would a chart with rules about increasing or decreasing weapon size prove? Wouldn't it just take up space? Now, assume someone wants to play a halfling. Don't you now have to explain the entire concept of small sized weapons to them, which is just another rule to know. Aren't you also restricting them from using a large number of magic items the party finds simply because they aren't small sized? So the DM has to spend extra effort to make sure that the treasure of the enemies contains a fair amount of small stuff.

In an "average" game, tiny, large, and huge PCs cause a large number of problems. Some won't fit down the dungeon corridors of that adventure you made up or purchased. Some are so small so as to fit in that hole you thought no one could get down...and so on.

3.5e was a lot more flexible in exchange for having to memorize and look up more rules. And they were rules that a large number of groups never even used.

 

[AllisterH]

Because people whined about it. Endlessly and at length. It was too hard it was too unrealistic, etc. It looks like they ended up caving to the whiners.

Honestly?

I'm thinking that the added "realism" that the 3.5 weapon size system added to the game wasn't worth the ease of use of the 3.0 system.

For example, while as Lizard pointed out, it is quite true that a longsword designed for humans probably shouldn't be balanced for halflings, the added headache of having to rejigger the treasure table to account for this was never factored in...

You'll notice even though most monsters in the game AREN"T medium sized, the default treasure table gives out treasure assuming that the standard adventurer is medium sized.

 

[neceros]

188 and counting.

Definitely not worth 500 posts... or 200 for that matter.

 

[AZRogue]

Because people whined about it. Endlessly and at length. It was too hard it was too unrealistic, etc. It looks like they ended up caving to the whiners.

Well, I never whined about it, but I much prefer the 3.0 system to what I'm hearing about the 3.5 system. After reading the article I didn't realize that anything had really changed, but now that I see that 3.5 was different, I suppose I'm pleased that they reverted back. Not that I, personally, was really impacted since 99% of the time my players play humans. Still, I would hate to have to take into account whether items I placed in my adventures were HALFLING longswords or ... just shortswords. Since I would have ignored any such needless categorizing, I suppose I'm glad that they didn't do it.

 

[MyISPHatesENWorld]

Again, all of your problems are rendered moot by simply banning halflings. It's the cure to all ills, people!

I thought playing a ranger was the cure to all ills?

 

[hong]

I thought playing a ranger was the cure to all ills?

No, that's the CAUSE of all ills. As evidenced by the website listing 100 alt.rangers, which unfortunately now seems to have been lost to the mists of time.