Excerpt: Weapons (MERGE)

[Mort_Q]

Ok, I shouldn't have used small long sword in my earlier suppositions.

A short sword perhaps, or dagger most certainly, would have a the keyword small in its description, and could be used by a small character in an identical manner as would a medium character. Same dice, etc.

Is that how people are reading it?

 

[Kordeth]

Haven't the designers explicitly said that feats will not grant new powers? Feats in 4e are supposed to enhance what you can already do, not give you new things to do, or so I thought.

Depends on your definition of "new powers," as we've already seen one feat (Power of Amaunator) that gives the cleric a new way to use his channel divinity ability.

 

[Kordeth]

Ok, I shouldn't have used small long sword in my earlier suppositions.

A short sword perhaps, or dagger most certainly, would have a the keyword small in its description, and could be used by a small character in an identical manner as would a medium character. Same dice, etc.

Is that how people are reading it?

No. Daggers and short swords are neither two-handed nor versatile, so they will not (and do not, check out the DDXP characters) have the "small" keyword. Daggers and shortswords can already be used by Small characters exactly identical to Medium characters, because being Small only affects your ability to wield versatile and two-handed weapons.

Small: This property describes a two-handed or a versatile weapon that a Small character can use in the same way a Medium character can. A halfling can use a shortbow, for example, even though halflings can’t normally use two-handed weapons.

Personally, I think we'll only see this keyword on weapons that are classified as two-handed because of how they're used, not their size or unwieldiness. As the article itself points out, bows would be classed as two-handed weapons, because there's simply no way to fire a bow one-handed no matter how small it is. If there weren't an exception for weapons like shortbows, halflings would, by the rules, be unable to be archers. The small keyword creates the necessary exception for cases like this.

 

[Cadfan]

Haven't the designers explicitly said that feats will not grant new powers? Feats in 4e are supposed to enhance what you can already do, not give you new things to do, or so I thought.

We've seen feats that give new ways to use existing powers (Power of Amanautor) and feats that grant new powers at a reduced strength (multiclassing feats).

I don't know how things will be out of the box. But I'm confident that we will eventually see powers granted by feats. Which powers will be worth granting with feats will be governed by the analysis in my earlier post. Adding new at will powers to a character does not actually increase that character's power level in a meaningful way, IF the rules in my earlier post are followed. That means that doing so at the cost of a feat will not harm the game's balance.

 

[Mort_Q]

No. Daggers and short swords are neither two-handed nor versatile, so they will not (and do not, check out the DDXP characters) have the "small" keyword.

Thanks. Now it becomes clear.

 

[Spatula]

Depends on your definition of "new powers," as we've already seen one feat (Power of Amaunator) that gives the cleric a new way to use his channel divinity ability.

Ah good point, although in that case using any Channel Divinity power "uses up" all the others for the encounter.

 

[Klaus]

Most 2-weapon fighting styles I know of are things like 2 machetes, or 2 butterfly swords, or 2 nunchaku, or 2 sticks, or 2 rope darts. Generally 2 weapons that are considered "small" or "light" and for the most part I think at least the idea with attacking with 2 butterfly swords is to be able to counter attack sooner rather than later, by using 1 to block and the other to strike.

Rapiére/Main-Gauche.

 

[Kaffis]

If that's the standard of the weapon illustrations in the PHB I'll be happy.

Likewise. I want the rapier.

 

[frankthedm]

Uh... high-crit weapons like the rapier and scimitar are actually inferior to other one-handed martial weapons.

Only for the lowest levels. As levels go up in 3E, the weapon damage die mattered much less than the damage bonus. The extra crits more than made up for the slightly reduced damage die, notably with Scimitars / falchions and 2 for 1 Power attack.

 

[Kordeth]

Ah good point, although in that case using any Channel Divinity power "uses up" all the others for the encounter.

Yep. It's worth noting that we haven't seen any feats that give you extra powers yet--Power of Amaunator gives you a new way to use an extant class ability, and the multiclassing feats let you draw one of your power picks from another class's list.