Excerpt: Weapons (MERGE)

[Majoru Oakheart]

Not when there's feats, powers, etc, which require specific weapons. If a halfling uses a human shortsword as a longsword, can he sneak attack with it?

Halflings are nearly 5 feet tall in 4e. They are just slightly shorter humans. They can use human sized weapons with nearly no problem. It is only the ones that are so big as to be completely unwieldly that they can't use(2 handed weapons).

Humans are the most populous race in default 4e. The world is in a dark age after the last great empire of Humans collapsed a short while ago. That empire crossed most of the world and united all the races for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The Humans were the uniting factor between all the races.

Humans outnumbered Halflings dramatically and Halflings are natural born traders and wanderers. Their culture for a long time has emphasized moving around a lot and not taking route in any one place. They aren't the sort of culture that produces a lot of goods. They mostly buy and sell goods made by others. And the Human weapons seem to work fine in their hands, why spend the effort to make their own when there are so many of them just hidden in caves and buried in the ground from ancient battles and civilizations.

As for the feats thing. It's really simple. Rather than a complicated set of rules on which weapons they can use and which weapons they can't, you point a player at the list of weapons and say "take any of these weapons that aren't two handed."

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

I'm still a bit puzzled as to why you wouldn't take high crit weapons all the time.

Only if high crit can be found with all the other good weapon properties. Would you rather have high crit or reach? Or a +3 proficiency bonus rather than a +2?

 

[vagabundo]

As for the feats thing. It's really simple. Rather than a complicated set of rules on which weapons they can use and which weapons they can't, you point a player at the list of weapons and say "take any of these weapons that aren't two handed."

Yey! Keywords FTW...

Divving up the weapons into a few categories make so much sense, each then has powers/feats that can enhance them. So an Ax and shield fighter can be very different than a longsword and shield fighter. This is a change I really really wanted.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

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...)

Meh, if the choice is between:
Longsword: Damage 1d6, prof: +2
and
Handaxe: Damage 1d6, prof: +1, high crit

(as a side note, I've purposefully given wrong numbers here to avoid breaking my NDA, don't over analyze this)

Then it's really a matter of +1 to hit in exchange for 1d6(more at higher levels) damage whenever you roll a natural 20.

Its really a matter of taste.

 

[Lizard]

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...

Who the hell uses random treasure?

You always place items the PCs can use (and that you want in your game). That's why you have a human DM, not a computer.

 

[Enoch]

Two-weapon fighting barely gives an advantage. If it is really as good as some people think, everyone would fight with two weapons.

Musashi's Niten Ichi Ryu was fighting with katana and wakizashi. He suggested practicing (and perhaps using it in real combat a time or two) fighting with two katana to get better at fighting with katana and wakizashi.

On the other hand...

I have no problem with fantasy characters fighting well with two longswords. I do have a problem with everyone getting two attacks with them. This leads to the obvious result of players always attacking twice. When I imagine this in my head...it looks silly. I much rather have two strikes be part of a special move or something, it makes it seem much more fluid (in my head at least).

-Joshua

 

[Wormwood]

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.

"This would be a great place to work if it wasn't for the customers."

 

[Ashardalon]

Halflings are nearly 5 feet tall in 4e.

Last I heard, halflings only grew 1 foot, not 2 feet. They're still supposed to be Small. And halflings, for that matter.

Honestly, the 3.5 system had its warts, especially entering the 1.5-hand weapon territory, and some lack of weapon equivalents in the PHB. Those warts could be fixed, though. No need to rip them out like that in my opinion.

 

[Cirex]

I ask again, because I'm honestly curious: what's the difference between a halfling sized longsword and a normal shortsword? Is there any difference?

The feats that affect one or another. If you got weapon focus : Shortsword, you got it for shortsword only, not for a small sized longsword, even if they are identical.

There's a PrC called Dervish. It's a specialist using dual scimitars (where is the roll eyes smile) but since scimitars were medium weapons, you had a -4 penalty instead of -2. You could always get a small size scimitar and go for dual scimitar with just the -2 penalty of normal/light blade TWF.
Damage was 1d6/1d4.

 

[Propheous_D]

Well 2 Weapon fighting when dealing with long weapons is in reality impractical in combat. The problem with modern society is we have no combat experience and rely solely on heresay and practice. Anyone who has been in a real fight will say that what you do in the ring is VERY different then what you do in the alley against an experienced opponent. However, this being fantasy allows us to have alot of fun with it.

I can say from what little experience I have had fighting with two weapons the counter argument of opening yourself up for attack stands pretty strong. A buckler makes a much better friend then a second weapon in reality.