D&D 5E Is the rapier "necessary"?

[TheLoneRanger1979]

While that increases average damage by half a point, it actually cuts your chance of doing maximum damage in half, so it's not a great trade-off.

Whoops! Missed a bit:

That's way too granular for the 5th Ed ruleset. You really don't need to go into that sort of level of detail unless you and your players specifically want to.

A longer, heavier blade will be slower to respond, true. But the reach increase may cancel out the speed decrease in terms of hitting. Compared to a somewhat lighter blade it will build up less speed when it lands a blow, meaning that there is no real difference in damage between them as well.

How about then this decrease of the chance for maximum damage to reflect the slower and heavier blade? So a 2d4 (without the -1 to hit) might actually reflect the one handed use of a long sword better then 1d8 and the true sword (arming) can still have the 1d8 for itself.

Heavy doesn't do this. Two-handed would. At that point you've got a greatsword<snip>

Then we need some optional rule to prevent dual use. How would banning heavy weapons from dual wielding affect the game overall?

As far as I can tell, it's mostly correct. "Longsword" seems to denote swords that are generally used with two hands, although this includes bastard swords as well as the larger obligatory two-handers. It means something like "longer than a normal sword", not "longer than a shortsword" the way D&D tends to use it. Although since 5E merged the longsword and the bastard sword, I think it's close enough to correct now.

True that. And the long sword as a term was never used for the renaissance two handed great swords. So the terminology in 5E is correct (more now then ever before). It's just that this time there is a gap that doesn't cover the one handed blades larger then short swords.