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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6843781" data-attributes="member: 996">You do have the free hand to use a shield, grab, or whatever.   Sure, but D&D has an all-or-nothing model for now, with STR being the default, and finesse letting you use DEX, instead.  In reality, I assume, both strength and agility (among other things) matter.  Games have gone there in the past, IIRC, the in RuneQuest, for instance, STR, DEX, & INT all added to your attack % with melee weapons, as did two other stats, Size, and Power (your mystical connectedness to the universe).  Most of them only added a little if they were very high, with STR and DEX being the more significant.  With bounded accuracy, obviously, that would be madness.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  I've toyed with the idea of some feature or weapon quality letting the wielder add both STR & DEX (or two other specific stats), up to a maximum of +5, which would encourage less Single-attribute specialization in classes like the fighter.  It would, though, make it easy to get a +4 or +5 to hit out of the standard array at low level, and so decrease the optimization impact of ASIs (and bonus ASIs are one of the fighter's 'things') unless feats are in play, then it'd have the opposite effect, making taking a feat at 4th while starting with a max stat bonus to attacks more doable.Obviously the shield helps with defense.  A reach advantage is both offensive & defensive, isn't it?  Again, both offense & defense, though clearly more on offense.Of course.  D&D is very abstract that way.  Maybe +1 AC when used one-handed, and +1 to hit when used two-handed would cover it?  I'd like something more interesting than flat bonuses, myself, but that'd model what you describe in a preponderance of the evidence kind of way, and it's a clear choice, that synergizes with the option of a shield one-handed, and the larger damage die 2-handed.  Defense style already gives a +1 AC, so there's a stacking danger, there, and +1 AC is a big deal since AC currently scales only with DEX and gear.  It might be desireable to phrase it in a way that doesn't stack with Defense style (then again, the only ones who get two styles that I recall are Champions, and it's not like they're in danger of dominating the game as it is).</blockquote>

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