Neonchameleon
Legend
Apparently it isn't trivial given how irrelevant your claims are. I hope you're a better computer game playtester than you are at tabletop RPGs.
Ah, here's one of your problems. You think that hit points are equivalent to damage. So when someone is on 1hp they have been seriously hurt despite suffering no penalties in any other form. Damage on a miss makes no sense if you have shock and wound penalties - but AD&D hit points don't have anything else associated with getting cut open to them. Hit points as damage make very little sense. Of course there are many people who'd strongly disagree with Mr. Gygax and myself on this point (Gygax was very clear about this). But any claim that revolves round hit points are damage is incredibly contentious because hit points do not behave like damage.
And now you're ignoring what's going on in the game world to make your supposed point. If I am shooting a bow at someone I am likely to cleanly miss them if I don't hit. On the other hand if I am swinging a two handed sword at someone a few feet away I need to be utterly inept if being on target for their centre of mass is a problem. Try it on a tree trunk. A longbow from sixty feet away, and a broom handle from five feet away. You might well miss with the long bow but if you miss with the broom handle I'm probably going to laugh at you.
So clearly what is going on on a melee miss and a ranged miss is not necessarily the same. On a melee miss the fighter is either more inept than an overweight nerd with a broom handle and no training or experience or their opponent is dodging or blocking somehow. Otherwise to miss would be stupid.
And momentum transfer? That's a minor issue. The momentum of an arrow is tiny. A baseball pitcher can throw a 140g fastball at about 100mph. An arrow travels at twice this speed but weighs only 20g, meaning the arrow has less momentum than the baseball. And if it hits me the baseball is going to transfer more of its momentum into me because it will stop - the broadhead arrow won't. But I'd still rather be hit by the baseball.
OK. Let's look at a fight between a strength 18 greatweapon fighter with the feat and a kobold.
The fighter swings, aiming for just below the Kobold's centre of mass. The Kobold can't jump high enough to leap the blade, dropping flat wouldn't help (the fighter just has to roll their wrist slightly to change the line of the sword; this is always going to be faster than the kobold falling). Forward and back the fighter is ready for and has longer legs. So it does the sensible thing and blocks with its shield. Sword on shield rather than sword on kobold. A clear miss, right? After all, that's why shields add to AC.
No. Not a clear miss. That greatsword sword might have only hit wood and hide, but it still has a lot of momentum. Where does it go? Into the kobold. The kobold is about 3' tall - or smaller than an average 2 and a half year old boy. Do you really think that just raising a shield is going to fully stop a blow from someone who could make a competitive weightlifter and who specialises in beating people down with brute force? When you've only got the size and mass of a two year old? Really?
You might have tested computer games, but until you can tell me what hit points are (hint: it's one of those subjects no one can agree on) and have experience of the difference between swordfighting and archery, and can visualise how serious a disadvantage a 3' tall person is in in a swordfight, especially against brute force/beatdown attacks your complaints are all going to be irrelevant.
