D&D 5E Pet Peeve: Weapon Weights

[Howndawg]

One pet peeve I have about Next is that some of the weapon weights are much too high. Seven pounds for a throwing axe? Fifteen for a greataxe? I'm not usually a whiner, but this gets my goat. The weapon weights in 4e are closer to life, so why not use them instead of making up new stuff which is way off base? The only reason I can see this is grognard appeal, but as I grognard, this has no appeal to me.

 

[Gorgoroth]

hear hear

Let's put some actual weights here:

Short sword : 1.5 pounds max
Arming aka longsword : 28 inch blade - 2.5 - 3.5 pounds
Bastard Sword < 36 inch blade: 3.2 - 4.5 pounds
Two handed sword : 3.5 - 6 pounds
Battle Axe : 3-6 pounds
Throwing Axe : 1 pound

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

That said, as ridiculous as these rules' weights are (did they pull them out from you know where? probably. da internetz is da good stuff, d00dz), this is probably the easiest thing to house rule and doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that you can't wield a bastard sword in one hand in D&D Next.

Jeez, just remove it from the game, if you're gonna made useless cruft, guys. There is no reason to own a bastard sword over a two handed sword if you can't wield it one-handed.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

If it makes you feel better, sure.

Unless you regularly account for encumberance to the nearest pound, it won't make a whit of difference in play.

 

[Gorgoroth]

so then why

don't they put realistic numbers then? If it makes no difference to in-game (except encumbrance), why not just put in the real values and stop this insanity?

Someone in the other thread wrote that a longsword being 5 "pounds" in the PHB is due to the fact that someone with 18 strength being only able to carry a certain number of them...thus the extra "weight" is a fudged hack on top of the carrying rules to account for carrying many of them.

But this in my mind, in no way compensates for the added difficulty in lugging around bags of stuff, i.e. the "knapsack problem". I know, I'm a computer scientist...it's a BS cop-out to assign a numerical stat and conflate it with weight. It's much easier to pack a stack of swords or a quiver of arrows than one sword, an axe, a polearm, a suit of plate, etc.

What would you rather carry with a friend, a coffin with a corpse in it? Or a corpse itself, directly. What do you think would be easier...? 10 swords all wrapped up in a bundle swung on your back is imminently more do-able than 5 in your hands, while you're doing other stuff. The weight is just that, the weight.

If we want rules to make emcumbrance more realistic, then we/they can add an optional module. But let's keep the weights real. Don't tell me a throwing axe is 7 pounds when it is in fact, one. That's an unforgivable error of an order of magnitude.

 

[Libramarian]

So this is a conflict between realistic weights vs. weights that meaningfully interact with encumbrance.

I like encumbrance to be meaningful so to me it's a more important issue that the weapons are depicted at a realistic size in the art than that they're give realistic weights in the equipment list.

 

[Roger]

Only if the average Str-10 guy stops getting to carry around a hundred pounds on his back all day and night without any problem.



Cheers,
Roger

 

[GX.Sigma]

If realistic weapon weights aren't working well with the encumbrance system, they should fix the encumbrance system. Making weapons unrealistically heavy is an absurd solution.

 

[Howndawg]

Haven't been around for a couple days, so its good to see some good thoughts! Fixing encumbrance is a good idea. Perhaps a simple three tier system would be good?

Light-up to 5x Str. No penalty.
Medium-up to 10x Str. Reduce move by 5.
Heavy-over 10x Str. Reduce move by 10 with disad on physical checks.

BTW, they should make sure horses are actually strong enough to carry an armored man!

 

[Ryujin]

Has anyone here tried carrying around a broadsword or a longbow? They encumber you more than their actual weights, because they are unwieldy when not in use. I doubt that my longbow weights more than a couple of pounds, and yet it's a bugger to navigate around while it's slung.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Has anyone here tried carrying around a broadsword or a longbow? They encumber you more than their actual weights, because they are unwieldy when not in use. I doubt that my longbow weights more than a couple of pounds, and yet it's a bugger to navigate around while it's slung.

Hey - you just said what I was going to say! The one and only time I held a battleaxe in my hands I could only think of - 'How the heck do you carrying this thing at your waist (one of more common ways I've seen them depicted being carried) without cutting your *&^% off??!!'

I think they should just change 'weight' to 'encumbrance' and leave it there.