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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zaruthustran" data-source="post: 1310387" data-attributes="member: 1457">The "big weapon = big damage" thing used to upset me, but then D&D 3E came out with coup de grace rules. That's when I realized the fact that a dagger is d4 and a greatsword is 2d6 doesn't mean that daggers are less lethal; in 3E you can kill a 20th level paladin with a knife in one round if you catch him sleeping. The differences in damage value are to reflect that fact that a man with a greatsword has a tremendous reach and mass advantage over a man with a dagger. All other things being equal and no unusual combat conditions, the man with the bigger weapon is going to kill the guy with the knife. Which is another good thing about D&D 3E: you can't use a greatsword in a grapple, and DMs are explicitly encouraged to use conditional modifiers. Big weapons are, as a rule, better than smaller weapons. If I have a 40 inch sword and you have a 10 inch sword, I have greater reach and, if I pay attention to footwork, I can hit you and you can't hit me. Your counter would be to move inside my guard/grapple, and D&D has rules for that kind of thing.D&D's damage scheme takes relative combat advatnages of differing weapon sizes into account, and that's fine with me.-z</blockquote>