Super Simple Weapons

[Ath-kethin]

Counterpoint: There's already a lot of abstraction built into the game, as a necessity in order to make the game playable, so there's not much benefit to adding any more abstractions than are strictly necessary.

Of course, that's entirely a matter of priorities.

Sure. I for one have always embraced the abstract nature of D&D rules - I remember defending the one-minute combat rounds back in the 2e days, and I still feel it makes some sense.

My overall goal is to let people play characters they will love (without multiclasing, because I really detest WotC-era multiclasing). I have no interest in making all weapons equally useful as such, since as I mentioned before there's a reason spears have been the go-to weapon choice in pretty much all cultures for centuries and centuries, and axes then swords became so popular. They're just better designs.

But if a character idea revolves around wielding a knife, it makes sense to me that a warrior type trained in eviscerating people will be far more effective at using it than the scholar who uses it mainly for separating bat poop into separate lines by color. Hit Dice already represent this combat training, so applying them as weapon damage is intuitive and solves a host of logical and gameplay problems.

Or maybe it doesn't. Most of my D&D experience for the past couple of years has been on the design side; I haven't been actually able to play, on either side of the screen, since 2016. I could be totally off.my rocker. But I'd love to try these ideas out.

EDIT: in addition to my usual battery of typos, the system amusingly auto-capitalized "spears." Not to say that we aren't all Britney fans here (I know I am!) but it seems odd particularly in context to have that particular adjustment made automatically.

 

[mrpopstar]

Sure. I for one have always embraced the abstract nature of D&D rules - I remember defending the one-minute combat rounds back in the 2e days, and I still feel it makes some sense.

My overall goal is to let people play characters they will love (without multiclasing, because I really detest WotC-era multiclasing). I have no interest in making all weapons equally useful as such, since as I mentioned before there's a reason spears have been the go-to weapon choice in pretty much all cultures for centuries and centuries, and axes then swords became so popular. They're just better designs.

But if a character idea revolves around wielding a knife, it makes sense to me that a warrior type trained in eviscerating people will be far more effective at using it than the scholar who uses it mainly for separating bat poop into separate lines by color. Hit Dice already represent this combat training, so applying them as weapon damage is intuitive and solves a host of logical and gameplay problems.

Or maybe it doesn't. Most of my Day&D experience for the past couple of years has been on the design side; I haven't been actually able to play, on either side of the screen, since 2016. I could be totally off.my rocker. But I'd love to try these ideas out.

Keep chipping away at the math. Divine insight will come!

EDIT: in addition to my usual battery of typos, the system amusingly auto-capitalized "spears." Not to say that we aren't all Britney fans here (I know I am!) but it seems odd particularly in context to have that particular adjustment made automatically.

She deserves it! <3

 

[mrpopstar]

I'd really like for more traditional weapon-oriented terms instead of small, medium, and large. It would be awesome if I had enough good terms for a progression from hand to great.

 

[Yaarel]

I'd really like for more traditional weapon-oriented terms instead of small, medium, and large. It would be awesome if I had enough good terms for a progression from hand to great.

Weapon size
• agile (finesse)
• one-hand (medium)
• hand-and-half (versatile)
• two-hand (heavy, reach)

Technically, modern archeological nomenclature for the type of grip. But works better for the size of blade (or other cold weapon), since the same hand-and-half sword blade can be made with either or a one-hand grip or a two-hand grip, depending on the preferred fighting style of the user.

 

[Yaarel]

It can make sense to refer to crossbows and guns as ‘one-hand’, ‘hand-and-half’, and ‘two-hand’.

 

[Oofta]

As someone who's played previous editions where there were charts for weapon charts, where there's a difference between glaives, guisarmes and halberds, I think 5E is already super simple.

I don't really see the point of simplifying further - other than maybe getting rid of rapiers. You already have most of what you want, it's just been codified a tiny bit and given names.

 

[fjw70]

For my stripped down D&D I play with the kids I have simplified weapons even further.

Thrown weapons 1d6 damage, light, finesse, thrown
Light melee weapons 1d8 damage, finesse
Heavy melee weapons 1d10 damage, heavy, versatile
Two handed weapons 1d12 damage, two-handed

When using a two-handed or versatile weapons with two hands then you get a +1 added to damage (so yes, two handed weapons always get this).

One-handed ranged 1d6 damage
Light two-handed ranged 1d8
Heavy two-handed ranged 1d10

 

[Yaarel]

I googled across this website describing different kinds of fighting knives.

The analysis is too granular for the goal of elegant simplicity here, but interesting.

It distinguishes between ‘thrust’ (piercing), ‘slash’, and ‘hack’. It suggests the thrust of a knife with a dagger blade deals more damage but with a disadvantage on attack. Thus the dagger is better for an unsuspecting target.

Meanwhile, a knife designed for slash, such as a point-clip or scimitar blade, is better for a fight.

 

[Grainger]

For my money, 5e is great, but still has a lot of unnecessary complication. What we need is a tactically rich game without meaningless nuts and bolts. I'd say players agonising over weapons tables is a relatively pointless aspect of character creation, especially as most characters really have only a couple of viable weapon choices.

I'm all for 6th edition having Class-based damage - so, basically the Hit Die idea discussed so far. The player can just pick what goes thematically with their character. As it stands, there are only some sensible weapon choices for any given character, so you're kind of forced into that. Perhaps we would need to give a bonus to two-handed weapons so that there's a meaningful choice between two hand/dual wield and sword/shield.

It would also fix the problem I've seen of newbie players picking terrible weapon choices because they didn't understand the game (and cut down on the advice they need to get from more seasoned players - there's enough for them to learn at the start), and it would reward (or at least, avoid penalising) players who go with specific weapons for RP reasons. Want to have a Rogue that uses daggers? No problem - you're not nudged towards dual-wielding swords to do better damage.

In short, I don't think having lots of different weapon damages adds much meaningful choice to the game, so it should go.

 

[Yaarel]

Even if switching to class hitdice for weapon damage, I would still want to see things like downsize the hitdice for finesse, reach, and similar. Upsize for two-handed.

So the simplification/systemization in the original post is still useful.

I want some kind of verisimilitude − even if I want an elegant minimalism.