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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6862788" data-attributes="member: 42582">Maybe I'm missing your point here, but it seems to me that - at least in 4e and 5e D&D - the trade off between a two-handed weapon (more damage) vs one-handed weapon and shield (more defence) is expected to be a meaningful one, where neither option is strictly superior to the other.So choosing to have a two-handed sword or axe, vs a one-handed longsword or battleaxe + shield, is not imposing a mechanical burden on your PC.Whereas if you are a barbarian who chooses a quarterstaff as your two-handed weapon (d8 rather than d12 for the axe) then you have imposed a mechanical burden on your PC.My suggestion was that, in the latter sort of case (previously I canvassed a monk who renounces weapons, or a fighter who wields only a shortsword), we could add a Vow slot to the personality mechanics ("I vow never to use a weapon", "I vow to wield only my father's shortsword", maybe the barbarian admires druids and says "I vow never to wield tools made of metal"). The player would then get Inspiration for upholding the vow, which would counter-act the mechanical penalty to damage.As I already said, I haven't done the maths in any serious way - it's just an example of the sort of thing that can be done within a 5e-ish context. I don't think the logic of it is that puzzling.I don't know what "book" you're referring to. Do you mean the HeroQuest revised rulebook? Or the FATE core rulebook?Upthread (post 605), you said "I don't agree that the systems themselves are particularly good at representing a wide variety of character types mechanically because the games like HeroQuest, Fate, etc essentially eliminate there being an actual choice with weight." I replied by saying that "The weight of choice is moved from mechanical minutiae to fiction and framing." Now you are asking whether there is a mechanical difference between Dagger Dervish and Disciplined Sword Saint.To repeat myself: the difference or the weight is located in the fiction and the framing. If it never matters in the fiction of your game that you are a Dagger Dervish rather than a Disciplined Sword Saint, then you are correct (tautologically correct, I think) that nothing will turn on which descriptor a player writes on the sheet.Just off the top of my head, here are some circumstances in which the choice of descriptor might matter in a practical or procedural way: you are fighting in confined quarters; you are in a combat where you and your opponent(s) start outside of arm's reach; you want to use your weapon to reach under a couch/vehicle/low-ish verandah/etc to knock out some item that has fallen underneath it; you are trying to sneak into somewhere while armed; you are applying for a job with the militia; you are trying to do an impressive dance.Here are some circumstances in which it might matter in a more dramatic way: you are trying to become master of the dojo; you have to fight a duel over a point of honour; you arrive at the Temple of the Moon and beseech the high priest for aid.As for what is being "ruled on": in these games (I can't comment so much on FATE, which I don't know as well, but I think it is broadly similar in this respect to HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, etc) the GM has to adjudicate fictional positioning to (i) establish that action declarations are permitted (eg if my PC is across the road from yours as a procession is passing by, I probably can't declare an attack against your PC using Dagger Dervish), and (ii) to impose any modifiers on the raw check that might be required (eg if my dagger-wielding PC has to close on your sword-saint PC across an open field, you will have the advantage due to weapon length).This doesn't seem to me to be wildly different from what a 5e GM has to do in adjudicating non-combat action declarations (which requires determining if success is possible, if so if it is uncertain, if so what the DC is, and also whether or not a given skill is applicable). This is why I was puzzled by your suggestion that adjudicating action declarations in these games has some sort of problematic feature that D&D lacks.</blockquote>

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