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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5045665" data-attributes="member: 58197">It's far from limited to modern nations; there's a reason the founders of the United States felt it necessary to enumerate a "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights. (Please note that I'm not trying to debate the exact meaning of the phrase, just pointing out that they wouldn't have put it in if they hadn't already seen instances of the government restricting access to weaponry.)Lots of medieval nations restricted who could have access to what in terms of arms and armor. If you've got an oppressed underclass and have to face occasional revolts, the last thing you want is to let that underclass get its hands on quality weaponry.This is a more serious issue. Even if you treat a wizard's staff as equivalent to a sword, that simply puts staff wizards in the "ghetto" while orb and wand wizards get a pass, and armored PCs remain at a huge disadvantage compared to both.In the real world, full plate and a big sword are better than leather armor and a dagger - vastly so. This makes weapon and armor restrictions sensible. In the D&D world, a guy in leather can actually go toe-to-toe with a guy in plate and not get turned into chutney.For this reason, I generally handwave the whole business. Most of the time it doesn't matter anyway.</blockquote>