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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 571772" data-attributes="member: 3146">If there's no way for two handed weapons to gain more damage than 1x strength bonus, people won't use two handed weapons except to gain reach. If two handed non-reach weapon fighting is to be a viable style, there must be a way (and it shouldn't be any more expensive than a feat--and even one feat might be much for non-fighter characters) to gain more damage than simply the strength bonus.3e is much better than 1e and 2e where the only difference in damage was, at best, going from d8 (longsword) to d10 (two handed sword). However, the difference in damage from dice is still not too significant. At best, two handed weapons do 2d6 instead of a d8--a difference of 2.5 points. More commonly, they do a d12 (greataxe) or a d10 (most other two handed weapons). So they get 1 to 2.5 points of extra damage from dice. That's significant at first level but by the time a PC reaches 7th or 8th level, it doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as to be worth the 2 to 4 points of AC gained by using a shield. Strength bonusses scale with level, however, (through stat increases, strength boosting items, and the availability of Bull's Strength) so, using 1.5x str bonus, two handed weapons are able to maintain their damage advantage.</blockquote>