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Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3369056" data-attributes="member: 16574">There's only a few, they're the biggest weapons of he type (morning star, footman's flail, etc.), and they only do a little more damage (1 or 2 points more). Most bludgeoning weapons (hammer, club, horseman's mance, etc.) do less damage against large opponents.  The reasoning probably had something to do with the size of the striking surface and the way the impact is spread out -- a footman's flail's large striking surface inflicts damage over a wider area, thus (perhaps?) making it more effective against a large opponent (such as a horse) than a weapon which concentrates its impact on a smaller area. Or something like that...FWIW in Chainmail's Man-to-Man combat table (the progenitor of the OD&D/AD&D weapon-vs-AC table) there's a column for weapons vs. horses (actually two columns: one for non-barded horses and one for barded horses) -- a couple weapons (hand axes, maces) are less effective against horses than men, most seem to be about the same, and a few (pole arms, pikes, lances) are more effective against horses than men. I'd guess this column was at least partially the inspiration for the separate damage values against medium vs. large opponents which were added to D&D in Supplement I, at the same time as the weapon vs. AC chart, but that doesn't explain why swords (long and two-handed) are given such a big bonus against large opponents in D&D -- in Chainmail they're both about the same against horses as against men <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /></blockquote>

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