D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[Remathilis]

You land a crit. At the end of the turn, you have to switch weapons.

While other players take their turns, you have a couple minutes to study the statblock and adjust to hit bonus if necessary (would it even be necessary? You'll have the same attack bonus with most weapons, no?)

But also yeah, I'm all for making all weapons deal the same damage and representing the difference through reach, special qualities and whatnot.

It is also realistic — a dagger is as deadly as a sword, the difference is in how easy (or hard) it is to threaten your opponent without getting skewered yourself.

Easier in theory than practice. Ok. My greatsword breaks. I grab the mace off the floor. I recalculate my attack (PB + Str) and damage (1d8 + STR). But wait, I also now add in the +2 damage from dueling, but I no longer can use great weapon master to get my PB to damage. Further, I no longer use the graze property, I have sap and I have to read what that does. While I'm doing all that, I missed what else has happened in the round.

Not insurmountable, but your going to get a lot more "wait, I forgot to add my..." To the mix. More than there is already.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

What can I say, stop playing people who don't respect other players' time.

There's like ten billion ways a negligent player can make the game worse, and they generally have nothing to do with the rules or their complexity.

But also... That's just a non-existent problem anyway? What kind of person seriously struggles to read two paragraphs on a piece of paper (or a telegram message)?

Never in my life I encountered that, and I've been doing this for a decade at this point.

Yet I have seen enough complaints from frustrated players and DMs to know this is an issue, it's like in every other DNDhorror story.

What are the four examples? You can't leave us hanging like that!

100 Men Slayer from Berserk
Fire opening from RRR
10 Black Belts from IP Man
Scourge's Last Stand from Walt Simmonson's run on the Mighty Thor

Each of those examples works because it relies on getting into the mind of the character doing the beating and showing us something about their mindset - the determination, the rage, the willingness to sacrifice himself.

 

[Lanefan]

It happens when the player does not assume they will have a steady stream of replacements. If you have a steady source of income, you are willing to spend money on things. If you don't, you hoard your money and only spend on absolute necessity. The same is true in game of magic. If magic (spells, potions and weapons) are both rare and consumable, people will wait until the last second to use them. If they know they can easily get replacements they will use them frequently. Which is why breakage and potion chugging are acceptable in something like Diablo where legendary items can fall out of broken barrels but potion hoarding is common in Souls games.

The trick is to hit that balance where replenishment is likely but not guaranteed, such that using (or breaking) an item carries some risk that it won't easily be replaced and yet the possibility or even probability of replacement still exists to the point where using the resource instead of hoarding it is seen as a viable option.

The exception is that which replicates something the character can already otherwise do or easily access. Spell scrolls frequently fall into this category: if you can cast the spell conventionally then having it on a scroll is simply a fail-safe or emergency back-up resource and is held for such uses only. Some potions are similar: if you or someone in the party can cast Fly then why waste a potion of flight to get yourself in the air?

 

[Lanefan]

You are missing the big difference between TTRPG and a video game. In video game when you die or lose, nothing happens. You died or you lost, load the save or checkpoint.

If you die or lose in TTRPG, then a character you put so much work into is just gone. Yes, you can have ways to bring them back to life, but there is a huge contingent of people who despise how this cheapens the game and removes the stakes.

Your approach may work for OSR type games, where you challenge the player and the character is disposable, but for a lot of modern players this isn't an rpg, but a wargame.

Sadly, the challenging-to-the-player style of game is something many modern players (i.e. anyone who came in since about 2010) have likely never been exposed to.

We don't need two classes that fill a niche of being simple and dumb.

True. We need four. One for each classic genre of class - a dirt-simple warrior, a dirt-simple rogue, a dirt-simple cleric type, and a dirt-simple mage type - so that someone who wants to play that type of character can do so with a minimum of overhead.

 

[Lanefan]

But do you realize your own hypotethical makes the game look like a comedy of errors and festival of incompetence,

You say this like it's a bad thing.

It isn't.

 

[Lanefan]

And I can already see how it iwll look in practice

DM: Ok Bob, your turn.
Bob the Fighter: Wait, I forgot to switch my weapons!
<Bob spends 10 minutes trying to switch the weapon>
Player A: Dammit Bob! We told you to do it after your turn, before we circle back to you! You're slowing the game down!
Bob: Sorry, it won't happen again.
<one full round of combat later>
DM: Ok Bob, your turn.
Bob the Fighter: Wait, I forgot to switch my weapons!

And I know that because this is literally happenning with all casters and spell selection.

The obvious next line in that conversation:

DM: OK, Bob, skip your turn. Cindy, you're up.