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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6608143" data-attributes="member: 6775031">I have to disagree with you, on this point. Almost every weapon in 3.x was balanced against other weapons of the same proficiency type (simple or martial). It's just that most weapons were highly situational, and the "best" ones were the ones that didn't have any special properties.If you wanted a one-handed martial weapon, then you general took either the longsword or the battle axe (depending on your critical hit preference). Unless you wanted to finesse it, in which case you took the rapier. Or if you wanted to disarm someone, you might take the flail.It meant that most weapons were useful for someone, but each character only had two or three "best" weapons to choose from. It shifted the decision point from the nature of your enemy to the nature of yourself.As a game designer, when you decide whether to implement variable weapon performance based on targets, you have two basic avenues of approach:1) Make it really matter. Make it so that the longsword is effectively worthless against plate armor, and you need a warhammer to really succeed. Resistance/Vulnerability fall into this category.2) Make it not really matter. Make it so that the longsword is marginally less effective against plate armor, so the guy with the warhammer gets to shine for a bit, but the sword-user doesn't feel compelled to switch. Something like a +1 to hit or damage would fall into this category.The problem with (1) is that it removes choice. There's no point in using the wrong weapon, so you obviously switch. It's not even a question. Every fighter carries a golf bag with at least three weapons that are all suitable to different circumstances. In 5E, your first object-interaction in the round is free, so there's not even a cost associated with this.The problem with (2) is that it's too much bookkeeping for too little effect. Every fighter keeps using one preferred weapon, because the inconvenience of carrying multiple weapons and switching between them (and tracking that all on your character sheet) is too great relative to the payoff of a 5% chance that something might matter. In 5E, small bonuses and penalties are avoided, for exactly this reason; if it's not big enough for advantage/disadvantage, or resistance/vulnerability, then it's a waste of time.(Both 2E and 3E also got to this point, regarding weapons specialization - there might be a significant reason to use one weapon over another, but that reason wasn't enough to overcome the benefits gained from sticking to your preferred weapon.)A game is defined as a series of meaningful choices. Neither path, here, makes for a better game. There is no meaningful choice involved. Either you obviously switch, or you obviously don't switch, but you're almost never in a position where it's worth thinking about. At most, you gain some minor verisimilitude. Which is great, of course, but you need to weigh it against the complexity cost.</blockquote>

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