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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 8589570" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Look, if you don't want to feel beholden to answering for your comments made sometime last year, I totally get that (some other forums don't allow thread necromancy, although I think that's a reaction to botspam more than anything else). You should not feel you have to (and I think everyone would have called out the thread necromancer if they'd expected responses from individuals they quoted a year later). However, if people are insufferable for getting into the weeds/overanalysis/'realism' and insufferable for not doing so, is there just not a right way to engage in forum threads? Should we tell Morrus to just pack the whole thing up and call it a day?I think this certainly does describe how plenty of RPGs do things (D&D/AD&D has kinda been all over the map with this, as sometimes there are 'strictly best' options, depending on the edition). One particular reason, I feel, is that often the benefits a weapon has IRL are hard to translate into in-game mechanics. Swords in general have an advantage over other weapons in that they are easier to carry as a sidearm while going about life and relatively easy to draw. That's hard to reflect in game (especially if it means creating a carry-burden or quickdraw exclusion rules for non-sword weapons that most groups will end up ignoring as cumbersome and unfun, similar to how many people ignored the WvsAC charts). So instead swords get X, Y, or Z benefit. Un-basket-hilted shorter blades like hangers and messers and fascine knives and other various things probably lumped under short swords have these traits even more than other swords, but that's be doubly hard to represent (maybe polearms and axes have a 4pt inconvenience penalty, swords a 2 pt., and 'shortswords' only 1? Is that fun?). So, instead, shortswords get something like good for tunnel fighting, or easy to use in two-weapon fighting (rapier and dagger would like to have a word...). 5e Halberds get a (with a feat) butt-end strike (which, while not completely implausible or unrepresenting in the fighting treatises, is a strange thing to focus on as a benefit of the weapon) because again, the primary benefits of a halberd are hard to model in a game.All of this is predicated on the notion that all weapons need to see play. Some could just be worse than others (blowgun often being so in D&D, except I guess to deliver poison without doing a lot of damage), and simply not show up 99% of the time (but then again why waste the page space on the weapon at all in that case?).</blockquote>

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