Quote from: S'mon;1059000For D&D I'm fine with them being interchangeable.

For a more simulationist game like Runequest I'd like them to have distinct notable characteristics (eg maces crush armour, swords are best vs unarmoured), but I generally finding simulationism gets in the way of the point of D&D.

Absolutely. The D&D game deals heavily in abstraction but many people try to ignore these realities when discussing weapons and damage. Getting all simulationist with weaponry then plugging that into an abstract system with classes, levels, and large piles of hit points is very much like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. There is nothing wrong with a simulationist fantasy game but the entire system needs to be designed for it. D&D and similar systems need to remain abstract in order to function properly.

Did anyone actually use those "weapon vs. armor types" (or whatever they were specifically called) tables from AD&D? I remember looking them over and we all just took a pass on them (just like the unarmed attack rules from that edition's DMG). I think that was an example of too much weapon detail.

The other horror story with weapon stats comes from Exalted (yeah, yeah...). You had Accuracy, Damage, Defense, Speed, Rate (later addition, IIRC), Range (when applicable), and sometimes special modifiers. It was a clunky as hell, but that's also because the system was clunky as hell. D&D 5e doesn't give any equivalents to Accuracy (no weapon that I know of has inherent bonuses to hit) or Speed (no inherent initiative boosts) or Rate (attacks are governed by class abilities and maybe some abilities allow bonus action uses of certain weapons, but I don't recall any offhand). Defense in D&D might be there if a weapon gives a +1 AC, but that's usually Feat territory.

Quote from: Elfdart;1059092I've used this system for many years:

D2:   very small weapons

D4:   small weapons

D6:   medium weapons

D8:   large one-handed weapons

D10: large two-handed weapons

It has more variety than "D6 For All" but doesn't get into the hair-splitting of the more detailed charts. A large one-handed sword does D8 damage, whether someone calls it a broadsword, arming sword, falchion, spatha, katana, sabre, scimitar, tulwar or whatever.

Ditto here -- I don't use "very small weapons" (fists do 1 Damage), and I call the largest category "Extra-large". Otherwise, my system is identical.

Not only does the specific type of "large sword" not matter to me, I also allow most weapons to come in any size, and I allow all Small Weapons to be hurled effectively.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1059265Did anyone actually use those "weapon vs. armor types" (or whatever they were specifically called) tables from AD&D? I remember looking them over and we all just took a pass on them (just like the unarmed attack rules from that edition's DMG). I think that was an example of too much weapon detail.

The table from Greyhawk was misused in a campaign I played in, which had combat charts by weapon; one result was that javelins were terrible weapons, because the chart in the book seemed to reflect that they were specifically bad against shields, so they ended up being bad against every armor class better than AC9.

QuoteD&D 5e doesn't give any equivalents to Accuracy (no weapon that I know of has inherent bonuses to hit) or Speed (no inherent initiative boosts) or Rate (attacks are governed by class abilities and maybe some abilities allow bonus action uses of certain weapons, but I don't recall any offhand). Defense in D&D might be there if a weapon gives a +1 AC, but that's usually Feat territory.

Accuracy and Speed don't really arise in 5e, except perhaps that archers can get +2 to hit with one of the fighting styles, and there is the Weapon of Warning (magic item giving advantage on initiative ). Most of the bonuses given are to damage, by design for 5e.

Rate is mostly tied to Extra Attack which is a class ability, but there are rules that give Bonus Action attacks for specific weapons: I don't have the PHB at hand, but I think there's a crossbow feat that allows Extra Attack to apply where reloading would otherwise prevent it, and a polearm feat that allows a bonus attack with certain weapons. A second weapon attack is a bonus action that requires a weapon in the off hand with certain limitations (light, by default, I think), with a feat to remove some of the two weapon restrictions.

For Defense, I would say that the only weapon choice affecting AC is whether your weapon is two handed or not; in the latter case, if you are proficient with shields, you can add to AC by using a shield. (And the shield master feat allowed you to attack with the shield.) Otherwise I can't think of a weapon specific bonus to AC. I can't think of anything that improve AC based on using a specific weapon otherwise.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1058998Do you want your melee weapons to have more sophisticate differences between each of them? Or are you fine with a short sword, spear, mace, hammer and handaxe all doing 1d6 and being basically interchangeable?

I want differences, because I want a tactical game  (however no edition of D&D does what I want to provide a tactical game approaching even TFT, so it's really a matter of just not my game style).

But it seems particularly unsatisfying to have all weapons do the same damage. It makes me wonder, what's the point of even saying what your weapon is? Why spend money on a weapon when a stick or rock (or just, the cheapest weapon on the table) would perform identically? Having them be identical seems to me to erase almost all pretense that the game really includes various types of weapon at all.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1059108A great deal depends on what the rest of the system is like. I use varied weapon damage but I think reach is much more important than damage. That is why knives of various types are problematic, not because they do less damage. But the guy with the sword or club can keep you from ever reaching her by injuring or killing you before you can get there. That is also why the spear usually beats the sword because you pretty much never get there if you have the sword and are not at some other advantage. the advantage of the sword is that you can wear it and the spear must be carried.

Suspension of disbelief trumps simplicity in my mind. And finding ways to overcome a reach disadvantage or to keep your reach advantage makes combat more interesting.

The lack of a weapon space in many games irritates me. There are times where a short stabby weapon (dagger, short sword) makes sense, but short of the occasional special rule included on the spot (mentioned in a module for a specific situation like following giant rats down a sewer tunnel), are rarely included even in games that are otherwise fairly detailed.

I know of a few games that give an advantage to long weapons (spears) at their proper range and to shorter weapons if they can get inside of that range, but even that seem to be kind of unusual. It rarely seems to go beyond that. Considering the amount of time spent underground, you would expect more emphasis on weapon size.

AD&D had the right idea with weapon vs armor tables, but they were far too wargamey for most, anyway I don't know anybody that actually used them. A simple advantage or limitation against broad armor types would have been more desirable than tables detailing the effect against each specific armor type. The S and L damage ratings never made a lot of sense to me either (S/M 1d8 / L 1d12 for Longsword for example). I never understood the need, and it seemed fairly random as to which weapons performed better against large creatures.

Quote from: Skarg;1059278But it seems particularly unsatisfying to have all weapons do the same damage. It makes me wonder, what's the point of even saying what your weapon is? Why spend money on a weapon when a stick or rock (or just, the cheapest weapon on the table) would perform identically? Having them be identical seems to me to erase almost all pretense that the game really includes various types of weapon at all.

I don't think anyone here has suggested that all weapons do the same damage - rather reducing the differentiation to eliminate differences between, for example, a morningstar and war pick or spear vs trident. I gave some specific examples earlier.

Quote from: jhkim;1059292I don't think anyone here has suggested that all weapons do the same damage - rather reducing the differentiation to eliminate differences between, for example, a morningstar and war pick or spear vs trident. I gave some specific examples earlier.

In my game, weapon damage is static for each weapon (for example, regardless of who wields it, all spears do +5 damage, all battleaxes do +4 damage, all short swords do +3 damage, etc.). Total damage dealt on a hit will vary, however, by character (some classes have a higher potential for damage), weapon damage type (slashing, piercing, etc.), and whether or not the attack hit an area protected by armor or not. Weapons are inanimate objects. Their effectiveness and potential should be based far more on the skill/training of the wielder than the weapon itself.

Quote from: Graewulf;1059301In my game, weapon damage is static for each weapon (for example, regardless of who wields it, all spears do +5 damage, all battleaxes do +4 damage, all short swords do +3 damage, etc.). Total damage dealt on a hit will vary, however, by character (some classes have a higher potential for damage), weapon damage type (slashing, piercing, etc.), and whether or not the attack hit an area protected by armor or not. Weapons are inanimate objects. Their effectiveness and potential should be based far more on the skill/training of the wielder than the weapon itself.

Which is completely wrong.  A dagger in a thief's hand will do the same amount of damage as in a fighter.  Because the length thickness of the metal is the same.  It's why it takes multiple hits to kill a human being with a knife typically.  Bleeding out is how a knife kills.

No, it breaks the suspension of disbelief.  Yes, I know Sneak Attack and Strength/Dex bonus change that, but it's still to show TRAINING.  A dagger will always to the same amount of damage, it's how it's used that changes it.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1059353Which is completely wrong.  A dagger in a thief's hand will do the same amount of damage as in a fighter.  Because the length thickness of the metal is the same.  It's why it takes multiple hits to kill a human being with a knife typically.  Bleeding out is how a knife kills.

No, it breaks the suspension of disbelief.  Yes, I know Sneak Attack and Strength/Dex bonus change that, but it's still to show TRAINING.  A dagger will always to the same amount of damage, it's how it's used that changes it.

I think you're misusing "damage" here. A dagger doesn't deal damage at all. It is an inert object and the size and sharpness of its blade are meaningless without some outside force acting upon it. What matters is the relative mass behind the dagger and the velocity its blade can reach by the user's movement.

Frankly, if you wanted to be realistic, the base "damage" for a weapon should be a multiplier of your Strength (Mass) multiplied by your Dexterity (Velocity) in terms of how efficiently it uses those in comparison to, say, a punch.

Also, "damage" is not some static thing that can be measured anyway. The human body is not a ballistics gel dummy; it is composed of materials of varying density and hardness with areas of greater or lesser importance in terms of its ability to survive. To wit; a dagger puncturing a target's shoulder is not the same as one that punctures the intestines and a dagger that glances off the ribs is not the same as one that slides between the ribs and hits a lung. The hole might be the same size (though not in the case of it glancing off the bone), but the amount of "damage" done to the target in terms of their ability to survive (and how quickly they bleed out) is much much different.

Even an inch can be critical. The only reason I still have both feet is because a particular injury that put a golfball sized hole in my leg when out on a trail in Montana missed the artery by half an inch and so I didn't need a tourniquet during the one hour ride to the hospital, just some pressure and elevation to minimize the bleeding. If it had hit the artery I would have likely lost the foot due to the tourniquet and long trip the closest hospital or even bled out if one hadn't been applied. Same "damage", but half an inch mattered between me just having a scar that aches a bit when the weather changes and having to wear a prosthetic foot or even being in a grave by my church.

So to get the actual damage with any degree of accuracy you'd need a hit location table that provides an additional multiplier to the dagger's base damage (again, a multiplier of the user's mass and velocity upon it).

And this is before you take into account armor. A good thin dagger might slip easily through chain (to a degree, the amount of force needing to break a riveted ring is not trivial so a tight mesh with good riveting might keep all but the flimsiest of blades from being able to get very deep and there's a gambeson backing that up to keep it from reaching anything vital too), but be utterly useless against a steel plate unless you can maneuver it through a gap in the plates. Meanwhile a bludgeon of sufficient force might shake up the person inside the plate without having to entirely penetrate it (while one of insufficient force won't penetrate at all and is too broad to try and bypass the plates for a vulnerable point).

Quote from: Chris24601;1059360So to get the actual damage with any degree of accuracy you'd need a hit location table that provides an additional multiplier to the dagger's base damage (again, a multiplier of the user's mass and velocity upon it).

Harnmaster and GURPS are the only two RPGs that I played and refereed that modeled injury accurately and still remain playable. Of the two Harnmaster is the more accurate and playable.

GURPS handles damage by accounting for mass and strength (weapon modifies damage dice based on strength). The type of weapons. Armor subtract from damage. The type of damage (blunt, impaling, or cutting) causes watch remains to get multiplied by a factor (blunt - 1, cutting - 1.5, impaling - 2). Some armor or more or less effective against certain types of damage. Some types of damage are modified by the hit location for example a thrust to the vitals (heart region) impaling get 3x damage, while any shot to the skull gets multiplied by 4 after armor and the skull natural armor is substracted.

In Harnmaster one's skill determines how much damage is dealt. There is a impact modifier for weapons which have different aspects (point, edge, blunt), and the weapon skills are influenced by strength and dexterity in different ways. Some weapons skills are more strength based like two handed sword, some are more dexterity based like dagger.

However most of your potential damage stems on how well you do against your opponent's defense. Success levels are critical success, success, failure, and critical failure. Cross index the result on a chart and roll the amount of dice (if successfully hit) and add in the impact of the weapon. Then you roll for hit location and subtract the armor rating from the impact.

The remaining impact is cross indexed on the injury chart and will produce two things. A injury die roll and a saving throw. The saving throw modified by current injury level is where the bad stuff happens. You can get shock, stumble, fumble, amputated, or killed by failing the save.

Injury modifies the above saves and degrades your physical skills. Despite making all the save enough injury will make cause character  to be unable to make any type of physical skill roll.

It may sound complicated but it all reduced a nicely designed one page set of charts. http://www.columbiagames.com/resources/4001/harnmaster-combattables.pdf

It sits between OD&D and GURP/D&D 4e in terms of how long combat takes to resolves during a session. Compared to Runequest.


As for D&D, it combat is an abstraction born of a mass melee wargame where one -hit equal one kill. This was boring and quickly evolved into 1 hit = 1d6 damage and 1 kill = 1d6 hit points. The odds of killing an opponent was based on cross-indexing the the weapon used versus the armor of the target. Roll that number on 2d6 and the opponent was dead. Unless the opponent was a Hero in which case it took 4 hits to kill (with the wrinkle it had to be a single round). A super hero took 8 hits to kill.

For everything else you cross index the character type/monster type versus the target. Any type of weapon would do. Roll that number on a 2d6 and the target died.

OD&D had the option of using this and provided the stats to make it work. It offered an alternative system that everybody associates with D&D of looking up one's level and class versus the target's AC. Roll that number on a d20 and the target gets hit for 1d6 damage, irregardless of the weapon used.

It was in the Greyhawk supplement that varying damage dice was introduced, and Chainmail's weapon versus AC chart was modified to work with the d20 roll high alternative system. Instead of a fixed number, the result was a modifier to the d20 to hit roll.

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Going outside of D&D, I find the Silhouette Engine (at least as it appeared in Jovian Chronicles) to be a pretty good abstraction. Weapon damage was a multiplier applied to the attacker's margin of success of an attack check vs. defense check (the system used 'best multiple d6s' with extra 6's being worth +1 so the margins were reasonably constrained) and then compared to a set of thresholds (based on armor and body mass) for light injury/serious injury/instant death.

Injuries reduced your skill performance (including your defense check) and thus made your attacker's margin of success grow higher (eventually reaching the point where getting the "you're dead" threshold becomes a certainty). A really good attack (multiple 6's so a 7-8+modifiers) when the defender rolls crap (1-2+modifiers) acould often hit the "you're dead" threshold as well so every round of combat was a risk.

It's not a system I'd recommend if you're looking for Big Damned Heroes style play, but for reasonably simple, but fairly realistic, combat it was pretty solid.

Mekton also did a pretty decent job via its static damage vs. hit locations (with levels that ranged from injured to severed/mangled beyond hope of recovery) and armor as stopping power that degraded with each hit also provided fairly realistic results.

Neither would translate well to the level of abstraction you typically see in D&D though, nor to the flat distribution of a single d20 check.

Quote from: Graewulf;1059301In my game, weapon damage is static for each weapon (for example, regardless of who wields it, all spears do +5 damage, all battleaxes do +4 damage, all short swords do +3 damage, etc.). Total damage dealt on a hit will vary, however, by character (some classes have a higher potential for damage), weapon damage type (slashing, piercing, etc.), and whether or not the attack hit an area protected by armor or not. Weapons are inanimate objects. Their effectiveness and potential should be based far more on the skill/training of the wielder than the weapon itself.

That is kind of how GURPS does things. While I understand the concept of just adding a bonus to damage, and even agree to a point, I just don't personally care for that method.


If you think about it though, most games give to hit and / or damage bonuses based on strength and dexterity / agility, so is there really that much difference between 1d4 for a dagger and 1d8 for a battle axe and bonuses to hit and damage for high STR / Dex and damage based on the wielder (lets say 1d4 to 1d8 for the normal human stat range) and +0 for a dagger / +4 for a battle axe?

Quote from: jhkim;1059292I don't think anyone here has suggested that all weapons do the same damage - rather reducing the differentiation to eliminate differences between, for example, a morningstar and war pick or spear vs trident. I gave some specific examples earlier.

Doesn't the very first post in this thread ask exactly that? i.e.:

Quote from: RPGPundit;1058998Do you want your melee weapons to have more sophisticate differences between each of them? Or are you fine with a short sword, spear, mace, hammer and handaxe all doing 1d6 and being basically interchangeable?

(my bold)
Or did I over-apply that, and RPGPundit meant not like White Box 0D&D (where really almost every weapon does 1d6), but merely games where certain weapons are interchangeable, but several are not?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1059265Did anyone actually use those "weapon vs. armor types" (or whatever they were specifically called) tables from AD&D? I remember looking them over and we all just took a pass on them (just like the unarmed attack rules from that edition's DMG). I think that was an example of too much weapon detail.

  IMO, the logical conclusion of those tables is Arms Law. This is not necessarily a bad thing.