Omega: Yes, the damage is an abstraction. Where people disagree is whether what they wish to abstract is the view that a dagger or club is just as effective on the battlefield as a sabre.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;860535Query:  What happened to the Magic User?  Did they stop using spells suddenly?

Maybe he's already used his spell, or maybe the only one he has memorized is Hold Portal, or maybe he's been taken hostage down this very passageway, or ...

QuoteAlso, the Cleric, who's limited in weapon use, but has spells, whatever happened to theirs?  Your reply makes no sense to me.

Maybe he's only 1st level and can't cast spells yet, or ...

Your reply makes it seem as if you've never played this game before.

Quote from: Arminius;860544EDIT: Also, point of order: when you write "BX", what edition are you referring to?

BX's variable damage for weapons was optional. It was not the normal method.

BX as in the Modvey/Cook set. If I meant BECMI I'd say so. This thread isnt about B or BECMI.

Quote from: Phillip;860548Omega: Yes, the damage is an abstraction. Where people disagree is whether what they wish to abstract is the view that a dagger or club is just as effective on the battlefield as a sabre.

Then play AD&D or some other RPG with a more robust weapon and combat system.

Or get the DM to either use the optional variable system or work out a more robust system for BX. Like porting over the weapon system from 2nd ed Gamma World which had weapons to hit factor based on the weapon type and the armour type. A a fusion rifle might be good against everything except studded leather. Why? Have no clue.

Quote from: Omega;860569Then play AD&D or some other RPG with a more robust weapon and combat system.

Why the hell should we have to have our D&D variant dictated to us by someone else?

QuoteOr get the DM to either use the optional variable system or work out a more robust system for BX. Like porting over the weapon system from 2nd ed Gamma World which had weapons to hit factor based on the weapon type and the armour type. A a fusion rifle might be good against everything except studded leather. Why? Have no clue.

Double WTF??

Yup. A dagger doing the same damage, with the same probabilities, as a great sword isn't an abstraction. The idea that you only get one chance to "hit" per round is an abstraction.

The lack of weapon differentiation is a simplification that trades off verisimilitude. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but again the implementation in early D&D creates a strange situation where the criteria for choosing a weapon include hard factors such as whether it permits use of a shield, its cost, and its weight, but not its effectiveness in combat.

I feel like we are running into some variant of the idea that you shouldn't critique a given rule because the rule can be altered. The point of expressing the critique is to analyze the motive for altering the rule and help guide the method of alteration. I feel this should be obvious, yet it seems necessary to state.

Quote from: Phillip;860437Common sense also suggests that soldiers don't lug around more costly and cumbersome weapons for usual combat when something cheap and pocket sized works just as well. It further suggests that if there's a reason to publish a "rules set" about such matters in the first place, then the stuff that's most important in practice is most important to write up.

What's most important here is effectiveness in putting the other guy out of action before he can kill you. Plate & mail armor or adding a shield doesn't just have some occasional advantages over leather to make up for the disadvantages; it directly contributes to the object! Why then not so with weapons that in real life are preferred for the same reason?

On a normal battle field, heavier armor is generally better in almost every way.

Once you go go down into a hole in the ground and start poking around in places with deadly traps, magical teleportation that can sen you to who knows where, or come face to face with horrors too awful to consider, then the trade offs of heavy armor vs remaining lighter and faster become worth thinking about.

Being the slowest member of the party while running from something that will eat you in a single gulp doesn't sound advantageous to me.

Armor, much like weapons and other tools has uses to which it is best suited. The "best" tool for any job is going to be situational.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;860493As a heavily armoured fighting man?  Why?  Also, I can throw them.  And where in a dungeon would I face a charging horse?  Not to mention that if I am, I'm not going to be facing it down anyway, because the lanceman on it's back would skewer me first anyway, better not be there in the first place.

The issue is that I (and have had players who) can rationalize away a lot of 'common sense' rules, by using 'common sense'.  It's things like this that just confuses me.  I think some differentiation is 'better', simply because making all weapons do the same damage, but different weights and other things, you will get people who will find the most efficient (or min-max, power game or some other pejorative for when a player proves to be a little more clever than the game is) way to get the most out of their choices.

But that's just me and my experience, Your Mileage May Vary.

Multi-rank fighting in confined spaces can happen quite a bit. If your team is formed of three ranks of fighters armed with dagger and shield against a force of orc infantry armed with axe & shield on the front rank, spears in the 2nd rank, and pikes in the third rank, despite all of those weapons doing 1d6 damage, your team will likely die.

Your front rank gets chewed up as they are attacked three times as often as they are able to. Its simple math.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;860513And a good team makes sure they don't have those circumstances.  I'm sorry, but having all weapons doing the same damage, but wildly varying 'other stats' is the opposite of 'common sense', which I'm surprised we have people actually believing that it really is 'common'...

So what you are saying here is basically- don't go into a dungeon armed only with daggers. Yes that makes perfect sense.

Quote from: Arminius;860574Yup. A dagger doing the same damage, with the same probabilities, as a great sword isn't an abstraction. The idea that you only get one chance to "hit" per round is an abstraction.

The lack of weapon differentiation is a simplification that trades off verisimilitude. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but again the implementation in early D&D creates a strange situation where the criteria for choosing a weapon include hard factors such as whether it permits use of a shield, its cost, and its weight, but not its effectiveness in combat.

I feel like we are running into some variant of the idea that you shouldn't critique a given rule because the rule can be altered. The point of expressing the critique is to analyze the motive for altering the rule and help guide the method of alteration. I feel this should be obvious, yet it seems necessary to state.

The problem here isn't the reasoning, its more of where do you draw the line to satisfy verisimilitude?

OK lets say that we want variable weapon damage. A B/X normal man has 1-4 hit points. If all weapons do 1d6 to such a man then every weapon in the game has a decent chance to kill a man. This is the basis for uniform weapon damage.

If we use variable damage and say that a sword does 1d8 damage then it has a greater chance to kill that man. Hooray! We now have more verisimilitude, or do we?

So a sword now does 1d8 damage. It does so regardless of it being swung by a scrawny scribe or a troll. Does that seem right? Both a short sword and a long sword can kill a man in one hit. Who should do more damage, a skinny scribe with a long sword or a troll with a short sword?

A sword is simply a lever with an edge that permits strength to be channeled into a more deadly strike. A troll hurts more when it hits than a skinny scribe no matter what weapon we are talking about. By the rules in place though, since monsters don't have ability score ratings, that troll is being out damaged by the skinny scribe due to a 6-8 inch difference in blade length.

Then we come to realize that to truly have the verisimilitude we are after, then we need to base damage on STR modified by the weapon used (GURPS method) and soon our simple abstract game is full of simulationist complications.

Chasing after fixes which seem very logical can lead to a merry chase of one's own tail.

But it's still important to have PCs pay more for a great sword than a dagger? And incur all the other penalties of carrying around a larger weapon?

Incidentally, the GURPS approach isn't at all complicated compared to D&D variable weapon damage. In D&D terms you would just base damage off of strength, and add a fixed bonus-per-weapon. This is assuming you're already in for strength bonus when attacking, which I believe is standard in Basic--it's just an inversion of base and modifier. In short, if we forget about the cost/handedness/enc issues, we have:

D&D simple: everybody does 1d6
D&D with strength effects: everybody does 1d6 + str bonus
D&D with weapon effects: you do xdy+n based on weapon, plus strength bonus

GURPS-like simple: everybody does 1d6
GURPS-like with strength effects: you roll xdy+n based on str (note, this could be 1d6 + n)
GURPS-like with weapon effects: you do your base damage xdy+n, plus weapon bonus

There is no difference in complexity, but the GURPS-like approach achieves verisimilitude in the specific case (humans) without creating weird effects in general (trolls).

But again if your argument is that you want simplicity without distortion, then don't even pay for weapons and don't penalize two-handed use.

Quote from: Arminius;860593But it's still important to have PCs pay more for a great sword than a dagger? And incur all the other penalties of carrying around a larger weapon?

There is more to a weapon than than the hit point damage it deals. All weapons are capable of killing a man in one good hit but they are not all equally useful in all situations.

A great sword shatters a chain freeing a captive. It can also be used to bar a door allowing escape.

An axe can chop through a door or a wooden chest.

A dagger might fit in the narrow crack between shutters to break the latch.

A spear can effectively attack an enemy from the rear rank or one who is at a higher or lower elevation such as on ledge above or below you.

Quote from: Arminius;860593But again if your argument is that you want simplicity without distortion, then don't even pay for weapons and don't penalize two-handed use.

At first level the cost is meaningful. Beyond that all normal weapons are small change. The different utility of the weapons persists at all levels. The weapons have their utility for different situations. Do you think the fighting man being proficient in ALL weapons was meaningless?

A fighter uses whatever there is to hand that is the best for the job. Against that skeleton a spear is a poor choice. That spear may come in handy when fighting kobolds up on that ledge.

If you ignore all weapon properties other than damage then sure, all weapons doing the same damage doesn't make much sense.

This all strikes me as arguing in favor of cruft. The history of D&D is hard to make out--does anyone know if Peterson addresses the Chainmail-d20 transition in the combat system, and how it relates to the use of variable damage and/or weapon-v-AC?

In any case, even though I believe CM was used only for a short time by Arneson, I also think it's been said that the Greyhawk weapon rules predate publication of the original game. In short, as published, the Whitebox/Brownbox was at best a subset of the rules that were actually used by the originators of the game, whether those were the Chainmail-combat method or the Alternate Combat System using one or both of the Greyhawk methods of mechanical weapon differentiation.

My point is that the price listings and any other "hard" considerations are just the result of some material leaking through in publication that, if one were making a complete introductory game, one would engineer more cleanly. I.e. I wouldn't exaggerate secondary effects of weapon choice while ignoring the primary one. It would be okay to have neither.

Quote from: Arminius;860613My point is that the price listings and any other "hard" considerations are just the result of some material leaking through in publication that, if one were making a complete introductory game, one would engineer more cleanly. I.e. I wouldn't exaggerate secondary effects of weapon choice while ignoring the primary one. It would be okay to have neither.

If simply acknowledging that a spear is in fact longer than a dagger or a short sword is exaggerating the characteristic then count me guilty as charged.

I feel like we are going round & round. I'll acknowledge that is a fair point in itself but it only comes up in special situations in the game. Furthermore the real controversy isn't over spears, but the overwhelming disadvantage of weapons that cost more and (based on history and common sense) ought to have some advantage, such as pole arms (presumably, halberds/glaives/pole axes) and two-handed swords. In B/X without the variable damage, you lose the use of a shield and you always lose initiative.

Quote from: Arminius;860620I feel like we are going round & round. I'll acknowledge that is a fair point in itself but it only comes up in special situations in the game. Furthermore the real controversy isn't over spears, but the overwhelming disadvantage of weapons that cost more and (based on history and common sense) ought to have some advantage, such as pole arms (presumably, halberds/glaives/pole axes) and two-handed swords. In B/X without the variable damage, you lose the use of a shield and you always lose initiative.

I'm not sure that I agree that two-handed swords ought to have some advantage.  The idea of "bigger weapons should do more damage" doesn't really stand up historically - in an abstract system like "hit points" it makes even less sense.

That said, saying that heavier and more expensive weapons ought to have some kind of special rules advantage is missing the point, I think.  In this particular style of gaming, nobody needs "special weapon abilities" to be written out explicitly.  The physical characteristics of the weapon determine how it can be used, special rules be damned.

Quote from: Ddogwood;861070That said, saying that heavier and more expensive weapons ought to have some kind of special rules advantage is missing the point, I think.  In this particular style of gaming, nobody needs "special weapon abilities" to be written out explicitly.  The physical characteristics of the weapon determine how it can be used, special rules be damned.

I think the issue of extra cost and weight is far less significant than the loss of a shield bonus to AC. I think it's a legitimate concern that a two-handed weapon should have some sort of well-defined advantage over a one-handed weapon to compensate for that.

Quote from: aspiringlich;861079I think the issue of extra cost and weight is far less significant than the loss of a shield bonus to AC. I think it's a legitimate concern that a two-handed weapon should have some sort of well-defined advantage over a one-handed weapon to compensate for that.

When I run OD&D or B/X, all weapons do a standard 1d6 for damage.

Fighting with 2 weapons grants a +1 to hit. (Not available to MU class)

Fighting with a heavy two handed weapon allows 2 die rolls for damage and you take the highest.

Thus there is some benefit of giving up a shield.