One of the difficulties in a lot of games that I've run into is the urge to create "teh ultimate combat feat" or the "best combat maneuver" or "the best weapon damage"; meaning that players will end up creating their character based on mechanical necessity, rather than any kind of aesthetic consideration.

I mean, if a mace arbitrarily does a D6 and a sword a D8 and a bastard sword a D8+1, you're going to pick the bastard sword every single time, assuming there's no penalty for choosing it.

Likewise, if in your effort to create a more appealing or realistic or sophisticated or complex technical game you create dozens of different rules for special attacks, obviously players will pick the one maneuver that works absolutely best and just use that one all the time. That's why in True20 no one bothers to try sundering and absolutely everyone tries to do feignts all the time.

If there's a feat that gives you an absolute edge over everyone else, you're obviously going to take it.

To me, these are all errors in design, because they trap the player into having to minmax their character to just keep up with everyone else, rather than allowing them to play the character as they envision him.  

That's why I love solutions like WFRP's "hand weapons" rule, where it doesn't matter what kind of one-handed medium weapon you use, its stats are the same.

RPGPundit

Is this true if you're playing a vagabond using the hand weapon stick with leaf?

There is a favorite basic career thread on tbp and 'Simple Man' listed that as one of his favs.

Edit: I mean, vs a cutlass or a gladius?

Quote from: RPGPunditThat's why I love solutions like WFRP's "hand weapons" rule, where it doesn't matter what kind of one-handed medium weapon you use, its stats are the same.

Agreed.

But keep in mind that in OD&D all weapons do 1d6, so this wasn't an innovation of WFRP.

Quote from: RPGPunditOne of the difficulties in a lot of games that I've run into is the urge to create "teh ultimate combat feat" or the "best combat maneuver" or "the best weapon damage"; meaning that players will end up creating their character based on mechanical necessity, rather than any kind of aesthetic consideration.

Hell yes.

You might be aware that I just finished playing a months-long Weapons of the Gods campaign. Our enthusiasm for the system was pretty much beaten out of us by the end, but we kept playing for the banter and socialisation, and because on a fluff level the characters and plot were interesting.

By the end of the campaign, pretty much all of us had boosted our Jade stat, bought Heaven's Thunder and Moon Covered By Clouds kung fu, and focused on high-strike weapons. It simply didn't make any sense not to. We also noticed that all the NPCs in the core rulebook were really, really badly designed, suggesting that the authors didn't quite have a clear idea of how the system worked, which suggests in turn that they didn't playtest it properly. Between those two things, and the fact that God-weapons were so stupidly overwhelmingly powerful that a high-ranking martial artist simply couldn't function without one, and the terribly-organised rulebook, and the occasionally utterly broken descriptions of effects...

Well, let's just say your assessment of WotG was totally right. The GM of the campaign in question and I had a blazing argument on RPG.net a while back about the game, in which the fanboys insisted that we were playing it wrong and we kept pointing at the actual rules and saying "Well, here's how the game is actually designed..."

It's a tricky business.  Ideally, a system can have a series of tradeoffs where'e there's no ideal solution but choices do make a difference.  I mean the point of a rules system is to give meaningful options - if choices don't make a differnce then it's jumping through hoops for the sake of jumping through hoops.  But if not done right, there is 1 highly optimal choice that ruins it.  
 
I'd lean to making things not matter if they are not the focus of the game.  If you want a game for duelling between different fighting schools, you'd want each weapon and maneuver to have pluses and minuses, opposing weapons/maneuvers they are great against and ones that fare poorly against.  But if your focus is really more about exploration, or time travel, or whatever, then having differences in weapons that could unbalance the game isn't worth the hassle.

One thing I like in Hackmaster is the idea of penetration rules... It's setup so if you role max on your die, you get to roll again subtracting one and add it on... and it continues.  What that means is if you have a weapon with a 1d4 or 1d6 damage, you're more likely to penetrate than one with 1d8+1.  Also, a 2d4 penetrates more than 1d8 (it works per die rolled), even though on average you'll do less damage without penetration.  What this does is makes weapons work a bit different from each other.

Also, it has different damage vs. different sizes... and if you play with ALL the rules, different types of weapons (hacking vs. piercing for example) affect armours different.

Sure it gets complex, but I like the idea that different tools work better for different jobs.

Even in D20 (at least 3.5) the different crit multipliers and reach help differentiate some of the weapons.

That all being said, I tend to pick things more on the roleplaying side than "max damage" but it also has to do with the way we run our games.

I too don't think the, uh, options baby should be thrown out with the, err, minmax bathwater.

I like medium crunch games and the variety of choices they offer. In some of these (not including 3.x but e.g. Sengoku or Harp) the more choices, the more I will be tempted to select a technique/weapon/template that's cool for my character concept over one that's optimal for Teh Build.

What's bad is when in a game (BD&D for example) with very few options overall everyone will choose the same weapon from an already very short list.

In two years of play none of my True20 players have tried to fient. It just hasn't become part of the culture at our table. Not that it couldn't, I guess, afterall every one takes Cleave and Great Cleave for instance, and for a while Rage was all the, well, rage.

Quote from: theemrysOne thing I like in Hackmaster is the idea of penetration rules... It's setup so if you role max on your die, you get to roll again subtracting one and add it on... and it continues.  What that means is if you have a weapon with a 1d4 or 1d6 damage, you're more likely to penetrate than one with 1d8+1.

Based purely on your description of the mechanic, the "penetration" rule doesn't really balance out a d4 vs. a d6. A similar "exploding die" mechanic exists is in Savage Worlds, and a while back I did some calculations for it that showed if you roll a bigger die, your expected value (in the HM case, the expected damage) will always be higher.

Link.

Quote from: NicephorusIt's a tricky business.  Ideally, a system can have a series of tradeoffs where'e there's no ideal solution but choices do make a difference.  I mean the point of a rules system is to give meaningful options - if choices don't make a differnce then it's jumping through hoops for the sake of jumping through hoops.  But if not done right, there is 1 highly optimal choice that ruins it.

Yes, ideally when you have several options, they should behave in a fashion somewhat like rock-scissors-paper. That is, no one option should have the advantage over every other option in every situation.

Quote from: Elliot WilenYes, ideally when you have several options, they should behave in a fashion somewhat like rock-scissors-paper. That is, no one option should have the advantage over every other option in every situation.

Bingo!

-clash

And sometimes, the bigger gun really is just going to kill the guy better.  Despite all the vagaries and unpredictabilities of ballistics, generally speaking, a .22 pistol is still a hell of a lot less likely to kill a man than a .44 magnum.

True, but then you ask why .22s haven't been driven from the market by the existence of the magnum, and that should give ideas for elements you might want to have in a game.

E.g.: cost, concealability, cost of ammo, legal restrictions on access.

Quote from: J ArcaneAnd sometimes, the bigger gun really is just going to kill the guy better.

On a related note, sometimes a gun is just the best option.  Some games, like D20 modern, nerf guns and automatic fire a bit so that martial artists, melee types, pyschics, etc. can compete.  This is reasonable from a play perspective as long as you realize that's it's not realistic.

Oh, but note: in some cases, the "inferior" option was driven from the market, but the game doesn't reflect that very well, leaving the players scratching their heads.

Classic example is all the AD&D armors, even leaving aside the questionable distinctions between banded/splinted/chain. Or other games that include stats for different kinds of helmets. Fact is, if you had the money, you bought state of the art. Circa 1500 that meant no self-respecting knight was wearing chainmail and a great helm or nasal helm. Just like today there's no tradeoff between an M-16 and a Brown Bess.

IOW, some of the stuff on equipment lists may only really be used by poor or desperate folks; depending on their station and resources, PCs may have no reason to touch it.

EDIT: "superior/inferior" what's the diff?