Should 5E be conservative or go balls-out?

[Username17]

I'll bet that historically, more daggers and concealed/small blades have killed people than greatswords have.

Since historically almost no one actually ever used greatswords, that is probably true. Not sure how it would measure up if you tossed in all the saber equivalents together (and yes, scimitars and katanas count). But in any case, I think the most deaths have probably been achieved by spears, unless firearms or bombs have taken the mantle in the last few centuries.

I have no idea how you do this without achieving grognard levels of detail, but it'd be different as all hell.

Everyone wants there to be some tactical matching going on with weaponry, but it mostly gets bogged down in Elennsarism. That is, people waving their arms around hoping that something will happen to make "obvious" choices somehow magically float to the top. Sometimes there are weapon lengths involved. It... doesn't generally work out.

In order to make different weapon selection be something that follows a logic, you need to create some kind of minigame involving key words and weapon types. But remember, the logic of what weapon to use will be emergent from the logic of the minigame you actually make, not whatever you think ought to happen.

-Username17

[K]

Weapon sizing logic always falls apart the instant you have to deal with giants or sprites. Any logic that assigns special traits to a dagger for being small is meaningless when a Frost Giant-sized dagger comes into play.

[Ferret]

That's just a case of a paragraph or so of weapon size translation rules for orders of magnitude. Anything Frost-giant size would be sent to the improvised weapon (Large) table for medium characters to get it's attack penalty and off you go.

[Username17]

That's just a case of a paragraph or so of weapon size translation rules for orders of magnitude. Anything Frost-giant size would be sent to the improvised weapon (Large) table for medium characters to get it's attack penalty and off you go.

The point is that a Frost Giant is actually going to be using a dagger against your halfling character. And then... what? His dagger is physically longer than your broadsword.

Your weapon matchup minigame has to deal with that reality.

-Username17

[Ferret]

Then he gets bonuses for 'reach' or whatever advantage you give to Large creatures, and if a bastard sword gets some kind of advantage vs a dagger he gets that too, because your weapon size matrix says "Large Dagger = Medium Bastard Sword = small two-handed sword"

You bring everything back to the Small/Medium paradigm so you have a standard of reference, and then you TELL the DM that's what you did in the Monster Manual and in the DMG so that if they ever have to model Colossal vs. Colossal combat they know what modifiers to apply / cancel out.

Alternately, give out weapon scores based on their honest physical dimensions. If a halfing rapier is two feet long, and a human short sword is two feet long, they get the same weapon score modifier. That avoids having to have size equivalences and so I'd probably just go with that. You'll have some folks whining because a weapon <X> isn't historically accurate, but fuck those guys.

Note that Large or better sized weapons have minimum Str AND minimum size categories, so if your 30str fighter picks up a Frost Giant bastard sword, he still goes to the Improvised Weapons table and takes the relevant penalty because he doesn't have the stature to wield the weapon effectively (unless he has some kind of virtual size modifier that lets him count as larger than he is for purposes of negating improvised weapon penalties - I'm a fan of this solution as I saw it proposed in another thread since it lets PC's do cool shit like rip trees out of the ground and throw them at dragons and shit).