Weapon Sizing

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Caedrus
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Post by Caedrus »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Caedrus wrote:And you imagine this option is more practical for a 3.0 pixie rogue than a 3.5 one why, exactly?
I really don't see how you can construe the difference between taking a penalty and not taking a penalty as being a difference in degrees of practicality.

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Well, according to NativeJovian, it's a -4 size penalty for the pixie to use it. By contrast, you're going to take a -4 nonproficiency penalty for using a greatsword unless you multiclassed or otherwise gained proficiency (whereas a pixie IS proficient in the dagger, except that it's large). So yes, there is a difference in degrees of practicality in that respect.

However, even if you gained proficiency through one means or another, it doesn't seem like a terribly practical action anyways except under the circumstances that you are low level and missing any weapons of your own.

But I'll cede that point since yes, technically there is a difference in degrees of practicality (depending on your build). One could also make the point when arguing for the old system that it perhaps makes more sense for a greatsword proficiency to apply to the use of an orc's dagger for the pixie, rather than a size penalty from a dagger proficiency.

Personally, if I was designing the game, I'd handle this issue more along the lines of my suggestions for making improvisation and improvised weapons more practical. In fact it fits the model pretty straight: You pickpocket the orc and stab him in the back with his own weapon. That's cool and I can totally see that happening. What I don't see is the pixie deciding to fight with that weapon all the time any more than Jason Bourne is going to fight with a book/towel/pen for more than a round, unless you actually want to give your game the flavor of using outlandish weapons like Cloud's buster swords or whatever. That's really a matter of personal preference, of course.
Last edited by Caedrus on Sat Sep 12, 2009 6:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Username17 »

By and by: D&D Pixies are actually halfling sized. Y'all are talking about other sprites like Grigs.

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Post by Caedrus »

FrankTrollman wrote:By and by: D&D Pixies are actually halfling sized. Y'all are talking about other sprites like Grigs.

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Huh. I never actually noticed that because I have never used a pixie in a game ever. I just assumed it was right because others were referring to them as tiny in the context of the thread. :D
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

FrankTrollman wrote:By and by: D&D Pixies are actually halfling sized. Y'all are talking about other sprites like Grigs.

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Well shit. So the pixie and/or halfling only takes a -2 penalty when using a human-made dagger.
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Post by Meikle641 »

I don't see why using the weapon of a bigger creature as something suited to your size is a bad thing. Happens a few times in fiction (Sting, anyone?), but not hugely.

Why is this somehow looked on as retarded? It has issues, sure, but that isn't enough to simply discard it out of hand.
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Post by NativeJovian »

Because there are more differences between daggers and longswords and greatswords than just how big they are. If you take a butter knife and increase its size until it's 2 feet long, it doesn't become a shortsword. You could use it like one, if you really wanted to, but it wouldn't be the same. That's why it's possible, but you take penalties if you do it.
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Post by Username17 »

NativeJovian wrote:Because there are more differences between daggers and longswords and greatswords than just how big they are. If you take a butter knife and increase its size until it's 2 feet long, it doesn't become a shortsword. You could use it like one, if you really wanted to, but it wouldn't be the same. That's why it's possible, but you take penalties if you do it.
Explain that with a spear. Go ahead, I fucking dare you.

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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

NativeJovian wrote:Because there are more differences between daggers and longswords and greatswords than just how big they are. If you take a butter knife and increase its size until it's 2 feet long, it doesn't become a shortsword. You could use it like one, if you really wanted to, but it wouldn't be the same. That's why it's possible, but you take penalties if you do it.
Yeah, weapons are built so they're easy to hold and manipulate. Things like handle diameter are built for a human hand. If you used an ogres greatsword, the grip would be a lot bigger and make the weapon clumsier to hold.

I kinda do think the 3.5 sizing rules make sense as far as melee weapons go.
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Post by NativeJovian »

FrankTrollman wrote:Explain that with a spear. Go ahead, I fucking dare you.
Granularity of the system. You can either say that incorrectly sized weapons all take penalties, none take penalties, or some take penalties but some don't. It's a small enough issue (ie, there are few enough weapons that are reasonably just different-sized versions of each other) that it's easier to say "they all take penalties" and call it a day. If you really want to break down every single weapon into "takes penalties" or "doesn't", go right ahead, I guess.
Last edited by NativeJovian on Sun Sep 13, 2009 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by IGTN »

Yeah, a wrong-sized weapon has a wrong-sized handle, and that's where the clumsiness comes from.

A spear made for people with hands twice as big as yours will have twice the circumference, and won't fit in your hand.

For swords and so on, though, if you want to make them your size, you can just remount them. Putting a smaller handle on your longsword can turn it into a halfling's greatsword, and a larger handle on your longsword turns it into an ogre's shortsword. Spears can get the same, too, if you only need the tip (but shafts are hard to carry around).
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Post by Roy »

Ya know, why don't you just say 'magic weapons and armor scale to the wielder' and call it a day? Every other magic item already does it, and technically they already do resize since any non full plate armor can be used just as easily by a 4'0 dwarf chick and a 7'9 male goliath, because both are Medium size. And the only reason it doesn't apply to full plate is some legacy throwback. Likewise, the same barding can be used by a Siberian Husky and a Pony. And if you can accept that for normal armors, why not just say fuck that noise for the magic ones?
Last edited by Roy on Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

IGTN wrote:A spear made for people with hands twice as big as yours will have twice the circumference, and won't fit in your hand.
That's stupid and you should feel stupid.

Spears vary in diameter much more than double, and it's seriously not a problem. Thicker spears are required to maintain length and thicker spears are required when flimsier wood is used. The optimal diameter is whatever will hold it together, because weight in the haft is inefficient and slows the weapon down more than it adds to the damaging effects.

Since spears range in length from less than a meter to more than six and come in materials that range from steel to bamboo, the idea that there is a "human sized" spear diameter isn't just wrong - it's fucking insulting.

Now for swords, handles generally are made differently for different hands. But that's just it - it's personal. A guy my own height and weight whose sword I take will have a slightly different optimal grip. And he'll use his sword better than I would. There's no more or different problem with me picking up the sword of a child or an ogre.

Go to your fucking silverware drawer right now and measure the handle diameter of your knives and forks. Right now. I'll wait. If your spoons don't all come from the same box of Ikea silverware, chances are fucking excellent that the diameters vary. A lot. Does that make them hard to use? Of course not!

Hands work like monkey wrenches. They ratchet up and down in size very fluidly. The idea that it would be difficult or even noticeable to be using a club that was thicker or thinner around the handle displays a shocking lack of understanding of even basic body mechanics.

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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Yeah, weapons are built so they're easy to hold and manipulate. Things like handle diameter are built for a human hand. If you used an ogres greatsword, the grip would be a lot bigger and make the weapon clumsier to hold.
People seems to manage with wildly differing handle diameters for things like spears and staves. For even greater diversity, take a look a knife or sword grips.
NativeJovian wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Explain that with a spear. Go ahead, I fucking dare you.
Granularity of the system. You can either say that incorrectly sized weapons all take penalties, none take penalties, or some take penalties but some don't. It's a small enough issue (ie, there are few enough weapons that are reasonably just different-sized versions of each other) that it's easier to say "they all take penalties" and call it a day. If you really want to break down every single weapon into "takes penalties" or "doesn't", go right ahead, I guess.
That's a nice false dichotomy. The other other option, which we've been talking about, is to avoid giving penalties to anyone.
IGTN wrote:For swords and so on, though, if you want to make them your size, you can just remount them. Putting a smaller handle on your longsword can turn it into a halfling's greatsword, and a larger handle on your longsword turns it into an ogre's shortsword. Spears can get the same, too, if you only need the tip (but shafts are hard to carry around).
I actually like this idea a lot, and it benefits both realism and dealing with sunders. If you want to resize a weapon, take ten minutes to put it on a new handle. If you want to carry around 10 different magical spears for 'just the right situation', carry one haft and 10 heads. People skilled at using improvised weapons can just ignore the whole fucking issue.

Of course, that still leaves us with the 'halflings need different weapons' lameness, but at least now it only takes 10 minutes to pretend like it never happened.
Roy wrote:Ya know, why don't you just say 'magic weapons and armor scale to the wielder' and call it a day?
That's a good question. IMO, making it so that items which don't need to resize (brooches, potions, wands, scrolls) and weapons which you can ignore the need to resize without killing realism (belts, necklaces, weapons) does not add too much conceptual complexity to a game where armor and rings do resize. In addition, it saves us the question of why people don't carry around 20 magical grig weapons in a belt pouch, to be expanded to gargantuan size and used as bridges when the need arises.
Although we still have to explain when they don't have pouches full of sprite platemail...
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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

CatharzGodfoot wrote: People seems to manage with wildly differing handle diameters for things like spears and staves. For even greater diversity, take a look a knife or sword grips.
Actually combat knives tend to have bigger grips than your average kitchen knife for that exact reason. If you're gonna exert a lot of force on it, you want a bigger grip. So combat knives tend to have handles that look more like sword grips.


That's a nice false dichotomy. The other other option, which we've been talking about, is to avoid giving penalties to anyone.
Yeah, I mean you can do that. It just depends on how realistic you want your system to be. If you want people using Cloud style cleaver swords, then you probably don't care much if a pixie can use a human dagger without penalty. If on the other hand you want the game to be a bit less anime-ish, you may want to place some kind of penalty.

I mean, basically if you allow oddly sized weapons to be used without penalty it probably means that you shouldn't have penalties for using improvised weapons either. The guy who fights with barstools is gonna be as good as the guy with a war club. Depending on the type of game you want, this may or may not be a bad thing.
Last edited by RandomCasualty2 on Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

RC wrote:Yeah, I mean you can do that. It just depends on how realistic you want your system to be.
But it's less realistic and more ungamebalanced to throw around penalties for using clubs "made" for a bigger creature. Why would you do that?

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Post by souran »

Frank -

Have you done any fencing or martial arts? Cause your totally wrong.

Sword handles contribute to the way and technique of a weapon. They are not "just a little different guy to guy"

I am left handed. I cannot even use MOST right handed fencing equipment. Even stuff for people in my size and weight category.

In many forms of sword fighinting the handle of the sword is partially sized to counterblance the blade. There are numerous historical accounts of large individuals who use weapons that longer/heavier than a standard weapon of their type. The other universal of these stories is that these weapons were often nearly useless for people of typical height because the balance was all fucked up on them. It was better to just use a weapon actually designed for a person of your height.

You want to know about increasing the size of spears? Sure:

Spears of different sizes are totally different weapons. Whats more people from different ears and cutlures developed COMPLETELY different spears for different purposes.

The spears used by the greek phalanx are not the same as the pikes used by later europeans. Many cultures developed spears for use on horseback, on foot, in one hand and in two hands. The techniques for using these weapons were as different as the weapons themselves.

So no Its not really that accurate to think that your elf should be able to use a giants footspear that he holds in one hand and fights with a shield as a pike. the gaint probably holds it on the weapons center of balance. Your elf has to use two hands off the center of balance.

Now you might say "well, it should depend on the complexity of the weapon, a club is still a club no matter how big it is." My response is "have you ever heard of singlestick?" Even something as seemingly straightforward as a club or mace probably has had some technique developed to make it actually useful. The idea that you could perform these techniques with an oversized version of hte weapon held in two hands is silly. The idea that you could simply use similar techniques from a similar weapon at least stands the test of reason, but it doesn't mean that all those methods would work.

Anyway, all of this is really secondary anyway. The rule was not instituted for its facual accuracy (see the inclusion of things like monkey grip) but because without a penalty everybody would be running around like its exalted or some damn animie using gargantuan weapons because even -8 to hit would still be worth it for the damage.
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Post by Username17 »

souran wrote:Have you done any fencing or martial arts?
Yes.
Cause your totally wrong.
Do tell?
Sword handles contribute to the way and technique of a weapon. They are not "just a little different guy to guy"
What? That was part of my point. A sword handle is wildly different guy to guy. There are optimized grips that pretty much only fit your hand properly, and even then only if you are trained in using the appropriate fencing grip (hint: many of them do not especially look like a fist).

At the level of abstraction where you allow me to pick up Maria's blade and swing it around, there is no reason I couldn't swing around Elmo's or Sweetums'. For spears there literally is no special grip surface at all, so any spear I happen to be able to lift I should be able to use with roughly equal facility.
I am left handed. I cannot even use MOST right handed fencing equipment. Even stuff for people in my size and weight category.
This is true. And totally half of the point. The other half is that you can swing a child's baseball bat or hammer without difficulty. Which is ironically entirely applicable to the grips on maces and axes. There are weapons which have special man-specific grips, and for those weapons it makes no sense or difference if the intended user is a meter taller or shorter than you, because the grip is going to be fucked as long as he isn't your twin. And then there are weapons where the gripping surface is just a cylinder, and for those it makes no sense or difference if the intended user is a meter taller or shorter than you because the human hand can ratchet up and down dozens of times without seriously impacting the user's strength.
Spears of different sizes are totally different weapons. Whats more people from different ears and cutlures developed COMPLETELY different spears for different purposes.
No. That's dumb. The pointy end goes in the other man. That's the purpose. There are several thrusts you can use depending on the size of the spear relative to your body and the confines of the area around you, but the vast majority of spear users got like half an hour of actual drill in their whole lives and they were able to kill people just fine. Sometimes a pointy stick is just a fucking pointy stick.

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Post by Koumei »

RandomCasualty2 wrote: If on the other hand you want the game to be a bit less anime-ish,
Didn't we have some kind of rule where the next person to say that gets punched in the dick?

Again, it's not anime until the ninjas summon energy-wangs and there are combat schoolgirls in really short skirts.

And big-boobed ladies who carry spare ammo in their cleavage.
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Post by souran »

FrankTrollman wrote: No. That's dumb. The pointy end goes in the other man. That's the purpose. There are several thrusts you can use depending on the size of the spear relative to your body and the confines of the area around you, but the vast majority of spear users got like half an hour of actual drill in their whole lives and they were able to kill people just fine. Sometimes a pointy stick is just a fucking pointy stick.

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Again, your wrong.

The sarissa (the spear of the phalanx) is a long spear used with a full shield. It also often includes a metal butt at the opposing end to add weight and that metal end is actually used to deliver killing blows to people wounded in the assualt against the phalanx. Training to fight in the phalanx was a nearly full time activity.

The weapon of the pike square is actually a totally different spear. Infact, some versions of the pike developed after the arquebus actually have a metal STAND PLATE attached to the end. This stand plate is not weaponized but could be used to allow individuals in the rear ranks to both march and point their spears down over the ranks in front fo them to pentrait a shield wall.

Wahts interesting is that these spears are totally diffirent from japanese yari which are two handed fighting spears. This spear is not metal shod and is used in two hands sans a shield. It is a "throw thrust" weapon, you actually are going to let the spear slide a bit in your hands and impart power to it. Although you might hit somebody with the shaft portion (which you would defiantly do with the sarissa remember) that is not a typical part of the style of using this weapon.

The bayonet required the development of a number of new techniques (some of them are still going on today but not really) The initial idea was to give individuals in all musket units the same level of protection that they would have had in the older formations that had one longspearmen for every 2 fire armed equiped soldiers (see the new model army).

Most early mounted spears were not used tucked under the arm, with the invention of stirrups the tucking technique allowed for the develop of a totally different mounted spear. Note that there are weapons in many cultures called lances and that only about half of these weapons are used in the "european fashion" of being tucked into the underarm.

We can do this all day. There were of course simple one and two handed spears thrust into the hands of untrained conscripts. Although those conscripts might also have been fighting with farm impliments. You will not that although it is recoreded that that happend that those guys never actually beat anybody of relevance.....

The other issue, though, is that D&D is no where near this historically detailed. Nor should it be. If you want a game were intimate knowledge of period fighting styles acts as an IWIN power play "riddle of steel."

Honestly, "longsword" is a complete D&D bullshit idea. Infact, "longsword" in period fightbooks and manuals usually applies to two handed swrods of different styles. The closest thing to the dnd longswrod would be the various "arming swords." Shortsword is a little better but based on the weapons it describes it should be thrusting sword, or possibly smallsword as opposed to short sword. The D&D spear and longspear don't represent any "real" weapon with a specific technique they represent all weapons that might fall into these categories.

Players just want there weapons to work and when they see an upgrade they want to get to use it. On the other hand dms probably don't want every player hauling around gargantuan weapons.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

souran wrote:Sword handles contribute to the way and technique of a weapon. They are not "just a little different guy to guy"
...
Spears of different sizes are totally different weapons. Whats more people from different ears and cutlures developed COMPLETELY different spears for different purposes.

The spears used by the greek phalanx are not the same as the pikes used by later europeans. Many cultures developed spears for use on horseback, on foot, in one hand and in two hands. The techniques for using these weapons were as different as the weapons themselves.
D&D, however, abstracts away all of those differences. Recall that a katana (a fairly light-weight single-edged sword) is completely interchangeable in every way with a hand and a half sword. There is no distinction between the foil and the epee, let alone different kinds of foil and epee. Don't even start on what the saber might be.

In D&D, there are four kinds of spears: long spears, "spears", short spears, and javelins. Five if you include pikes. All of the different types of tips, flexibility and weight of the haft, and tassels are abstracted away.

When that's what you're dealing with, you cannot model individual variations in real world weapon forms, because a bastard sword is already defined as being completely interchangeable with a katana.
souran wrote:Anyway, all of this is really secondary anyway. The rule was not instituted for its facual accuracy (see the inclusion of things like monkey grip) but because without a penalty everybody would be running around like its exalted or some damn animie using gargantuan weapons because even -8 to hit would still be worth it for the damage.
Ah, so of primary importance is the fact that you don't understand 3e weapon sizing. In 3e, you have the ability to wield weapons based on their size rather than the size of the creature they were made for. So the only creatures running around with stupid anime gargantuan swords (which are actually huge objects) are cloud giants, and they don't take any penalty to hit. What a medium creature can use is a cloud giant short sword, which is identical in every way to a human's great sword.
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Post by Koumei »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Recall that a katana (a fairly light-weight single-edged sword) is completely interchangeable in every way with a hand and a half sword.
Not quite: the katana is always Masterwork, because of SUPERIOR JAPANESE STEEL or each samurai spending hundreds of years on an individual katana. I read it on Wikipedia, it must be true.

So the very moment you chuck a +1 on them, they're identical again. I think there are some other cases, too. Perhaps the sickle and scimitar are identical or something.

And it already has too damn many polearms (but is better than the old editions with guisarme, voulge, carbine-voulge, guisarme-voulge, pike, halberd, jeddart, lochaber, Swiss Army Polearm, naginata, yori, spear, greatspear, not-so-great-spear, sharpened oar, glaive, trident, quaddent, dodecadent, pitchfork, and who knows what else). A sufficiently lazy person could chop it down to "one-handed weapons", "two-handed weapons", "polearms" and "other". Or the Australian airport method of "Guns, Knives and Misc (including bombs and spears)".
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Post by souran »

CatharzGodfoot wrote: Ah, so of primary importance is the fact that you don't understand 3e weapon sizing. In 3e, you have the ability to wield weapons based on their size rather than the size of the creature they were made for. So the only creatures running around with stupid anime gargantuan swords (which are actually huge objects) are cloud giants, and they don't take any penalty to hit. What a medium creature can use is a cloud giant short sword, which is identical in every way to a human's great sword.
Actually your missing the point of the entire discussion. The giants shortsword is not "identical to a human's great sword." In game mechanics the giants shortsword does not switch from piercing to slashing damage. Whats more doesn't the mokey grip line of feats eventually allow a medium sized creature to weild huge sized weapons without penalty?

This leads to the realism argument that is central to the thread. A cloud giants shortsword is still a shortsword in its application. The fact that is very big does not change the style in which it is meant to be used.

There are actually a lot of issues to be considered. A giants shortsword is probably actually made for one giant to kill another giant. Using it to fight humans is probably not not the optimal choice. If the size differance between to creatures grows large enough wouldn't the larger creature develop specilized "weapons" for getting rid of pesky smaller creatures? Wouldn't a titan be more likely to come at you with a fly swatter and a can of raid?
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Post by hogarth »

souran wrote: Actually your missing the point of the entire discussion. The giants shortsword is not "identical to a human's great sword."
It depends on whether you're talking about 3.0E or 3.5E.
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Post by violence in the media »

Souran, you're bouncing back and forth between realism and game mechanical arguments. You cannot promote a realism argument while endorsing the game mechanical distinction of piercing/slashing/bludgeoning weapons. Also, why are you even applying a realism argument while using D&D Giants as a point of reference with a straight face? It's unreasonable for someone to use a Giant's 2 meter shortsword as a greatsword, but not unreasonable for the triple-sized human to cavort about in the first place? WTF?
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Post by Quantumboost »

This leads to the realism argument that is central to the thread. A cloud giants shortsword is still a shortsword in its application. The fact that is very big does not change the style in which it is meant to be used.
That depends on whether the object is a "Large-sized sword" or a "Large-sized shortsword". If it's the former, why should it matter whether someone 4x as big as you would be using it as a stabbing implement rather than a hacking implement?
"I don't care about what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do."
There are actually a lot of issues to be considered. A giants shortsword is probably actually made for one giant to kill another giant. Using it to fight humans is probably not not the optimal choice. If the size differance between to creatures grows large enough wouldn't the larger creature develop specilized "weapons" for getting rid of pesky smaller creatures? Wouldn't a titan be more likely to come at you with a fly swatter and a can of raid?
If it isn't a "Giant's thinblade" or whatever (i.e., the specialized weapon you seem to think it should be/is), this is not a concern. Here you seem to be railing against the idea that a Giant would even use a shortsword, rather than Medium-sized people actually being able wield such an item as a greatsword (under the 3.0 system being discussed). That may or may not be the case (I don't care at the moment), but it's not pertinent.
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