Quote from: two_fishes;372132It's true, but the point is there are odd game-balance limits in all the versions of D&D. I'm aware there are valid reasons for disliking 4e but these particular complaints strike me as pretty trivial. Crossbows do less damage than longbows, clerics need a feat to use shields. Like I posted before. Meh. Big deal

The point being, there was an archetypical justification to it before.  Clerics can't 'shed blood', so only blunt weapons.  Now, it's 'Clerics have to take a feat to use a shield...because, uhhhh... they do.'  I was never particularly keen on the 'metal interferes with human magic' bit, but at least it was some kind of rationale.

Quote from: Settembrini;372142You do get bonus points for a weird form of sock puppetting.

Care to explain that?

Quote from: T. Foster;372121"But no one we knew ever used those weapon vs AC adjustments" comes the inevitable response. Well, that's your problem right there.

We did and we liked it.

I say we. My thief and his poxy shortsword and dagger wasn't too fond of it, but the +4 largely overcame it when he got all back-stabby.

Hmm I've fallen behind.

Peregrin said:

QuoteFWIW, if you're going for realism or detail that "makes sense", I wouldn't really look to D&D. There was already a game made in response to D&D to cater to people who wanted that type of detail and sense in their game, and it came out a few decades ago.

BTW which one are you talking about here? Runequest? Fantasy Hero? Fantasy Wargaming? Sword's Path Glory (God help us)?

To whomever commented on these (EDIT: T. Foster) - fair enough with weapon-type-vs-AC modifiers if that's what float's your boat. One of the reasons I really like Dragon Warriors is that it has a separate 'Armour Bypass roll' [vs. armour factor with d4 or d6 or d8 depending on weapon] so that you can have low-damage, high-penetration (mace) or vice versa (sword). I'd normally rewrite the actual weapon statistics to do this, but I like it that the subsystem is there. You can have easily built on it to have multiple rolls for weapons with multiple striking heads, too (triple flails or star flails, Cat o' 9 tails, African throwing knives). A friend of mine did a really interesting system for this for his DW campaign.

Yeah, Johnson, RQ was what I had in mind.

Quote from: T. Foster;372121"But no one we knew ever used those weapon vs AC adjustments" comes the inevitable response. Well, that's your problem right there.

I just simplified by giving a to hit bonus. Plus made a "knight-killer" that take 6 rounds to reload and does 5d4 damage. Basically a one shot weapon.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372136Indeed.

Anyway, I was glancing through Fantasy Craft last night and I saw that there, arrows and quarrels do exactly the same damage regardless of the type of bow used. BUT, the type of bow influences the chance of getting a critical hit, and here a heavy crossbow is better than a longbow.

I can't say exactly how that fits into the rest of the system; e.g., I don't know if it uses AC or armor absorbs or both.

It's an Armor Absorbs system, and Armor Piercing ("AP") comes into the picture. Crossbows have a higher AP rating.

Quote from: two_fishes;372123Remind me again why clerics were prohibited from using edged weapons in earlier editions.

Because Archbishop Turpin, a paladin of Charlesmagne, was famed for only used blunt weapons because he was a priest.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;372193BTW which one are you talking about here? Runequest? Fantasy Hero? Fantasy Wargaming? Sword's Path Glory (God help us)?

It Runequest, created by SCAers who found D&D too abstract to visualize how they were fighting.

The most playable "realistic" system out there is Harnmaster. GURPS + Martial Arts (which covers all forms of fighting) has the most detail. As long as you make a cheat sheet of your maneuvers it playable.  Rolemaster is famed for it charts, it's many many charts. Fantasy Hero 1st edition had a lot of customization option but had difficulties with realism. Later editions fixed this.

Fantasy Wargaming, DragonQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, Sword's Path Glory were all overkill in the realism department. Way too complicated to be fun.

One thing that also ought to be mentioned in response to the attempt at deploying a revisionist history of D&D is: in Original D&D, it didn't matter what weapon you used, it always did 1d6. Ergo: forcing clerics to use maces and slings wasn't much of a game-balance decision. (Maybe if you used Chainmail...but also contrary to revisionism, Chainmail wasn't actually used very widely or very long as the D&D combat system.)

Quote from: T. Foster;372121"But no one we knew ever used those weapon vs AC adjustments" comes the inevitable response. Well, that's your problem right there.

Do not EVEN get me started on this. :rant:

Quote from: estar;372201Because Archbishop Turpin, a paladin of Charlesmagne, was famed for only used blunt weapons because he was a priest.

Turpin wielded the sword Almace at Roncevalles, but yes, generally speaking the cleric weapon proscription stems from the prohibition about shedding blood.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372203One thing that also ought to be mentioned in response to the attempt at deploying a revisionist history of D&D is: in Original D&D, it didn't matter what weapon you used, it always did 1d6. Ergo: forcing clerics to use maces and slings wasn't much of a game-balance decision. (Maybe if you used Chainmail...but also contrary to revisionism, Chainmail wasn't actually used very widely or very long as the D&D combat system.)

This is generally true, but overlooks bows and crossbows (note: slings aren't actually on the equipment list in Original D&D, so adding them (and allowing clerics to use them) is a house-rule) and magic swords (which are a separate class from other magic weapons in Original D&D -- only swords can be intelligent and have other special abilities beyond a simple bonus to hit and damage (charm person, teleport, life-draining, granting wishes, etc.). It's not much of an exaggeration to claim the ability to use magic swords as one of the main benefits of the fighter class (just like the ability to use wands and the "big two" staffs (power, wizardry) is arguably the most important ability for magic-users -- even moreso than their own spellcasting ability; heck, the rules even specifically cite the ability to use the +3 war hammer as one of the main benefits of playing a dwarf).

Was it Turpin or some other bishop in a more recent battle?  I can't remember.  Gygax had a lot of inaccurate data on the middle ages from victorian sources.  The armour classes for instance.

But no, historically crossbows are more accurate, more powerful, longer ranged, and yes, slower loading.  It takes a long time to train a longbowman.  And they're firing into massed formation.

Really, with the way armour classes and hit points work, all weapons should have weapon verses armour type modifiers and do 1d6 damage with NO STRENGTH BONUS.  It would be really simple to get people to use them if they were integrated with the core to hit table and character's got a bonus from their class.  And in AD&D 1e Crossbows were great knight killers and only did 1 point less damage on average than Longbows and never did 1 point.

The nitpicky things for eight year olds are fire and forget spells, fighters that can't get new powers like the wizard does, and the low hitpoints of low level characters.

Quote from: The Shaman;372204Do not EVEN get me started on this. :rant:

No no no. I -want- to get you started on this. I'm interested in your take on that topic.
So... what's that remark about?