Over-Valuing Swords

I want to ask three main questions here.
Have I over-valued, made too useful, swords in my Glory Road Roleplay Rules? There is a related question here: Do game designers in general over-value swords? However, that isn't very important to me right now and it is too difficult to answer quickly without looking at a great many rules sets. So, it isn't one of my main questions.
The second question is, is there a reason to over-value swords. I realized early on that many early game designers under-valued missile weapons and I know they had their reasons. Maybe there is a genre reason to over-value swords.
The third main question is: what should I do about it.

Let's compare Glory Road swords with other weapons of the same or similar handling weights. Let's compare the good old Arming Sword, the one-handed broadsword of the medieval period, with an axe of the same handling weight as the edge of the sword. The sword has more reach with the point and that's fine. It has the same reach with the edge and that's good also. I'm mostly comparing edge versus edge anyway. The axe has a much larger handling penalty because its striking surface is smaller and your opponent has to worry about the point, so that's ok too. However, the axe only does one category of damage more than the edge of the sword if the wielders are the same strength. That's a small difference. 2D10+2 versus 4D6 for Strength Bonus three characters.
With those other advantages, why was the sword relegated to sidearm status (except for polearm-sized swords) when armor became common? Well, this sword was not suitable for two-handed use but even the longsword was generally considered a backup weapon to something with more percussive impact. Given that the amount of damage in the system directly impacts whether the weapon hurts someone through the armor, maybe I am giving swords too much damage.
Both these sword edges and axes are chopping weapons and can easily be compared. We roll the damage, subtract the armor value and then double and apply the result.
A mace or a hammer will do about the same damage as an axe but we only subtract half of the armor value. Then we apply the result without doubling.
A few swords, such as the katana, depend on the drawing cut. For them, we subtract double the armor and then we triple the result and apply it.
Some sword points do armor piercing point damage and have a damage type similar to blunt weapons and they are useful against armor.
Most sword points do stabbing point damage, which works like cutting damage.
So, what's the problem? For a crunchy game to have swords still be the weapon of choice for many player-characters feels like it ought to be problematical.

Well, is there a reason to over-value swords? Swords are the glamour weapon of fantasy literature. The fact that they were not the battlefield weapon of choice did not mean that they couldn't be carried by far-traveling adventurers. And a sword, unless we are talking about a huge two-hander, is handy to carry around. Finally, a sword is often the status symbol of a noble or an officer. So, I think it should retain its status as at least a favored sidearm.

So, what is to be done? Well, I could easily reduce the damage of swords, at least their edges. Weapon stats are on the website on a PDF, not on the core rules that are commercially available. And I could put a note on DriveThru that I had done that. GMs could change or not as they choose. Or I can leave it like it is. They do call (part of) the genre Sword and Sorcery, after all.

This reads like an advertisement?

Swords arent the glamour weapon of choice. Some prefer axes, others hammers, etc. Swords just show up alot because pop culture, and some normal culture, over-use them. And sometimes even mis-use them.

In my own game way back and 4e D&D Gamma World you had damage ranges of light, medium and heavy, and then could name it whatever you want. This takes into account craftsmanship and possibly even the user being unaware what the weapon really is.

An arming sword and a katana should use the same rules. Nothing particularly special about either.

Been taking marketing tips from the Zweihander guy?

But honestly, I think swords are probably the best all around weapon. You can stab, you can slash, you can whack them with the hilt. Because they are relatively light and balanced, you can swing them quickly, which means much more energy.

If you had an army, you'd probably want to give them pikes (ie, really long spears). But one on one the sword is king.

Every other weapon is better than a sword at it's main function, but that's it's only function.

Swords are versatile, and unlike hafted weapons, are lighter, and more durable due to the lack of wood.  It's only very late in the melee weapons era where you see armor worn over enough of the body to render one handed swords useless.

But, you're asking about raw damage, so yes, maybe swords should be less useful against armor than an axe.  Axes do have the curved edge to bring the weight down all at one point after all.

IRL people carried around swords way more than they carried around halberds & other specialist battlefield weapons. There were good reasons for this. Those reasons did not include raw damage against plate armour, but if your game is not focused on actual battlefield simulation I'm not sure it's worth worrying about.

Barring speciality weapons like zweihanders, a sword is a sidearm, not a primary weapon. It's the backup for when your main weapon either fails or is situationally less useful. We see this across cultures and times, the sword was always a secondary weapon. The ancient Chinese, for example, called it the "queen of battles" - the "king" was the spear.

Many RPGs undervalue the spear, not least later editions of D&D introducing silly, arbitrary rules like regular war-spears requiring two hands to use.

Look, there may or may not be a large amount of expertise on the true qualities of medieval weapons here. I don't think it matters. The one salient point I think has already been brought up:

Quote from: S'mon;997748if your game is not focused on actual battlefield simulation I'm not sure it's worth worrying about.

In virtually no RPG, are the individuals who are going to be engaging the rule system (players/characters, and the opponents they are up against) going to be doing what people really did with weapons in the way that they would have, and have the same priorities that they did. Even if you get rid of the fantasy milieu of using swords on dragons and the technological smorgasbord of having leather, chain, and plate; rapiers and katanas all in the same time and place, you still aren't doing the same things with your weapons and armor as they would have historically.

The existence of a thread where a guy wants to talk about his game and wants to include a little more detail based on historical use of weapons doesn't force you to read it.
We don't need a massive threadcrap of "lol realizm", or "you'll never be perfect so why bother" or "nerd's comparing dick size again" or any other of the types of arguments that crop up when someone wants something more than all medium weapons do 1d8.

You can get down with your bad, superior self...elsewhere, and let the guy work it out.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;997765In virtually no RPG, are the individuals who are going to be engaging the rule system (players/characters, and the opponents they are up against) going to be doing what people really did with weapons in the way that they would have, and have the same priorities that they did. Even if you get rid of the fantasy milieu of using swords on dragons and the technological smorgasbord of having leather, chain, and plate; rapiers and katanas all in the same time and place, you still aren't doing the same things with your weapons and armor as they would have historically.

Except for all those historical RPGs and anyone choosing to use systems for historical settings...

I guess I would ask if you have valued everything else enough. Like... the axe has a larger handling penalty because of its smaller striking surface. Does that handling penalty map to the +2 max damage and almost the same average? My gut tells me that with dice that big, the difference should be smaller in handling penalties. I guess the question is... is the sword a jack of all trades and master of none, and are the other weapons the master of something else?

Does the axe have a cost advantage? It is a FAR cheaper weapon to make. But outside of that, I would certainly not consider an axe within the parameters I've seen. The damage difference is very slight, and unless armor is quite tuned around about 13-25 points, I'm not going to ever see the benefit of an axe.

Also,  http://armor.typepad.com/bastardsword/sword_dynamics.pdf Might be useful. It's not short though!

At first glance, it sounds like the modeling problem in the OP's damage numbers is that the average of the axe is only 1 more than the sword and has a wide range (min damage is the same, and max damage is only +2 for the axe, and very unlikely to ever happen on 4d6). With armor subtracting from that (even though penetrating damage is doubled), I expect that's not going to represent the situation of axes being much better at penetrating heavy armor.

Swords are better balanced than axes, and it tends to be easier to slash up an unarmored person with one than with an axe. But getting hit solidly with an axe does a lot where it hits, and can sometimes chop through heavy armor.

One way you could try representing it would be to make the sword make more attacks (or more damage rolls, or have a chance to hit more times than the axe does) but with lower damage for each,

Another way would be to greatly reduce the sword damage to the point it's very unlikely to get through heavy armor, but then multiply the penetration multiplier so it does more damage than an axe to an unarmored person.

The second suggestion will probably be simpler and faster than the first suggestion, but might make the minimum penetrating sword damage several points (so no chance of light sword wounds, which is also wrong). The first suggestion seems more accurately representative to me, but takes a bit more work to calculate.

Quote from: CRKrueger;997775The existence of a thread where a guy wants to talk about his game and wants to include a little more detail based on historical use of weapons doesn't force you to read it.

And likewise, no one is forcing anyone to take the advice of anyone who puts forth a suggestion that they don't like.

QuoteWe don't need a massive threadcrap of "lol realizm", or "you'll never be perfect so why bother" or "nerd's comparing dick size again" or any other of the types of arguments that crop up when someone wants something more than all medium weapons do 1d8.

You can get down with your bad, superior self...elsewhere, and let the guy work it out.

I'm fascinated that you've interpreted this as one 'side' taking a stance of superiority over the other, as opposed to reasonable people putting forth opinions that will compete in the marketplace of ideas. For future reference, what was it that made you feel that way? Why is this a threadcrap and not advice you consider bad?

I'll elaborate on my particular stance. OP stated, "is there a reason to over-value swords? Swords are the glamour weapon of fantasy literature." And my answer is yes, over-value whatever you consider your own fantasy glamour, to the dearth of historic realism. That's a position, and one that can be argued, but the one I favor.

My reasoning is that these are (for the most part) military, battlefield weapons, and PCs are (for the most part) not going to be playing soldiers fighting in ranks on a military battlefield. This is as significant a factor as things like an handaxe having a different striking surface profile compared to an arming sword. Likewise, I feel that any weapon that your going to bother to include in the weapon list ought to be a reasonable one for a PC to choose to be their weapon of choice. Even if that's slightly unrealistic. Therefore, I don't think that realism should be the primary motivation.

Personally, I would propose (again, opinion and position) that there should be some variation in weapon stats. So not 'all medium weapons do 1d8.' And it might even have some nod towards realism, but that that not be the determining factor of the end-stats of the weapon. Instead, it should be such that all the weapons are reasonable choices (except maybe things that are supposed to be 'improvised weapon,' in which case that's its benefit), so that if someone really wants to make a "____-wielding combatant," it is reasonable.

I will use D&D 3.5 as an example. They had all weapons of the same skill level and heft work off the same formula (so ex. one-handed, non-light, martial-skill weapons they do 1d8 damage and either 19-20 crit or x3 critical, or 1d6 damage and 18-20 or x4 critical). There was some nod towards some justification ('scimitars and other curved swords have less reach and thus inertia-per-weight, but a longer cutting surface, so we'll say they do less damage but are more likely to cut a vital artery of something and thus have a higher critical range'), but it was hand-wavy. They did some other things wrong (like making "spiked chains" an uber-weapon) and 3.5 isn't my favorite system, but this isn't something I think they did wrong.

I'm suggesting this because the OP stated that "For a crunchy game to have swords still be the weapon of choice for many player-characters feels like it ought to be problematical" and I don't want a classic fantasy weapon to be problematic. There are plenty of games, such as oD&D/1e, GURPS, and so forth that did take valiant stabs at realism with weapons and armor charts, or different stats or even rules for each weapon types (GURPS 3e I believe had swords be swingable every second and axes every other second)--and there always seems to be clear 'best choices.'

So I am putting forth the position that--where realism and fantasy diverge, follow the fantasy (unless this is a game whose whole 'deal' is its' realism, in which case you should expect certain weapons to simply not get used). It's also not an all-or-none thing. One can certainly say 'yes, spears are going to be as effective as swords and axes, even though no one is fighting in ranks, but you bring a rapier or whip to a battlefield, and you're going to have a rough go at it.'

This thread makes the case for 1E AD&D's weapon vs. armor type system. Generally ignored, often reviled, but really represents the relative merits of pre-gunpowder weapons better than any other roleplaying game system I've seen, including the supposedly super realistic ones.

Quote from: Kiero;997779Except for all those historical RPGs and anyone choosing to use systems for historical settings...

Well the problem I've seen is that the 'historical' game makes eg halberds realistically better weapons than swords, but does not enforce the reasons why you hardly ever saw a halberd in daily life. So everyone* carries halberds and you end up with something *less* realistic - and probably less genre-emulatory too - than a game which just lets swords do comparable damage.

*Like a WW2 game where all the soldiers wield MG42s and Panzerfausts and no one uses a rifle.