Are there any quick-fix rules that adjust weapon choice so that they matter more and causes people to consider what...

How do you use the dire flail?

I imagine you move it infront of yourself in an hourglass motion, leaving the middle centered before yourself.
That's really the only move I can think of for it though.
Guess that's why it costs a feat to learn.

well first you break it in half down the middle

...

Very carefully.

God 3e introduced some fucking retarded weapons. All the double weapons are so fucking retarded they make my brain hurt.

Also that rapier doesn't look like any rapier I've ever seen.

>Burning Wheel
>Ever

not me.

all of these are better for playing fantasy (except MERP) if you want to play something other than hack-and-slay fantasy.

any of those pieces of shit look like pure gold compared to any newer edition of D&D tqh famalam. UNLESS of course you want the "OMG, I slayed anotha ork, time to level up and unlock another superpower; also, I am taking his +3 gazillion broadsword of mystical artificial intelligence, look how mighty and kewl I am".

fuck this style of fantasy gaming.

>Longsword
>Shorter than a bastard sword

>"OMG, I slayed anotha ork, time to level up and unlock another superpower;
Super powers are only really at higher levels, 1-7th level is pretty unspectacular
Or do you just not like level systems.

>+3 gazillion broadsword of mystical artificial intelligence
But that's fucking wrong if playing 5e

>fuck this style of fantasy gaming.
What, you mean heroic fantasy?

You don't even need to do that. Just play the one good edition.

>Or do you just not like level systems.
I like it when I want to scratch my hack-and-slay itch.

>But that's fucking wrong if playing 5e
It's still central to player's efforts.

>What, you mean heroic fantasy?
Yeah, if I wanted to play a game that resembles heroic fantasy fiction outside of gaming, my choice would definitely not be D&D.

>but it seems with newer editions, the only 3 things that matter for a weapon are damage, crit, and reach.
You mean "but with 3.pf..." other editions have either solved your problem or made weapons matter a lot less.

Even 5e has rules to make weapon use more tactical in the DMG.

Don't forget the crazy awesome Weapons Mastery System in the Rules Cyclopedia for BECMI.

>BECMI
Only good D&D book I've come across. It is fucking epitome of great design. I hope more rulebooks like this existed.

D&D 4e, now fuck off.

Here's my shitty homebrew d6pool sys' fixerupper
-Curved Swords/Blades, can apply bleed once per day (once per combat?)
-Straight Swords/Blades, can parry a melee attack once per day (once per combat?)
-Hammers and Maces, can apply Stun once per day (once per combat?)
-Axes, inflict double damage once per day
-Polearms, +1 initiative and Reach, but have a disadvantage in close combat
-Exotics (shotels, khopesh, flails), can ignore shields once per day

And this shit can be combined, eg. Bardiches can do 2x damage and have +1 Initiative and Reach (didn't really think of a downside).

This doesn't really help minmaxing, but it does streamline it a bit and offer more choices beyond damage die/damage type/crit. My answer to minmaxing is offering more choices that have similar power, than offering obviously inferior choices with minimal benefits (the weaker damage weaps in 3.5 are often lower weight, but fuck who tracks that?).

not as big an issue in the era of PDFs but the layout is rightly criticized

4e had that somewhat cumbersome trait/accuracy system, but that ultimately didn't pan out well.

In the other direction is 4e's Gamma World spinoff. It has broad and simple weapon categories.

If they did a reprint with a modern layout I would buy the hell out of it.

Feels like lightning macos from 3.5, that axe skipping feat in Pathfinder are good examples. Hell style feats work greato too, you just need feats that focus on weapon groups that help really differentiate them.

Play Fantasy Craft, here's one of the weapon tables.

I'd wagers the hebrews are at fault.

Furthermore, each weapon category, like swords, axes, whips, ect. have a tree of three feats that diversify combat. And you get enough feats to get all of the ones you want pretty quick.

>GURPS
>a mess

When will this meme die?

Spoken like someone who never played a Dart Fighter in AD&D.

>hurf a durf lookit me I'm a big fat contrarian who doesn't like anything except muh dee an dee!

Stop.

Before we go any further OP, are you planning on mechanically hindering the spellcasters in any way, shape, or form if you are going to be futzing with the martial weaponry tables?

>hurr durr I don't know what a contrarian is, now watch me hate on something just because it's popular!

The irony isn't even funny, you're just a dumb faggot.

I'm glad 4E used [W] dice to give an incentive to pick heavier weapons.
One houserule for 3E you could try is make standard action attacks with weapons gain extra [W] dice as BAB increases.

This isn't actually that bad. Its pretty much a mechanical-use-per-day version of how our group plays. All attacks have to be described/contextualized, and if there's advantage to be had based on degree of success, details, who's getting hit, etc. then we have that be part of the outcome/moves. Damage is mostly by size.

OPs problem is that if you make your rules for different weapons too mechanical, there will be some that are better than others in all cases, and players being autistic fucks, will generally pick those.

what casters? if I'm going to be fuddling with weapon specifics, this is gonna be a caster-less game.

maybe not magicless, perhaps, but certainly nothing with spellslots.

weapon speed is nice, sure.

you know what else is nice? second layer of reach. A dagger is gonna be out-reached by a longsword. But only things like polearms and glaives get reach.

so what you need is a 2.5ft version of reach in addition to the 5 and 10ft kind.

Armor penetration for some weapons, letting the user ignore armor ac, while other weapons get extra flat damage.
Special maneuvers for certain weapons
.

Well if you're going to be playing a medieval fantasy d20 system, then why not just play Iron Heroes? It's by far probably the best d20.

I know "the best d20" is somewhat redundant, but at this point I'm just suggesting the lesser of many evils.

*caster-less medieval fantasy d20 system

...

Why the hell would a naked dude be harder to hit in any circumstance?

He's not. That's an adjustment to existing AC. So an axe doesn't get as big an advantage against an unarmored guy as a sword does. If you directly apply the adjustments to AC, this is what they would look like (using Basic D&D as a template):

For an Axe:
Unarmored = AC 8
Leather = AC 7
Mail = AC 6
Plate = AC 3

For a Sword:
Unarmored = AC 11
Leather = AC 8
Mail = AC 3
Plate = AC 2

Balance/Slow weapons/What the weapon is specialized against means that it's normal to hit is based on a certain situation

I mean, if you REALLY want it, AD&D had more stats for weapons that came up every now and then. It had weapon speed factor (used only to break initiative ties,) weapon length (to break initiative ties when one party was charging into the other,) damage versus medium creatures, damage versus large creatures, and a set of special bonuses and/or penalties to hit every type of manufactured armor in the game. Every weapon had every one of those things. It's just that nobody used them because they weren't worth the time they took to implement, which should tell you something about how good an idea this is.

Hacksaw version is weapon with greater reach gets advantage/shorter weapon gets disadvantage unless enemy is flanked.

If you corner a reach polearm, reverse this.
TRoS, basically, but extremely simplified.

Thus, a sword is great for cutting down unarmored and lightly-armored targets, where the power of the axe is largely superfluous and doesn't compensate for the fact that it's a slower, less agile weapon. But against heavily-armored targets, the axe's extra punch gives it a distinct advantage vs. a sword.

Quick Fix:
You have to roleplay your fighting moves, targeting, and what you intend to do, doing so adds situational modifiers to your attacks and makes fighters useful again. Also, referencing fight books for moves gives you a to-hit bonus.

>Hacksaw version is weapon with greater reach gets advantage/shorter weapon gets disadvantage unless enemy is flanked.
I'd do one or the other. Doing both is rather catastrophic. Let's say we're fighting and normally have a 50% chance to hit each other, but I've got a longsword and you've got a shortsword. That increases my chance to hit you to 75% but reduces yours to 25%, giving me a three-to-one advantage, which is a bit much.

once per day? what, the edge needs an extended rest?
>millennial weapon is a portable wifi, has to make time to take a selfie while in the body of his enemy and then post it to social media

>dat rapier cleverly disguised as a cutlass
>dat warhammer obviously not designed for war
>dat bastard sword and longsword being different things
>dat two-bladed sword even existing, that abomination is literally worse than sword-chucks
D&D is made of lies and should be destroyed.

Holy shit. Opinion discarded.

Apply a DR/damage type to various armor. Though that just steps the min-maxing back a step.

Plate, chain, and similar heavy armor get a DR/Piercing.
Padded perhaps a DR/Slashing

Though, really, it just needs an overhaul if you want to see more than just greatswords, longswords, and the handful of other long held "best choices"

I mean, there're even some silliness in the ranged weapons. Longbows can't be used mounted, but composite ones can.

I'd have the weapons grant powers. Players can only wield one or two weapons at a time anyway, so you can work on just a few weapons and get them right. Sometimes I watch medieval weapon videos on youtube and try to see what the weapon was designed for, then craft the power using that. For example, certain spiked flails were used to hit around shields, so I'd add a power for that weapon to deal half damage on a hit roll missing the AC by 2 points or less. I'd allow them to make a roll to disarm a shield on a crit (the weapon nabbed the shield with the spike or the chain, then the attacker yanked the shield off the guy and followed up with a free hit.)

>dat rapier cleverly disguised as a cutlass
Don't you mean "cutlass disguised as a rapier"?

>dat warhammer obviously not designed for war
Or to be used at all, for that matter.

>dat bastard sword and longsword being different things
A longsword is actually an arming sword. Research was a bit trickier before the age of the internet, and I'm not sure that the respective definitions were quite as settled upon as they are today (and both terms are neologisms, in any case). Also, a bastard sword is a subset of longsword and thus the terms aren't strictly interchangeable.

>dat two-bladed sword even existing, that abomination is literally worse than sword-chucks
But how else can you be fantasy Darth Maul?

Anyway, the warhammer and rapier come down to the artwork, and while, yes, that should've been done better, it doesn't really affect the actual game. Longsword is just a matter of terminology. That just leaves two-bladed swords as being legitimately retarded. Oh, and dire flails. And hooked hammers. And double axes.

uhh... not even that annon, but really. This is a solid meme with a deep, honored history.

>How do I fix fighters sucking all the balls.
>How do I deal with wizards?
>How do I make my game feel less gamy?
>How do I make my game less min/max focused.

These are not questions that should really be answered. Much like I shouldn't have to tell someone to try turning on and off their computer.

Only in full armor.

>Vancian Swording

Good argument, Deendeefag. That's exactly the type of behaviour we have come to expect of you guys, combined with spouting memes a la

>HOW DO I FIX PROBLEM ALMOST EXCLUSIVE TO D&D??!?!?!
>Try one of the multitude of other systems
>LIKE WHAT?
>list of systems here
>THEY'RE NOT EXACTLY LIKE D&D SO ARE ALL BAD

Every. Time.

>falchion
>FALCHION

Holy fuck, that partisan.
Overcompensating much, Serbia?

>allahuakbar scimitar is in
>glorious sabre that was used everywhere is not
explain this

Jesus, that Rapier looks like a Cutlass and that Falchion is a very thick Scimitar, whereas that Scimitar is actually a Sabre of some sort, perhaps just a Talwar/whatever the persian name is.
The Rapier is as long as the Longsword, and lighter, but trust-centric.
Make the Falchion slightly curved with a single edge, but thick, and used for breaking maille and other armor.
Make the Scimitar a slimmed version of the above image.
Remove any double-headed weapons.
There, you now have not-shit weapons.