What are you doing to make your different classes of weapons (sword vs. axe vs. mace vs. spear vs...

So... Fate, then?

>"What are you doing to make your different classes of food feel mechanically distinct?"

Y'all cowards don't even smoke Comfort Food

Not the game I was thinking of, but sure.

What game were you thinking of?

>It's like asking "What are you doing to make your different classes of food feel mechanically distinct?"
Except food isn't something you make direct use of during a consistent source of conflict throughout your adventure. No matter what says, combat is a major part of the way many groups like to play, far more significant than eating food (unless you're playing something along the lines of a Dungeon Meshi homebrew, in which case lemme see).

For the not at all minimal statistical differences between whole different fighting styles, then yeah, that is a big difference. Berserking barbarian and sword-and-board fighter are different fighting styles.

What I'm taking is about is more along the lines of the difference between a two-handed axe and a two-handed sword. Can axes cleave better than swords? Do swords operate off of larger single dice (e.g. 1d12) giving more varying damage whereas axes operate on more but smaller dice (e.g. 2d6) to yield more consistent damage? Are swords more accurate to make up for their inconsistent damage?

I made a system where armor did flat damage reduction, and you could trade 2 points of damage from your weapon to get 1 point of armor piercing true damage

The idea was that a sword would do full normal damage, a mace would do only armor piercing (and thus half the damage of a sword but so much better against plate) and axes were in the middle.

Then you know, reach is also a thing

Weapon tags of course. Things like rending, armor piercing, and flexible. Tags just make everything easier.

Why don't you go and fauchard yourself?

>Not making food mechanically distinct
>Not eating English food prior to combat for +4 protection against poison
>Not eating Italian food prior to retreating for +10ft/round speed

>What I'm taking is about is more along the lines of the difference between a two-handed axe and a two-handed sword. Can axes cleave better than swords? Do swords operate off of larger single dice (e.g. 1d12) giving more varying damage whereas axes operate on more but smaller dice (e.g. 2d6) to yield more consistent damage? Are swords more accurate to make up for their inconsistent damage?

Nope! Any mathematical difference between the weapons leads to one of them just being plain superior choice for a character, which would then punish others for making a "fluff" decision. Even if you do want to stat out differences between weapon types, they should be mechanical and harder to quantify than simple numbers that can be crunched.

Strike!, since that's the most combat focused game I know.

>I made a system where armor did flat damage reduction, and you could trade 2 points of damage from your weapon to get 1 point of armor piercing true damage

This is fucking retarded, unless your armor makes you impervious to all "normal" damage.

Like, think about it.

Let's say a sword does 10 damage, and a mace does 5 "true" damage. Unless the enemy has more than 5 armor, the mace is less effective than a sword, even against armored foes (at 4 armor, the mace would still be doing 5 damage, while the sword would be doing 6, for example). And any mixed damage type would essentially never be worth using.

It has been three years, I may be recalling the math wrong. Give me a moment

>Not eating French food prior to retreating for +10ft/round speed
ftfy

Still me. Just to elaborate a bit more

>What I'm taking is about is more along the lines of the difference between a two-handed axe and a two-handed sword

If these were NPC, I'd use it to signal that these two have different tactics. If hey are PCs, they probably are already different enough that they don't need to be differentiated further.

Nononono, French food gives +5 to your diplomacy bonus when you surrender

And that's what happens when interest in the system dies before people other than the dev playtest it. Small rules get written and forgotten about, despite glaring mathematical flaws.

3-2 should make the exchange rate reasonable?

>Any mathematical difference between the weapons leads to one of them just being plain superior choice for a character, which would then punish others for making a "fluff" decision.
This is what people traumatized by 3.5 actually believe.

>implying French food doesn't give a +5 bonus to empowering the nobility, and a +10 bonus when a well-paper Salon has been visited in the past 24 hours

Unless you're eating peasant food, which gives a +5 to constructing barricades

Don't even get me started on what they eat in the countryside.

meant "well-papered Salon"

fugg

How about just give armor DR and give different weapons more or less armor piercing?

It's the same in all editions of D&D I have played.

Admittedly, I have only played like 4 of them.

Although, now that you mention it, there's also the golf-bag effect of carrying around a sword, a maul and a spear just in case that I encounter something with damage resistance.

It lowers the point at which the mace overtakes the sword. Instead of at the halfway point, it'd be at the 1/3rd point (i.e. 15 dmg sword vs 10 dmg mace vs 5 points of armor). So it depends on the rest of the math of your system, what bonuses people have, average armor : weapon damage ratio, scaling, etc.

>different classes of weapons feel mechanically distinct?
It's GURPS, they reach run on a skill class. So theres that.
They also have different options being, you know, built differently. Staffs get a +2 to parrying. You cant defend against flails well. Fencing swords get bonuses on retreat/parries. Big fucking axes hit HARD.
You know, logic?

I can halfway agree with this. I mean, a knife will kill you dead. A spear, which is basically a knife on a stick, won't make you 'more dead'. You're getting stabbed and probably bleeding out either way.

On the other hand, there are reasons why it's a good reason to use a spear over a knife, such as reach and momentum. And other reasons you'd use a knife over a spear, such as ease of use and how easy it is to hide. Different tools for different purposes. Injuring your opponent is sort of a given, no matter what the weapon, but there's a lot of variety beyond that. I don't think it's safe to just completely abstract everything away.

Martials don't deserve options. Stupidity has to be weeded out, and this is yet another measure towards that.

If I wanted to get all simulationist I'd start by looking at cancerous hemashit like TROS or Song of Swords.

Because I was super crazy lazy with a lot of things. Base weapon damage scales off size and is almost irrelevant halfway through a campaign because it's a combat system and everyone will immediately cap out their attack attribute, so most damage should be coming from the extra hit dice (dice pool vs dice pool, extra successes = extra damage). A normal person hits for 4 damage, a goron for 5, and a kokiri for 3

DR depends on what you're fighting, Legend of Zelda monsters usually have DR0, but you run into armored people from time to time with DR 4 ish, and it wouldn't be strange for goblins to have DR 2ish.

There's also things like super heavy armored bosses such as the fire dragon from OoT that have such arbitrarily high DR you can only damage them with piercing damage, in that case the megaton hammer

The only tick-based system I ever know is Exalted 2e.
And it's messy as fuck.

Is there any good tick-based combat system?

>Martials don't deserve options.
>3aboos actually believe this

bad math aside, the concept works well

Nothing, save at the highest quality levels. They have slightly different traits when they're that well-made. Swords are agile and give a bonus on defense. Axes are especially hard-hitting in the beginning of the fight. Picks are noticeably superior against armor.

Seriously, Fantasy Craft has you covered.

...

>Chad the assmad tries to say there's something wrong about that

>no glaive-guisarme
it's shit

The fuck is this guy doing leaving the door open while he does the deed? And who lets their pet watch them have sex?

Don't respond to bait.

I find it hard to believe that there is no way to tweak the numbers such that different weapons are better in different situations.

GURPS does this great. Both the weapon itself and the user's skills/fighting style/techniques have tremendous effects in combat.

It doesn't have to boil down to "lol fluff differences and call it a day" unless that's genuinely how you prefer playing. Personally I think it's silly if a guy with a butter knife in combat goes up against someone similarly skilled with a spear or whatever and there's no effective mechanical difference between the two, making their odds of coming out on top effectively even with one another (barring "lol I'm a PC so Fate point to dodge his move, generate a boost then I maim him with the butter knife because I'm just that good"). Just silly unless you're doing a blatantly cinematic anime-fu game where nothing matters except core character traits.

By the same token, in a social situation, types of dress/perfume/your company/status/reputation absolutely have an effect in social situations like a royal ball or whatever. If everything is gonna be fluffed away, let's just play Risus or Heroquest 2 or something.

"Fluff it" is IMHO a lazy way of accomplishing something in an RPG, unless your actual goal is to gloss over all these sorts of details in favor of "the narrative" ala Fate or something, or if it's below the resolution of the system ala highly heroic D&D where it only matters if you're down/dead or not.
Not to say all systems are designed for this level of detail; many aren't. But that's no excuse to claim the details don't matter simply because they're below the resolution of the system you happen to be using.

Ultimately, it really comes down to preference, but "fluff it" is only a good answer for people who want to actively avoid exploring the details, NOT an answer for everyone and in particular those who want meaningful detail can absolutely have it without those details being "meaningless". That is straight bias from those in favor of glossing, nothing more.

wow this faggot has rational well-reasoned opinions haha what a loser

Your words sting me like bees on Nick Cage, user.

In lieu of feats I give special properties to weapons if the wielder is proficient, which vary depending on the type of weapon.

If you're proficient with rapiers you can lunge from 5' away to move towards an opponent as you attack, adding your proficiency bonus to hit and damage. Estocs use the rapier skill and have armor-piercing properties that can only be accessed by a wielder proficient in rapiers.

When the wielder of any type of sword is proficient with that sword, they impose a penalty of half their proficiency bonus any attack from another sword, and a penalty of their full proficiency to any attack from the same type of sword as long as they are aware of the attacker and are not incapacitated.

>Nick Cage

I like that position GURPS but this triggers me hard.

I'm sure Nicolas won't mind if I call him Nick on the internet. If he does, he can always show up to my house and give me crazy eyes in person. That'd be neat.

Depends on what your numbers represent.

If it's just D&D schlock damage/accuracy/crit range, it really is just a DPR optimization problem you want to solve. Reach and handedness at least have some interesting trade-offs. I personally loathe damage types and DR/weakness based on those, because it encourages the whole golfbag thing. I mean, I guess you could say it rewards preparation, but in the end it's just another boring calculation to be done at the beginning of the fight.

I actually LIKE the golf-bag approach -- there's actually a bit of reality to it, too! Different weapons have different tactical uses, so real warriors would carry more than one weapon. It IS a little weird for adventurers to lug around three different weapon types at once, but that's something that can be remedied by taking another simulationist cue and giving weapons alternate modes of attack. An arming sword wasn't just a cutting instrument, it was also a two-and-half-foot-long metal pole you hit people. Yet a longsword (sic) in D&D doesn't give you so much as a to-hit or damage value for hitting someone on the head with the pommel.

is the answer. I prefer GURPS, so everyone have their place.

>hey Veeky Forums how do you do thing
>by using a system that does thing
What about describing HOW said system accomplishes said thing? See .

Oh, okay. Let me give you a short explanation how it works in GURPS:
0) Different types of damage end up dealing different amounts of damage of different enemies, an depend on hit locations. For example, impaling weapon absolutely fuck the living body, and stabbing the vitals gonna get you killed. There is also different amounts of damage, depending on how you strike - swing or thrust.
1) Swords are good, because you can parry with them, you can stab and cut with them - they are versatile. Their drawback is that they are costly.
2) Axes and maces are cheap, and dealing swing amount damage, which is better than thrusting. But they are unbalanced, so you can't parry with them, if you are hitting with them.
3) Spears allow you to keep distance from your enemy (which is absolutely critical - if you can hit him and he can't hit you - you are going to kill him), deal impaling damage, and cheap. Their only drawback is thrusting damage (which is lesser than swing) and if somebody manages to stick to you in close combat - he can strike you without retribution.
4) Shields are very, very good choice, because they boost all defenses significantly and allow you to block strikes. The damage isn't as good as with two-handed weapons, but it's much easier to defend.
5) On the other hand, polearms and two-handed weapons have huge damage, and strike from far. If you hit enemy with halberd and he isn't wearing plate - he is fucked. Drawback? You literally have almost no defences - polearms are usually unbalanced, and you have no shield to block, so you pray and dodge. Or have someone else to cover you.

>muh DPR optimization
If a +2 longsword is +2 to hit and 1d8+2 to damage, and a +2 dagger is +5 to hit (+2 from the enchantment and +3 from being a dagger) and 1d4+2 to damage, which is better to use against a mook with 3 HP? Which is better against a beefier mook with 5 AC and 10 HP? Which is better against a heavily-armored mook with 15 AC and 6 HP?

Not this user, but armor also reduces damage based on armor type, e.g. flexible or rigid, is there layered padding such as a Suncoast underneath, etc. It is much, much harder to cut through armor with a sword than, say, punch through it with a pick (which may incidentally also get stuck in the victim). A maul works wonders, though because it's crushing it won't get sweet damage multipliers after armor penetration like some other types, and you can't target weak points like eye slots in a helm or chinks in the armor/ armor gaps around elbows, armpits, around the knee, etc.

Also each weapon has it's own traits which user above alluded to, such as unbalanced, fencing, parry bonuses, etc. and whips and nets have their own connotations as well. Often HOW you use the weapon is just as important as the weapon itself, e.g. a knife in a reverse grip, or a thrust with a sword instead of a swing, or a defensive grip on your spear if someone gets in too close and shoving or cracking them with the pole, or a pommel smash with your sword to their skull if they tackle you and engage too close for you to take full advantage of your blade, or using an impaled weapon to control an enemy like a grapple...

The options go on pretty much forever, but it's really as simple or as gritty/realistic/in-depth as you want it to be.

>10 HP
Eh, make this 15 HP.

*surcoat, or arming doublet. No idea what Suncoast is.

Not sure if I got the number right, but my point is that even simple numerical differences can give rise to categorical differences in the way you fight. Against low AC enemies, it's better to have a low to-hit, high damage weapon, unless the HP of the enemy is also so low that you'll probably kill it quickly no matter what weapon you use. Against high AC enemies, high to-hit, low to-damage weapons are good for whittling down their health, or delivering the coup de grace after the barbarian has scored a lucky hit with his hefty war axe. Add this to the varying distribution curves of different weapons using different numbers of dice, and you complicate the problem even further.

Also remember that variables other than the weapon you're using affect the equation! If you've got a to-hit bonus from a buff stacked on top of some tactical circumstance that gives you the upper hand, suddenly that powerful-but-clunky greatsword doesn't seem like such a bad idea!

If you're getting the numbers right, there isn't a decisive answer to DPR optimization problem. Again, this does kind of give rise to the golf bag effect, but what's worse, all the most effective heroes carrying around a variety of weapons with them, or all the most effective using near-identical weapons and never even swapping them out?

>Not sure if I got the number right, but my point is that even simple numerical differences can give rise to categorical differences in the way you fight.

No. With all of those you'll fight the same way: roll to hit and then damage. You'll be more or less effective against some foes, but what you are doing is going to be the same, and the only difference between two characters fighting the same foe will, again, come down to the DPR.

(also, at first glance it seems like the dagger is objectively better, in case this is a d20 system but w/e)

>If you're getting the numbers right, there isn't a decisive answer to DPR optimization problem.

The point is that it's still a DPR problem! You haven't made weapons any more unique, you just made the problem more complicated.

>If you've got a to-hit bonus from a buff stacked on top of some tactical circumstance that gives you the upper hand, suddenly that powerful-but-clunky greatsword doesn't seem like such a bad idea!

You could have weapons have the same stats and then give them an ability that does something like this instead. For example, a damage bonus for daggers when you want to sneakily shank someone or something. A defense bonus for swords, since they are versatile. A trip/disarm bonus to axes since you can hook things with them.

>Again, this does kind of give rise to the golf bag effect, but what's worse, all the most effective heroes carrying around a variety of weapons with them, or all the most effective using near-identical weapons and never even swapping them out?

If the system encourages refluffing, then the heroes have no reason to all use the same weapon at all; after all, they could use any weapon they want instead. I'd also say that everyone having a golfbag of weapons is just as boring as everyone having the same weapon. One guy having golfbag weapons as a gimmick is pretty cool though.

>No. With all of those you'll fight the same way: roll to hit and then damage. You'll be more or less effective against some foes, but what you are doing is going to be the same, and the only difference between two characters fighting the same foe will, again, come down to the DPR.
That's like saying all playstyles of chess are the same because they involve moving pieces around the board one-by-one and occasionally removing opposing pieces from play by displacing them with your own pieces. There's still a DPR equation, but if that equation gives rise to interesting, plausibly verisimilitudinous tactical variety, then maybe it isn't such a bad thing in the first place. Read up on emergence.

>You could have weapons have the same stats and then give them an ability that does something like this instead.
This doesn't meant that some choices won't be better than others. If you're going to be traveling in broad daylight on the open road, that dagger isn't going to give you as much of a benefit as the versatile sword. And if you're attacking something that doesn't have parryable attacks, the defense bonus from the sword is going to be redundant. And if your opponent isn't using a weapon (maybe they're a monster using claws or a monk using bare fists) the disarm bonus from the axe is going to worthless.

It sounds to me like your problem isn't with the fact that metagamers can choose superior options and come out ahead to the detriment of people making decisions based on roleplaying so much as the fact that there's a mathematical equation involved.

>If the system encourages refluffing, then the heroes have no reason to all use the same weapon at all; after all, they could use any weapon they want instead. I'd also say that everyone having a golfbag of weapons is just as boring as everyone having the same weapon. One guy having golfbag weapons as a gimmick is pretty cool though.
See . "Just fluff it" is an alright answer, but I think we can do better.

>That's like saying all playstyles of chess are the same because they involve moving pieces around the board one-by-one and occasionally removing opposing pieces from play by displacing them with your own pieces.

Chess pieces are infinitely more different because they do different things. They move different, threaten different, take different, are worth different and may have different special rules. There are a lot of variables in play that decide which one you want to move. You also have access to all of them at the same time.

Meanwhile, your dagger is just a more precise sword with slightly less damage.

>There's still a DPR equation, but if that equation gives rise to interesting, plausibly verisimilitudinous tactical variety, then maybe it isn't such a bad thing in the first place.

To-hit and damage differences are enough to carry a tabletop wargame because you have many units and there's strategy being found in engaging your units in a way that you hit your enemy's weakness.

In an RPG, you only have one "unit" most of the time. There's two ways this can go: either you can select your weapons freely, you switch to the weapon that does the most expected damage against target (whoa, such emergent, much versimiltude), or you just hit your target in the face since there really isn't much else your weapon determines.

>Read up on emergence.

I'll settle for a "No U!".

>This doesn't meant that some choices won't be better than others.

The point is that they are equal in the boring parts; that is, the average damage they do, making them at least viable in all situations. And then they have situational advantages. Do note how all the examples you cite as "useless" are ones that are actually very different, very obviously so, nothing as fucking boring and arbitrary as "this monster has high HP but low defenses! And this monster has low HP but high defenses!".

cont.

>It sounds to me like your problem isn't with the fact that metagamers can choose superior options and come out ahead to the detriment of people making decisions based on roleplaying

There's always going to be a "best" option. Pretending there won't be is foolish (and may I note, I never did).

>so much as the fact that there's a mathematical equation involved.

It's that it's straightforward. It also doesn't change your options. You put in numbers one end, and numbers come out on the other. It's only worth to consider until you find the best one, and then it's done. It's boring and it doesn't actually tell anything about how your character fights. Fucking weapon speeds are more interesting than that (although I have never seen it pulled off in a way that is not a clusterfuck).

>See . "Just fluff it" is an alright answer, but I think we can do better.

And I think if you don't want to go with "fluff it", you should still go with more meaningful and flavorful differences than "attack and damage". That's just pushing around numbers. I think we can do better than that.

This. Games can do a lot of the math and physics in the background of the game, leaving the actual playing and choices more up to the player without being hampered. Even as TES has simplified, you still have certain weapons being tied to skills as well as stats, and doing more or less damage, with a faster or slower rate of fire or swing speed. You could not recreate that effectively in a TTRPG, unless you somehow could map out specific time during a battle, instead of leaving a turn at about six seconds.

This.
French are good at collaboration with conquerors, so it's a good thing it hasn't really happened that often.

The golf bag aspect is more historically accurate though. Pages and swordbearers existed for a reason. Sometimes you need a Pokemon, sometimes you need an arming sword amd shield, sometimes you need a mace. It's hard or impossible for one man to carry all of them, so you have servants/trainees who carry them for you.

By playing GURPS

It's great as the weapon you use actually changes how you play, rather than there being a homogenized fighter class that sits there and attacks

Pokemon end up solving a lot of problems themselves, its probably better to use them first.

>Fucking weapon speeds are more interesting than that
That's precisely the type of numerical difference I'm talking about, though. Weapon speed, weapon accuracy, weapon damage, weapon damage distribution, weapon durability, weapon range -- all these things are numerical differences. My point in was that numerical differences can give rise to interesting variation. If accuracy and damage distribution aren't enough, you add other variables.

Can't you just carry a pokeball around in your backpack, though?

Rifles and heavy weaponry get a better Accuracy stat. Pistols, shotguns, and PDWs/SMGs get a better Handling stat, which is basically a CQC version of Accuracy.

Essentially:
>Handling: easier to maneuver in close quarters, harder to snatch/knock away
>Accuracy: easier to steady at range, more stable

this is a really good option

This thread really made me appreciate how awesome GURPS combat would be if actions didn't take 1 second and people didn't die in one or two hits.

Melee weapons have more range variability than traditional D&D. Hand to hand and very short weapons attack adjacent spaces, medium weapons such as longswords can attack with 1 empty space between attacker and target, spears and greatweapons can attack with 2 empty spaces between attacker and target. If the defending creature is closer than your max attack ranger you take a penalty equal to how many spaces you are too close to the defender. In other words, if your opponent is in knife range you're at a disadvantage to hit him with a spear unless you disengage and make some distance.

>Weapon speed, weapon accuracy, weapon damage, weapon damage distribution, weapon durability, weapon range -- all these things are numerical differences.

With the exception of Range and Durability, they are all pretty boring though, as they only affect your estimated damage. Speed is only better because there's more chance for it to have emergent gameplay and interplay with your other abilities, and there's a lot of implementations that can make it different.

>My point in was that numerical differences can give rise to interesting variation. If accuracy and damage distribution aren't enough, you add other variables.

I've already said that numerical differences can be good if they involve things like Range here I just think having 2-4 numbers dedicated to what is essentially only describing a single value in the end (your DPR) is a fucking waste, and that's what accuracy/damage/crit range/crit multplier stats tend to end up doing... unless, you want your game to be focused around maximizing variables like that. However, OP's question was about making weapons feel different, and for that goal, they are mostly redundant, or at least insufficient. You may still want to involve them for verisimilitude's sake, but any balanced system will essentially be broken down into something like pic related with ability tags used to actually differentiate weapons.

Or SoS style weapon autism. That's possible too.

wizardmind

I use GURPS

I'm not. pick your favorite and roll for damage. battlemasters and eldritch knights exist if you really, really, need to add more complicated elements to your plate wearing meatsack.

One way you can make accuracy more important is by giving weapons effects on hit OTHER than damage. If there's a 25% chance that an enemy will get poisoned with every hit from your dagger, then the high to-hit rating may still be valuable despite the low DPR as a result of a pitiful to-damage rating.

Assuming, of course, the poison isn't just your standard damage-over-time thing.

The fun part in this case is still the rider effect, not the accuracy. 4e kinda did this, and it resulted in accuracy > damage almost always when it comes to weapon choice. It can be done better, but it's the only case study I know off hand.

Just to illustrate, I'm talking about handling weapons something like this:
Billhook
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Slide target 2 squares.
>While using this weapon, you have Reach 2.

Twin swords
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Deal 2 damage to an enemy adjacent to the target.
>While using this weapon, enemies that end their turn adjacent to you take 1 damage.

Mancatcher
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Grab the target.
>While using this weapon, if an attack misses you while you have an enemy Grabbed, the Grabbed enemy takes 2 damage.

Rending Claw
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Target takes Ongoing 1 Damage (save ends).
>While using this weapon, add 1 damage to your Opportunities.

Rapier
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Shift 2 squares.
>While using this weapon, you may Shift 2 squares as a Move Action.

Chain & sickle
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Target is Distracted (save ends).
>While using this weapon, enemies adjacent to you cannot take advantage of Opportunities granted by your allies.

Shield
>While using this weapon, add the following effect to all your melee attacks: Target has Disadvantage to attack you with melee attacks on its next turn.
>While using this weapon, each turn you may pick a cardinal or intercardinal direction (e.g. North or Southwest). Until the start of your next turn you Resist 1 against ranged attacks in that half-plane.

I bet you could supplement that by giving damage special properties itself. E.g., you're weakened if you're at low health. This would make high-DPR-but-boring a valid alternative to low-DPR-but-funky.

Many games do this (or at least close enough) with wound levels, if I understand what you are saying correctly. It's a viable thing to do, but you need to look out for slippery slopes.

>Mechanical focus on the weapons should exist only if you're running the run of the fare murderhobo campaign.
Not even then. They'll gravitate towards optimal choices. Probably actively (given the game), but at least subconsciously.

If you high-lethality combat then slippery slopes aren't a bad thing.

My Crafty nigga!

There's a whole slew of modular weapon upgrades, a glaive-guisarme is just a glaive with Hook.

Hell yeah nobody plays my favourite system

could someone explain that pic to me?

I've wanted to play Fantasy Craft. They say it's like a better version of 3.5... what do they mean by this?

Basically, FC takes 3.5, strips it down to the most basic mechanical skeleton, and rebuilds it all from the ground up with more consistent balance and a rather more cinematic design philosophy.

A lot of the basics will look very familiar to a 3.5 player. You've got the same six core stats, with the same method of calculating modifiers. You've got your race, which gives attribute adjustments and special traits, and your class, which provides most of your unique abilities and level-based progression in several familiar core stats like BAB and saving throws. You've got skill points based on class and Int bonus, which are spent to buy ranks in the various skills. You've got feats every 3 levels, with many feats resembling those in 3.5.

However, it's really quite different when you get into the details. It's a lot less beneficial to dump one attribute to jack up one or two favored stats, the classes are totally redesigned to sit comfortably in what the usual 3.PF class tier rankings would call "tier 3" (shine in their specialty, competent enough to not be dead weight when their specialty isn't applicable, but not so strong they warp the game around them), skills are overhauled to be a lot more accessible and relevant. Combat is very dynamic and exciting, even at low levels, due to overhauled feats, more useful and accessible special maneuvers, and changes to the action economy and methods of limiting enemy movement. Magic is changed to a spell point system rather than Vancian spell slots, and the spells themselves are drastically reined in to eliminate caster supremacy.

It also introduces several new things to help flesh out character types that are poorly-supported in 3.5 (particularly dedicated noncombatant social/support types, like the Courtier class), support customization of characters outside the typical class niche, and make gear more interesting and less central to game balance.

Also, it lets you play stuff like ents and dragons with minimal fuss.

Playing 4e.

Oh shit, you were one of the guys that made that? I'm still trying to get my group to play it.

Are you still making improvements on it? You haven't updated the questions/complaints page in a while; the last five questions were eight months ago, all from me.