Semantics? Really?? They're dually "disadvantaged" compared to other Races, via less damage in certain scenarios (with no compensation to make up for that loss of damage) as well as less options to choose from in those same scenarios.
Right, but that's like saying I have $1 and you have 99 cents. So what. It's just not worth being upset over.
Not just damage; also less options. Just because you don't view it as such or you see the other advantages of being small (which are also subjective to a point) as worth it doesn't mean you are factually correct, either, Max.
Okay. What's your point. I never claimed that my views on them being balanced were in any way factually correct. I've said that there is a rule that takes my view into account when it comes to cover and concealment. This is factually correct.
Would you really take a Feat that said, "You gain Cover behind 3-foot walls if your DM agrees with you, but do 1 less point of damage and can't choose from all the options others can if you want to wield a 2-Handed Weapon,"?
Why would I? I can get that for free by playing a small PC race. No need to spend a feat slot on it.
You seem stuck on combat. D&D is not a purely combat game. When a race is balanced, it is balanced as a whole, not as a combat machine. If you gain this static bonus you so desire, what are you willing to give up from all of the other small racials to balance it out?
Combat's the only **** place the lower damage and less options in Weapon Choice come up at, Max!
So what. Other advantages outside of combat balance the RACE. The RACE is balanced.
WTF is wrong with you, dude?!?!
Nothing. I'm not the one who thinks the entire race is about combat.
Wow. Xun Fallacy and personal attacks. Enjoy, I'm done.
The truth is not a fallacy, nor was there a personal attack in there. Go ahead and give up, though. You weren't doing so hot a job at proving that you were right.
Correct - I note you skipped the portion where I said it just made it easier. Also, a prior post that showed that as written the current method can be used as an approximate for a duplicated (and translated for the weapons and size chart) one small characters.
I don't disagree with everything you've said in this thread. I take issue with you where you're quite plainly and hyperbolically wrong, as in your discussion of twelve foot greatswords.
It can, but it has serious problems (vorpal bug) which is why we don't do it. 3/3.5 used automatic weapon upsizing/downsizing, and the problems were illustrated quite well therein. They're also illustrated in 4th re:Oversized being a surprisingly strong trait, which would be the likely candidate reason for, say, Minotaurs having "Oversized" in the MM, and not in a subsequent treatment in Dragon #369.
Certainly there are a lot of weapons that ought to be downsized in order to open up options for small creatures. A Small (read: lighter and ever so slightly shorter) reach polearm, for example, would open up previously shut paths; a Small creature would be disadvantaged as a Longarm Marshal, but still be able to actually attempt the role, and it's my opinion - as, I believe, it is yours - that most of the "problem" of Small creatures can be addressed by this. The DPR difference, while real, is not very important except for a few extreme cases.
It's best, IMO, that these things are addressed in "generic" supplements, rather than through campaign-specific items like Talenta weapons that might not translate or might simply not be readily available to a playing group who only buys generic D&D books.
Agreed - you did miss the point. I even showed which points you missed. Small creatures are using roughly translated weapons (again for simplicity).
No, they aren't. They're using the same exact weapons.
What you are missing is the concept of an extra hand on a one-handed weapon.
No, I'm not. What differentiates the leverage characteristics of a two-handed vs one-handed weapon is not the size of the hand used to grip it; what differentiates it is the ability to shift pivot points and apply much greater torque by having a gap between hands. This does allow you to put greater force behind a blow, and handle weapons that are too long to pivot effectively with the leverage granted by the surface of a single hand.
While the width of a single hand represents a limit on the amount of leverage for a single-handed weapon, in a two-handed weapon, the limiting factor is for many types of actions the distance between the hands. Thus, if we want to talk realistic physics, Joe Halfling should actually suffer a loss of effectiveness relative to raw muscular power when he uses a 40" saber with one hand, since his hand is smaller, giving him a smaller lever with which to effect torque in wrist-cuts; however, he should experience little to no loss in effectiveness relative to raw muscular power when using a longsword in two hands versus a human using the same, as the leverage limit there in the same "wrist/hand" pivot actions is the length of the handle, which is within his ability to manage without loss of effective strength (unlike the longer handle of, say, a fullblade, which is too long for a halfling to effectively use all of).
Instead, the converse is true in D&D; Jane Human should perform better with the saber, which stretches the limit of a strictly one-handed weapon's leverage action, but instead performs better with the two-handed longsword style. Which is an oddity, and repairing that by applying the versatile damage bonus to Small characters using their two-handed weapons would not, IMO, actually break the damage curves. We're looking at a very marginal improvement that makes their weapon tier/type structure look more like Medium characters while remaining strictly inferior. Right now, a Small creature trained only in Simple weapons can deal just as much damage one-handed as two-handed. Which is very odd.
I could get behind a change like that. It's not something I would have considered prior to checking the math and the physics and the damage tables, but it pops out when you run calculations. I have to wonder why they decided that Small creatures wouldn't get the damage bonus - whether it was a holdover from 3/3.5 mechanics with small-size weapons, or whether they playtested it the other way first and decided it resulted in too many great-weapon halfling characters.
Versatile weapons are NOT one-handed weapons to a halfling. Their large size makes them equivalent to small 2 handed weapons.
And yet... those weapons behave differently in the hands of a medium vs small character. These are weapons which are small enough to be used with two hands by a small character in the same manner a medium character uses that weapon in two hands, rather than the weapons which are too large for them to effectively handle due to total length versus operator height (ground intersection issues) or due to handgrip spacing ("arms too short").
Wow - and people claimed *I* was being simulationist?
You were being simulationist badly. I corrected it. Incompetence is a flaw regardless of whether you're basing your argument on game or reality.
first - as Max pointed out - going by the artistry is plain folly.
Not exactly. The descriptions used in D&D do not, appropriately speaking, correspond to arbitrarily selected vocabulary. You have to be very cautious in translating across history, in which a simple term - such as a "broad" or "long" sword - has had many different meanings. E.g., the bastard sword, requiring special training for effective one-handed use in D&D, corresponds pretty well to the Renn era German longsword (appropriately described as a hand-and-a-half sword), while the D&D longsword, easily handled in one hand by any trained soldier of any of the pre-gunpowder metalworking eras, corresponds more clearly to something more like the shorter Viking longsword. That's something that's not clear from the name, but the picture makes it perfectly clear in a moment. It's also something you can figure out "ought" to be the case from examining the difference between martial and superior weapon proficiencies, but that requires a lot more work. (You could - third - look at the edition history of D&D over the past thirty years and arrive at the same conclusion, but that requires either a lot of work or a long background with the material.)
Strictly two-handed swords vary between greatsword and fullblade - "zweihander" describes a range of blades from little more than 4' long (barely more than the period longsword) to 6' monstrosities requiring a highly trained individual to manage appropriately. Certain "legendary" examples would qualify as an oversized fullblade.
You missed a significant portion of the torque equation. The length of the lever arm.
Actually, if you review my calculations again, you'll note that's accounted for. 84% raw strength x 68% leverage length = 57% total applied torque. Your errors are significant if you tried the same calculations before and diverged significantly from my results. A series of small errors can compound rapidly to a larger error.
Agreed - it's cubed.
It's cubic under simple elongation, which gives - as I emphasized - a "typical" result of 83% just on the size difference. It's quintic under total scaling; if you're trying to produce an weapon of identical proportions, the length declines less.
The length shift of 83% in maximum effective weapon length by torque issues is therefore a "generous" estimate to your cause, especially as it assumes halflings are weaker, as you do. That's not actually a necessary characteristic. Halflings actually need only 20% superior force per unit muscle to have the same strength as humans, whether through superior percentage of tissues in muscle (lighter bones and lower body fat percentage, for example), or superior muscle tissue, and the game statistics reflect such a hypothetical superiority. Elves and eladrin likewise need higher densities of effective muscle to match up to bulkier humans of similar height, so it's not a halfling specific problem. (Or a fantasy specific problem. Go arm-wrestle a chimpanzee and get back to me on whether or not a short lightweight creature can have strong muscles.)
Assume a halfling of equal strength, and using elongation, gives 88%. I.e., seven eighths as long. On average, you wouldn't notice that unless you carefully laid the weapons out side by side. Use a scaling model (as your claim of "similar equivalent weapons," and the traditional 3/3.5 model of "small" size weapons) on the same base strength, and you have a 0.93 scale weapon being usable by the same halfling. This gets very marginal in terms of trying to compute maximum usable blade length for a halfling.
Realistically, there's more variation in strength between individual halflings as between halflings and humans. The hypothetical population mean might be 84%, but physical strength has a proportionately high standard deviation, and certainly an 8 strength human is capable of wielding a greatsword (with great effect, even, using Melee Training) in a way that an 18 strength halfling is not permitted to.
In terms of extreme examples, where individuals are pushing the limits of what they can effectively possibly wield on their frame (fullblade), that matters. In terms of easily wielded weapons ... it doesn't. The lever action and strength are not really significant considerations. In many cases - in particular, when executing "wrist/hand" or "half-sword" type finesse moves, which are the core of parrying in many types of swordwork, and the lever used is the actual grip, rather than the arm, and limited by grip length rather than arm, the halfling actually does not have a lever disadvantage with two-handed weapons until the weapon becomes unmanageably large, because the lever in question is the distance between hands. A halfling can half-sword a reasonably small German/Italian Renn-era longsword (aka D&D bastard sword) in two hands just as well as a human - s/he just can't do it with a larger one, or switch to using the sword in one hand.
It is more important for one-handed weapons, in which the lever size is almost always determined by the dimension of one or another body part of the wielder, but even then, when you're scaling down, it's usually the problem of carrying the weapon and hitting the ground that runs you into problems before you run out of leverage. A halfling (ironically) might be able to perform high strikes perfectly well with a claymore and execute a picture-perfect parry quinte (parry for overhead strikes), but cannot perform parries 7-8 (or even 1-2) due to the fact that the sword tip would necessarily strike the ground (those are the four "low-tip" parries - 1 higher inside, 8 lower outside), and has difficulty drawing or carrying the weapon easily due to the fact that it is taller than s/he is. But until reaching that limit... the halfling may have to wield a bastard sword with both hands simply in order to use it, and uses it more in the style of the greatsword, but is really able to use it to similar effect on foes.
You actually don't use simple static arm-lever actions that often. You're typically putting whole-body strength to effect as much as possible for impact actions, and wrist/hand leverage for finesse actions. The halfling's greater weight/strength ratio actually means they are better able to apply their entire body's strength to an action by moving more quickly; where a human's feet would still be out of position to complete a reversal, the halfling's superior (1.75+) strength/weight ratio lets them reverse the direction of their whole body more quickly, compensating significantly for their smaller size. They may be half the size, but they can accelerate that weight twice as quickly.
Being bigger, in other words, is an advantage, but it's actually not such a terribly overwhelming one on the whole outside of the obvious point of reach, when you get to cases of more generalized physical performance. Usain Bolt towers above Jesse Owens; in spite of having more modern training techniques and more finely tuned running form, he's only 7% faster in spite of being 10% taller and more muscular to boot. I bet he can leg press more than 107% of what Jesse Owens could, but that's a more specialized activity than running. The halfling may be half the total size of a human, but is substantially more than half as effective at most physical tasks - the more generalized the activity (and combat is very generalized in the way that scaling both benefits and inhibits you) the closer the performance of the two.
Using simplistic scaling techniques to try to derive what a halfling should be able to wield versus a human? Very bad idea. You're trying to introduce a small measure of realism without careful respect for how the mechanics actually work. Square-cube is a powerful biological compensator, and anyone talking as you were in jabbering about 12' greatswords deserved to get a giant physics smack upside the head.
To me, it's common sense that a versatile weapon in the hands of a small character functions as a 2 handed weapon. I really cannot believe that people argue against that. Even if by some craziness that wasn't the designers' original intention, I'd still overide it because that would be stupid. Like I said, it's common sense.
That being the case, small characters are only at a relatively mild disadvantage as barbarians and great weapon fighters. They can still do it, but it isn't optimal. That's the way it should be. A creature of small stature attempting to wield a large weapon that relies on the user's power at the expense of mobility would be at a disadvantage, one they would not have if they acquiesced to utilizing their mobility to the fullest with a smaller weapon.
To me, the rule is brilliant in its simplicity, flavor, and effect.
But it isn't common sense. I hate to beat a dead horse, especially on a thread I just continue to read out of train wreck curiosity, it is completely illogical to conclude that a 4 foot tall person cannot use a longsword one handed.
No, it isn't illogical. It's not that they couldn't use it, they just couldn't use it effectively. It would be too heavy and too awkward to try to use 1 handed (in the RW, it's difficult even for a full-sized adult male to do and requires a fair amount of conditioning, it is more commonly used with both hands). No halfling or gnome sized creature in real life would attempt to seriously wield a weapon the size and weight of a longsword with 1 hand, so it is just disallowed by RAW for flavor and *logical* reasons.
It also follows logic that a gnome or halfling using a longsword would use it the same way that a human would use greatsword, therefore it would function as a 2 handed weapon where powers and feats are concerned. It really cannot be stated any more simply IMO.
I *really* don't get it, how this topic is even debated as much as it is.
I'll simply direct you to earlier posts in this thread, and remind myself of why I stopped seriously following this thread.
More sex and gender equality and racial equality shouldn't even be an argument--it should simply be an assumption for any RPG that wants to stay relevant in the 21st century.
I'll simply direct you to earlier posts in this thread, and remind myself of why I stopped seriously following this thread.
Is anyone seriously following this thread, or has everyone demoted it to "train-wreck curiosity" as I have?
Yes, the latest book/release that you don't like is a blatant attempt by Wizards of the Coast to make money off the fanbase. They all are. That's kinda the point of the Free Enterprise system, companies are in it to make money...
You can't! I tried... and the next night masked men came into my house and beat me until I burned up my ranger character sheet and rolled a scout. They told me... if I ever thought of making a non-essential character that they would kill mitsy..... OH GOD THEY ARE COMING BACK AND ARE FORCING ME TO BUY HEROES OF SHADOWS! SOMEONE STOP THEM PLEASE!
Your DM is your friend. He's not trying to screw with you, or dick you around. Play your character how your character would act. Accept that your character won't always be able to do what he's best at, but also know that as a goddamn HERO, he's gonna try to do his best at what he can do.
Roleplay your goddamn character, make the decisions he would make, and roll appropriately. Everything will be fine.
But filling a post with vitriol, hate-filled comments, like "these people should be fired", swearing at us or other ambiguous members of the company - there really is no reason for that. Please share your feedback respectfully, and consider how you would share your ideas if this were a face to face conversation between real people, not faceless names on a screen.
If you see me posting in a thread about editions or Essentials (that isn't simply a rules thread or similar) remind me that I'm trying to stay away from them. (My blood pressure will thank us both.)
I'll simply direct you to earlier posts in this thread, and remind myself of why I stopped seriously following this thread.
Is anyone seriously following this thread, or has everyone demoted it to "train-wreck curiosity" as I have?
I'm watching to see if I get to roll out the whole "forte and foible" lesson next (it's been at least a couple months since I last trotted that out for a beginning fencer) and proceed to the lecture about sniping versus in-fighting and the curious cases of disadvantageous reach differences. Perhaps there will even be cause to talk about half-swording.
I don't feel moved to pontificate on the intersection of biomechanics and bladework online very often. People usually (a) aren't curious enough to ask those sorts of questions, and (b) don't stick their necks far out and then stuff their foot in their mouth making silly mistakes involving both. PBN did (b) at least once too often.
I don't disagree with everything you've said in this thread. I take issue with you where you're quite plainly and hyperbolically wrong, as in your discussion of twelve foot greatswords.
Granted it was hyperbolic - not to the degree you mention. Your calculations fail to include all aspects of weaponry. Namely - strength is not the determining factor (espcially in blades). To use the same weaponry - much of the compensation you claim to gain is lost in balance and control. The further the center of balance (linear scale) moves away from the center of gravity of the wielder, the larger the proportion of energy used just to maintain the weapon. Further, greater "damage" is achieved by striking with at the weapons percussion point - which, again, is on a linear scale. So, as stated, 12 is hyperbolic - only insofar as halflings aren't 3' tall. (although, I do believe that I specified that in my hyperbolic example), you've given him a fully unwieldy weapon, wherein most of his energy is lost. Achieving the same effect requires a linear scaling of the weapon.
or in short - smack me with your physics book if you'd like, but don't be surprised when I grab my CRC handbook.
Through the ages, many would wonder "Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?" I wonder "Does the art of discourse on the internet imitate the art of discourse in life or does the art of discourse in life imitate the art of discourse on the internet?"
