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Oct 10, 2012 -- 3:56PM, Maxperson wrote:

Then give small and smaller creatures the ability to use weapons to remove immunity to close quarters from creatures.  That effectively gives them "at bay" without actually attaching it to the weapon, and also goes towards helping overcome the penalties for being small that some people feel is unbalanced.

I don't understand what you mean.  I don't think it would make sense for a Small creature to use a weapon to keep people at bay that a Medium person could not use. 

Ah.  That makes more sense.  I'll think about it!

I've amended the rules to allow these weapon categories to affect creatures up to one size bigger than you.  So a human can keep an owlbear at bay, but not a bullette.  I also added an ehtire section on weapons of unuaul size in the "Design Your Own Weapon" section.

The other thing to remember with at bay is there are no attacks of opportunity in this iteration of the playtest.  So if you have a halberd and two men with longswords approach you, you can only keep one at bay at a time.  The other is going to close in on you.  Which means, even if you back up five feet and hit one swordsman, you are still getting attacked by the other swordsman (and at some point may run out of space!)

If they reintroduce attacks of opportunity, the at bay rule should state that hitting someone on an attack of opportunity does not keep them at bay.

Oct 8, 2012 -- 6:19AM, wrecan wrote:

MacEochaid: What about an ongoing damage, or just a second dose of damage at the begining of the next round to represent a deep wound?

These are good ideas.  I wonder if they would be too complicated for a mechanic that is likely to be invoked, on average every encounter.

MacEochaid: I would remove the throwing knife from blades, I just don't see a thrown slashing weapon helping add versimilitude (nor does a deflective throwing knife make much sense to me). 

I understand your point.  I'm going to hold off removing throwing blades until we're certain we're using deflective as the blade property.  That's one of the properties potentially on the chopping block.  If we replace it with something that does make sense with a ranged weapon, then the throwing knives stay.

As for the more general point as to why I don't let holes in the system, it's to ensure that if someone comes up with a character concept, the tools are there for them to use it.  I don't want someone to be excited about a character concept that requires a close axe and then find out there's no such thing.  

I'm not going for realism here.  I am going for cinematic storytelling.  So if someone wants to weild two mini-axes, I don't care that it's not particularly realistic.  Same reason spiked chain is in there.

MacEochaid: Also why are flails slashing?

Good catch.  Mostly, because there are way too many bludgeoning weapons (flails are traditionally bludgeoning) and almost no slashing weapons.  In my mind, I was thinking of a swinging piece of metal tearing flesh from their enemies as slashing damage, rather than simply swinging a mini-wrecking ball into someone's cranium as bludgeoning damage.  But I'm amenable to restoring the flails to bludgeoning if people are bothered by them being slashing.

MacEochaid: maybe remove morning star for it's dubious historocity and replace with the DnD triple headed flail

I'd like triple-headed flail to be an exotic weapon of some sort.  I don't see anybody but gnolls really getting to use them.  And, for better or ill, morningstar has a lot of history in the game, so I'd rather not remove it, despite the historical inaccuracy.

MacEochaid: Lastly, would you use these rules for monsters natural weaponry

I was actually thinking monster attacks would be described in individual monster entries.  But it might be worth having a short paragraph in the basic rules explaining how monster attacks fit into the schema along the lines you suggested.

Just to maybe contribute a little on the whole question of flails, morningstars, and maces...

There were a couple types of flails in use. One was the simple agricultural flail, which was used now and then by peasants as a makeshift weapon. There are a few illustrations of these with spikes added, but in general they're a long pole (4' or so) with a shorter cylindrical head attached by a couple links of chain. The other type of flail was a short (often very short) handle with one or more heads attached by chains about as long as the handle. These could be spiked balls or just weights. clearly these smaller flails were purely military weapons.

Morning stars were BASICALLY maces, but with spikes. They came in both infantry and cavalry (light, one-handed) versions. The infantry version was typically at least 4' and sometimes as much as 8' in length. They always had a tip spike and might or might not also have side spikes (usually). Some of the longer versions with only a tip spike were called 'godendag' and were probably used mostly like a spear with an auxiliary mace-like bludgeoning mode.

Then you're grading into the various maces and then hammers. All of these weapons were made in both one and two-handed versions, and some hammers were made as pole arms. They all work on the same principles though.

Frankly, IMHO it would be most ACCURATE to consider the mace/hammer/morning star/club as one single 'club' weapon family. That does reduce the need to come up with extra rules and resolves the "what is the club pole arm slot called (lucern hammer)". Of course this may not meet with the expectations of a lot of players...

Flails certainly seem mechanically somewhat different, though in terms of the damage delivered they don't seem much different from other clubs. They were certainly difficult to defend against, with blows easily avoiding shields, tangling with weapons, and striking from odd angles and with high speed. It is quite hard to defend against a determined flail attack. OTOH if the weapon users momentum can be broken or the head snagged then it can quickly become useless. Perhaps something can be done to portray this nature of the weapon, though I don't think the last version you put up was bad at all.