of course some weapons could be finessable outside these rules, and there can be option that if you use twohanded grip on weapon equal size of you(melee only) you can increase damage die by one category.
What about Greatswords built for halflings? Would they be Medium weapons? A Greatsword (or broadsword, or Buster Sword....) is built different from a longsword, so shouldn't have the same stats. I'm not happy with a system that says "because something is bigger it is better at killing you," especially when HP are supposed to represent your ability to avoid direct hits. I would prefer something like this:
Each weapon is constructed in a size. the damage for each weapon is static, regardless of size (IE a 'small' longsword is just as deadly as a 'large' longsword). If a character has a strength of 20 they may use weapons one size catagory larger without penalty. If a character has a dexterity of 20 they may use weapons one size catagory smaller without penalty. Monster Trait: Giant Strength: Weapons gain an increased damage die if they are 'large' weapons or larger.
This would let Halflings use weapons built for them (a longspear built for someone only 4 feet tall still functions like a longspear), and it would let large monsters deal extra damage with their big weapons. The pitfall to this comes with reach rules and how far a 'small' spear would reach. However, that could be delt with in Character Size rules rather than Weapon Size rules.
The best solution for the question of weapon versus size has always been and will continue to be that weapons for creatures of any size are absolutely identical except for weight. In other words, small races aren't stupid and are perfectly capable of making weapons appropriately sized for themselves, just as they were smart enough to do in 3.5. As for the oft-asked question of "Shoudn't small weapons do less damage because they're smaller?", the answer is "No.", and I will copy-paste an explanation that I presented in another thread:
To explain, we need to go over a couple of basic premises first:
1) Smaller creatures aren't inherently more stupid than medium creatures, so they're perfectly capable of creating their own weapons perfectly sized for themselves rather than needing to rely on larger creatures to make weapons that they then need to adapt to. In other words, a Human can make themselves a longsword appropriately proportionately sized for a Human, and a Halfling can make themselves a longsword smaller than that of the Human's that is appropriately proportionately sized for a Halfling.
Now, the immediate response to this is typically "Well, sure, but then a Halfling's Longsword is the exact same thing as a Human's Shortsword", but that's not the case. Even two weapons of similar size and weight need to be balanced differently if they're going to be used in two completely different ways by two creatures so different in size, and the hilt sizes at least will differ greatly. Furthermore, if we go with the premise that any small-size weapon can be adequately modeled by a step-down version of the medium-size weapon, we run into the issue that many medium-size weapon don't have any step-down version. For example, there is no step down for a Dagger or a Shortbow or a Scythe.
So, following this logic so far, what we must end up with it something like what 3.5 had, where Halflings can and do make their own smaller versions of every weapon that Humans can and do make. Perfectly reasonable.
B) Now, let's go somewhere completely unrelated and talk about attack bonuses and damage bonuses in general. If you saw a feature that said "Due to your superior accuracy and precision, you get a +2 bonus to X", would you have any idea whether that X was attack or damage? No, you wouldn't. It is a simple matter of fact that the vast majority of instances of such a bonus can be reasonably represented either way. These have even sometimes changed from edition to edition, for example like how Weapon Focus created an attack bonus in 3E but a damage bonus in 4E. Another example from 4E is two races, the Dragonborn and the Gnoll, that have thematically practically identical features (they fight more furiously when bloodied) but the former's is modeled with an attack bonus and the latter's with a damage bonus for mechanical variety.
The great thing about a system as flexible as D&D is supposed to be in that a concept can often be mechanically translated in multiple ways, and the fact that many attack or damage bonuses can often be modeled just fine the other way is a testament to that.
If anything is going to cause a hangup for anybody as I continue to explain, this is going to be it.
#) Stepping back to concerns of size, let's look at the inherent mechanics for size, completely independent of race, present in different editions of D&D. The most detailed and "realistic" was probably 3.5, where there were many, many mechanical implications of being small size that we didn't see afterward in 4E and that we don't see yet in Next. For example, small characters in 3.5 got a size bonus to AC. Logically, this makes some sense, as it is more difficult to hit something that's smaller because you have a smaller target to aim for.
Of course, this is only part of that story. If the AC bonus were the only thing that they got, then two Halfling would have a harder time hitting one another than two Humans do, and that just makes no sense. Therefore, small size creatures also got a bonus to attack rolls due to the advantage granted by their perspective. The entire size chart followed suit. Medium was the default "zero" size, and every size smaller got an identical bonus to AC and attack, and every size larger got an identical penalty to AC and attack. If we wanted to most realistically model the effects of size differences, this would be a perfectly internally consistent way to do so.
Now, let's combine all of the above premises, and the true implications of my proposal become clear. Small creatures do create their own smaller versions of the same weapon that medium size creatures create. However, while these weapons may be smaller, small creatures also have a perspective advantage over larger creatures. Where in the past this perspective advantage has been modeled as a bonus on attack rolls, we can instead now model it as a bonus on damage rolls. If the weapons of a small creature do less damage because they're small but then do more damage due to perspective difference, then these things cancel each other out, and we end up with small-size weapons that are physically smaller than their medium-size counterparts but that, when wielded by a small-size character, still do the exact same die damage as their medium-size counterparts. In other words, despite the fact that we are dealing with differently sized weapons (NOT a Halfling with a two-handed sword twice his size), they can still reasonably be modeled as mechanically identical in terms of everything but their weight, removing a layer of complexity and pigeon-holing from the game.
For maximum realism, add in rules for what penalties are taken when wielding a weapon normally sized for another creature, for example a Human taking a -2 penalty to attack for attempting to wield a Halfling's Greatsword as a Longsword or a Halfling taking a -2 penalty to attack for attempting to weld a Human's Shortbow as a Longbow.
If you've been following closely, then you may be saying to yourself that, following this logic, larger creatures, despite wielding larger weapons, would also be dealing the exact same damage with those weapons that medium creatures would with their versions of them. That is also correct. Should larger creatures do more damage than medium creatures? Probably. Must that damage be as a result of weapon damage dice? No, they don't need to be. The vastly superior strength of such larger creatures should give their damage rolls enough of a static modifier to model this increased damage despite rolling only normal damage dice.
tl;dr, Weapon mechanics across size categories can be made more identical by also taking into account the size of a weapon's intended wielder and not just taking into account the size of a weapon itself.
Speaking of things that were badly designed, please check out this thread for my Minotaur fix. What have the critics said, you ask? "If any of my players ask to play a Minotaur, I'm definitely offering this as an alternative to the official version." - EmpactWB "If I ever feel like playing a Minotaur I'll know where to look!" - Undrave "WoTC if you are reading this - please take this guy's advice." - Ferol_Debtor_of_Torm "Really full of win. A minotaur that is actually attractive for more than just melee classes." - Cpt_Micha
Also, check out my recent GENASI variant! If you've ever wished that your Fire Genasi could actually set stuff on fire, your Water Genasi could actually swim, or your Wind Genasi could at least glide, then look no further.
Finally, check out my OPTIONS FOR EVERYONE article, an effort to give unique support to the races that WotC keeps forgetting about. Includes new racial feature options for the Changeling, Deva, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Kalashtar, Minotaur, Shadar-Kai, Thri-Kreen, Warforged and more!
Be sure to have all of the crappy, boring weapons I don't care about using to all have the d6, leaving the other dice for the good, interesting weapons.
So, a tiny little pixie, wielding a pixie-sized greatsword, does d12 slashing damage? Just want to make sure this is your point...
No, a tiny little pixie, wielding a pixie-sized great-sword with which it is proficient, does 1d12-5 damage due to its atrocious Strength. Considering that the average damage (assuming a total minimum damage of 1, as has been the rule in some previous editions) of 1d12-5 is 2.75, which is about what an untrained Human of average strength can do with a dagger, that sounds perfectly believable to me, considering that a Human dagger and a Pixie great-sword are probably about the same size. Really, Strength difference due to size can handle expected damage differences such as these well enough that further penalizing weapon damage dice themselves is simply unnecessary.
EDIT: By the way, if we remove the "minimum damage of 1" assumption and allow the attacks to do 0 damage, then the average damage of 1d12-5 drops even lower to 2.33.
Speaking of things that were badly designed, please check out this thread for my Minotaur fix. What have the critics said, you ask? "If any of my players ask to play a Minotaur, I'm definitely offering this as an alternative to the official version." - EmpactWB "If I ever feel like playing a Minotaur I'll know where to look!" - Undrave "WoTC if you are reading this - please take this guy's advice." - Ferol_Debtor_of_Torm "Really full of win. A minotaur that is actually attractive for more than just melee classes." - Cpt_Micha
Also, check out my recent GENASI variant! If you've ever wished that your Fire Genasi could actually set stuff on fire, your Water Genasi could actually swim, or your Wind Genasi could at least glide, then look no further.
Finally, check out my OPTIONS FOR EVERYONE article, an effort to give unique support to the races that WotC keeps forgetting about. Includes new racial feature options for the Changeling, Deva, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Kalashtar, Minotaur, Shadar-Kai, Thri-Kreen, Warforged and more!
I'm pretty sure that if I hit someone with a warhammer the size of a salt shaker, even if it was balanced and fitted for me, it would have a different base damage than if I hit someone with a warhammer the size of a halfling.
I'm pretty sure that if I hit someone with a warhammer the size of a salt shaker, even if it was balanced and fitted for me, it would have a different base damage than if I hit someone with a warhammer the size of a halfling.
Why should it? Why can't the simple difference in your Strength scores due to size be enough to cover that? If something is big enough to wield a warhammer the size of a Halfling, then it will have a high enough Strength score that the resulting damage will be significantly higher than that of the pixie with the salt shaker and laughable Strength score. It is important to realize here that it is not just the base damage die here that matters to what the character ends up experiencing as damage. As long as the resulting possible damage outputs are believable enough, then the specific factors going into them become significantly less important.
Could we vary weapon damage dice by size? Absolutely. But do we need to for damage outputs to do what they're expected to do? Nope. Differences in Strength of differently sized creatures can and will ensure that a Human is going to take a hell of a lot more damage from a Storm Giant's Ase than from a Pixie's axe. So, as we don't need to vary weapon damage dice by size and there are other very good reasons not to anyway (primarily related to racial pigeonholing), the logical conclusion is that we not.
Weapons of different sizes differ only by weight, characters can only wield weapons one step removed from their own size but with disadvantage on attack, and that's it. Elgant simplicity, and we can all move on to the parts of damage that actually matter.
Why is it assumed that a pixie will have a 0-1 strength score?
Because it will. If it has anything higher, then magic is in play, and once magic is in play, then why shouldn't the Pixie be able to do the same damage with the salt-shaker-warhammer as the giant does with the halfling-warhammer? It's magic. It can do whatever it wants.
Speaking of things that were badly designed, please check out this thread for my Minotaur fix. What have the critics said, you ask? "If any of my players ask to play a Minotaur, I'm definitely offering this as an alternative to the official version." - EmpactWB "If I ever feel like playing a Minotaur I'll know where to look!" - Undrave "WoTC if you are reading this - please take this guy's advice." - Ferol_Debtor_of_Torm "Really full of win. A minotaur that is actually attractive for more than just melee classes." - Cpt_Micha
Also, check out my recent GENASI variant! If you've ever wished that your Fire Genasi could actually set stuff on fire, your Water Genasi could actually swim, or your Wind Genasi could at least glide, then look no further.
Finally, check out my OPTIONS FOR EVERYONE article, an effort to give unique support to the races that WotC keeps forgetting about. Includes new racial feature options for the Changeling, Deva, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Kalashtar, Minotaur, Shadar-Kai, Thri-Kreen, Warforged and more!
