How would these weapon properties stack up against each other?

[stoutstien]

I'm all for this.

It's surprisingly close to my weapon tags/features/effects.

- heavy weapons - deal damage even on missed attacks as long as they clear a certain AC. Bigger weapons have lower AC thresholds and higher minimum damage. *Shields can stop this once per round*

- Piercing - if you roll X or more total they deal extra damage. Found on weapons that can find gaps in armor or hit vital areas in a single blow. *Trade off is it's found in weapons that usually have a lower base damage, some NPCs just don't have vitals to hit, and some armor has immunity unless they are restrained, grappled, or otherwise unable to react.*

- vicious - deal a ton of extra damage if the target is unaware of the theat. Dagger, hand crossbows, fist weapons, and other easily concealed options have this. Also bypass armor completely if you have enough set up time.*all the plate I the world won't stop a dagger in the eye*

Have a handful of "special* tags for regional weapons like man catchers and the like but the three above can mix n match to make dozens of weapons.

[Amechra]

And that, to me, is the unifying feature of everything D&D does well. It emulates the archetypes, not reality.

I kinda agree, except that I'd argue a bit with saying that D&D does those things well... because they're usually held back by crufty stuff that modern D&D imported semi-mindlessly from earlier editions (which had a wildly different playstyle).

Like, arguably what 5e wants is to just do something like this:

Spoiler: Rough Sketch of Class-Based AC

Show

Class	Class AC	Shield-OK	Heavy-OK	Ward-OK
Barbarian	10+Con	Yes	No	No
Bard	12	No	No	No
Cleric	13	Yes	No	No
Druid	13	Yes	No	No
Fighter	14	Yes	Yes	No
Monk	11+Wis*	No	No	No
Paladin	14	Yes	Yes	No
Ranger	14	Yes	No	No
Rogue	12	No	No	No
Sorcerer	10	No	No	Yes
Warlock	12	No	No	No
Wizard	10	No	No	Yes

• Add Dexterity to your Class AC to get your actual AC.
• Shield-OK classes let you use a shield for +2 AC (giving up a hand).
• Heavy-OK classes let you wear heavy armor, which lets you use Strength instead of Dexterity for AC. Some magic armor (like adamantine armor) is only available as heavy armor.
• Ward-OK gives you Shield for free (and the spell is gone from spell lists).
• If some feature would grant a class medium armor proficiency, they get +1 AC and their Class AC becomes Shield-OK instead.
• If some feature would grant a class heavy armor proficiency, they get +1 AC and their Class AC becomes Heavy-OK instead.
• Monks are special, because they can't use any magic armor.

But it doesn't do this, because having an overly-long list of equipment that people cherry-pick the best options off of is a very D&D.