Variable Weapon Damage: The Case Against

[Dan_Hemmens]

This is a spin-off from a couple of other threads, which I thought I should put somewhere by itself instead of hijacking.

Every so often, you see a thread where somebody asks about why it's so hard to create an effective "fencer" type, or why it's so hard to actually kill a man with a dagger, and people immediately jump in pointing out that it is completely ludicrous to expect a tiny little knife/pointy little skewer/whatever to do do as much damage as a great big manly battle axe.

Now I'm not saying that variable weapon damage is a bad thing per se, or that it should be abolished entirely from D&D or from RPGs in general, but I do think it's worth challenging the received wisdom that for weapons Bigger == Better.

The basic argument in favour of big weapons doing more damage is that they hit harder. On the face of it, there's not much you can say against this. Harder hits = more damage. It's a no-brainer.

Except that of course it isn't that simple.

As a physics teacher how much voltage it takes to kill a man, and he is pretty much guaranteed to answer "it isn't the voltage that kills you, it's the current". The voltage is what pushes the electric current through your body, but ultimately it's the actual physical movement of electrons through your internal organs that does the - well - damage.

A cut from a two-handed sword could take your head off. A stab from a dagger could pierce your heart or a major artery and kill you in seconds. Both of these are fatal injuries, both of them are roughly equally possible with the weapons involved. Of course a cut from a dagger could *also* be a shallow slash that spills blood and little else, but then a hit from a two handed sword could be a hasty blow made with the pommel, or a thrust made at the half-sword.

Yes, ultimately, a two handed sword will do a better job of cutting up your body, but both weapons are basically equally likely to kill you.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that damage in D&D is an entirely abstract concept. 12HP might be "instant death" to a first level commoner, but it's barely a scratch to a high level fighter. Suddenly we get to the peculiar situation where all weapons are potentially deadly to low level characters, but some suddenly become incapable of inflicting serious injury on high level ones. You could argue that this is because it is easier to learn to defend yourself from a dagger than a greatsword, or that in some nebulous way a greatsword fighter has a broad advantage over a knife fighter, but again this strikes me as improbable, or at least unsupported. It carries the implication that the greatsword is, in all respects, a superior weapon to the dagger when it fairly obviously isn't. If it was, the modern armed forces would still be using greatswords in military operations. They don't. They do use knives, however, because they're really handy in close-quarters fighting.

[Learnedguy]

Well, as hp is abstract, maybe it's try to show that daggers are worse than swords?

Because objectively speaking, the guy with the sword will win. Daggers fill a niche, but there is a solid reason to why soldiers rush into combat with their swords at the ready, not the daggers.

[Rachel Lorelei]

Also, when we're talking about Large or Huge-sized demons and Gargantuan dragons, a greatsword is probably going to cause a lot more damage than a dagger.

[Zincorium]

Well, you sir have stated the obvious with extreme skill. While I applaud you for it, I can't honestly say that I am educated by it.

At the same time, I do not really disagree with any of it.

I would like to say that the motivations behind each weapon (such as the reach advantage of the greatsword versus the speed advantage of the dagger) are simply not represented in 3.x. It's not built for realism, it's built for fighting giants, dragons, and demons. This has inherent disadvantages when you decide to use any real-world knowledge in analyzing it.

[technophile]

You could argue that this is because it is easier to learn to defend yourself from a dagger than a greatsword, or that in some nebulous way a greatsword fighter has a broad advantage over a knife fighter, but again this strikes me as improbable, or at least unsupported. It carries the implication that the greatsword is, in all respects, a superior weapon to the dagger when it fairly obviously isn't.

Thus why the dagger was the primary weapon of roughly as many historical warriors as the sword. Except wait, it wasn't. The greatsword is superior to the dagger in all but a tiny number of circumstances:
1. Its greater reach allows you to keep the enemy farther away, limiting their ability to harm you (and maximizing the number of enemies you can reach with a minimum of movement).
2. Its heavier weight imparts more force to the blow, giving you greater potential of defeating or at least damaging your enemy's armor. Daggers are not actually much use against e.g. an armored knight, unless you have him down and not moving very much and can thus pick your targets with impunity.

The dagger is only useful if you haven't got room to swing a larger weapon, or as a last-ditch backup if your primary weapon is lost or broken.

If it was, the modern armed forces would still be using greatswords in military operations. They don't. They do use knives, however, because they're really handy in close-quarters fighting.

And they never use them for anything except last-ditch close-quarters fighting, and even that loses out to the real reason they carry knives: because they are great utility tools.

At short ranges, most soldiers will resort to a bayonet or handgun long before they draw a knife, for the same reasons a medieval soldier chose a longsword or crossbow. Knives are only used when you need absolute silence, or you can't bring your handgun/bayonet to bear because the enemy is literally on top of you.

[Fiery Diamond]

I applaud the previous posters on their statements of why a greatsword is superior to a dagger.

That's not the point of this post.

I would contest this:

The problem is further compounded by the fact that damage in D&D is an entirely abstract concept. 12HP might be "instant death" to a first level commoner, but it's barely a scratch to a high level fighter. Suddenly we get to the peculiar situation where all weapons are potentially deadly to low level characters, but some suddenly become incapable of inflicting serious injury on high level ones. You could argue that this is because it is easier to learn to defend yourself from a dagger than a greatsword, or that in some nebulous way a greatsword fighter has a broad advantage over a knife fighter, but again this strikes me as improbable, or at least unsupported.

(my emphasis) on the grounds that what I emphasized is debatable. Something that people seem to forget is that D&D (and lots of the D20 stuff) is a FANTASY SETTING! Personally, though this could be debated by people, and everyone will have his/her own interpretation, I don't think that the first two bolded statements are true, and the last is irrelevant. I don't think that being high-level and having more hit points means you can "defend yourself" more easily - it means you have more stamina. Remember, this isn't realistic - it's a fantasy setting. Anyone here watch anime? You know how some characters, the ordinary humans that don't do much, can die or be on the brink of death from only a blow or two (or a slash or two)? Those are commoners with low hit points. You know how main characters can be slashed across the chest, the face, the legs, the arms, and be spitting up blood and still keep fighting? That's a character with a lot of hit points. 1 hp at a low level isn't more than it is at a high level - you can just take many more life-threatening attacks at high levels (completely unrealistically, but this is a FANTASY SETTING, remember).
There. I've finished my diatribe. Ok, continue.

-Fiery Diamond

[Burley]

I'd like to point out where your own logic and the weapon statistics actually coincide with one another so that everything makes sence.
Let us take two weapons: The Greatsword and The Rapier. One is a big two handed blade, the other is a pointy steel stick.
You already said that the big one can lob off heads and limbs, while a small one (dagger) can sever a major artery or puncture the heart. Well, that is accounted for. It's called a Critical Hit.
Big weapons do a lot of damage, yeah. But, the smaller, lighter weapon (which do the vessel slicing and the heart puncturing) have a much higher critical threat range.
(all feats aside, on the same character using the same statistics)

So, yeah. Small weapons have a chance of taking things down. It's accounted for in those 18-20 x2 things, that you seem to have forgotten about. Everybody is worried about the d4, d6, d8, d12 stuff. Start paying attention to the d20, or the others are useless.

[ColdBrew]

I could point out the historical and physical data that contradict pretty much everything you've said, or I could just say you're wrong and leave it at that. You have failed to provide sufficient evidence in support of your points, and until you do, they warrant no further interest.

[Lord Tataraus]

This is a spin-off from a couple of other threads, which I thought I should put somewhere by itself instead of hijacking.

Every so often, you see a thread where somebody asks about why it's so hard to create an effective "fencer" type, or why it's so hard to actually kill a man with a dagger, and people immediately jump in pointing out that it is completely ludicrous to expect a tiny little knife/pointy little skewer/whatever to do do as much damage as a great big manly battle axe.

First off, I fencer relies a a completely different style of combat than a battle-axe-wielder. A fencer (in a combat situation) is trained to parry and wait for an opening to make a single, killing or crippling blow while the battle-axe is used to bash and slash until the opponent dies/crumples under the number of wounds. The fencer style is just plain not supported by the D20 combat system, not the weapon damage. As for the dagger, it is hard to kill a man with a dagger compared to the other options. You need to get in close and strike a vital area while with a sword or axe you can be less precise because of the wound area.

Now I'm not saying that variable weapon damage is a bad thing per se, or that it should be abolished entirely from D&D or from RPGs in general, but I do think it's worth challenging the received wisdom that for weapons Bigger == Better.

The basic argument in favour of big weapons doing more damage is that they hit harder. On the face of it, there's not much you can say against this. Harder hits = more damage. It's a no-brainer.

Except that of course it isn't that simple.

As a physics teacher how much voltage it takes to kill a man, and he is pretty much guaranteed to answer "it isn't the voltage that kills you, it's the current". The voltage is what pushes the electric current through your body, but ultimately it's the actual physical movement of electrons through your internal organs that does the - well - damage.

This is where you point out that finesse weapons kill by well placed strikes and the passing wounds are frivolous, as I said with the fencer, D20 combat just doesn't support that style. However a bigger weapon deals more damage because it has a wide damage area. A sabre makes a small scratch or pin prick that is lethal only with a precise hit, where as a broadsword or battle axe has a large blade that can cut off a limb or make a huge gash that causes death through blood loss. A sabre doesn't rely on damage, but instant death via vital points in one's anatomy.

A cut from a two-handed sword could take your head off. A stab from a dagger could pierce your heart or a major artery and kill you in seconds. Both of these are fatal injuries, both of them are roughly equally possible with the weapons involved. Of course a cut from a dagger could *also* be a shallow slash that spills blood and little else, but then a hit from a two handed sword could be a hasty blow made with the pommel, or a thrust made at the half-sword.

Yes, ultimately, a two handed sword will do a better job of cutting up your body, but both weapons are basically equally likely to kill you.

No. Just plain no. This is a false statement. A two-handed sword requires less precision to chop off a limb then a dagger has of piercing an artery or the heart. Firstly, there is the matter of distance, then the matter of the target area, and then the matter of your blade size. The larger each of those are the easier the desired outcome. Also, who is your opponent? A Medieval-style soldier? Well, now you have the matter of armor, a dagger can't pierce armor very easily, that's why most medieval weapons were either long-piercing weapons (pikes, spears, swords) or large bludgeoning weapons (greatswords, maces, axes) a slashing weapon was a bludgeoning weapon that had a cutting edge that could be used if the opponent's armor was detached somehow.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that damage in D&D is an entirely abstract concept. 12HP might be "instant death" to a first level commoner, but it's barely a scratch to a high level fighter. Suddenly we get to the peculiar situation where all weapons are potentially deadly to low level characters, but some suddenly become incapable of inflicting serious injury on high level ones. You could argue that this is because it is easier to learn to defend yourself from a dagger than a greatsword, or that in some nebulous way a greatsword fighter has a broad advantage over a knife fighter, but again this strikes me as improbable, or at least unsupported. It carries the implication that the greatsword is, in all respects, a superior weapon to the dagger when it fairly obviously isn't. If it was, the modern armed forces would still be using greatswords in military operations. They don't. They do use knives, however, because they're really handy in close-quarters fighting.

The HP system is based on vitality in terms of endurance and on morale. It assumes you are not taking cuts and getting pierced, but are rather getting bruised and weary from fighting and losing morale because you are an inferior warrior. As for modern soldiers using knives/daggers? They use them as survival tools, not weapons. For close combat melee, they use the butt of a gun or a bayonet which is effectively a pike, bludgeoning and piercing. Few civilizations used slashing weapons. The only substantial armies that used slashing weapons were those in the middle east and India because most armors were cloth and could be cut easily. That's why they has trouble invading the metal-clad warriors of Europe. And for the record, the katana is a piercing weapon, designed like the short swords of Europe to pierce in the joints in armor.

Now, for the question of the randomness of weapon damage, it is not to display physical damage, so I don't mind. However, I prefer scaling damage that ignores the base weapon damage and indicates training, rather than the original effectiveness of the weapon.

[Lapak]

Chiming in with the 'no, a dagger is not equivalent to a greatsword in damage potential' crowd here. As has been noted, we don't use knives for combat now. And they didn't by preference back when hand-to-hand combat was the only option, either. Not just for reasons of reach, either!

Modern stab wound victims do sometimes die from a single knife thrust. Sometimes a dagger-user does get that lucky/is that skillful, and pierces the heart or severs a major artery. However, many/most stab victims either survive or perish from multiple, repeated stab wounds and cuts. Bodies can take a lot of punishment, especially in the short term: while you might bleed out from a lot of shallow wounds, or have one of those shallow wounds happen to sever a major blood vessel, you're far more likely to be mortally wounded when hit with a bigger, heavier weapon.

People don't survive axe blows as readily as knife wounds, because they hit harder (due to greater mass), cause more direct damage (because of larger surface area), cause more indirect damage (bruising and breakage around the actual wound due to the force of the hit), and generally have greater penetration. The greater mass helps them break through barriers that would turn a dagger - a rib might stop a knife thrust, but an axe is going to crunch right through it and keep going.

All in all: yes. Bigger melee weapons are more dangerous, and do more damage to human bodies. The only reason that they're not still used today is because guns are more effective still.

EDIT: Clearly I came in late on this. That'll teach me to open several tabs and respond to a thread after reading three others.

[Fhaolan]

Of course, it's difficult to map RL effectiveness to D&D, because HP and AC are both too vague of concepts. If HP damage is defined not only as actual physical damage, then weapons will do more or less damage not only because of how hard they hit and how far they penetrate, but their psycological impact and effect on fatigue.

And add in that many D&D weapons are... not what they are in RL. A RL rapier is only fractionally different from a cut-and-thrust, which is only fractionally different from an arming sword (which is what D&D defines as a 'longsword'). For some reason D&D rapiers are more like sport epees, which may have evolved from rapiers but have no resemblance to actual combat rapiers.

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I agree with you that the weapon damages in D&D are inaccurate, but that revisiting weapon damage in an effective way entails revisiting HP, AC, and many of the other base D&D concepts.

[Yakk]

Or, to be clear:
The dagger is not just as likely to kill someone as a great sword.

You swing a great sword at someone, a large amount of stuff gets cut. If you hit a bone, the bone breaks. Shocks continue through the body.

The dagger, meanwhile, hits less stuff. Less stuff gets cut. Bones deflect your blade. The shock to the rest of your body is small.

...

Game wise, large blatantly violent weapons should, by default, be deadlier. Otherwise who would bother with a 10 lbs sharp metal stick, when a 1/2 lb sharp metal stick would do the job?

[fendrin]

Thus why the dagger was the primary weapon of roughly as many historical warriors as the sword. Except wait, it wasn't. The greatsword is superior to the dagger in all but a tiny number of circumstances:
1. Its greater reach allows you to keep the enemy farther away, limiting their ability to harm you (and maximizing the number of enemies you can reach with a minimum of movement).
2. Its heavier weight imparts more force to the blow, giving you greater potential of defeating or at least damaging your enemy's armor. Daggers are not actually much use against e.g. an armored knight, unless you have him down and not moving very much and can thus pick your targets with impunity.

The dagger is only useful if you haven't got room to swing a larger weapon, or as a last-ditch backup if your primary weapon is lost or broken.


And they never use them for anything except last-ditch close-quarters fighting, and even that loses out to the real reason they carry knives: because they are great utility tools.

At short ranges, most soldiers will resort to a bayonet or handgun long before they draw a knife, for the same reasons a medieval soldier chose a longsword or crossbow. Knives are only used when you need absolute silence, or you can't bring your handgun/bayonet to bear because the enemy is literally on top of you.

Erm, no.

Try to count how many variations on the dagger were used, historically, in combat. Now compare that to the greatswords. Not to many of the latter and an unimaginable variety of the former.

There are plenty of daggers designed for use against armored opponents. For example, the stilletto was designed to be able to puncture some armors, and slip through the cracks of others.

Physics explains one reason. Yes, mass factors in to the force of the blow [Force = Mass * Acceleration], but equally or more important is a small striking area [Force / Area]. That's why the preferred medieval weapon against a heavily armored knight was a warhammer. Good mass and a small striking area (historical warhammers, not fantasy ones). Blunt, so that instead of piercing the armor and getting stuck, it would dent the armor, essentially crushing the armor in to the knight's body, and lockin gjoints all at the same time. A good warhammer hit could crack a helm and kill a knight in one blow, but a sword blow would be more likely to be deflected (though the impact might stun the knight, giving an advantage).
besides, heavy armor is a historical fallacy. It was not used for very long before it was rendered obsolete by guns and better tactics. Before that, there were many large gaps in armor that were typically taken dvantage of, which required a maneuverable blade: typically a one handed sword or a large dagger.

EDIT: as someone else pointed out, slow posting on these threads is brutal.
For the record, I have no problem with greatswords doing more damage in D&D than daggers, but PLEASE don't bring physics and history into it. The fact of the matter is that D&D is trying to make a playable, balanced weapon system that allows for a variety of fantasy archetypes to be replicated.

Note that I said, fantasy archetypes, not historical archetypes.

[ColdBrew]

Well, I use a greatsword all the time, and I routinely kill guys with daggers without taking a scratch. It's only other greatsword-wielding foes that give me any challenge.

There, I've solved the debate once and for all with my first-hand knowledge of medieval warfare.

[Draz74]

I use a Vitality and Wound Points (VP/WP) system, and I've considered making all weapons do the same amount of VP damage, while still giving them variations on WP damage. Or the other way around.

Any feedback or suggestions on that idea?

[Starbuck_II]

As a physics teacher how much voltage it takes to kill a man, and he is pretty much guaranteed to answer "it isn't the voltage that kills you, it's the current". The voltage is what pushes the electric current through your body, but ultimately it's the actual physical movement of electrons through your internal organs that does the - well - damage.

Actually, it is not internal organs. Which is why you should always keep one hand behind your back when messing with a circuit: as long as it does'nt travel through your heart, you won't die.

Or create a Faraday cage for your protection: either way.

[sikyon]

As a physics teacher how much voltage it takes to kill a man, and he is pretty much guaranteed to answer "it isn't the voltage that kills you, it's the current". The voltage is what pushes the electric current through your body, but ultimately it's the actual physical movement of electrons through your internal organs that does the - well - damage.

The physics teacher should be fired. Voltage kills you, not current. Even a very small amount of current can kill you if it runs through your heart. It never does, however, because the resistance of your body is such that it simply prevents that small amount of current from running.

Voltage = Current * Resistance.

Voltage causes electricity. Make no mistake. Voltage differences are potential electrical energy. Your bodily resistance is high enough that a small amount of voltage will only induce a small amount of current in your body, a tiny amount. The more voltage there is, the higher the current is.

Lesson: Current comes from Voltage.

It carries the implication that the greatsword is, in all respects, a superior weapon to the dagger when it fairly obviously isn't. If it was, the modern armed forces would still be using greatswords in military operations. They don't. They do use knives, however, because they're really handy in close-quarters fighting.

Modern forces don't carry greatswords around because greatswords are not useful in grapples (repersented in D&D), greatswords have encumberance (heavy weight, also in D&D though the effect is much less than real life). Knives are much eaisier to draw as well, being light (and therefore backup) weapons. If you actually ran out of ammo, you'd most definatly want a greatsword over a combat knife to protect yourself. But if your opponent jumps on and grapples you, a combat knife will be much more useful. Finally knives are also more useful in regular chores soilders do, like cutting rope. (D&D doesn't really deal with chores).


Finally, stop thinking of HP in D&D as having physical meaning, even being able to block better. It's purely abstract, and best left that way.

[Matthew]

No. Just plain no. This is a false statement. A two-handed sword requires less precision to chop off a limb then a dagger has of piercing an artery or the heart. Firstly, there is the matter of distance, then the matter of the target area, and then the matter of your blade size. The larger each of those are the easier the desired outcome. Also, who is your opponent? A Medieval-style soldier? Well, now you have the matter of armor, a dagger can't pierce armor very easily, that's why most medieval weapons were either long-piercing weapons (pikes, spears, swords) or large bludgeoning weapons (greatswords, maces, axes) a slashing weapon was a bludgeoning weapon that had a cutting edge that could be used if the opponent's armor was detached somehow.

This strikes me as extremely spurious. A Dagger has about as much chance of going through Body Armour as a Long Sword or Spear. Why are you dividing Medieval weaponry into 'Piercing' and 'Bludgeoning' categories? What's your source for these statements?

As for modern soldiers using knives/daggers? They use them as survival tools, not weapons. For close combat melee, they use the butt of a gun or a bayonet which is effectively a pike, bludgeoning and piercing.

Source?

Few civilizations used slashing weapons. The only substantial armies that used slashing weapons were those in the middle east and India because most armors were cloth and could be cut easily. That's why they has trouble invading the metal-clad warriors of Europe. And for the record, the katana is a piercing weapon, designed like the short swords of Europe to pierce in the joints in armor.

Source?

[fendrin]

Oy, people give the electricity debate a rest!
Dan is right, though that is the stock response from a physics teacher (I've heard it often enough).

Here's the thing about Voltage and Amperage (ie current):
They are two sides of the same coin.

Voltage: the difference in electrons between two points
Amperage: the flow of electrons between two points
Resistance: How difficult it is for electrons to flow across a given point

As sikyon pointed out, V=AR (often written V=IR or I= V/R)

What this means is that given a fixed resistance, Increasing voltage increases amperage, and vice versa.

So which kills? BOTH!

[ColdBrew]

This strikes me as extremely spurious

Source?

A Dagger has about as much chance of going through Body Armour as a Long Sword or Spear.

Source?

[sikyon]

Source?


Source?

Discovery channel, I've seen it there. Swords infact do not cut through armor, but bludgeon the person inside. Daggers poke through joints. Spears have the momentum to peirce lighter armor.

Solders do infact use knives as tools. I used to be in cadets, have a few friends in the army. You never end up using knives as weapons in real combat. You use your gun.


I've never seen a source for that last one. I say that's just logic, but I find it abit far fetched. Eastern armor wasn't made of metal, but it was reportedly still very strong.

[sikyon]

So which kills? BOTH!

Actually, if you were to touch one wire with 2000 Amps running through it but as the result of only a few volts difference, you wouldn't be hurt.

If you touched a wire with a few thousand volts and only a few Amps running through it, you'd be a goner.

[ColdBrew]

Actually, if you were to touch one wire with 2000 Amps running through it but as the result of only a few volts difference, you wouldn't be hurt.

If you touched a wire with a few thousand volts and only a few Amps running through it, you'd be a goner.

The difference between those two cases is the resistance of the wire, but your body's resistance is what's important to determining how much current flows through your heart.

[Lord Tataraus]

This strikes me as extremely spurious. A Dagger has about as much chance of going through Body Armour as a Long Sword or Spear. Why are you dividing Medieval weaponry into 'Piercing' and 'Bludgeoning' categories? What's your source for these statements?

True, a dagger has as much chance to pierce body armor as most other weapons in theory. However, in a combat situation you are more likely to have the opportunity to do so with a sword or spear because of reach and other factors. As for dividing medieval weaponry into piercing and bludgeoning categories, firstly, I'm using D&D terms since we are talking about D&D. Secondly, due to the nature of armor and its interaction with weapons, a weapon made to cut is very ineffective. The greatsword in reality was what would be termed a bludgeoning weapon in D&D. It was used to bludgeon an opponent and the blade helped to make a smaller surface area. You were not going to cut through a helmet with the blade but you could still bash the heck out of the guy wearing it.

On the modern soldiers, bit, I admit I don't know as much about that, but I am sure the knife is mostly a utility tool, though there are cases were it would be used as a weapon. I think bayonets are mostly gone from the battlefield, at least in the US military, though they were used in both World Wars, but that's almost ancient history now.

As for few armies using slashing weapons, again I mean cutting as in a light curved blade not a straight blade of a broadsword that makes an effective bludgeon. Most of these curved blades are found in areas where armies used cloth or leather armors as opposed to metal armors. A curved blade is inefficient against metal armor because it relies on slicing an opponent to damage, not bruising and shocking like straight blades.

Unfortunately, I cant quote once source in particular, I draw from a number of articles I've read through the years on a variety of topics and I have no idea if I could find them again. I'm not saying I know everything about medieval combat and I'm sure there is a lot I don't know and I might be wrong on some points. However, I know enough that I think I can confidently say what I have.

[sikyon]

The difference between those two cases is the resistance of the wire, but your body's resistance is what's important to determining how much current flows through your heart.

Exactly, since your body's resistance is fixed (more or less) all that really matters is the voltage of the source you are touching. Therefore voltage kills you, not current.

I think bayonets are mostly gone from the battlefield, at least in the US military, though they were used in both World Wars, but that's almost ancient history now.

I believe bayonets are still used in some militaries. I know that my friend in the canadian forces has to practice affixing bayonets at least, though I'm pretty sure that's just for ceremony.

Honestly, the advent of automatic rifles rendered many of the weaknesses of rifles in close quarters moot.

[Lord Tataraus]

I've never seen a source for that last one. I say that's just logic, but I find it abit far fetched. Eastern armor wasn't made of metal, but it was reportedly still very strong.

Eastern armor was made of woven cloth and leathers. There were very strong, but a blade built for cutting could slice through easier and wouldn't get caught as easily as with a wooden shield. Thus the weapons are built to work against the armor, so cutting weapons were developed and favored. Actually, a cutting weapon is more effective than a bludgeoning weapon because it can cause gashes that harbor infection if the victim doesn't die from blood loss. And since the armors were not especially resistant towards cutting weapons, they worked well.

[ColdBrew]

Ah, the old "medieval swords were bashing weapons" theory rears its head again.

I refer to you the following:

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html

It very quickly becomes clear they were intended for large fighting men to deliver not only powerful slashing blows but great stabbing attacks as well as pole-weapon-like techniques.

[ColdBrew]

Exactly, since your body's resistance is fixed (more or less) all that really matters is the voltage of the source you are touching. Therefore voltage kills you, not current.

Well, a sufficiently resistant wire may as well be an insulator, but that's nitpicking.

[sikyon]

Actually, a cutting weapon is more effective than a bludgeoning weapon because it can cause gashes that harbor infection if the victim doesn't die from blood loss. And since the armors were not especially resistant towards cutting weapons, they worked well.

Actually against armored knights bludgeoning weapons were more effective, as many times the force of hammers on the armor would trap a knight inside his armor, which couldn't be removed, dooming him.

[Telonius]

The problem is further compounded by the fact that damage in D&D is an entirely abstract concept. 12HP might be "instant death" to a first level commoner, but it's barely a scratch to a high level fighter. Suddenly we get to the peculiar situation where all weapons are potentially deadly to low level characters, but some suddenly become incapable of inflicting serious injury on high level ones.

Not really. The weapon is perfectly capable of killing high level characters. The hand wielding it might not be. This gets into one of the trickiest things about HP. Yes, HP is an abstraction. But higher HP isn't really a measure of toughness. It's a measure of skill. Combined with AC, it represents skill in getting out of the way of attacks. This is completely counter-intuitive, I know, but it makes sense.

For example, suppose a Commoner 1 gets a lucky shot in, rolls a 20 and hits a Fighter 20 with a Greatsword for 18 damage. What would that look like on the Fighter? Probably a fairly decent cut on the arm. It's only that bad because the Fighter is very skilled. He moved out of the way, parried, or did something else so that the damage was minimized. The Fighter is one of the most renowned warriors in the realm. The commoner is some schmoe who barely knows "pointy end away from self." The only reason he got through the armor in the first place was a lucky shot. The only way he could reliably kill the fighter would be sneaking up behind him when he wasn't looking and Coup de Grace'ing him (which is possible given the D&D rules). Regular combat would just be a slaughter, as you would expect in real-life combat.

Now, if the Fighter hit the Commoner for 12 damage, it would probably look something like, the body is down there, and the head is across the room somewhere. That's because the Fighter is much more skilled at getting through armor than the commoner is (higher BAB). He's a highly-skilled warrior. The only way he misses is if some major mishap occurs (rolls a 1). The Commoner is utterly unskilled at defending himself (low HP). Even leaving aside feats like Power Attack, you would expect an evisceration with every blow. So, end result, the commoner gets blood all over the fighter's shoes.

As the fighter is fighting things that have higher and higher HP totals, his sword is just as deadly. But it's less able to kill the foes. Not because the sword becomes not as sharp - but because his foes become harder to hit (i.e. higher in level and HP).