3.5 Weapon Size Rules

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Count Arioch the 28th
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3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I'm sure The Hanged Man meant that 3.0 weapon size rules were nonsensical, because saying they don't make 1000% more sense in 3.5 is just idiotic.


Mod Edit: I'm not sure what the Count is referencing here, but it is clear that that this needs to be it's own thread. - fbmf
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

Count, they don't make sense. Unless you think a Grig using a Colossal Longbow is a logical thing for basic weapon sizing rules to allow. I'm not talking about things I disagree with (like the -2/category difference) - that we can debate, if you'd like.
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by Username17 »

In the 3.5 weapon size rules:

You can't hit people with bottles because they are too small.

Halflings can fire the longbows used by Titans.

If you think either of those rulings makes any sense, I honestly don't know what to say to you.

Other than that, there is no difference between what you can and cannot use between D&D 3e and D&D 3.5. None. 3.5 instituted:

* A minimum size for using melee weapons.
* No size limitations for maximum or minimum use of ranged weapons.
* Penalties for using weapons "made for people of a different size than you" which :
.a> Don't apply based on your actual weapon using bits (a drider can't use normal elven weapons even though he has normal elven arms), and
.b> Are larger than the penalties for using items as weapons which were not built to be used as weapons at all.
* Grouping together of weapons which are different size categories based on how some people can use them, without actually labelling which items are thence of which size category even though that's still important.

---

So, in total: your dagger is a dimminutive object, which is important for its AC and stats when animated but it isn't marked as a dimminutive object anywhere. It is given the same listing as your short sword - which is btw a tiny object and thus behaves entirely differently if targetted directly with spell effects.

However, if you pick up some other random object that is the same size as your dagger, such as a bottle, it is now recalculated as a weapon equivalent - which is to say that it is a light weapon for a small creature so you can't use it at all. In melee. You can still throw it at people, just not break it over someone's head under any circumstances.

Meanwhile, remember how you can throw that bottle? Well, you can also pick up a greatbow of a Titan and fire it somehow despite the fact that it is larger than your mount.

None of these changes are advantageous in any way. None of them. There is absolutely nothing you can do in 3.5 that you couldn't do with weapon equivalency in 3rd edition except retarded stuff like firing longbows which are the size of your house.

Under 3.5 rules, firearms do a variable amount of damage depending upon the size of their trigger, and people suffer extreme penalties when pulling the level on a crossbow made for a child.

Centaurs can't use human knives, except as throwing ammunition, which really sort of screws the whole Hercules/Hydra myth in the butt.

Nothing good came out of those meddlings, and a whole lot of stupid came burbling up all over the place.

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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by RandomCasualty »

Frank, I don't get you... I really don't. On one hand, you're saying how high level characters are supermen and capable of all sorts of weird ass shit, like a rogue disarming a forcecage, now you're complaining about a halfling using a titan's bow at a huge penalty.

The 3.5 weapon size rules aren't that bad. They're about all we can expect from a rules system.

Some of the stuff like the centaur/drider's weapons just aren't implementable in a stiffly defined rules system without introducing a new monster stat indicating its weapon weilding effective size.

It's the kinda stuff that a rigid definition rules system just doesn't handle well, you need something more vague to allow stuff like that. Ironically the more rules you have for stuff, the more absurdity you allow.

For the most part, the safest thing to do is just let the DM deal with it. Any DM can figure out that a centaur should wield a human longsword, but by designing strict weapon size rules we take the human element out of the equation and it causes problems. Sometimes I think we'd be better off just tossing lots of the current rules and letting the DM sort it out.

Less complexity and ambiguity is definitely a good thing sometimes.
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

If your going to change the weapon size rules, at least have the changes make the rules less confusing and rational. The 3.5 rules are in no sense simpler, and are definitely more ambiguous.

AFAIK, the only problems w/ 3.0 weapon sizing were:

1. No reach weapons or rapiers for small creatures;
2. Nobody knew what to call a greatsword used by a gargantuan creature.

So, 3.5 comes out. We solved those two problems, and added a mechanic for using missized weapons which is arguably more realistic, and arguably a ridiculous perversion of physics.

But now we have nonsense for ranged weapons, irrational rules for reach weapons, and weapons which aren't even classifiable under the 3.5 system and require their own rules (the lance, the bastard sword, and the dwarven waraxe). The Grig Colossal Longbow is only the tip of the iceberg.

For example, a halfling can throw a Huge Dagger, but can't stab with one. Does that really seem like the result of systme with "less complexiity and ambiguity?"
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by Username17 »

AFAIK, the only problems w/ 3.0 weapon sizing were:

1. No reach weapons or rapiers for small creatures;


Actually, there's a halfling rapier, and of course there's the heavy lance - so the halfling warrior can use reach weapons and rapiers if he wants to in 3rd edition.

2. Nobody knew what to call a greatsword used by a gargantuan creature.


It's the "colossal greatsword". No problems there that I'm aware of. Of course, if you have a a Colossal creature using a greatsword it became a little bit confusing - it was technically the "Colossal+ Greatsword", a piece of nomenclature which was fairly unfortunate. I don't know how often Colossal creatures used two handed weapons in your games - but at least for me that's never come up.

No... there is one problem with 3rd edition weapon size rules. That is the fact that Rogues could use the small versions of weapons and couldn't use the larger versions - except they could just by scaling up the smaller versions. A Halfing Rogue could use a "medium shortsword" (that is, a Shortsword made for an Ogre), which would have the same stats as a Longsword, but mysteriously couldn't use the regular Longsword.

That was a real problem, and required the DM to totally stare at the player with a neutral expression until he shut up.

---

It's nothing compared to the fact that you apparently lose all weapon proficiencies when your size changes, or your inability to hit people with bottles that you have in 3.5.

I'm not entirely sure what the fix for the weapon sizing loop was - but I'm damn sure that 3.5's abswer is the wrong one. IMX, it was not actually enough of a problem to worry about and it never negatively impacted a game I've ever played in under any circumstances.

I suggest actually simply standardizing weapon size, type and damage to a much greater degree so that you never have a situation with two pieces of steel that are the same size and shape being usable by different people (3rd edition and 3.5), or even worse - doing different damage (3.5).

There's no reason for a Longsword (martial weapon) to only do 3 steps more damage than a Dagger (simple weapon). Sure, it's legacy, but the hit point values are different now than when those damage values were defined. For thaqt matter, there's no reason why Martial Weapons and Throwability can't be defined by relative size. I'm realtively sure that I can throw a grig's greatsword. I'm relatively sure that I can't throw a Titan's dagger.

If any martial weapon 2 sizes smaller than you was throwable and simple, the 3rd edition weapon size rules would work perfectly. The 3.5 weapon size rules sincerely don't help anything, and I see no way to fix them except by removing them.

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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by RandomCasualty »

The_Hanged_Man at [unixtime wrote:1083712678[/unixtime]]If your going to change the weapon size rules, at least have the changes make the rules less confusing and rational. The 3.5 rules are in no sense simpler, and are definitely more ambiguous.


I find the 3.5 system a lot better. Because it actually differentiates between different weapons.

In 3.0 you had all this ambiguous crap. A large shortsword was the same as a medium longsword and so on. If 3.0 was going to differentiate by size as the weilding criteria then there should have been only a generic "sword", "axe" etc. that you apply size to.

The 3.0 system really got confusing for varying sizes. A greatsword for small creatures was in fact, medium size. And with no weilding penalties there was nothing stopping people from just finessing anything by weilding a finesseable weapon of a greater size. And worse still was that the weapons didn't actualy follow the real sizing rules. A large creature is 9' tall, yet a greatsword is classifed as being a large weapon, when it stands as tall as a medium sized human. And reach weapons were the same size as a greatsword, even though they're clearly much longer.

So in 3.0 you had, wieldable size, weapon type, size of wielder, and actual size. This didn't need to be that complicated and you don't need all those variables.

The 3.5 system at the very least just requires a size descriptor and a weapon type, and it's actually intuitive. the huge greatsword is weilded by huge characters, and we know because it's a greatsword that it's a two handed weapon. As opposed to in 3.0 where we had to figure out huge was the base, but since it was actually a greatsword it was really gargantuan in wieldable size. And it may or may not be weilded by a huge creature.

The 3.0 system was ok until you started doing stuff for bigger or smaller creatures, then it was just a tedious headache.
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by Username17 »

And worse still was that the weapons didn't actualy follow the real sizing rules. A large creature is 9' tall, yet a greatsword is classifed as being a large weapon, when it stands as tall as a medium sized human.


If you are misunderstanding things that much...

In 3rd edition, weapon sizes are defined as the size of a creature which can use it as a non-light one handed weapon. So a "Tiny Weapon" is one which can be used to fight sword and board style on a Tiny creature. Thus, a "Large Weapon" is a "medium object" when you care how big the item is.

In 3.5, weapon sizes are defined by the creature which is supposed to use it - even in the case of weapons like the spear and the orcish shotput which don't have any parts which vary in any way with the size or physiology of the user. Thus, a "medium greatsword" is a greatsword made for use by a medium creature, and it is a medium object. But a "medium longsword" is a small object, a "medium shortsword" is a tiny object, and a "medium dagger" is a dimminutive object.

The 3rd edition weapon size nomenclature included the information you needed for theabsolute size of the weapon and how people could use it. The 3.5 weapon size nomenclature doesn't, and the only way you know that a dagger is dimminutive instead of tiny is by looking at the god damned 3rd edition weapon chart - because that crucial piece of information is not actually contained in the 3.5 book at all.

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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083786006[/unixtime]]
The 3rd edition weapon size nomenclature included the information you needed for theabsolute size of the weapon and how people could use it.


Huh? Seriously... you're telling me a greatsword and a longspear are the same size? I don't get it. The 3.0 system sucked because it tried to do too many things at once.

If you want to base things on size, that's fine, but then you don't need long swords and shortswords. You just need a base "sword" or "straight blade" that is then modified by size. So you use a large size straight blade, and that's a greatsword. It gets rid of the large shortsword versus medium longsword crap. If the size descriptor describes the handedness of a weapon and who can weild it, then I don't even need to know what kind of weapon it is, because it's entirely descriptive. If we want to call a medium straight blade weapon a long sword and a huge straight blade a full blade, then that's perfectly ok, but the rules should treat them as just a larger version of an existing weapon.

In 3.5 every type of weapon has a distinct unique descriptor and behaves differently in the rules. A large longsword and a medium greatsword are two different things, and an elf trying to use the longsword takes a size penalty for doing so.
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

Under both 3.0 and 3.5, greatswords and longspears are the same size category, if they are for the same size of creature. A greatsword for a medium creature is the same size as a longspear for a medium creature. It's not exact - so, although a spear is much longer than a greatsword, they are the same general size category.

3.0 looked at things from the weapon POV. A Large weapon (size category medium) could be wielded 2-handed by a medium craeature. If I said the weapon was Large sized, that meant a medium creature could use it two-handed. It was admittedly confusing, although it had the advantage of being objective - it didn't matter what creature was actually using it at the time.

3.5 looks at things from the wielder POV - if the wielder was medium sized, it would take 2 hands to wield it. The problem is, this is subjective. So, if I say it's a two-handed weapon, you have no useful information. You need to know who can use it two-handed. From there, you can figure out what size the weapon is - if you have the 3.0 books and convert.

IMO, they should just use the actual weapon sizes as the category. Some things you just can't fix. Reach weapons, for example. The real reason that small creatures shouldn't have reach weapons is becuase they shouldn't have reach. But for balance reasons, they need reach. Since there's no rational way to do that, you should just jury-rig something to cover it - make a "halfling hunting spear" with its own sizing rules - and move on.

Otherwise, you end up with stupid things like a small longspear that weighs half as much as a medium longspear, but has the same reach.
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by Username17 »

If you want to base things on size, that's fine, but then you don't need long swords and shortswords. You just need a base "sword" or "straight blade" that is then modified by size.


This is true, but not actually relevent. It would be simpler if there was just a "straight blade" of various sizes, and it would work a little bit better. But while that is a minor inconvenience of 3rd edition - the 3.5 system is in the same boat; they instituted additional things you have to keep track of, and since they don't actually give you more information to work with - you are left with insufficient information to do everything you need to do.

The information you need is:

Weapon Damage
Weapon Size
Who can use it (and how)

and in 3.5 you also need:

Who the weapon was made for (a property which is mysteriously possessed by spheres of metal and sharp sticks).

The only piece of information the rules give you is the weapon size and its name.

In 3rd edition, that's sufficient, because the name times the size tells you the damage, and the size tells you who can use it and how, and the size also tells you how big it is.

In 3.5, that's not sufficient, because while the name times the size tells you the damage, and the size tells you who can use it and how, the size is also now telling you who the weapon was made for instead of how big the weapon literally is.

In 3.5 you need to keep track of exactly one more piece of information than you need in 3rd edition, and the weapon name and size provides no more information - meaning that you no longer know all the information needed to run the game.

And that's the bottom frickin line.

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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by RandomCasualty »

It seems the only problem that arises in the 3.5 system comes from improvised weapons, stuff that the DM adjudicates anyway.

Basically this means that whenever you use a weird weapon that isn't on the chart, the DM just has to make something up regarding what it does. Where's the problem in this? Haven't we done this since... well forever. Even in 3.0 you still had to say "this is an empty mug of ale I'm bashing over someone's head, how much damage does it do?"

This has always been a DM determination, and I suspect always will be. Trying to handle improvised weapons with a specific system is ultimately a waste of time, as long as its damage is somewhere between a fist and a shortsword you're alright.

A set of rules just can't cover everything.

I have to say that in my experience with 3E and 3.5 I've never actually had a battle with improvised weapons anyway, so I really could care less.
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

A set of rules can at least cover missile weapons, and consistently apply to all weapons that it explicitly covers. I'd hope.
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by Username17 »

It seems the only problem that arises in the 3.5 system comes from improvised weapons, stuff that the DM adjudicates anyway.


Is there some reason you are incapable of paying attention?

Let me spell it out for you:

I disarm my opponent.
I attack my opponent's weapon while it is on the ground.

The 3.5 rules do not tell me what that weapon's AC is.

---

Got that? It is actually important what real size weapons actually have. That information is included in 3rd edition weapon rules, and not included in 3.5 weapon rules.

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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083807463[/unixtime]]
Got that? It is actually important what real size weapons actually have. That information is included in 3rd edition weapon rules, and not included in 3.5 weapon rules.


How is it included in 3rd edition rules?
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by Username17 »


How is it included in 3rd edition rules?


By the fact that "weapon size" is one size category larger than its "object size". It's objective. It scales all the way up and down.

So a "tiny weapon" is a "dimminutive object". A "large weapon" is a "medium object".

In 3.5, weapon size is divorced from object size. A "Light Medium Weapon" can be tiny or dimminutive, there's absolutely no way to tell.

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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083808494[/unixtime]]
By the fact that "weapon size" is one size category larger than its "object size". It's objective. It scales all the way up and down.

So a "tiny weapon" is a "dimminutive object". A "large weapon" is a "medium object".



But this doesn't even freaking work, not when you apply it to reach weapons. A longspear, a scythe and a greatsword are not the size. A longspear is about 10' long, and a greatsword is only about 6. The longspear should be a large size while the greatsword is medium.

Meanwhile the bastard sword, whcih is only slightly smaller than the GS is considered a small weapon? And it's easily taller than a dwarf, being about 5 1/2' long. And lets not even talk about the heavy lance... somehow it's supposed to be small size :rolleyes:

If you thought the 3.0 rules worked in that regard and are somehow better because they produced nonsensical results, then I don't know what to say.

No rule at all is better than that garbage.
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by Username17 »

But this doesn't even freaking work, not when you apply it to reach weapons. A longspear, a scythe and a greatsword are not the size.


I'll assume you mean "not the same size".

Why not? Sure, they are very different in one dimension - the Longspear is about 4 meters, the greatsword is 2 meters, and the scythe is barely a meter and a half in length.

But that's only one dimension. A wolf, a human, and a bugbear are all considered medium size as well - and their heights are very different. A wolf stands about 7 tenths of a meter tall, the human stands about 1.7 m and the bugbear clocks in at a nice 2.2 m. But they're all the same size category.

Because what's important for size isn't one dimension, it's actually two. You are concerned about their cross sectional area. That's why snakes aren't regularly the size of titans - they haven't got any width so they clock down to the same size as much shorter creatures which do.

The scythe is shorter than the other two weapons, but it has things sticking out in all directions - it's probably an easier target than the longspear. The game makes approximations - and putting the scythe and the longspear into the same category is a fine one. Which one has more area? Not length, area - that's the question.

Comparing straight length is like looking at the height of the wolf, the human, and the bugbear and then making the wolf "small" or even "tiny".

I don't see what your problem is. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that you can't understand that having a friend on the other side of an enemy isn't always an advantage.

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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by RandomCasualty »

The lance is clearly bigger than a greatsword, no matter which direction you try to measure it. So don't give me that two dimension crap, because that's a load of bull and you know it.

Look at the weapon picture of the lance in the PHB and then the picture of the greatsword, they are drawn to scale. There is no way in hell the lance is a small weapon and the greatsword is a medium, no matter how you try to explain it. It just makes no sense... none at all.
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by fbmf »

Play nice, folks.

Game On,
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by Username17 »

Look at the weapon picture of the lance in the PHB and then the picture of the greatsword, they are drawn to scale.


No they aren't. They aren't even drawn accurately. Consider the spiked chain drawing in the PHB where you are apparrently dual wielding anchors - and then consider a much more accurate picture of a spiked chain on the 3.5 vampire or in the Complete Warrior.

Here's a picture depicting the use of a lance:

Image

Here's another picture which I don't know whether it will come out or not (stupid tripod):

Image

Here's a picture depicting the use of a Greatsword:

Image

BTW: Get a clue on bastard swords:

The Bastard Sword

Also called the Hand and a Half Sword. The Bastard Sword was a European sword used primarily in the late 14th and the 15th centuries. The Bastard Sword is a long, straight bladed weapon with a rather plain, undecorated grip (as shown at left). While the blade could be used for thrusting, most often the wielder would swing it like a baseball bat. Ordinarily the weapon could be wielded with one hand, but the grip was long enough to accomodate a two-handed grip when necessary. The blade length was rarely much longer than that of a simple longsword, but because the weapon could be used with two hands (although there was really just enough room on most grips for about one and a half hands), it really couldn't be categorized as either a one or two handed weapon, making it a bastard as far as swords go. Interestingly, the executioner's sword of the 16th century developed from the Bastard Sword design.


For goodness sake, read a book, don't randomly announce that D&D mechanics are or are not based soundly on real-world principles when you don't actually know what those real world principles actually are.

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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083855975[/unixtime]]
For goodness sake, read a book, don't randomly announce that D&D mechanics are or are not based soundly on real-world principles when you don't actually know what those real world principles actually are.


I'm not saying real world, I'm talking about D&D. Those pictures are to scale and they're what D&D is talking about when it talks about a given weapon.

A lot of D&D weapons don't match up exactly with what the name implies. A falchion in D&D for instance is more like a great scimitar as opposed to an actual historic falchion.

The point is that a lance, as D&D describes it and depicts it, is a lot bigger than a greatsword. Therefore the lance can't be small in size, while the greatsword is medium.
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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by Username17 »

Those pictures are to scale and they're what D&D is talking about when it talks about a given weapon.


No. They aren't.

Otherwise the pictures you see of people using the Spiked Chain would look anything like the picture of the spiked chain in the PHB - which they don't.

They are just pictures, and are not to scale.

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Re: 3.5 Weapon Size Rules

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

RC, there are a number of posts by the designers stating that the weapon pictures in the PHB aren't to scale. It's not really a debatable point - unless you want to argue that even though the pictures aren't too scale, those are the relative dimensions of D&D weapons b/c that's how they're depicted in the book.
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Re: Complete Divine Preview

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083710351[/unixtime]]In the 3.5 weapon size rules:

You can't hit people with bottles because they are too small.

Halflings can fire the longbows used by Titans.

If you think either of those rulings makes any sense, I honestly don't know what to say to you.


Please tell me where it says either of those things are possible in the rules, and I'll concede you have a point, because those scenarios are indeed rediculous.

However, I don't think it says that.
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