[The Last Conformist]

Originally Posted by RosenMcStern

The flat additions represent weapon shape in RQ3/BRP: curved blade weapons have +2 but a smaller die, straight-bladed weapons have +1, blunt weapons have no blade bonus.

I'm afraid the logic of this convention escapes me completely.

(Also, it plain doesn't apply to SB5, where a 1H mace does 1d6+2 damage. I thought the new BRP book took its close combat weapon stats from SB5?)

Removing flat bonuses yelds the improvement of scimitars, battleaxes, broadswords and maces having about the same statistics. If that is what you call an "improvement"...

I don't see the point in difference for difference's sake. If a mace, say, did less damage than a broadsword but ignored or reduced armour, there would be a mechanically interesting choice between them, but the difference between 1d6+2 and 1d8+1 is pretty much cosmetic (in fact, the sword is slightly better at punching through armour).


Also, as was already mentioned, flat adds leads to the anomaly where you can't get grazing hits. This is particularly noticeable in CoC with rifle damages like 2d6+4.